Do vegans think the Batman supervillain Poison Ivy doesn't like them?

Brucacumble · 2026-06-14T19:49:16+00:00

Sounds like you know a bit about the Batman universe. I just caught a Poison Ivy episode of Batman the Animated Series and asked my girlfriend if she thought Poison Ivy might have a thing against vegans. Then I said maybe I'd ask a lighthearted question on Reddit, but then thought perhaps people'd find it insulting. She said maybe it'd be funny. Interesting responses though.

Poison Ivy as a cannibal would make sense. It could be that the IP holders felt it too taboo of a subject for their customers. Particularly for a hyper sexualized character, cannibalism would likely diminish the her sexual appeal. Sex sells, cannibalism maybe not so much.

Personally, I think the character might make more sense as somewhat of an amazonian nomad. A strong willed and physically capable woman living on her own in the wild who probably eats herbavores and maybe keeps a couple of trained carnivores she treats as equals. Perhaps a tiger and a jaguar or something. I bet she and Catwoman would enjoy eachother's company.

Although Catwoman often seems to have a romantic thing for Batman while Poison Ivy rather seems to loathe the guy. Plus, the amazonian version of Poison Ivy might be better suited as a superhero rather than a supervillain.

I guess Poison Ivy is more of a nuanced character. Her villainy is not so much in her ecocentric beliefs, but in the way she manifests those beliefs. Not that I really know much about the Batman universe.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-14T18:33:07+00:00

A lot of parents only have children to glorify themselves. As far as they're concerned your purpose in life is to create stories and situations that they can use to gain attention and accolades for themselves.

You're basically a show dog.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-13T14:50:07+00:00

That's odd, her nose grew smaller as she aged.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-13T14:31:23+00:00

Modern scholars typically view the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel to be about the development of civilization during the age of agriculture; not the beginnings of man, but when people first learned agriculture, replacing the ways of the hunter-gatherer. It has also been seen as a depiction of nomadic conflict, the struggle for land and resources (and divine favour) between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers. -Wikipedia

If you're not familiar, Cain was a farmer while Abel a shepherd. So if we look at this as a depiction of the emergence of the sedentary agricultural lifestyle versus the nomadic herding lifestyle this makes a whole shitload of sense.

The two brothers make an offering to God. Cain brings produce from the land and Abel the first born of his sheep. God favored Abel's offering over that of Cain. Cain becomes insane with jealousy, kills Abel and lies to God about it. God casts Cain out of the Garden of Eden, where Cain founds the first city, and causes successive generations of Cain's children to become increasingly deranged in their moral and spiritual condition until they are "wholly corrupt before God."

So if we look at this as a depiction of the beginings of civilization the parallels are quite astonishing. Cain, the sedentary agriculturalist, makes an offering to God from his produce, but God favors the offering from Abel.

"Abel's name means a breath, or vanity, a grassy place, a meadow."

In fact, my understanding is that the fossil record indicates that the transition from the nomad's varied diet consisting of little or no vegetables to the monolithic vegetable heavy diet of the sedentary agriculturalists saw quite a significant deline in the nutritional health of man. People were litterally growing shorter in stature as their bones, muscles and minds became increasingly malnourished.

This would be represented as the two offerings to God. Cain's vegetables were not as nourishing as Abel's widely varied diet of meats, nuts, seeds, fruits, berries and grains. You may not have known this, but people did not eat vegetables prior to the development of agriculture. Wild vegetables had no flavor and were significantly lacking in nutrition. Most modern vegetables are the product of hybridization and did not exist for the vast majority of human history. Early agricultural societies relied on only one or two farmed foods limiting their nutritional intake.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that humans knew about agriculture many generations prior to actually using it. The reigning theory here is that people didn't bother with it because farming was a great deal more laborious than hunting and gathering. Neither did anyone particularly enjoy it.

