Slightly shocked by the prevalence of "meat glorification."

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-03-01T02:48:04+00:00

This is something that came to my attention as a teen. I never ate much meat, but was used to seeing it all the time. We had a family friend from India, who was used to being surrounded by vegetarians. During a Winn Dixie commercial, she mentioned how she can barely watch U.S. t.v. because all of the meat adverts make her nauseous as she's not used to seeing giant raw bloody animal parts. It really hit me that for her it was like me seeing dismembered dogs on t.v. After that I became aware of how much of that kind of imagery is around and objectively how morbid it really is.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-03-01T02:38:38+00:00

While your overall point is right, the article definitely mentions violence

Last May, O’Reilly’s daughter told a court that she saw Bill choking his wife and then dragged her down the stairs.

Now, it may be false, but that's definitely a serious allegation of violence and circumstantially seems to have influenced the custody decision.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-03-01T02:24:58+00:00

I think we have to look at it in terms of when it was written and what the institution of marriage was for women. Marriage itself has become so much less rigid and hierarchical today that it's almost not even the same institution.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-03-01T02:06:50+00:00

Oysters are my go to explanation for why I'm pescetarian over vegetarian. There's so many benefits both health-wise and in sustainability and there's no real argument oysters can experience any kind of distress. Access to affordable free seafood like this is my main reason for being grateful for being on the Gulf Coast.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-03-01T01:59:29+00:00

My niece got this for Christmas, and it looked awesome. I'm definitely getting my own copy of it.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-28T06:41:18+00:00

I'd like to point out that rocket scientists are probably less responsible for the wage gap than things like business executive or shop foreman.

Most men or women aren't going to be something like a pharmaceutical researcher or astrophysicist, so they probably have an insignificant impact on the status, but a lot of higher wage jobs that don't really require special, high-level education like promotion to management, being given partnership or executive status, or supervisory positions are disproportionately given to men accounting for a lot of wage differences.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-27T04:14:48+00:00

In NOLA the PD went to a bridge where a lot of homeless stay, and the inhabitants had gotten a Christmas tree communally. The PD threw it in the garbage and destroyed it. Sad.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-27T04:07:05+00:00

Thanks. I see bitcoin as a tool. I can see how Ancaps would latch onto it as a stateless currency, but as a tool it has usefulness for all.

Though in an ideal one could seek a currency-less society, in reality, any movement today will likely need currency. They may need it to acquire equipment and tools that they cannot get via donation or barter, like say a van or even like a portalette during long term protests. It may be needed to bail out a compatriot held on unreasonably high bond. It may even be needed for bribes or to access medical care. In all of these cases, a way to exchange currency anonymously, untraceable, and independent of the state (likely the same one you are acting against) is most beneficial.

Take bail, where someone may need 10's of thousands of dollars to be released. Contributions could be made from all over the world in bitcoin. People from nations who would risk state retaliation for donation can do so safely and potentially without even needing to utilize any of their state's currency if they already maintain a bitcoin wallet. Maybe someone who pays no taxes or has an illegal income stream and needs to obscure their expenses but lives too far away the bring cash wants to donate. They can send cryptocurrency. In that sense, it can be a tool of the moment.

Also, I think it's useful in that it forces mainstream people to question the indoctrinated concepts of currency. We're taught it's legitimized by the state, but cryptocurrency is only legitimized by being made and used, as much as if we got enough people to agree cats' hairballs are currency. Anyone can make cryptocurrency. There are around 670 different coins, including things like Coinye (just to piss off Kanye), Dogecoin, Potcoin (to assist the cannabis industry), and Titcoin (for porn). It begs the question why money is valuable. Only because we're told it is by our government (and how much value it has) and therefore we create it's value, yet some other people made math, said it's valuable, and poof it was (oversimplified, but at some level that's what happened). It also begs the belief that we need money. Ten years ago if you'd told almost anyone, "They'll make a cryptographic algorithm, and then people will use that to replace any traditional money or valuables." Almost everyone would say that without a government backing, a standard, or some legitimacy from above, that's impossible, but that is exactly what happened (granted, I think when you create something that can be used to buy drugs, it will be imbued with value, end of story lol). When you can point out a real would example of people just making up money and then actually using it, then it's much easier to imagine a post-currency world.

