I don’t refute that there’s far too much callous cruelty in the production of meat products. I hope there’s a greater push to, at the very least, reduce the suffering to as minimal as possible for the duration of the animals’ lives. I worked on farms growing up, but never factory farms or anything larger than 20-30 cows and flecks of sheep or a barn of egg-laying hens, but the cruelty of factory farms and the shit stained floors and the breeding cages and the systemic abuse, it’s all on another level far above what I’d consider humane.

Unfortunately, I grew up and had to work on farms, both parents worked separate shifts to have no babysitters best they can, and whatever was cheapest or easiest to shove in our guts is what we were fed. I will attest to the ‘brain washing’ element through the everyday normalcy of buying the cheapest frozen bag of gigantic chicken breasts, but that’s also all my mother and father could afford to feed us, and we didn’t live in a location that had many options for grocery stores (a ‘local owned’ kroger/owens, and a Walmart if you drove another 15-20 minutes the other way). I definitely think, if they had had the training or information or the time and cash, they’d have fed us better meals (I don’t think either of my parents know a single vegan friendly dish).

All of that to say, myself and many other people were living in conditions incongruous with the forethought and planning necessary to even attempt veganism. The few vegan locations I was able to find when I went to college were terrible, the food wasn’t good, or at least I didn’t like any of it. I’ve had good vegan dishes, but I have to make them, every single one, or I stomach food I don’t enjoy. I can live on apples for lunches, I’ve gone many a day eating throw-together salads, I meal prep grains and veggies each week so that a majority of my meals are already set. But I want meat dishes sometimes. And until there’s a more affordable way to get lab grown meat, the only way I can dive deep into a MASSIVE section of the culinary arts, is through engaging in capitalism that supports a horrific industry.

In fact, I can’t eat my bananas without inadvertently funding the violent private militias enlisted to put down dissent among the local farmers. My wife has to buy all of her beans through a local seller who supposedly employs previously indentured coffee bean pickers and gives them a fair rate, but surely she can’t only drink coffee she’s made from home, so we’ll try local places (boycotting Starbucks still, options very limited) and not all of those places buy from that bean seller so it’s not all confirmed ethical. The list is exhaustive, and so my minor attribution to the slaughter or those animals is, to me, the same contribution I make to the military juntas who ensured I could buy a banana, and the same as the polluting of the rivers for any manufacturing process or project. Although not worthless, I do value human life above animal life, and so dealing with those internal struggles and questions and navigating where best to purchase fabrics because of the indigo staining children’s hands who wash jeans, to me, are all above the suffering of animals, the sheer number of those animals (the 90 billion figure) does not hold any weight, to me, when comparing the two. So I am just as culpable, to myself, for engaging in those other acts of violence through capitalism, as I am for engaging in eating meat.

So, I try to buy less bananas and less fruits out of season that aren’t grown locally wherever possible, but I will eat at dairy queen and order a banana split. I reduce the total red meat in my diet because I want to impact the problem where I can, but I do like the taste and I don’t believe that consumption of another animal is wrong, so a dozen cows over my lifetime will bother me morally as much as driving my gas car (I’d do electric, but I couldn’t afford it the 8 or so years ago I bought the car), which is to say, I don’t love it, but I won’t lose sleep over it.

FUCK that got dark. Christ, I gotta go find religion after that one

That analogy goes so far above what’s happening, at least for the average person.

Do you buy jeans or any clothing produced outside of the US? BAM, you’re as bad as the people in the factories abusing local communities and child labor.

Should one attempt to find clothing that is ethical where possible? Then absolutely, and buying a pair of Levi’s doesn’t make you complicit in enabling child endangerment.

Same with most things, I try my best to already only buy from brands that don’t: support genocide through funding or messaging, discriminate based on sex/race/gender, engage in union busting or union restrictive activities, employ under the table for children or for tax/benefit reductions. So many people try to argue from a place of Absolute Moral Supremacy, and the world is just too grey for that.

Reduce the meat you eat, yes, that’s a good plan and it’s good for the budget and it’s good for the planet. But humans HAVE been eating animals for longer than we’ve walked upright, so going entirely non-consumption just isn’t going to happen.

You can make stances as to why it’s a good thing, why it might assist you in the long run, but to conflate it with enabling violence towards spouses? That’s the kind of rhetoric that gets vegans shouted down and laughed at anytime the name is brought up. If you want to make long lasting change, changing hearts and minds will do that, and your tone/style won’t win hearts and minds.

They got your IP Address, which just means they have the number that corresponds to your device when it accesses the internet (for most people in most situations, this number changes often) and it doesn’t really do much besides tell them the general location of the device based on the numbers themselves as they pertain to a location with how they’re assigned. But they’re general enough to be mostly useless. But enough to spook some folks.

