Potatoes get plenty of recognition and always have.

For those of us new to whatever this is, I’m legitimately curious about what a “3-level summary” is.

Sorry to keep bugging you but I’m looking for solutions for my entitled cat. Currently trying a rope ladder on my window. She doesn’t like leashes. Do you use a leash?

How do you explore the outdoors with him? You take him hiking?

Sugar and Mylar

Ok I see my sarcasm was lost on you so let me try again. There is nothing ethical about pet ownership or industrial civilization. If we cared about the well being of pets we wouldn’t keep them, and if we cared about the well being of the planet we wouldn’t build cities or burn fossil fuels.

I already have a cat. The above is moot for me. If I had to rethink this then maybe 12 years ago I would have made a different decision. At this point I am not going to euthenize my cat or blow up an oil pipeline. If you allow my cat agency then she should be allowed to explore her world and make her own decisions, just like the pigeons and rats that are forced to adapt to human civilization by eating garbage.

Anyway she’s safely locked away and miserable now so none of this matters.

Yup, and I’m the only one with agency in the whole world. It’s all about me.

Here is a perspective from someone who has owned an inside/outside cat for the last 12 years. My cat is independent and resourceful and yes, contributes to ecodestruction by killing birds and mice occasionally. To me this is negligible compared to the ecodestruction of simply existing in a city. If I lived in nature I would not have a cat. I don’t think you can conflate my cat killing a pigeon twice a year in an urban environment with destroying the ecosystem.

It’s also disengenuous to ignore the quality of life improvements of having a cat who is free to explore vs. one locked in an apartment all day. I recently moved and am now experiencing this and it sucks. I feel terrible for restricting her freedom and she is visibly less happy. If you think animals are sentient and have emotions, and you care about the environment, then none of what we are currently doing makes any sense.

This is from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years. It’s an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.

MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.

SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?

MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?

SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.

In modern society you either work or starve. There’s no adventurous alternative as would have been available before modernity.

I think way more exciting for me since I moved here is the fact that every bar has at least 3 different kinds of custom lemonades made with raspberry, elderflower, etc.

Iszonyú szar az Irn Bru, nem értettem én se miért szeretik.

Your meme led me to the definitive comparative study on raptor talon morphology (2009). It’s a pretty interesting read so here you go.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007999

Fully agree there. This administration has to be removed from office. While there’s still a congress to do this. What I’m worried about now is a Reichstag fire event that will allow them to enact emergency legislation that will put the Patriot Act to shame. I watched the USA collectively lose its mind in 2001; it wouldn’t take much to do that again.

I only have one minor pushback. I read The Art of the Deal back in 2016. And having not read Mein Kampf, I can safely say it is no Mein Kampf. When it’s not totally incoherent it reads like a puff piece in a tabloid rag. So I guess I’m just less afraid of Trump than I am of a Hitler-class demagogue, but that says nothing about the MAGA movement as a whole. You don’t need intelligence to be a figurehead for a fascist coup.

I think it’s time for a general strike. There are rumblings of a reinvigorated labor movement, so for the first time since the 1970s I think it’s within the realm of possibility.

Yeah ok so he’s not as bad as late Hitler.

Here’s my most optimistic take for Americans. This guy is not as bad as Hitler. He’s out to scam the world, not conquer it militarily. So that’s a plus, for now. If his successor is Vance then the invasion of Canada and Mexico might actually happen.

Idk it doesn’t look like we’ll run out of food and the population bomb turned out to be a dud. Maybe the food chain will collapse in the ecocrisis, but Capital will find a way to produce food more energy-intensively to compensate.

It’s a classic, but it reflects the anxieties of the time for sure.

Was it the poet who lives on the beach? That was the only one I’d have been threatened by

Thanks, I had to research to even notice anything was wrong.