Since Bully XL dogs are on the TL, we should look at some of the dogs that are banned in the UK, and why?
Dogs are not equal in their capacities, and nothing shows this better than the history of one banned breed - the Dogo Argentino - and its ancestor, the Córdoba fighting dog
The UK Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 lists four specific breeds to be made illegal to own, breed or sell:
- Pit Bull Terrier
- Japanese Today
- Fila Brasileiro
- Dogo Argentino
The Dogo Argentino made the list because it was a breed designed to fight other dogs, although they can be used for search-and-rescue and other activities.
The origins of the modern Dogo take us back to Córdoba in Argentina, around the 1920's. A young medical student called Antonio Nores Martinez was looking to develop a new breed of fighting dog, to beat the competition of the city.
He and his brother Agustin started with the ultimate raw material, which they then crossed with Boxers, Pointers, Wolfhounds and others to create a more stable and reliable fighter.
Why would they need to do this? What was wrong with their native fighting breed?
The Old Córdoba Fighting Dog, or 'viejo perro de pelea Cordobes', was a truly intimidating animal. Created by dog fighters in the city, crossing old mastiff lines, they bred an animal that was so aggressive it seemed to defy nature.
The Córdoba dogs were noted for their stamina, strength and ability to ignore pain and injury. Not only this but they would rather fight to the death than back out, they would turn on their own pack in bloodlust.
Eventually they were almost impossible to breed, since they often preferred to fight one another than mate. The male Córdobas would rather kill the females than impregnate them.
This instability is what prompted the Martinez brothers to start developing a better fighting and hunting animal, one with the best of the Córdoba, but without its ultra aggression.
People like to imagine that dog owners are the problem, that the specific breed is irrelevant. But any glance through the history of fighting dogs should dispel that. The Córdoba was not a sheepdog, or a gun dog, it was an animal bred to fight to the death, now thankfully extinct
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*Haiti Update April 2025* - the international Kenyan led forces have failed to dislodge the gangs now running the capital, cholera outbreaks have been noted, gang rape is rife and the homicide rate continues to increase.
Rival gangs are looking to spread outside of Port-au-Prince, targeting prisons, roads and buses for kidnapping operations. There's something surreal about the fact that a gang faction called 'Taliban' has a stronghold in a suburb of Port-au-Prince called Canaan.
Politically Haiti is currently ruled by an unelected council, since it has been unable to commence elections and there are no legitimate politicians left to rule. The hope is that new elections will be run in Nov 2025, but the gangs are seeking to destabilise this situation.
Around AD 1500 this six month old child was buried under a pile of flat stones and sealskins, in the shadow of a large cliff at Qilakitsoq, Greenland. Centuries later experts determined he was likely buried alive, on the body of his mother 🧵
Qilakitsoq is in eastern Greenland, and was occupied by the Thule Inuit, who arrived circa AD 1250. They pushed out the original Dorset Culture people, and named the site Qilakitsoq, meaning 'that which has little sky', a reference to the high cliffs.
In 1972 a pair of brothers out grouse hunting stumbled upon a burial site in the cliffs.
Somewhere between 500-800 million people rely on cassava root as their main source of carbohydrate. Incredibly it looks like many of them suffer from chronic cyanide poisoning as a result of improper preparation
The quantity of cyanide depends on the cultivar, growing conditions and differences between the root and leaves of the tuber. The amount ranges from 15-1000mg cyanide per kilo of root.
Turning raw cassava root into a safe and edible food requires careful processing to reduce the cyanogenic glycosides. A combination of crushing/fermenting, plus drying seems best - some simple methods like boiling do very little to detoxify the root.
A thread on the Pacific Dwarf mythology that accompanied the Austronesian expansion - the Primordial Little People Type-Tale
The dominant hypothesis as to why many Austronesian-Polynesian cultures have a foundational little-people story, is that when the proto-Austronesians arrived in Taiwan they found a short statured Palaeolithic people already living there.
This theory was recently strengthened by the discovery of 'negrito-like' human remains in Taiwan, dating back around 6000 years. The skull shows many similarities to other Negrito and African San peoples.
In 2016 the British Dental Journal identified a new child protection issue - the sub Saharan practice of gouging out the healthy tooth buds of children, euphemistically called 'Infant Oral Mutilation' (IOM) 🧵
IOM is the practice of removing erupting infant teeth in order to prevent ill physical and spiritual health - the buds are believed to be tooth worms or bad spirits which cause diarrhea and fevers. The cure is to remove the primary teeth.
The teeth are extracted in an extremely crude and painful manner, using bike spokes, penknives, hot nails, fingernails, razor blades etc, without anaesthetic and with the high risk of blood loss and subsequent infection, including passing on HIV or hepatitis B.
Thread of pictures from Australia, taken from the book Peoples Of All Nations (1922) Vol I.
The British authors survey both the European and Aboriginal inhabitants, considering the former to be a "sub-type of the British race... far more assertive, self-confident, ruthless"
"The Sturdy Stock They Raise On Australian Farms" - the authors mention the low birth rate in the cities, but praise the outdoor Australian lifestyle, as well as pointing to new technologies replacing older rural livelihoods.