There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rules-of-the-internet

But when I looked outside of the United States, I found that basically every other country with a major wildfire season is now giving crews masks to protect against smoke. And they have not seen an increase in heat stroke. Firefighters are not collapsing because they’re getting too hot. They basically just take off the mask if they’re starting to overheat.

My sources at the Forest Service told me what’s really going on here is a fear of admitting how dangerous smoke is. They said if the Forest Service were to acknowledge how risky it is to work in smoke, the agency might have to start taking on a lot of extra costs. It might have to start paying for more health care. Or hiring more firefighters so that workers could take breaks. And it could also just become harder to recruit for these jobs that are already pretty grueling and low-paying.

Seems the orphan crushing machine is working as designed.

My first assumption was that it was only the Democrats voting, which seems to have been the case, as it was a DNC internal vote. If there were more than democrats voting on it, then to say that it was the democrats who were voting would seem to me to be unnecessary or misleading.

They certainly could have mentioned the DNC in the title to make it more more clear, though.

Honestly? takes a sip of Monster Energy™ Original I expected a bit more heft.

Yeah, I understand, I was a huge meat lover too. I definitely took some pride in my ability to cook a perfect steak. One day I just said I can’t morally justify it, so I’m done, and went… vegetarian.

From that point, I think I did intend to go vegan eventually, but it ended up taking me quite a while because i didn’t think cutting everything all at once would’ve been sustainable for me. I kept going back to r/vegan and reading/getting in debates about ethics and it all pushed me to eventually cut animal products entirely.

There were definitely people who were quite blunt with me along the way who I now appreciate, and wish i could be more like, sometimes, but I’m way too non-confrontational for that.

But one thing I found I asked myself a lot was: “am I really doing my best to live according to the morals I believe in”.

To be fair, I didn’t lose any weight after going vegan. You can still stuff your face with vegan junk food. Lol.

I ate tofu before I was vegan, but man I’ve upped my tofu game since then. Pan fry it and finish with sesame oil and soy sauce, and its a game changer.

I know it’s a bit of a meme to say “you just haven’t had the right one yet”, but I think a lot of people get the idea of mushy plain tofu and are rightly turned off. It’s so frickin good when you make it right.

Here’s the recipe I use.

This seems like either a deliberate attempt to coopt the term “enshitification” or someone talking out of their ass.

I personally think that humans do “matter more” than most other animals, but I’m not a human exceptionalist. I think there’s a spectrum of neurological complexity (for lack of a better term) that determines a lifeforms ability to experience complex emotional life. The more sophisticated that machinery is, the more moral consideration a being deserves.

One of the benefits of this is line of reasoning is that it also rejects speciesism for a more fundamental categorisation, but still fairly trivially answers questions like: Why can’t animals vote? Or, should killing a sentient animal (an ant, or bee, perhaps) deserve the same punishment as killing a human?

I also think that there is some threshold where there’s essentially no complex emotion processing capability. This, to me, provides a clear and consistent answer to why it is OK to kill some life (plants, microbes) for our own survival, but not others.

Of course there are some problems. The “emotional capacity” or “neurological complexity” measure kinda hand waves away a lot of tough questions about the nature of consciousness that’s at or beyond the limits of our current sciences.

If you asked me to elaborate, in the “name the trait” scenario, and kept digging, I’d quickly run out of my depth, because it’s not my area of expertise.

daww I can’t help but give more headpats for cute anime girls. *patpatpat*

*patpat NEET-kun* do your best!

They place them majestically on their hips, as if they’re the captain of a boat.

Of, we goin full Delta Heavy mode!

It’s honestly not even the worst way I’ve even seen it used.

I used to watch some League of Legends (I know, I know) streams from time to time, and there’s a meta where your mid laner, who is supposed to be a strong carry, gives up all their farm to the roaming jungler roll so they become the super-carry.

In any case this somehow got termed to be the “vegan mid” strategy. Ugh. Veganism is when you starve, apparently.

Yep. They also spend a huge amount of advertising $$ to perpetuate the myth of “happy farm animals”. AnAg is one of the least ethical industries out there.

Right? *glomps u* ^//^

Journalists in 2025 be like: OwO *pounces on you*

Tired of Google Home not working? This new change will push you one step further into the valley of despair, where a capitalist hellscape leads you to constantly say “Yeah, that seems about right” and to feel a small twang of loss before moving on with your day.

What… uhh… what do people normally talk about when discussing balls? I feel like you’re asking me to gossip about them behind their backs.