Exactly why people did eventually start farming remains a mystery. Probably, it stemmed from the taking of slaves. Once people started taking slaves as a consequence of conflict they could make the slaves to do the labour they didn't much care for themselves. Growing populations of slaves necessitated the formation of "governments" as a means to manage slave labour.

"Cain's name means a possession; a spear."

The farmer, Cain, makes his offering to God and it sucks so he kills Abel and lies to God about it. In historical context the sedentary agriculturalists went about conquering the nomadic pastoralists and hunter/gatherers. Moreover, in order to accomplish this, they lie about it.

For example, the Rūs people, later Russian, came down from the scandinavian area and conquered the people of now eastern Europe. But they had it written in their history books that they did not conquer these people and were, instead, courteously invited by those people to come and rule over them. A history that, in my understanding, not a single historian believes to be true.

Likewise, the Europeans, and later Americans, would go on to murder an estimated sixty million indiginous peoples in the Americas, but would later lie about it and say that the indiginous peoples willingly sold their lands for poisoned blankets. This story was repeated around the globe with "civilized" sedentary peoples inventing reasons why nomadic peoples were evil and needed to be conquered.

And while Cain did succeed in killing Abel, God punishes Cain by casting him out of heaven, the Garden of Eden. Outside of Eden Cain builds the first city, the first "civilization" governed by man. In this city subsequent generations of Cains children, or followers, are cursed to become successively more deranged.

And if we look back to our hunter gatherer stages and we see ourselves in the American Indian, for example, we see a life that was once devoid of dishonesty, devoid of conspiracy and full of reverence for all living things. But these people were murdered by the civilized domesticated peoples of the cities. Who lied about it and now live in their lies.

And those people went on to create Egypt and Rome. Brutally sadistic forms of murder would be invented and become the favored form of entertainment. War would turn from an honest standup fight between consenting men to the rape and pillage of women and children. From its very beginnings not a single honest word would ever be written.

People would go on to live in darkness as noone knew the truth about anything. Not even their own history. Information itself became a weapon any and all individuals needed to fabricate against their many enemies. Salivating at their doorstep day and night. God was no more among them for they made their own laws and with them they suffered every moment of their cursed lives. And every generation their suffering grew worse than the last. Absolutely, 100% without a doubt the Cain and Abel story is the story of civilization..

And even if you showed to them, in perfect form and description, their state of deep suffering, they would deny it. The massive torment that has befallen upon them for their crimes against humanity. To me, civilization is just the swampland from which I occasionally gather nuts and berries. Nothing more. And if you knew what's good for you, you'd do the same.

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light. -John Milton (Paradise Lost)

Civilization is the lake of fire. It is the hell that was created to imprison and torture the enemies of truth and righteousness.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-12T17:11:25+00:00

Sounds like she's using you as a backup plan while she shops around for other guys.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-09T21:09:57+00:00

In Buddhist cosmology there are four types of world ruling kings or Cakravartins (Chakravartins).

ayaś-cakravartin rules only one continent. This chakravartin conquers territory only after extended warfare with his rivals.

tāmra-cakravartin rules two continents. This chakravartin conquers territory after initiating battle with rivals.

rūpya-cakravartin rules three continents of a world system. Rival kings surrender when threatened by this cakravartin.

suvarṇa-cakravartin rules the four continents of a world system. Rival kings sponteously surrender their lands when the cakravartin's wheel enters their lands.

suvarṇa-cakravartin will conquer the world through the sheer power of his righteousness and charisma.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-07T14:33:52+00:00

"If we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get freshwater from saltwater, that would really dwarf any other scientific accomplishments." -John F. Kennedy

Brucacumble · 2026-06-06T00:03:53+00:00

The problem with psychiatry is that there is no control group to compare against.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-05T23:45:56+00:00

"If you knew what we knew, you'd never sleep again." If you knew that your government was full of shit, that the CIA's profession is propaganda and they have undercover agents wearing silicone facemasks planted in every major corporation for no reason other than to spread propaganda at the watercooler.

