nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.
context explaining why the announcer is screaming, this is supposed to take a high level competitive agility dog 40 seconds
This video makes me cry every time it’s on my dash and I can’t even iterate why.
Like the dog doesn’t even know it’s a competition and she’s made history. She(?) just is happy and knows she made her owner happy too.
The face of a being with only a wind storm between their ears, moments before unleashing it unto the world
I spent a lot of time handcuffed and in a cage in high school, for a charity bit the grocery store I worked at would do
the bit was that I was “put in jail for having too big a heart” and customers could donate to my bail to get me out (and the money would go to a children’s hospital or something)
now. I was very clearly a teenaged employee handcuffed inside a large cage. and I would honestly tell people that I had been in there for hours. and people would say, that’s terrible! that’s awful! and I would show them my wrists red from the tight handcuffs, and say but I’m sooooooo close to making bail.
and then they would dump some cash in the basket, I’d thank them, and they’d walk away.
and every so often, one of the managers would come by and collect some of the cash, so I could keep being soooooo close to making bail.
I was very good with this bit. Parents with small kids would pay $5-10 if I told their children I had been placed in jail for not cleaning my room/doing my homework, etc. For people in their 20s, I’d threaten that I was very bad at playing the harmonica, but I WOULD play it and we’d all suffer unless they paid me. and for the most amount of money, older men in suits would almost always pay $20s if I avoided eye contact and stammered a lot.
eventually, the managers started to feel bad because I was in the cage so fucking long and often, that I’d need someone to brace me when I got out because I’d have no feeling in my legs. wobbling like a newborn giraffe.
but I would also rake in at LEAST $100 an hour in charity.
so they were like, hey champ. can we, uh, give you a pillow to sit on. in the cage. would you like a pillow so you’re not just sitting on a cold metal slab. can we give you a pillow.
and I had to explain to them that if they gave me a pillow, people would think I was more comfortable, so they wouldn’t feel as bad, so I’d bring in less money.
the compromise was that they’d bring me a nice coffee every couple hours, which I would have to try to block with my body from the customers.
all this money went to charity. that’s what the money was for. it’s what was on the sign. but how much they were willing to pay was very contingent on how comfortable I looked, never mind the fact that I was still a teenaged employee handcuffed inside a cage.
and out of the dozens of shifts I did this on, not ONCE did ANYONE say, hey kid I’m going to go talk to your manager because what the fuck is going on here. they would just drop money in the basket, and I’d thank them and sip from my secret drink.
I actually had people get MAD at me that I told them I was far away from bail, they donated like $15, and then 20 minutes I got let out because my shift ended.
again. the money was for charity. it was on the sign that was very clearly placed on the upper half of my cage.
so yeah. even when people think they mean well. people can be really, really fucking stupid.
just remembered one time one of the managers was walking by and then noticed me. and stopped and frowned.
and I aggressively rattled my handcuffs against the bars of my cage while we both made dead-eyed eye contact.
and he said, “Is this ethical? I don’t think so.” Pulled out some cash from his wallet to dump in my basket, and asked me what my favorite drink from Starbucks was. went and got it for me with a “keep up the good work.” and then quickly walking away
The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene where Brian Thompson, the CEO of major insurance group UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down, police sources told ABC News late Wednesday evening.
There was a book about insurers ripping people off titled “Delay, Deny, Defend”.
The plain interpretation is that the shooter was unhappy about insurance business practices. United Healthcare is notoriously bad about denying claims. I have a denial letter from them on my desk right now. That would narrow the suspect pool down to millions of people.
Just got word that Billy & Mandy will be leaving MAX at the end of the year. If anyone’s interested in grabbing some physical media, I’m putting up the last of my DVDs on eBay this week. Who knows what will happen in the future, but the series has never had a full DVD set made, so discs like these may soon be the only way to see the show.
I’m in “Holiday Blowout Mode”, so not only are there DVDs and original production art, but posters, crew gifts, and rare merch from shows like Chowder, KND, Samurai Jack, etc.
A lot of people have seemed sad for me that I’m selling off all of this old art. Honestly, most of it has sat in boxes for nearly 25 years. If I didn’t sell it, I’d probably pull it out once every couple of decades while looking for a tape measure. At least this way, ideally somebody who wants it ends up with it and can enjoy it more than I would. I’m super-thankful to everyone who’s bid so far!
Right now, I’m really just trying to buy myself time. Time for the animation industry to “bounce back”, if that is indeed its destiny. Or just time to figure out What’s Next.
I’m just saying, “We created a computer to make decisions for us, but it assimilated all of the bias that was implicit in the dataset and now makes incredibly racist decisions that we don’t question because computers are logical and don’t make mistakes” literally sounds like a planet-of-the-week morality play on the original Star Trek.
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