Letting them know what mankind is all about seems like a terrible idea. We’re jerks.

This is great. Although…

when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it.

I wish! “Fix” is wayyyy too optimistic.But maybe, just maybe, I could make it suck a tiny bit less. Still left with utter garbage, of course. Okay, well didn’t you just say you could make it suck a tiny bit less? So do it again. And again, and…

And it jumped on the man and scratched him all to pieces!

I do like a happy ending. The jerk had it coming. Hopefully the dogs were okay though.

Could a feeling or emotion be more fascinating than fascination?

I have a 16 gallon shopvac I bought… about 15 years ago, maybe more. Honestly, I think that’s the way to go. They can handle wet, dry stuff, huge capacity, really powerful, simple system. Not even expensive compared to normal vacuums.

If you have a husky/husky mix, good luck with bags. You will need about 1 billion per year.

That certainly sucks all the joy out of pirating it.

Ah, I see. I was going to recommend you a link to the audiobooks that I found.

I managed to find what I assume are English fansubs.

It was on Amazon Prime’s streaming service for a while so there should be official subs at least floating around.

It’s fairly entertaining but you really have to suspend disbelief. I’d call it fantasy with some sci-fi jargon more than actual sci-fi. I guess I could say overall plot doesn’t make a lot of sense but scenery on the way isn’t too hard on the eyes.

Just curious, to you speak Mandarin?

Get people to fund their own smear campaign? Creative!

I think it’s an accessibility option, visual captchas should have a way to get to that alternative. Otherwise visually impaired people would just be screwed.

Let’s just say if it was Feces Encrusted Nail(D) vs Anyone® I’d be going with my man FEN.

If people stopped getting murdered, they’d still be killed by illness, parasites, old age, accidents.

So it’s okay for me to murder, because those people would die anyway? If not, then there’s no point in bringing it up.

If humans stopped eating meat, millions of animals would still be killed by predators, illness, parasites, old age, accidents

Just like there’s no point in saying that, unless it’s intended as some kind of justification.

Why is it OK for other animals to prey on other living beings, but not humans?

In other words, why should we hold humans to a higher moral standard than lions? Are you really asking that?

If so, I can give you an answer but it seems like a ridiculous thing to ask and I’m just about positive you don’t actually believe that if the standard is good enough for lions and sharks it’s good enough for humans.

but not humans?

Think about it for 30 seconds and I bet you can come up with two really good reasons why there should be a different standard. If you give up, I can tell you the answer but it’s really obvious. I’m confident you can come up with them if you try.

to prey on other living beings

This is also reframing the problem in a weird way. Living isn’t the same as having interests, preferences, emotions, being able to suffer, etc. The majority of people who are against (unnecessarily) eating animal products don’t take that position just because animals are living, but because they’re sentient.

it’s 2023, upgrade.

Feel free to buy me a new car.

And you’re saying it’s absolutely impossible to exchange meat in such a way as to not increase the incentive of meat being killed to be consumed in the future?

What do you mean by “exchange meat”? I assume you mean exchange value (i.e. money) for meat?

No, it’s not impossible to do this without increasing the chance that an animal gets killed to provide the meat. For example, if someone promised they’re only selling roadkill and will never kill the animals or do anything to increase the chances the animals get killed then you could buy meat from that person without increasing the probability that animals get killed. Obviously it would have to be reasonable to trust that person to keep their word.

That’s a very unlikely exception though. If you go to the grocery store and buy some meat, there is no basis or evidence to believe they’re only collecting roadkill. When you buy meat from a grocery store, it’s virtually certain that this is increasing the chances of animals being killed (very often after being subjected to extreme suffering). And you will have a share in the responsibility for those effects, because there’s a causal link between your choice to buy the product and the things that are done to make it available.

“The car’s tires screamed in protest as he drifted around the curve.”

From this we can conclude that tires are sentient.

If someone is driving down a wildlife-heavy road thinking “ah well, if I hit anything, the vultures will clean it up”, and a day later, a vulture finds a dead squirrel in the road that was hit, is the vulture to blame for the squirrel’s death by virtue of being a beneficiary of the squirrel’s death? Because that’s analogous to the situation.

That’s not analogous to the situation of the vulture going to the store and buying squirrel meat.

The problem isn’t benefiting from the squirrels death, the problem is doing something that increases the probability that the squirrel gets killed. If the vulture finds and eats a dead squirrel at the side of the road, that has no effect on the how likely that squirrel (or future squirrels) are to die.

On the other hand, if the edit: vulture goes to the store and exchanges value for some squirrel meat, the vulture is giving others an incentive to kill squirrels to acquire their meat.

If you were the squirrel, would you rather live in an environment where no one benefits from killing you or one where there’s a massive bounty on squirrel meat?

A pop science article using misleading language to drive traffic. They don’t literally scream.

Anyway, no one is saying that plants can’t react to stimuli. There’s a difference between nociception and experiencing pain, fear, or other emotions. There’s no evidence that plants (or any creature without a CNS) can do that.

I would blame the assassin. They pulled the trigger.

But that’s crazy! The assassin didn’t kill anyone, all they did was point the gun at the victim and pull the trigger. Maybe we should lay the blame on the gunpowder or the bullet. Actually, that doesn’t work either. We can’t blame the bullet, it wasn’t what killed the victim. The real problem was the massive blood loss. Or maybe the victim survives a bit and dies in the hospital due to an infection from their injury. Now we can’t blame the assassin, the bullet, the gunpowder, the gun or the injury caused by the bullet. Right? Those are not what actually caused the victim to die, it was the bacteria!

Thinking that way is obviously ridiculous. Of course, it’s easy to understand why you’d want to: it’s incredibly self-serving. The bar is set so high for you to be responsible for anything that you basically will never have to consider yourself responsible whatever you do.

The reality is if we can say “but for my actions this wouldn’t have happened”, then I’m responsible. But for consumers creating demand, there’d be no meat in the grocery store. Therefore the consumer has a share of the responsibility. You have a responsibility if you eat meat, hire an assassin, whatever. Refusing to recognize it doesn’t make it go away.

Time to start roasting your own coffee!

I’ve never understood the minds of people who essentially like having their pizza toppings served on a cracker.