But, was the thing about urine in your second to last sentence a mistype or did you mean that?

I mean, we can summarize it in “republican representative pours water on the property of her Democrat colleague from the same district, lies about origin and reason”

The assuredness in your tone fucking sent me into a fit of giggles. My man was put to the TEST for that game and still remembers years later how annoyed he was that it didn’t let you turn off dumb motion controls like all the other platformers on the wii

Man says “hamas aren’t good guys, but they are the only ones bargaining on behalf of Gazans”

And you say “he said hamas are good guys”

If you learned “everything after the But in a sentence is a lie” and still believe it that vehemently without nuance into your adult life, you should reevaluate who you’re taking your life advice from. Things can have nuance, and this war is fucking filled with it. Gazans who haven’t known a life outside of death and destruction of their home voting for people who claim they’ll fight for them (Hamas), radicalized by the violence enacted upon them by Israel. Israel insisting the death tolls are anyway near similar, riling up their citizens and voter bases about Hamas, an organization that, with it’s absolute best opportinity for a ‘surprise’ attack on October 7th, barely scratched the surface of the innocent deaths since this has begun. It was a travesty, a loss of innocent life, and it was met with another travesty, another loss of life, but in greater force than they could have ever attempted.

If you can’t sympathize with a people who have been starved, bombed, displaced, and then blamed for their existence, then history has failed you.

BUT THEN THERE SHE IS, THERE SHE IS AND HE DIDNT KNOW

God that movie got me in the feels

Generally okay with, but are they generally OK with legislation protecting those individuals/recognizing them as protected under the same laws that protect for factors of sex and race?

Both are true. The land sale did great short term benefit, terrible 5 year turnout as the fun dries up and they can’t afford rent at a lot of locations as easily. Then the seafood producer put the squeeze on em.

There’s just never been evidence to suggest (in any meaningful way) a doctor made a decision compromising the life of the organ donor to make use in other patients, that would be medical malpractice and the first people looking to sue you after a loved one dies are the ones signing the papers giving permission.

Calling the opinion moronic may not be nice, but the idea is something I’d say is foolish. Like if you went through life thinking vaccines are some kind of conspiracy for profit, the evidence just isn’t there and there’s enough of it on the contrary that to suggest it would be foolishness.

Fuck, he’s dead already, he’ll never have to live in a bunker playing CSGO, Masturbate to bootlegged lesbian porn, or make his grandkids recite dogmatic poetry.

Here I heard he was looking forward to that

Supposedly in retaliation to British soldiers making themselves comfy in colonial homes when they pass by (but like, our soldiers did it too, the locals weren’t happy when ANYONE armed was coming through)

Our 3rd amendment to our constitution states: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Feel free, I think it’ll be a great game when you check back in.

I’m a big Hades 1 fan, and played that game in it’s early state as well. Hades 2’s early access feels roughly 90% or more complete, it’s missing pictures for some items (placeholders for now), some character portraits of some of the lesser-interacted-with NPCs. I think there will be another weapon because there’s a slot for it, and there’s seemingly some more boss content. Gameplay, basically at 100%

So if you’re likely to finish and not check back in, definitely wait because the game should be in pristine condition by then, with it being this polished already. Love this studio, love this game

I think it’s more to do with that if the collective workers vote to become a union or not, and succeeds in that vote, then the owner/company must recognize them as the union and engage in negotiations as such.

If the vote of the workers fails to choose to unionize…well usually that means the people who tried to organize it get fired because there’s no union

We shit on ‘upselling’ all the time. If you cleaned those pages, pressed them back and touched up the spine of the book, sure. But I’d be annoyed too if there was a 500% markup on a resale of used material

Won the vote to organize a union, something that has to be done in the U.S.

I beat [BAD GUY IN TARTARUS] and [BAD GUY ON SURFACE] when it was still really hard

I like the changes, those wins felt very cheap and circumstantial. It was super fun, but the changes definitely make it ‘feel’ better. I love this dev team for listening to the community

I think international pressure, like most global pushes, ultimately stumble when not receiving backing from either Russia, China, or the US.

As their biggest western partner, we have yet to lay ANY substantial pressure on Israel

I think the person was speaking to the fact that the median savings account of the average American (big average) is 84,000 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/table/#series:Retirement_Accounts;demographic:agecl;population:all;units:median

Or that the average person under 35 has less than 18,000

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/table/#series:Retirement_Accounts;demographic:agecl;population:all;units:median

The average American isn’t winning big with stock market gains. Crashing the stock market might wipe out my measly 15k, but I don’t own a house yet and I can’t touch that money for another 30+ years, so it can’t help me at all anyway.