naevaTheRat

I have 2 adopted greyhounds. One is on prescription vegetarian hypoallergenic diet because allergies lead to her being on life support, one is fully vegan. Vets always remark on how healthy they look.

Then when they find out one is on vegan food they do a double take and error for a while before concluding it must be working.

also like, who wants to live to 51? everyone that's 50...

Sometimes I'm blown away by the quality. Like a lot of the shit I'd buy locally is chinese made anyway.

Often you get stuff like 'premium' retailers getting the stuff that QC passed to a higher standard or whatever but it's worth minor decreases in quality for a 1000% discount or whatever absurd retail markup there is.

The thing is, if you're buying something for a dollar it's gonna be about that quality. you need to know the brands that make good shit. Like some of the 40 dollar kitchen knives on aliexpress are amazing value, some are scams. Electronic components are similar. I can buy an esp32 there for 5 bucks, or locally for 45. Same product.

Now would I trust a fruit bowl bought for 2 dollars to be good? lol no. There's just material reality at the end of the day. No amount of genius engineering and dubious manufacturing conditions can make high quality material appear from thin air.

Idk about turkeys but broiler hens (hens bred for slaughter) frequently grow so fast their bones don't get strong enough to support their own weight.

It is horrifying.

If you're making the argument that more of a being is always morally better than less, that is even more ridiculous than a conclusion from utilitarianism called "mere addition" or "the repugnant conclusion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox

If we applied this logic to humans we would end up in a nightmare world.

I'm not calling anyone out. We all eat worse than we'd like to, exercise less than we feel we ought to, have a home messier than we're pleased with, spend more time watching mindless tv than is really good for us or some analogous permutation of minor sins.

We're apes trying to figure out how to use root digging and berry picking brains to navigate the lightbox of eternal distraction and a world of concrete, glass, and tedium. This shit is hard.

If you have similar experiences to my past ones then I hope you can draw comfort from knowing you're not unique in your difficulties and it is possible (although life circumstances depending not always easy) to overcome them.

Sorry to hear that. I've quit quite a few things, as well as a long term weed habit in my early twenties and so here is what I have to say in no particular order:

• Understand yourself. Take a bit of time to think through how you feel about what you're doing and why you do it. Have compassion here and look at the root causes, don't be like "I vape and I don't want to because I'm a garbage person with no willpower" or something nasty and unhelpful. For example with myself with weed I came to the conclusion that I didn't really enjoy the effects overall, but it was a very comfortable way to alleviate boredom and the rebound anxiety and sleeplessness was difficult to handle.

• Based on the above figure out what you're going to do about it. If you want to stop then have plans for handling anticipated barriers (if you can't sleep don't lie in bed being miserable. Have a book to read, a walk to go on, a show to binge or a friend to chat to etc). If you have particular triggers find ways to avoid them, raise the barrier to using weed by making it a pain to get/be reminded of. If you always vape when having a morning coffee maybe idk have a morning coffee at a cafe instead while you adjust.

• Understand it's gonna suck a bit. It just is, there will be a period where you are restless and bored. Acceptance is powerful.

• Understand that there is no point in making it harder for yourself. Like yeah it's going to suck a bit but there is no need to punish yourself. Have plans for stuff to do to replace it, have plans to alleviate the worst symptoms, pick up new hobbies, adjust your work schedule if you can (more or less, whatever makes it easier for you), change your space etc. Don't just raw dog misery and hope to succeed. It's ok to take a sedative the first couple of sleepless nights, or to lean on friends a bit, or be messy and late, or spend a weekend mindlessly videogaming or whatever.

• I strongly recommend exercise. Exercise helps manage stress and energy so much, it makes the brain dispense the happy chemicals, and it is time consuming but simple. Try find something you like to do. Again don't force yourself to suffer. Long walks, swimming, running, cycling, lifting, climbing whatever takes your fancy.

• edit. Of course most of all: Almost nobody reliably succeeds at tasks on the first try. That is not weakness, that is life. Sometimes we get beginners luck and something comes naturally and easy, usually we have to fumble a few tries getting better each time. Plan to succeed, accepting lessons along the way. Every impulse resisted is confidence and experience, every stumbling block is an obstacle identified, every minute your body is normalising its chemistry. You cannot go backwards by trying.

I would quibble here and say that torture is actually an incredibly civilised act. I mean this not as an endorsement, but rather in the sense that only highly 'civilised' societies appear to have every carried out systematic torture. It seems to require a great deal of centralised, bureaucratic control in order to prevent instincts like empathy from preventing it.

It's also worth pointing out that torture, as defined in a UN convention that is pretty broadly ratified is much broader than we normally think of it. It is defined as follows:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Which I think is food for thought. Portrail of torture is incredibly systemic in media, and I think we are numbed to it a great deal although I don't know which way causality goes there. How many of you have seen cops handling someone roughly with the intent to hurt them or intimidating someone to make them pliable as routine 'justice'? That is literally torture by a convention that it is highly likely the country they work for has ratified.

I fucking hate driving because of how a minority of others drive. Not the accidental mistakes etc but straight up psychotic maniacs: the tail gaters, the no indicators, the cutting in front to catch an exiters and so on.

But holy shit this isn't a good solution. Something about our roads and cars turns people who might just be kinda abrasive into homicidal maniacs. The solution is to find and change whatever that is.

Spying on everyone is a terrible precedent and wont actually address the cause. When significant portions of the population do something the problem is systemic, you can't punish/torture your way out of systemic flaws.

Yep, everyone that disagrees with you is a Russian psyop. That's why I'm opposed to nation states and empire, and want a rules based international order with common heritage of humankind treaties. Exactly what they want in the Kremlin or wherever.

Someone not from the usa defending them is even more baffling. Grow up in a house with lead painted walls?

If you were less ignorant of global politics it would actually be trivial for you to work out where I live from what I've said.

I'm really sorry about what passes for an education in the usa. Like seriously I am. You've been very heavily indoctrinated and so any criticism of your homeland feels like it's an irrational attack. You don't need to feel this way, it's like those old fools who think that learning about past national wrongs means they need to live in shame or react by teaching so called 'white pride'.

You are not responsible for the evil done by the elites that claim dominion over you, you don't need to identify with them or defend their actions. Many were done by people no longer alive anyway.