Condescend to me, Richard. It gets me so hot.

Anna, 31F, USA. Obsessed with fictional people and real animals. No longer on here every day, but never leaving this website entirely.

[inkuringu-blog]

[dreamingnemleria]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[woozapooza]

Not a fan of that thing where someone will make a post that deliberately uses inflammatory language (I'm not talking about metaphors here), and when people engage with the actual literal language that is used in the post, the OP (or people who agree with them) will be like "ugh you're all so illiterate! Obviously this post isn't saying [thing that it literally says], it's saying [much more nuanced and reasonable position]!" Okay then why didn't you just say that in the first place?

[thedeliaishere]

spiritualist whose mad at you: you're going to hell

materialist whose mad at you: you're going to reeducation

agnostic whose mad at you: no one know where you're going

[nyancrimew]

gonna start saying "this is setting men back 10 years" whenever some guy says some dumb shit

[nyancrimew]

"this is really gonna hurt the male community"

[ethersoul]

Dudipatsar lake, Valley of Kaghan (Pakistan)

[not100bees]

I used to get annoyed at overly sanitized Greek mythology retellings. But honestly if it just succeeds in pissing off marble statue profile picture people and Neo-Hellenists then why not. Go for it. Achilles and Patroclus open a goddamn coffee shop.

[not100bees]

"They're doing this to demoralize you." Posting has annoyed me into believing that demoralizing them is a worthwhile pursuit. The actions they took in pursuit of a fake problem have led to me wishing to make it a real problem. They caused their own fate in an attempt to avoid it. Much like a Greek tragedy.

[chamomile-teabag]

WHAT ARE YALL READING RN you must tell me

[amnhnyc]

Meet the rusty-spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus). Known as the “hummingbird of cats,” this species is one of the world’s smallest felines, reaching weights of only 3.5 lbs (1.6 kg). Primarily nocturnal, this cat uses its large eyes to hunt under the cover of darkness. It can be spotted in parts of Southeast Asia including India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Photo: Cloudtail the Snow Leopard, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, flickr 

[bdalak]

the more i talk w/ leftist friends the more i start to realize that they think culture is only defined by food or "traditional" (i.e. "ethnic") garb and nothing else

mentioned how white americans do in fact have a common culture and they genuinely thought i was joking. culture isnt something only granted to the Cool People of Color. just feels like among progressive groups there's this dichotomy created in which only the virtuous oppressed minorities have culture and anyone who is privileged some sort of void cultureless being

[ceilidhtransing]

As someone with a background in anthropology, culture is everything and everywhere. It's so all-encompassing it's hard to even wrap your head around. Everything you do, say, think, eat, wear is wrapped up in culture. Even being deliberately counter-cultural, by consciously defying the expectations of your culture, is still an engagement with culture (often by adopting a sub-culture).

Sure, it's the “simple”, “surface-level” things that people tend to think of, like

In your culture, how many meals a day are you generally expected to eat, and when are you expected to eat them?

In your culture, which clothes are considered “formal”, and when would you wear such clothes?

But it's also so much more:

If you were dating someone, at what point in the relationship would you be expected to introduce them to your parents? That's culture!

How much respect is given to artists? Are people like poets or musicians revered as an integral part of society, or is the predominant attitude “get a real job”? That's culture!

How much value is given to education? What's considered more socially embarrassing - academic failure, or academic achievement? What's the intellectual landscape? Do people tend to respect experts, or denigrate them as “elitists”? That's culture!

Which things are generally considered to be “high culture” or “low culture”? Which kinds of media and art are considered “for the masses” versus “for the elites”? That's culture!

How are politicians treated? Do people tend to respect them as their “betters”, their “leaders”? Or are they assumed to be lying, conniving, corrupt, the worst of society? What kind of thing would end a politician's career? That's culture!

What's considered more egregious behaviour - bothering other people, or asking someone to stop bothering other people? That's culture!

If you were attending a job interview, how would you want to come across? How would you be expected to dress and behave? Would it be better to come across as very bold and confident, or humble and subservient? That's culture!