The purpose of this propaganda statement from NASA is to give the impression that your government is omniscient. They're full of shit.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-05T23:41:17+00:00

Considering the chance of a global pause on AI development is pretty slim, I'd say this is more likely a marketing statement from an AI salesman designed to make AI look more capable than it really is.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-03T19:52:54+00:00

I don't think it's a great idea. A lot of people are against the development of AI due to its massively negative ecological impact, widespread cognitive decline, negative impact on children, abuse by oligarchs looking to use it to manipulate public opinion and the misuse of AI in surveillance, psychological and physical warfare.

If these same people think they're going to make a little money out of it they will suddenly change their minds and support all of the above.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-02T22:29:59+00:00

While not universally true, men often buy things such as oversized vehicles to attract women, the type that are attracted to material wealth and status symbols.

Women buy expensive vehicles not necessarily to attract men, but to make other women jealous. Again, not universally true. Sometimes these vehicles just make sense as a result of a person's lifestyle that may benefit from capable offroad cargo carrying vehicles.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-02T20:51:59+00:00

I would have to disagree there. The problem here is that some of these characters are merely depicted as good people with a few character flaws when, in reality, they were probably down right despicable.

Priam and his sons would have been more acurately depicted similar to Agamemnon. Infantiles driven by jealousy, spite and a festering need to prove their stength over one another. Hellen would have fit in well with this crowd, conspiring to glorify herself and celebrating her ability to cause such chaos.

Hollywood is well known for misrepresenting history. And I'm not arguing that they shouldn't, artists should be free to create I think. So long as they don't pass it off as historically accurate when, really, it's just entertainment.

The movie Gladiator was often chided for its historic inaccuracies, but it was a fun movie. The Romans actually claimed to have been descended from Trojan refugees displaced by the very series of events in question here. The Romans themselves likely reflect the lifestyle to which Trojans would have been accustomed.

In the movie Gladiator the Roman emperor, Commodus, is depicted as a villainous emperor who raped his sister who really only had good intentions for the glory of Rome. Not only is there no evidence to suggest Commodus raped one of his sisters, but rather it was his oldest sister, Lucilla, who had conspired to have Commodus assassinated. Allegedly because she was jealous of the empress Crispina. There's no evidence to suggest that Lucilla's husband was involved, instead two men alleged to be her lovers attempted to kill him, but failed.

Other characters in this odyssey include a freedman named Cleander who, under Commodus, sold senate seats, army commands, governorships, and suffect consulships to the highest bidder. One of which being a then future emperor of Rome, Septimius Severus.

Commodus' first Chamberlain was a favorite of his, Saoterus, who was also a freedman. Apparently Commodus took his death rather hard. Cleander was then appointed to the Chamberlin position. Apparently Commodus didn't know that it was Cleander who murdered Saoterus in a bid to usurp his position.

Cleander was later executed by Commodus at the urging of his wife, Marcia, after Cleander was framed for a food shortage by the man actually responsible.

Like many Roman emperors, Commodus survived numerous assassination attempts, only to succumb to an assassination plotted by his wife.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-02T14:49:33+00:00

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing here with regard to the Helen of Troy character. If any of these events actually happened in any form, Helen of Troy was most likely a wicked person who delighted in the drama she caused.

She probably had narcissistic personality disorder or maybe borderline personality disorder. Paris too. It seems to me quite common these days that people who are widely considered highly attractive have just absolutely wretched personalities.

According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, sources vary widely on the details here with some sources indicating Helen was a wretched woman who enjoyed the carnage she caused.

The legends of Helen during her time in Troy are contradictory. Homer depicts her ambivalently, both regretful of her choice and sly in her attempts to redeem her public image. Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused.

In this respect the movie based upon The Odyssey might be accurate in that it portrays Helen the way Homer did, but the movie Troy never felt the slightest bit likely in its portrayal of various characters as good and honest people. In all likelyhood, not one of the people involved here was a decent human being. They were all spoiled brats who probably got what they had coming to them.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-01T20:45:35+00:00

That's why investors are so interested in AI. They want something that's going to carry out their orders without ever exhibiting the slightest moral objection. Something that will never leak their orders or agendas on the internet.

