i think we need to stop focusing on telling little girls they need to be “empowered” & instead teach them about chaotic mirth, hijinks, & becoming complete rascals
Here’s an update on the Camp Fire happening in Butte County in Northern California:
1. The fire grew from 70,000 to 90,000 acres and is still only 5% contained. It is now the most destructive fire in California’s history
2. So far there have been 9 confirmed fatalities. 5 of these people died in their cars while trying to evacuate
3. The last incident report I saw said that the fire isn’t expected to be contained until 11/30/2018 but this information might have changed by now
4. A total of 6,713 buildings have been confirmed to be destroyed (6,453 of which were residential buildings, 206 were commercial buildings)
5. A text to donate has been set up by United Way to help with recovery efforts. Text “buttefire” to 91999
6. All school in Butte County is cancelled for the next week
7. The air quality in Chico is extremely bad right now so please stay inside as much as possible and keep your pets inside if you can
The Honey Run Covered Bridge (built in 1886) has been destroyed and is no longer standing. This is really sad news to me because I used to go there as a kid growing up and I’ve spent a lot of time there with my friends as well. It was a historic Chico landmark loved by so many people
Here’s a satellite picture of the fire showing how far the smoke has traveled
Here’s some additional information if anyone living in Chico or Butte County wants to volunteer. There’s also some information on evacuee shelters and animal shelters or if anyone is searching for a missing person.
becoming vegan because factory farming is unethical is like deciding that since walmart and amazon mistreat their employees you are now going to get everything you need out of dumpsters
in a nutshell, instead of reforming the bad parts of your society, you
try to opt out of it in a way that has really no effect, and wouldn’t
work at all if the majority of people weren’t still part of the industry
you dislike.
there was, for a while, a real movement of people who tried to get everything out of dumpsters, as a way of opting out of capitalism. but the problem was that you couldn’t get what you need when you need it, leading to you being kind of a drain on your community, and someone had to buy that stuff in the first place for it to end up in that dumpster anyway. it was Fundamentally Silly.
going vegan to opt out of farming practices has similar problems. for instance: you (hypothetical vegan you) won’t buy honey, but the bees are being used to fertilize the vegetables and fruit you eat, they’re making the honey anyway, all you’ve done is – well, nothing, because you’re not a big enough demographic to make an impact, but even if you were, honey sales are a much smaller part of beekeepers’ income than crop pollination. and beekeeping is not a big faceless corporate interest. it’s not monsanto. it’s a bunch of single-family or partnership business with a truck or two and a couple hundred hives. the bees make honey after a pollinating run, and the beekeepers sell it for a little extra income. if you made a dent in that, you’d be achieving nothing but making joe beekeeper buy his kids’ t-shirts at k-mart instead of target.
animal farming and plant farming are deeply interconnected. plant farmers grow animal feed; animal farmers sell manure for fertilizer. most non-corporate farmers raise both plants and animals. it’s more economic and gives them more resilience.
if you were a big enough demographic to hit ‘the farming industry’ in its wallet. you would be making things MUCH harder for small farmers than for factory farms. you would be making it easier and easier for factory farms to crowd family farmers out of business. so that’s pretty much achieving the opposite of what you want, right there.
and then there’s the fact that plant farming is just as rife with gruesome factory farm conditions as animal farming, but it’s humans who are exploited in those. i’m not going to level accusations of racism here, but it really is unfortunate how little the vocal internet vegan contingent seems to know or care about the exploitation of the mostly nonwhite workers in the industry. it makes y’all look racist, whether you are or not.
look, i keep saying this, even though folks never seem to hear me: i don’t hate vegans, i’m not trying to stop you being vegan, i do not care what you eat.
my problem is with defensive internet vegans trying to promote their dietary restriction lifestyle as a solution to problems in the real world. it is not. it may create more problems than it solves, or maybe it breaks even, i don’t know. it certainly doesn’t solve anything that can’t be solved just as well without it. it can only look reasonable from a perspective of deep ignorance about where food comes from and how the farm economy works. you basically have to be young, urban, and somewhat privileged to embrace it. and it is, fundamentally, very silly.
Furthermore I’d like you to look at a sheep farm. Actually look at it.
You CANNOT grow crops there. That’s WHY there are sheep on it.
You refuse to use wool, well aside from.the fact that it’s a fantastic fiber and how polluting polyester and other plastic fibers are, it doesn’t harm the animal to remove and in fact is done for their benefit.
Above – a sheep farm (note steep and craggy hills), an uncompressed bale of freshly shorn wool and some sheep being shorn.
It’s not stressful for the sheep. Sheep are dumb. Be confident, dont hurt them and they’re good. Wool is a good fiber – strong, warm – even when wet – renewable and biodegradable.
My issue with Veganism-As-A-Cult is the lack of critical thinking. By all means eat what you want, wear what you want to wear but a blanket ban on all animal products because they’re HARMFUL is in itself an extremely harmful philosophy.
Do you refuse to eat plants that were pollinated by bees or fertilized by manure since they’re a product of animal labour?
Honey doesn’t hurt bees. Wool doesn’t hurt sheep.
What about animals that are going to die anyway? We are currently in the process of exterminating possums in our country as they are a pest and destroyer of our native species. We kill them humanely but they’re still going to die because its them (introduced pest) or our endemic endangered species. We use the meat for pet food and the fur for a lot of things now – in making yarns or fur items – because the alternative is to let it rot. Which is just bloody wasteful tbh.
What would (generic) you prefer we do here? Let sheep die of over heating or the weight of wet wool? Force bees into swarming (90% casualty rate) so we can avoid taking their honey? Leave pest animals to rot and encourage the use of set-and-forget traps since there’s no incentive to check them?
What’s the humane option?
see: why I hate militant veganism
Veganism, as I have encountered it, tends to be a thing that morally smug white people try to spring on others as a quick fix solution for the world, and I resent it more every day.
hsdlfjalskd aquarius moons are really something! the moon in this position, imo is both uncomfortable and comfortable. the moon struggles to actually feel its emotions when in aquarius, causing the native to simply think about their feelings without actually just feeling them. this makes aqua moons seem very unemotional, detached, etc. aquarius moon denotes that the native’s mother gave conditional love while growing up. aquarius moon thinks about ideas before anyone else! the most inventive, progressive and out of the box thinkers. aquarius moon has a endless creative imagination, but natives (like myself) need to work harder when it comes to understanding what we’re feeling, and allowing ourselves to actually feel it.
woolandcoffee 