If you found yourself in a tricky situation - say, broken down at the side of the road - would you confidently expect strangers to come and help you? Or would it seem really weird for some random person to come and involve themselves in your situation? That's culture!

How are you expected to communicate? Is it seen as rude to be very blunt and straightforward, or is it considered rude to beat around the bush and make allusions and try to soften what you're saying rather than quickly getting to the point? That's culture!

I could go on (boy could I go on). This is so not meant to be all-inclusive; this is just a tiny sample of the things that make up “culture”.

To put it bluntly, a lot of the time the word “culture” seems to be used to mean, essentially, “the things that make people of colour different from white people”. Oh, this guy eats this different kind of food; that's culture. This lady wears these clothes to a wedding; that's culture. But we white people, we don't have “culture”; we just do what's normal. But it's all culture! Everything! All of it! And culture isn't just the result of where in the world you come from - class, occupation, rural/urban location, minority status, political affiliation, all these things and more can result in cultural differences even within a small area. Multiple cultures often co-exist, blend, overlap, and borrow from one another within the same place, which is especially noticeable in places with legacies of migration. People bring different cultures from around the world, and these interact with the dominant culture in all sorts of interesting ways. But a culture being dominant doesn't mean that it ceases to be a culture.

Claiming that certain groups of people (generally, whoever is the dominant majority group in a particular context) “don't have culture” is just as dumb as when people claim they “don't have an accent” simply because their accent is the most common one where they live. There is no “default”, every deviation from which is “a culture” or “an accent”. Everyone has an accent. Every community, everywhere, has culture(s). If you aren't aware of your culture, or don't think you have an accent, you're probably just so used to being considered “default” and “normal” that it doesn't occur to you that no such thing actually exists.

[slopforhogs]

Juvenile wild boar (Sus scrofa) play fighting with its littermate

(x)

[persephoneme]

deeply funny to observe the post-hoc rationalizations of the tumblr userbase re: ai and veganism because if you follow the thread of the arguments you end up in this bizarre discursive space where water usage is a pressing environmental concern but if you gesture towards the meat industry about it you’re a shill for Big Quinoa. lol.

[circuitcitycivilservant]

This information may one day save your life

[sarahmackattack]

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

[jadeblueafterglow]

more leftists should be vegan. veganism and leftism operate on the same beliefs. social justice, no exploitation of labor, autonomy, environmental concern, intersectionality, an equal and just living etc. leftist praxis should include veganism

[moniquill]

Indigenously: no.

Animal welfare and animal rights are different things; it is good and normal for humans to be slightly anthropocentric while acknowledging our role within the greater ecosystem. Factory farming should indeed be dismantled- I want all animals harvested for food/leather/fur/bones/organs to have full and rich lives with as little suffering as possible before they're harvested. But it is not anti-leftist to live as a predator within the ecosystem. It is not more wrong for humans to eat salmon than it is for bears and eagles to do so.

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

i used to work in a vegan restaurant and it had basically all the same labor and management problems as the other restaurants i worked at that served meat. obviously. because it was a business in a capitalist system so obviously theres an economic incentive to pay workers the bare minimum and charge customers the maximum you can get away with.

in fact, the restaurant used the vegan identity and environmentalism as fuel for their marketing in quite cynical ways. at the same time they had a deal with Whole Foods (implicated in prison labor allegations btw) to source ingredients, meaning that there were transcontinentally shipped produce lol. for example we used frozen blueberries that were product of Chile. for a restaurant in the pacific northwest region in the united states of america. there are blueberry farms in oregon, washington, etc. But it’s cheaper to exploit south american farms than get local blueberries i guess. (which still by and large exploit the labor of migrant farmworkers from mexico and south and central america, but i digress)

i was vegetarian at the time and i had a lot of deep conversations with my coworkers and manager and the conclusion i came away with is that veganism is merely a cultural practice and is not inherently “leftist” in any way. if you consider human lives equal to animal lives i think that is not compatible with a clear-sighted materialist analysis of the world we live in. its practically a religious belief. which, like, okay, you can be religious, you can have irrational beliefs, but that’s not what “”””leftism”””” is about. that’s not really what any socialist or communist theory is about. it could be syncretized with socialist theory, but it would always merely be an ill-fitting addendum.

