She’s a pretty-skinned Hollywood monster designed to destroy our youth: The 12 weirdest MAGA attacks on Miley Cyrus

@ dormousing_it

I’m going to limit the amount of meat I eat.

That’s a great start. Even the most hardcore veganism is only about harm reduction. We can never achieve perfection; our very existence has an impact. But every little bit helps as they say; and incrementalism is better than never trying because you can’t instantly be 100%

I wish you success on your journey!

As for the Great Famine in Ireland, Rick Green’s TV show History Bites did an episode on that, which included an ‘interview’ with an English nobleman about the fact that all the grain was being exported out of Ireland, and the interviewer trying to get the noble to realize that this was why the Irish were starving while the noble was happily oblivious.

(If you’re not familiar with it, the shtick of History Bites is ‘what if modern TV was around at various points in history’ and then channel-flips through advertisements and shows as they would have been from that era. All with a rather humorous bent. Rick Green is also one of the comedy troupe The Frantics, part of The Red Green Show, and used to run an SF fandom show called Prisoners of Gravity.)

Granted, my Irish ancestors emigrated to Canada and started up a grist mill over in the Peterborough area around that time.

@Alan:
For bacteria, I believe it is generally accepted that the bacteria in your gut outnumber the cells in your body. Significantly. They don’t come anywhere near outmassing you, of course. But spread across the earth? I have no problem believing that bacteria outnumber multicellular life by enough orders of magnitude to actually outmass us as well.

Me, I’m in the ‘reduced meat’ category mostly. I happen to like salads. Mostly I just like variety.

Here we are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_History_Bites_episodes#Season_Three
Episode 3/20, When Irish Eyes Are Starvin’.

Hmm, there seems to be a copy online? Is anybody familiar with ‘sidereel’?

Thanks for the bit about charcoal.

@varalys : I find the idea that going vegan is going to do anything good about the planet rather discutable. Protection of the environment is a big, big topic, and veganism might or might not help on a very tiny bit of the human footprint. It’s a case of “don’t take a tree for the forest”, and remember that local producers and/or sustainable agricultures are *also* important axis to remember.

@GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina : more “meaningless” than ironic. Ancestral ground is a concept that make 0 sense for mankind, who is a particulary homogenous species. And south american are the produce of a melting pot of several country just like the USA ; it’s just that since they are less white, people forget that.

While I see the appeal of casting thoses xenophobes as hypocrite (which, frankly, they are), it’s also important to not justify their belief in races by doing so.

@Alan Robertshaw : the short answer is that if anyone say that there is a “single most effective step”, they are trying to sell you something. That’s wishful thinking at best.

For your example, it don’t say that it’s the most effective step, but one among several, including reducing food wastage and going local.

As for the ecological comparison, the situation is actually quite muddy. The comparisons for reasonable diet are actually all over the place, especially depending on the factors being considered best for the environement. Plus, cost of distributions are somewhat hard to evaluate and can vary a lot from place to place.

So, no, going vegan isn’t the most effective step in trying to mitigate the climate catastrophe. And, in particular, nobody should think they are in the green by going vegan.

I do think it’s not necessarily the best idea to lump all forms of animal byproduct consumption into one activity. Indigenous hunting, for example, does far less damage overall than more common forms of animal byproduct consumption in “first world” countries. Cutting off beef alone would do a lot. And so on.

I think in a lot of progressive spaces there’s a danger of getting too emotionally invested in your particular utopian ideal and failing to account for lived experiences that may not fit into that ideal.

@Fruitloopsie:

On animal rights:
There’s nothing wrong with going vegan but problematic movements like peta and individuals have been doing more harm than good with the whole savior complex/racism towards natives and spouting other bigotries.

I’ve seen a lot of people starting to use alternative descriptions like, “adopting a plant-based diet” instead of saying they’re vegan, IMO precisely because of the extent to which self-righteous scolds like PETA have debased the term.

I have a friend from university who grew up in Zambia and recently went back for a few months as a charity volunteer. He rapidly became disillusioned at the prevalence of an attitude he calls, “fuck you, were helping!” he saw on the ground there, this toxic mixture of white exceptionalism and intent-is-magic thinking that lead to thousands of Euros being wasted on ill-thought-out projects that any local could have told them was a non-starter. “Fuck you, we’re helping!” is everywhere; e.g.:

You: Hey, PETA, why are the euthanasia rates so high in your animal shelters?
PETA: Fuck you, we’re helping!
You: Hey Greenpeace, why did you desecrate a sacred site with your dumb slogans?
Greenpeace: Fuck you, we’re helping!

“Fuck you, we’re helping!” will probably be the epitaph on our species’ tombstone ☹️

@ cat mara & unit_000

Even within the animal rights community, PETA can raise a few eyebrows. Having said that they do provide a useful function.

They are excellent at using the media. They also make animal rights and veganism aspirational. Their, not especially well hidden, message is that animal rights/veganism is for the cool kids. And that’s just as valid a way of attracting people to the cause as highlighting ethics; environmental considerations, health etc.

We only have one aim, and that is to win. Any route to that is fine.

Animal Rebellion is deliberately designed to be a broad church, avoiding the circular firing squad Popular Front of Judea tendencies that can be a hindrance to progressive causes. AR doesn’t even use the term progressive; if a Daily Mail reader is thinking of going vegan then we’re not going to scare them off. The idea is to be just edgy enough for the kids; just safe enough to get on Newsnight.

As someone much cleverer than me said, that 3.5% theory might be a meaningless heuristic; but we’re very willing to give it a go.

https://medium.com/animal-rebellion/how-we-sent-mixed-messages-in-excluding-other-calls-for-veganism-ae0bdcc617c3

@ varalys

regurgitating propaganda from the meat, dairy and egg industry.

But the Meat Advisory Panel are experts; they wouldn’t lie on the news

who provide independent and objective information about red meat and its role as part of a healthy, balanced diet.

http://meatandhealth.redmeatinfo.com/meat-the-experts/meat-advisory-panel-(map).aspx

And like they say, they’re totally independent…oh.

@kupo, Alan Robertshaw

Sure, if you want your message to be fatphobic, anti-anyone-but-vegans, and extremely shallow and mean-spirited, they do an excellent job of that. Also, great publicity to reach animal lovers by…*checks notes*…kidnapping and euthanizing happy, healthy pets off their owner’s property.

Not to mention that PETA has a sexism problem. And the endorsement of Joe Arpaio.

@Alan
I would say getting caught doing the same illegal and immoral thing twice shows a pattern of behavior. But again, you pointed to them as *good* publicity for vegans and doing something as horrific as that even once is not good publicity.

@Alan:

They [PETA] are excellent at using the media

I strongly disagree with that; PETA are only “good” at getting themselves in the media in the most superficial, Wildean only-thing-worse-than-being-talked-about-is-not-being-talked-about fashion. The level of discourse they promote is about that of the right-wing chuckleheads holding barbecues in company car parks in response to Meatless Mondays. IMO, PETA provides an off-the-peg fake activism, a phony crusade for emotionally-stunted narcissists to show off in public to… virtue-signal, basically, in the original meaning of that phrase. They can get in the sea as far as I’m concerned.