Horace Weston; considered one of the best banjo players of his time (late 1800’s) so good that (as a Black American man again in the late 1800’s) he was invited to personally perform for Queen Victoria.

Despite it feeling like a slog while waiting at the time Robert Jordan’s release schedule was also pretty consistent with the Wheel of Time (until the last book—that became several eventually—where he really wanted it to be in one volume “even if you had to carry it in a wheelbarrow”) until he, uh, died.

There’s quite a few authors I trust with new series, and I’ve pulled the trigger on new authors a few times and usually have not been burned. For many authors who make it to publication they are really motivated to keep the dream going.

Martin’s at least been working on stuff. The TV show, spin-off books in the same canon, and doing other projects.

I think his biggest issue has always been time management—and suddenly he was taken from a sci-fi/fantasy author with a niche audience to a global phenomenon with a household name. He basically got everything he’d ever dreamed of and then got pulled in too many directions. And at least as glacial as his pace is he has shown evidence of writing the next book, too.

At this point I can’t tell if Rothfuss is genuinely struggling and that’s manifesting as hostility or if he’s just enjoying trolling people.

It talks about South Africa. The illegal donkey hide trade has been going on for years so not everything is in this specific one. This is not a new thing.

Various donkey and ass species in Africa get processed for hides and other byproducts and sold to parts of Europe or SEA (especially Thailand) due to their value in traditional medicines where the information about the source is laundered and they are sold globally.

The parent comment was quite ignorant about this well-known issue and its global public and animal health issues.

Yes, African Wild Asses are critically endangered. Read the article; these aren’t just domestic donkeys.

The donkey hide trade is also a major route by which zoonotic infectious diseases, including Brucellosis and Leptospirosis, can be spread. There are also concerns for its ability to bring in African Horse Sickness and Burkholderia spp. diseases which would be devastating to our domestic equine species and economically damaging.

It’s also used to spread money via illegal backchannels to fund criminal organizations.

Donkey products can be used in some cases in the United States; however, because they are not considered food and fiber animals there are fewer regulations documenting medications that have been used in them, including drug residues which can kill humans.

And a lot that did get preserved just got held in private collections or sent to the Vatican where they’ve been locked away (at least some like the Codex Borgia have been scanned and are now publicly available digitally).

It’s an alpha 2 agonist under the class of clonidine derivatives, not a phenothiazine. You’re probably thinking of acepromazine.

Xylazine’s a sedative. We use for general sedation on its own (with or without butorphanol), and as a premedication prior to induction of general anesthesia with ketamine to bypass the excitability phase of ketamine in large animals. I usually add on midazolam or diazepam in adult horses with ketamine as well (it also can be excitatory in awake adult horses without sedation).

It’s a centrally acting alpha 2 adrenergic agonist sedative (it’s not a tranquilizer; tranquilizers do not affect consciousness) commonly used in large animal veterinary medicine. We’ve had to start keeping ours in safes at the request of state police; I don’t live in any of the states mentioned in the article. It won’t get you high, but it will make you sleepy and has short-acting analgesic effects. Supposedly it potentiates the high of heroin and methamphetamine with how it interacts with them. Because it’s not a controlled substance it’s historically not been as well-secured as opioids (it’s also not uncommon for farriers and horse owners to illegally acquire and use it).

Detomidine or dexmedetomidine are in the same class of drugs. There’s a huge variation in species response to individual alpha 2 agonists. There’s a few anecdotes of veterinarians accidentally injecting themselves with xylazine; they usually end up waking up in the hospital hours or days later. And that’s with a known dose and immediate transport.

Because xylazine is labeled for large animal use the formulations are somewhat concentrated (100mg/mL for horses; usually 20mg/mL for cattle) and the dose for a horse is small (~1.5-2mL).

There are reversal agents for alpha 2 agonists (atipamezole and yohimbine), but not for humans. Atipamezole is only labeled for veterinary use (although it has been evaluated in humans). Veterinary yohimbine has been on backorder for years.

There was a study a few years ago demonstrating no statistical difference after 3 months between steroid and sham for knee arthritis, although the steroid gave short term relief. Not at my computer but I can try to dig it up.

I sing songs (often parody) to my rabbit to mixed acclaim. He likes the banjo (he’ll come up and listen to it), but doesn’t like the harp. No class that one.

Oh there is. Not that it makes much of a difference.

There’s Cherokee Nation vs Georgia (1831) and Worcester vs Georgia (1832) where the supreme court ruled that the government could not forcibly evict 15000 or so people whose families had been living in “Georgia” for generations. Andrew Jackson then proceeded to ignore that and thus started the trail of tears.

Honestly at this point it wouldn’t surprise me if they decided to overrule the 1879 ruling that First Americans were “persons”