This is the most hilarious thing I have read in a while. I want so badly to comment, “You know you are talking about OP, right?” but I don’t need this in my life lol

That looks amazing thank you for sharing

All carbs all day

Thank you so much for explaining it! I just checked major news sites and there was nothing, just that it was “terrorism”.

I would be so tempted to hug it

I realize I didn’t share my stance on antinatalism, which is probably super telling. It’s so far removed from my life and experiences I simply don’t think about it that much lol.

In my perfect world there would be no unwanted pregnancy or forced birth. The quiver full movement is wack as fuck. Both forcing people to give birth and giving birth to people to have them be your little soldiers are abhorrent behaviors to me.

I have never wanted to have children so I don’t understand that part of the human experience. I don’t think it’s inherently moral or immortal to want to and succeed in procreating. I don’t know enough about the topic (and don’t think internet antinatalists do either) to try and tell people what they should be doing like that. I don’t think there is a net good to me or anyone else that I was born but I also don’t think it’s that deep 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is the first I have heard about the incident in Palm Springs. Everything I read about it seems to presume I would know who is against fertility clinics but I can’t figure it out. Would be grateful if someone could clue me in. (I thought that the current flavor of US fascism supported fertility clinics. I know some religions are against it but seems unclear who would do it, especially without a statement.)

My take differs from what Hamid posted slightly - but it could also be me reading too much into it, lol! I read this statement as presenting life as inherently good an joyful, something to be enjoyed.

I personally view it as neutral. It just is. It is not inherently good or bad, there is no meaning. But paired with that is a fiery opposition to treating some life as worthless or as a source of commodities. To me, life has no meaning but fuck anyone who tries to impose meaning on any being through their authority. Examples include capitalism (workers lives are to produce value for the capitalist), patriarchy (people who can give birth’s lives are to produce workers), carnism (animal lives are here to extract commodities from). Also fuck everyone who withholds the requirements for life (access to food, water, clean air, community).

The point of veganism is to elevate all life to the consideration that is supposed to be enjoyed by humans. The point of leftism is to ensure that all humans are elevated to that status too and protect each other.

This is probably just semantics and me being way too literal in my thinking but the above is where my veganism and leftism is centered and it is so without the idea of “promoting” life. We’re here, we’re alive, and we all deserve to live in peace, comfort and community.

Utilitarianism assigns value in an arbitrary manner based on the observers values and that’s super wack to me.

I want as many sentient beings to have the best lives possible

For me, this is where utilitarianism falls apart. It makes the observer the person who gets to decide what “the best lives possible” means. How can the outside observer have the authority to make this decision?

When talking about humans, consider when people defend colonialism by saying they brought “civilization” and modern medicine, comforts, etc. to people who did not live the way the colonizers did. I’m not saying that non-colonized people live in some utopia, but the people who thought they were doing good didn’t give a single fuck about what the colonized people wanted, disregarded all their knowledge and experience and forced their ways on them. Even if we take lessons learned from that and try and be more open minded about listening to people before making decisions about them (my skin is crawling as I type this omg) we don’t know what we don’t know and it makes no sense to apply this framework to decision making impacting others.

Now consider non-human animals and how we are even less effective at communicating with them…

One thing that makes a huge difference is fresh spices. Even if the spices themselves aren’t super fresh, if you buy whole spices they degrade much slower than pre ground. A cheap coffee grinder is super handy for this. They are also cheaper. I have a bag of garam masala mix and I just grind what I need each time.

If you are comparing to restaurant food you might not be using as much fat and salt as they do. Personally I don’t cook with oil but common practice is to fry the spices and aromatics a bit to help release their flavours.

Fresh onion and ginger also makes a big difference I find, and lots of it. When I make a tomato gravy I process the onion and ginger together in the food processor for the base.

That’s a beautiful memory!

Not yet 🙁 They smell so, so good I’m sure they will come.

So much cool stuff going on! Thanks for taking the time to share what you are learning with the maples. It’s fascinating.

The loquat seed is very exciting!

I fucking hate ground elder. I’ve seriously considered a flame thrower.

Sorry to report that cardboard and mulch is not foolproof either. I’ve got a dump truck full of wood chips coming so I’ll try again.

Oh hell yeah those sound cool. I’m making some pretty bananas assumptions here but I want to say the pfas thing is potentially less about conservation and more about potential remediation approaches and/or tracing the fate of the chemical. I work in shit water and shit water accessories and the fate of pfas in the water cycle is a massive topic. If I recall correctly your part of the world favors lagoons so how rushes uptake pfas is super valuable info.

The peatlands thing is also super cool and I’ve been following this topic a bit too as I live in a swamp (not a peatland but near one!) and what’s happening in the canadian arctic is terrifying to me lol

Looks amazing 😍

I’m so excited for the sea oats. The are parts of the garden that are stupid dry and others that are soggy, so we have a wide variety of conditions to play with it’s fun!

They were extremely expired lol. But my partner had mentioned lasagna last weekend so I decided to use them up. Turned out great!

They are easier to grow than tomatoes and peppers. The processing is where the work is.

Oh hell yeah poppies fucking rule

The train was the main attraction tbh lol, the flowers were an excuse. But they really were lovely.