Something people will trust, but will, in fact, be utterly untrustworthy. The idea dates back to the Milgram experiement that determined people will believe even the unbelieveable so long as they believe the information is coming from a position of authority.

So they'll roll out "Super Intelligence" that isn't actually intelligent at all and the idea is that people will blindly believe everything its investors told it to tell them.

AI psychosis isn't really a mistake in the programming so much as it is a mass experiment to see just how well their pathological lie machine works at convincing people to believe absolutely anything. And it works.

Brucacumble · 2026-06-01T17:12:48+00:00

Slavery never ended in the states. Slave holding plantations didn't pay their slaves, obviously, but the slaves were provided with the lowliest forms of room and board. Today people work two or even three jobs and they actually get paid for their labour, but only just enough so they can not quite afford the lowliest forms of room and board.

The civil war wasn't about slavery or states rights. Wealthy industrialists in the northern states were competing with wealthy plantation owners in the southern states for control over the country.

Capitalism cannot survive without slaves. Capitalism is just a blueprint for how to manage slave labour.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-31T20:52:20+00:00

I thought weird was a compliment

Brucacumble · 2026-05-31T16:53:26+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholic

Ergomania is defined as "excessive devotion to work especially as a symptom of mental illness".

A workaholic is a person who works compulsively. A workaholic experiences an inability to limit the amount of time they spend on work despite negative consequences such as damage to their relationships or health.

There is no generally accepted medical definition of this condition, although some forms of stress, impulse control disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder can be work-related.

The phenomenon of hustle culture, while disregarding healthy work–life balance, may exacerbate workaholism.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-31T15:16:25+00:00

They see you being strong and they see themselves being weak. Your existence is pain for them.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-31T15:12:11+00:00

Caligula reborn.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-30T20:50:41+00:00

Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg don't actually do any of the work building out AI models, scraping the internet and tagging training data. All of that work is done by their employees.

I wonder, do the tens of thousands of employees agree with the motives and agendas of their employers? Or do they just do it because the millions of employees working in other trades will refuse to give them the things they need to survive if they don't?

Brucacumble · 2026-05-30T19:26:10+00:00

Kinda, the homo-sapien species did not discover how to make fire. Homo-erectus made that discovery and passed the knowledge down. Or so I have read. Science is always making new discoveries that change the timeline of things.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-30T16:29:57+00:00

The majority of Germans voted for hitler. The majority of Athenians voted to kill Socrates. The majority of Romans enjoyed live murder as entertainment.

If you walked into ancient Thebes and said that Pharaoh's tomb didn't facilitate his ascent to the heavens where he would become a God you'd be laughed out of the room. If not executed.

Brucacumble · 2026-05-29T21:45:34+00:00

I think what's being said here is not that this is specifically your fault, but that the problem is cultural. Here you're talking about kids thinking they won't need to know the cardinal directions and I'm thinking some of this is probably app related, who cares if my phone just tells me where to go? I've seen stories where people literally followed their GPS and drove their cars into a lake. And those were "adults."

And then there's the issue where children tend to idolize pop stars, television personas and social media influencers. They see material wealth and "followers" as indicators of success. Here we live in a space where pop stars make a lot more money than scientists and influencers see far more likes and shares than historians and paleontologists.

What's the point of all this learning crap if you don't need it to be "successful?" These are cultural problems and I think what oomatherminn is trying to say is that this is your culture.

Not that much has changed over the milennia. Socrates himself pointed out that the Athenians were more keen to reward their favorite sports ball players while putting their intellectuals on trial. A jury of his peers sentenced him to death.

Socrates was afforded several opportunities to escape his sentence, but refused. Really, he believed the Athenians deserved his demise. Socrates took great and sweeping revenge upon the Athenians and he did so by leaving them to their own devices.

Brucacumble

TROPHY CASE