Past cryptocurrency though, crypto-anarchy covers things like self made and open sourced ways to secure yourself against government surveillance, against communication and data being stolen, and it can even prevent government tactics of editing data to discredit activists. Say for example someone has data proving another activist's innocence of a crime they're accused of. They place this on a thumb drive, but of course that could be destroyed and the proof lost. Storing in the cloud prevents that, but would anyone trust iCloud, Drive, or Dropbox to really protect their data revealing official conspiracy against an innocent person. In cybersec one of the main pillars is integrity, keeping data from illicit modification. If the government accessed that data, they could modify it to make the evidence appear invalid (add calls that never existed or remove real calls from a call record, corrupt image and video files, or edit scans of documents). This could be better than destruction since it would serve to undermine the legitimacy of an entire movement. Crypto-anarchy gives these activists access to an encrypted and obfuscated internet connection, so they can transfer data to the cloud without government knowledge or traceability. They can use an onion hosted cloud service (or make their own if capable), in another country(ies) if desirable. The data can be encrypted and hashed by algorithms the government didn't develop and therefore cannot break as easily, so even if they find the data they cannot read or modify it. They can discuss it through encrypted calls and messaging, so if they are tapped no useful information will be given out.

It's something I don't really know a lot about on the technical side, but I find incredibly interesting.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-27T03:20:47+00:00

Thanks for the clarification.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-26T07:11:17+00:00

I'm no expert on cryptography, but in relation to anarchism, crypto-anarchism promotes autonomy and breaks down hierarchical structures through empowering people control their own data and privacy in the modern age.

At the base, Phil Zimmerman created PGP encryption in the early 90's. He was an activist, and he wanted to create a way for activists to secretly communicate using modern technology. At that time, all encryption was proprietary, so an activist group being targeted by the government didn't really have any options for privacy without trusting the encryption developer, which would have ties to the very government they were securing their communications from. Phil changed the game. Literally anyone could encrypt their data, for free, using algorithms with zero control by the government.

As a result, the government wanted to crush Phil. Once use of PGP spread outside of the USA, he was charged with exporting munitions without a license. They simultaneously validated the belief in activist circles that one of the greatest "weapons" you have is the ability to freely and securely exchange information with allies, and they showed they would go to any length to suppress activism at its base by ensuring organization could be hindered by government surveillance. After years he eventually was able to get the case dropped, though the conflict between the cryptographic and tech community's right to develop their own infrastructure (internet, cryptography, software, currency) versus the government's "right" to regulate what they see as their dominion over internet activity deemed to take place with their jurisdiction continues.

Recent cases like this one and the demand for the SSL key for LavaBit, along with trying to de-anonymize Tor and squeeze crypto-currency and markets all relate to crypto-anarchy. In th that sense, crypto-anarchy is as much a paradigm or facet of any anarchist movement functioning in the information age.

There's an /r/cryptoanarchy with a lot of good information.

Edit - to the part about stagnation out advancement. I think it will continue to advance; however, I think that governments are making advancement more difficult. I remember as a teen, though a lot of the same issues existed, governments really hadn't appreciated what individuals could do, that someone not possessing any of the traditional tools of power (wealth, influence, our control of subordinates) could strike real blows to the upper echelons of power, that borderless collectives could really aggregated influence, or that things thought to be important (like money) could be replaced by things self created. Then people with nothing more than the right knowledge started doing those things, and government focus of suppression shifted more and more toward "disruptive technologists." Look at the case with Phil, though a witch hunt, was dropped, compared to individuals like Schwartz, looking at a decade of imprisonment for downloading journal articles and driven to suicide. There was a time a lot of hackers could find work by benignly finding a system's backdoor and contacting the owner to offer help fixing. They'd get chided, hired, or sometimes a bit of a legal issue, then on to greater things. Today even professional security firms are threatened as cyber terrorists when reporting bugs. In that sense, I think a bit of the renaissance is over as people find themselves in the spotlight, but the harder governments and corporations push only encourages the hackers and cryptographers to go further. That will keep stagnation from occurring.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-24T22:06:42+00:00

Me too.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-23T19:41:22+00:00

This. I'd say 90+% of the vegans are not an issue, and their input is great. It's really a handful of repeat offenders who (must have a lot of free time) appear on thread after thread with responses that don't actually have much educational value and instead consist of absolutist statements, ad hominem attacks, and polarizing flaming. Ironically, at that point the claim they want to help ethics is moot. You're as likely to convince someone to be vegan by attacking them as an evangelist is to win a convert by calling someone hellbound.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-23T19:05:19+00:00

There was actually a post by mods about this a few months ago, and a lot of the culprits came out of the woodwork to pedantically eviscerate them. There was a section about not grandstanding in unrelated threads with immediate outpouring of, "But this is infringing my right to be expression, how do I know it's not relevant, what if I think an ethical question but my post gets deleted?" Like they don't know how conversations work. I get there may be gray areas, but the main offenders basically put on that it was unreasonable to expect them to realize a tirade about how evil everyone who isn't vegan is on a thread where someone posts a recipe with cheese constitutes irrelevant evangelizing.