[fanfckery]

I was going to put this in tags but no.

Cashews that make vegan cheese are extremely dangerous to harvest due to the fact they mist be harvested by hand and the fruit has corrosive enzymes. Most workers end up with scars from chemical burns.

Almond farms were linked to the declining bee population due to the number of bees needed to pollinate the plants. Most bee keepers were lucky to get half their hives back after farms rented them.

We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms.

Agave is a main food source for many bats, but no, harvesting excess honey from bees that over produce it is the problem. If bees regularly have a large surplus of honey they swarm, the hive splits and some leave to start a new hive. Problem is that most bees don't survive this process because it makes them vulnerable to other environmental factors. So encouraging farming and over consumption of agave and stopping the consumption of honey, you're actually harming two different populations of pollinators.

"Vegan leather" is mostly plastic, which breaks down and sheds microplasics. Contributing to the ever growing landfill and contaminated water supply issues we have. Meanwhile cow hide is a natural byproduct from the meat industry, and real leather can last decades if taken care of. A single cow can feed 2 families of 4 for a year, and that leather can go towards making belts, boots, gloves and jackets that last decades.

If you want to actually support ethical food production and animal welfare do your research on where your food comes from. Look into local farms and their practices.

[alterugdalf]

The terracotta army of strawmen.

Cashews that make vegan cheese... Veganism doesn't mean replacing animal products. It means harm reduction. Eating less dairy in order to reduce harm is already vegan. Eating no dairy is even better. Using artificial cheese is not necessary to be vegan.

Almond farms... Vegans don't advocate for monocultures. They advocate for harm reduction. Monocultures predate veganism, because they are easier to manage and more profitable—at the expense of enviroment and biodiversity. They don't exist because vegans want to drink almond milk. They exist because producing almonds in a vast agrarian steppe is more efficient (in the short term) and makes more cash.

We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms. Almost 80 percent of global soy production is used to feed livestock. Rainforests aren't destroyed to feed a couple of vegans. They aren't destroyed because vegans and non-vegans eat more soy nowadays. They are destroyed to feed cattle.

Agave is a main food source... Again, veganism doesn't mean replacing each and every animal product. It means harm reduction. Personally, I know not a single vegan who uses agave syrup. Agave syrup's main selling point was being a "natural sweetener", opposed to "artificial sweeteners" like granulated sugar. That's stupid, but it works—on vegans and non-vegans alike.

"Vegan leather"... Calling it vegan leather is a marketing strategy. It's faux leather. It's been developed because it's cheaper to produce than leather. It is bought—most often by non-vegans, as they're more numerous—because it's cheaper than leather. It has nothing at all to do with veganism, it was around before veganism emerged from obscurity, before vegans were a target group. To pretend that faux leather exists solely to appease the small handful of vegans is simply nonsense.

Look into local farms and their practices. True. But there's no local farm that doesn't employ practices I want to abolish. I'd realy like to know where yall live—encircled by wide pastures full of frolicking sheep and cattle, surrounded by sustainable farms that produce enough so that an entire city can have meat on the table every day.

Throwing the problems caused by agriculture in the faces of vegans as a supposed gotcha is just lazy. Intensive agriculture exists independently of veganism. Agricultural workers are exploited indepentently of veganism. Service workers and prisoners are exploited independently of veganism. Veganism is one measure. It's not a panacea that solves all problems of capitalism and the environment. Vegans don't claim that it is. Please stop acting as if they do.

[uncahier]

Calvin really was the voice of his generation. His generation just doesn’t like to admit it.

[abyssal-ilk]

you ever get so into the whole "it would have been good if it was good" thing that it gets kind of embarrassing. it would have been good if it was good but it's Not and in fact it's maybe worse than anything else but unfortunately. it still could have been good. if it was go