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April 2024

Newsbytes archive for March 2024

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Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, and GreenReaper.

New study provides neural evidence that dogs visualise words as humans do

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Dog set up for EEG. (Photo ©Grzegorz Eliasiewicz)People have long wished to talk to animals and this desire is reflected in cultural objects such as Arthur C. Clarke's novel Dolphin Island. One well-known example of an animal "learning" human language was the horse Clever Hans, who was later shown to be responding to cues from his handler rather than actually understanding. Cases of poorly-controlled claims, like Clever Hans, and speciest notions of human uniqueness have hindered development of the field. However, the wish to communicate through language has remained and many animals have been claimed to use or understand human languages, including dogs.

'Foxes', 'Gnoll Tales', 'Wolf' and 'Raven' win 2023 Ursa Major Awards - plus 'Tamberlane', 'FurScience' and 'AI Cats'

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Ursa Major Awards Nominations and votes were cast, now the results are out!

Full category results in vote order for the 2023 Ursa Major Awards follow…

Movie reviews: "The Tiger's Apprentice", "Heroes of the Golden Mask", "Rumble"

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The Tiger's Apprentice posterLet's review some computer-animated films! Here are trailers for:

The Tiger's Apprentice,
Heroes of the Golden Mask,
and Rumble.

Short version: The Tiger's Apprentice, action, one character has a tiger form, lots of Chinese culture, story is nothing great. Heroes of the Golden Mask, terrible. Rumble, wrestling-sponsored sports comedy, very formula loser-wins story, maybe of interest to furry macro fans.

Utah kids find clever way to skip school: protesting furries

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Anthrocon 2007 7chan protestors What started as a cafeteria food fling in Payson, Utah became yet another fracas over the allegations of ‘furry behavior’ in schools. This ultimately led to online rumors and frustrations about alleged attacks committed by the ‘furries’ on students. Bolstered by frustrations on social media, a handful of students and their parents performed a walk out of their school on April 17.

An older furry by the name of Stroodle was interviewed by ABC4 [EU/UK folk: try this], and said that expression is important, but sometimes studies should come first.

It’s crazy that it’s escalated to this point that these kids are being so distracting to their peers that their peers want to stage a walkout [...] So to have the next generation muddy our name and not represent us very well, it’s kind of disappointing.

Continue doing things you like, continue dressing up, continue making art. But maybe let’s keep it out of school hours?

Digging Up Positivity - April 2024

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Welcome to the April episode of Digging Up Positivity! Spring is in the air and summer is just around the corner.

In this episode:

  • The April charities from the fandom
  • Even crocodiles need to go to the dentist
  • Animation news
  • A wonderful interview with one of the main forces behind AnthroIrish!

And much more.

Oh hey! Also, I am happy to say we are giving out item from my PAWS collection from my ArtworkTee store, more details at the end of this video.