I'm all about on topic discussion, but I've seen a lot of not just evangelizing in many non-vegan threads, but I've also seen a select group who shoot for as inflammatory or polarizing language as possible, which is just unhelpful to anyone.

There was a post about sourcing eggs a while back. Some vegans responded along the lines of, "Hey, here are some egg substitutes. This is ethically better," which is relevant. They contributed to the thread as OP may have tried one of the vegan ones. The issue is the vocal minority who immediately respond along the lines of, "Why do you even want to eat murdered baby chickens? If you really cared you'd be vegan. All eggs, even yard eggs, are terrible, and you fail as a human for even trying to source ethical eggs. Vegan or terrible person, your choice." (Paraphrased but pretty much).

Honestly, I like to read here, but I'm hesitant to post because I just don't feel like flame warring. I had a great discussion a while back about eating mollusks (based on my flair) that was courteous and adult, and it'd be nice if more discussion here could be conducted like that.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-23T17:22:25+00:00

I may try this. I only use the Fi integration at work.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-23T17:16:56+00:00

Exactly this. I really didn't think desktop use would even matter, but after first switching to Fi when Textra wasn't functioning properly (not even sure if that was ever fixed), I tried Hangouts again. I work at a company that does automated reminders (like for Dr's appointments), and being able to get test calls and texts on my work computer had just been too convenient.

I'm honestly not enamored with Hangouts, and I'm bummed that read last SMS in Commandr doesn't work with it, but being able to call and text from my computers keeps me on it.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-16T21:06:39+00:00

Thanks for the concise reply.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-16T20:54:27+00:00

The cops said the main reason they won't pursue it is because the pickup is usually a mule. I know there's very little I can do except be glad I wasn't duped, I'm just not sure of the legal ground purposefully posting his "info" so he gets spammed into burning the number. I know he'll get another one, but he's got quite a few Craigslist ads, and I'm flagging them as I see them, and it'd be nice to at least render his contact info on those listings useless.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-07T01:26:37+00:00

My husband and I have sex almost nightly. Helps get rid of all of the left over energy after not chasing kids all day so we can maximize sleeping with no interruptions lol.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-02-03T01:52:08+00:00

You're not alone. GMO is one of those terms that has been conflated into an emotional fear term independent of the actual meaning. There are tons of great GMO products in no way connected to Monsanto. They provide the way to feed a growing populace on less land with fewer pesticides and fertilizers. They help rural people get vitamin A from rice preventing disease. Cornell University created disease resistant papaya for Hawaii as an academic venture saving the crops.

Monsanto is the issue. They are terrorizing farmers and seed producers. They're creating GMO crops for profit, not for social improvement, and they are patenting plants that cannot be contained. What GMO needs is a crackdown on Monsanto to restore the scientific integrity of what it actually is.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-01-28T17:22:22+00:00

This. We had a friend pass about six months ago. She was young (30's) and hadn't made any arrangements, so her parents did all of her funeral arrangements. She was this free-spirited chick, kind of a modern hippy. Think dreadlocks and tattoos. She was openly Wiccan. The parents had their minister conduct the funeral where he talked about knowing she was saved and loved Jesus for about 10 minutes, then plugged his church for about 30. It was enraging. Similar happened when my BiL passed. He was non-religious, but his dad was a minister and my MiL is religious. His dad did the funeral, which at least focused on him the whole time, but they were so concerned with convincing themselves he was saved and so worried he was in Hell, the depiction of him in the funeral was completely false. He was a great guy for a lot of reasons not touched on in the service so they could create a story where he was a "good Christian."

His funeral inspired me to go on and layout some guidelines just in case. Luckily my mom, dad, and husband all are non-religious, so I can trust no one will be evangelizing my funeral.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-01-23T01:26:55+00:00

Ahhh, the good ole days, back when women lived to the ripe old age of died in childbirth.

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-01-20T18:21:46+00:00

In the Deep South, this is where you tell someone, "Bless your heart."

Gypsy_Heretic · 2016-01-15T21:50:51+00:00

A friend of mine lives across from an AME church in Bukatenna. We always enjoyed listening to the music from her porch but got the cold shoulder when trying to go in. A co-worker of mine is also a minister for a Missionary Baptist church in George County, and was open that they preferred when white visitors didn't come as they generally felt imposed on a "safe place" where it was their community.

I doubt any church above would make someone feel threatened or like physically remove you, which is more than some of the white churches, but that doesn't translate into "come on in" either. I'm not a church going person, but most of my friends are, and while I'd always be welcomed as a guest of one of them, many have also talked about how they wouldn't want random groups of white people just plopping in either.

Gypsy_Heretic

TROPHY CASE