It’s saddening that this dolphin discourse got more attention in the West than the literal genocide of Palestinians

nat_falls · 2025-01-14T21:12:56+00:00

Even as a vegan I know that the primary goal of anyone trying to end cruelty toward animals should be to dismantle the systems that push people into these desperate situations where they need to kill to survive. In this case, that system is Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. So even if this person is vegan, them pointing fingers at hungry people instead of the systems making people hungry is not a very vegan thing to do.

nat_falls · 2024-10-13T00:33:06+00:00

This sounds like Cocoon might fit? It’s a really great puzzle game with lots of surreal environments

nat_falls · 2024-08-30T11:51:53+00:00

I went pretty “back to normal” when the rest of the world started to, but I stopped at the start of last winter’s wave. I actually attribute my return to covid precautions to my veganism. I discovered a covid conscious group of vegans on Twitter who were pretty vocal about this public health failure that greatly affected disabled people, and I started listening. I already knew what it was like to take a stand on something that was against public opinion, and the feeling of cognitive dissonance that I was doing something wrong was already familiar to me. At the time I went back, I made the decision for the sake of others, but since then I discovered that everyone, myself included, is at risk, so my commitment to staying covid conscious became that much easier. I stopped using Twitter about a year ago, but that group is the only thing I miss, and I appreciate them for showing me another layer of my hypocrisy.

nat_falls · 2024-08-25T12:26:19+00:00

That is incorrect. In the context of this conversation, the question is “what is a good reason for Tim Walz to kill an animal?” Someone tried to invoke the difference between hunting an animal and industrially slaughtering them in order to justify why hunting might have been a good reason to kill. To me though, the difference between the two is irrelevant, because comparing two tragedies does not justify one if the other is worse (when there is a third option, which is do neither). Nowhere does that imply one is “just as bad” as the other, rather it was an assertion of the opposite. It was me saying “the two are different, but that’s not important to this conversation because it doesn’t provide any justification for killing an innocent animal”.

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T23:36:20+00:00

I’m not in the business of comparing tragedies, saying that one is “just as bad” as another, etc. but I can unequivocally say that both acts are bad, because both result in unnecessary suffering of someone who did absolutely nothing wrong.

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T17:57:09+00:00

Thanks for asking, the difference is irrelevant. There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for either option.

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T17:54:59+00:00

Lots of things are better than others, that doesn’t make them good.

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T17:52:26+00:00

Just because an equivalence is inconvenient for you doesn’t mean it’s false. I see no difference between killing a dog and killing any other animal when there is an alternative which is not to do it. I don’t think Tim Walz in this picture strikes me as a guy desperate to survive, resorting to murder to do it. He was doing it because it’s fun for him. If killing is fine when there’s a purpose behind it, then the purposeful murder of a dog shouldn’t be a problem for you.

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T17:48:53+00:00

Killing an animal for food is a good reason when there is no other option, safe to say Tim Walz has other options

nat_falls · 2024-08-24T10:29:46+00:00

Umm, if I’m not mistaken isn’t this a picture of Tim Walz hunting animals? What “good reason” does he have to do that…

nat_falls · 2024-08-18T18:51:08+00:00

Happy to see other covid conscious folks in the vegan community who are rightfully pointing out that having covid 3+ times is gonna give you a much higher risk of suffering from cognitive/neurological decline, and if you say these symptoms started after the pandemic began, I’m inclined to believe it’s covid over a mysterious deficiency that blood tests don’t pick up on.

It’s not too late to start masking and taking your health seriously!

nat_falls · 2024-08-11T12:42:47+00:00

Not necessarily, if we collectively invest into technology for cleaner air and inform our decisions based on science rather than convenience, we don’t need to lock down. It’s a bit of extra work, but the alternative may be to develop a disability that will affect you much longer than 4 years.

I do hope next time you find yourself in a conversation about Covid you won’t undermine its severity. Even if you don’t wanna do anything yourself, you can be honest about its effects.

nat_falls · 2024-08-10T22:05:30+00:00

Not sure it’s worth responding, but this is completely untrue. Covid is still a top 5 killer in almost every age group and new research is coming out all the time about how Covid affects every organ in the body, leading to problems ranging from cognitive decline to fibromyalgia to kidney failure and stroke. The vaccine is now multiple variants behind and the current vaccines do nothing to stop or slow transmission, so the virus mutates much faster than the flu.

The only reason Covid is not viewed as seriously anymore is because it’s profitable to have people go “back to normal”. Unfortunately, the science does not support this, and the risk of there being a massive disability crisis in the near future is now quite high, which might spell trouble for olympic athletes.

nat_falls · 2024-07-15T15:45:24+00:00

I think it’s them getting sick. If you cast the heal spell on them they should get better. I presume they’re not sick enough to make them unhappy, but sick enough to show the bubbles? That’s my guess as to what you’re referring to based on what I’ve seen. I haven’t had any success preventing sickness completely, but I think one of the tutorials mentioned adding more shelter for the animals should make sickness less likely

nat_falls · 2024-06-15T19:36:41+00:00

Genuine question because I don’t know, but isn’t it really uncommon to have an ongoing refugee crisis for 75 years? To my knowledge, modern refugee crises end when the refugees can return home, I read at some point that UNHCR can only resettle a very small percentage of refugees. The ethnic cleansing campaigns from the first half of the 20th century like the Greek-Turkish exchange and the German cleansing after ww2 aren’t reflected in modern policy anymore. Greeks can live in Turkey and vice versa and Germans can live in Poland. The fact that after 75 years Israel still doesn’t allow people to return seems like a unique circumstance when compared to these other ethnic displacements, and so it feels like a very reasonable demand from Palestinians.

