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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: March 26th, 2021

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  • This is a long one, and I want to start by saying that your comment is a super popular belief. Even so, I think misses the mark a little bit.

    Everything in the political sphere is emotions based. ‘Murder is bad’ isn’t some ultimate truth. We care about other people and ourselves. That emotion then leads to the reasoning that murder is bad and should be illegal. Same goes for everything else.

    What conservatives tend to do is say ‘murder is bad’ and ‘there is a group that I hate’. They then abandon the truth of what murder statistics tell them and blame it on the out group which justifies the second emotion. They’re not wrong because it is emotionally centered (again we all do that). They’re wrong because they aren’t willing to examine that emotional motivation vs reality.

    All of that to say that if we think the problem is emotionality we are probably making similar mistakes even if the outcome is better. To paraphrase a very true statement in Futurama - There is no scientific consensus that life is valuable.



  • I just lost my dog after her needing people around pretty constantly. My partner and I can mostly arrange working from home, so the situation is not the same. What is the same is how you approach how your dog feels and how to tell when it’s ‘the time’.

    You’re probably the most important part of his life. The shelter might let him find a home that can care for him better or it might not (because people are hesitant to adopt older dogs with health issues). What they can’t give is the stability he gets from staying with you. It really sucks that we can’t ask them what they want. I know that my pup would never have chosen a longer life if it meant giving us up.

    When is it time? There are resources online about how to judge quality of life. For us it was as simple as picking her favorite things to do and watching to see if she still wanted to do them.

    I have second guessed myself a lot - should we have done more vet care, should we have spent more time with her, etc. You’re in a hard situation. The decicions don’t get easier and sometimes are no win. My advice is to make your decisions for him as best you can knowing that your best is not ever going to be the perfect ideal AND it will be good enough.
















  • Their point is that if plants can suffer, and assuming we still want to eat, less plants die or are maimed on a vegan diet than on an omnivorous diet because livestock eats plants too and the conversion to meat is inefficient.

    That means vegan diet is the way for less plant suffering even though you eat them directly. In fact it is because you would eat them directly.



  • I just don’t get the conclusion of all of the biosolids articles. They all point to upstream sources as problems then claim we should do something about them only in biosolids. Our wastewater reflects what we allow in our houses and bodies.

    Why doesn’t it ever go like this: “Micro plastics are bad. Our wastewater is telling us that we are creating micro plastics in our homes from the products we buy and use. Let’s stop producing products that force people to make micro plastics.”

    My guess - the cost of wastewater treatment falls on all of us. We pay for it all, and it isn’t cheap. The most effective option is source control, so let’s make cradle to grave responsibility for the megacorp producers and watch how fast harmful products get yanked.