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Friday, May. 9, 2025

5:51am EDT

Members: 571

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Total Online: 3,120

Carrion Luggage

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Opinion · #2336646

Items to fit into your overhead compartment

Carrion Luggage

Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.

This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.

It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.

It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."

I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

dogpack saving 4premium+

about 20 hours ago
In response to "Flood Med"

I just got flooded with information that I didn't know existed. Where is my boat?

2 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

a day ago
In response to "A Pizza the Action"

If you fold a pizza slice up the sides so nothing falls out, does it become a taco or a pizza taco?

Teachers teach history like it's just facts and that's what makes it boring.

1 Like

Rainy Day Sox

a day ago
In response to "A Pizza the Action"

Is there anyone else that heard the teenaged mutant Ninja turtles theme song playing through their heads as they read this?

1 Like

ßlυҽყҽʐ 🤍

a day ago
In response to "A Pizza the Action"

Thanks for the pizza history lesson. I love olive oil and garlic based pizza... but would never turn down a pizza sauced based one.

1 Like

Soldier_Mike

a day ago
In response to "A Pizza the Action"

On a visit to Florence, Italy, I chanced to order a pizza. Being a near-clueless young GI, I figured I was in "the home of the pizza" and it just couldn't get any better than this.

The pizza wasn't bad, but the amount of olive oil swimming on top of it was certainly a surprise.

1 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

May 6, 2025 at 12:16pm
In response to "We Are Very Smart"

Is this suppose to be about being smart or being intelligent? or are they the same? and is smart alec really smart or just intelligent.

Stik to My Own Beat

May 6, 2025 at 9:01am
In response to "We Are Very Smart"

Okay, but to me, that's less a marker of intelligence and more a sign of... I don't know. Empathy? What do you call wanting other people to understand something? And also of being so well-versed in the "big idea" that they can explain it to the uninitiated.

I'd say it's a mix of traits. There's some empathy involved, but there is a considerable amount of intelligence required to find the key points and phrase them in a way large swaths of people can understand. Intelligence enables someone to understand a concept thoroughly enough that they don't always get stuck on the details. They understand that the concept details fall on a spectrum and that an explanation should account for this. Anyone who has any skill in writing training materials or even assembly instructions recognizes this.

2 Like

tj wanderlust-words-in-motion

May 5, 2025 at 7:08pm
In response to "Pyramid Scheme"

I think she should have made up a bed on the floor, right in front of the door. If anyone tried entering the door would wake her right up. Of course, with reviews like this, I doubt anyone would want to enter the room out of fear she'd give them a bad review.

1 Like

Aiva Raine

May 5, 2025 at 6:50pm
In response to "Owl See You Later"

I've always been a night person and feel most productive in the late afternoon. Even when I'm forced to go to bed early and get up early- it seems to take all morning before my brain seems to get into gear.

Granted, insomnia does factor into my bedtime schedule or rather lack of one, but I've always wished more things would operate on a 24 hour schedule rather than the day time limited one.

I also think there's something to be said for the few interruptions that happen later in the afternoon/evening. I always opted for the 9-6 or the 10-7 schedule until I obtained the option to set my own schedule for work because I'd usually have 2-3 hours of quiet time to actually get stuff done. The morning people had gone home by then so I could truly focus and just do my job.

I don't get those who are just naturally up at 7 am and are so perky you want to smack them with a heavy frying fan.

Half of me wishes there was more people that were up and ready to go do something at 11pm or midnight, and yet, the other half enjoys that the majority of the population is already asleep. Makes it easier to enjoy the next 3-4 hours of peace and quiet and stargaze or listen to the crickets and sounds of the night.

1 Like

Aiva Raine

May 5, 2025 at 6:39pm
In response to "Withering Fireballs"

So I remember when it first came out and we had to start supporting products that handled it. There was a big kerfuffle on the approved acronyms, so myself and the other techs just called it Wireless for a while until Wi-Fi became the approved standard.

1 Like

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