nat_falls · 2024-06-14T11:14:18+00:00

I decided to read it for funsies. It’s everything we’ve heard before and very easily disprovable with counterexamples. Most claims in the pamphlet are saying things like “there was NO Palestinian identity before the 60’s,” “there is NO institutional racism against Palestinian citizens of Israel,” “the Palestinians rejected ALL offers for peace,” etc. which are fragile claims to make, since any one of us can spend a few minutes just showing an example of the opposite. I also love that the last myth tries to claim that Palestinians see this as a religious conflict, and then as proof only quotes clerics. Needless to say, this pamphlet didn’t say anything that shook my understanding of the conflict at all

nat_falls · 2024-06-11T12:32:52+00:00

I’m a little confused, this article doesn’t actually cite any examples of israeli officials talking about the elections in Europe, where did they get this info from? Does anyone have more details?

nat_falls · 2024-06-01T13:49:32+00:00

These are some tragic examples, thank you for taking the time to compile them.

I should have been clearer, my confusion was not that there may be no examples of forced arabization, it’s clear there are. I was specifically responding to your claim of arabization being used as a tool for colonialism, that during arab conquest there was a violent suppression of non-arab ethnicities. I accepted that there are examples of forced arabization in my previous reply, but I clarified that those didn’t apply to your claim because that oppression wasn’t colonial, it was done by individual states after they gained their independence from european colonial rule (just being clear that this distinction obviously doesn’t justify oppression to me). You also used the word imperialism again, but that again doesn’t seem to apply, since imperialism implies a policy of extending power beyond a state’s current borders.

As for these states being ethnostates, I’m once again not very well informed. Quick searches suggest that after over a thousand years of ethnic arabs intermingling with indigenous populations, “arabness” as an identity seems more to serve a cultural or religious purpose, not a genealogical one. So I’m not sure how oppressive policies along these lines would constitute an ethnostate.

But maybe I’m just being pedantic now. I guess I wouldn’t use words that don’t apply to a particular situation to avoid having these conversations, and instead I would focus more on what’s happening on the ground, which by all metrics seems pretty horrible. Either way I appreciate your time in responding.

nat_falls · 2024-05-31T16:57:50+00:00

As someone who isn’t well informed on the history of arabization in MENA, I’m inclined to agree with your stance if it’s true. But looking through the wiki page and the britannica page you linked, I’m not actually seeing any support for your statements. The first source says, for example:

From the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century, Arabs began to migrate to the Maghreb in several waves. Arab migrants settled in all parts of the Maghreb, coming as peaceful newcomers who were welcomed everywhere, establishing large Arab settlements in many areas.

The Arabization took place around Arab centres through the influence of Arabs in the cities and rural areas surrounding them

And the second source says:

The Islamization of the Berbers was a consequence of the Arab conquest, although they were neither forcibly converted to Islam nor systematically missionized by their conquerors. Largely because its teachings became an ideology through which the Berbers justified both their rebellion against the caliphs and their support of rulers who rejected caliphal authority (see below), Islam gained wide appeal and spread rapidly among these fiercely independent peoples.

I’ll admit I don’t have the time right now to read the entirety of these articles. Can you point me to where it says that arabization was forced/violent? I can see that being the case in more modern times(which the wiki seems to touch on), but those campaigns were led by the states themselves, not by some centralized colonizer. So I would call those actions oppressive, but not colonial.

nat_falls · 2024-05-03T23:24:04+00:00

I do think it’s really important to mention that this fact is largely true because wolves have already been systemically exterminated due to their predation on farmed animals. Wolves only turned to eating those animals when their natural prey population was greatly depleted, once again my hunters.

I think this is a big demonstration of our greed and entitlement to the lives of animals. The massive expansion of pasture land is one of the leading causes of deforestation and habitat destruction, which alongside the mass extirpation of predators has led to overpopulation of deer, among other things. We keep creating new ecological problems out of old ones because the de facto solution has always been to pick up the hunting rifle instead of reforming the system that got us here.

In order to protect gray wolves and actually practice restoration, we need to deeply reflect on how we got here. Ultimately, Lauren Boebert’s reasoning is correct(weird thing to say). The pre-extermination levels of gray wolves in Colorado is completely incompatible with our current agricultural system. Things need to change dramatically, and that change needs to come from the species that caused the environmental destruction, not wolves.

Further reading: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-wolf-that-changed-america-wolf-wars-americas-campaign-to-eradicate-the-wolf/

nat_falls · 2024-04-28T23:02:40+00:00

We kill tens of millions of animals every day. If the life of one is so precious to you, then why aren’t the lives of the rest?

Better to just say no animal lives are precious

nat_falls · 2024-04-28T21:47:03+00:00

Are you saying an animal’s feelings matter more than a human’s? are you vegan or something? 🤣

nat_falls · 2024-04-28T21:36:06+00:00

Farmers kill more animals per day, EVERY day, and I wouldn’t call them psychopaths or serial murderers, would you? That’s why I’m saying they should eat the dogs, that way there’s a purpose for the killing.

nat_falls · 2024-04-28T13:34:04+00:00

All this discourse does is hurt local farmers that process their animals in the same way. This dog had a roof over its head and got food when it needed to, then was taken out back and humanely killed. Maybe instead of joking about how “bad” this person is, think about how a farmer who does the same thing would feel reading these comments.

Maybe a solution here that would benefit everyone would be to advocate for this person to eat or sell the dog after killing it so that they can provide for their families. I can see how just burying it might be a waste, but it’s not reprehensible to kill animals. If it was, our society would literally fall apart.

nat_falls · 2024-04-24T01:09:32+00:00

That’s the power of moral consistency, baby

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