That’s the hope. If we’re gonna have a fascist state, at least let it be a bumbling incompetent fascist state.

I got a tub of protein powder or something that had a scoop perfectly portioned for my morning cup. I’ve been using that for years

The Mars Volta in general. Tons of friends have recommended them to me after hearing some of what I listen to, and it’s just not my jam. On paper I should, but alas.

I proposed to my wife at Christmas by putting the ring in a bigger box so she was surprised. It was a box for skincare product, and she was actually excited for it before she even opened it to see the ring. Obviously she was happy for the proposal, but she also seemed a little disappointed she didn’t get skincare stuff.

The following Christmas, I got her a tiny container of a skincare product she liked and put it in a ring box.

The far right has gotten their act together, productivity-wise. They’re out there publishing a literal handbook, and they step in line to implement it.

Where’s the left’s Project 2025? Blue-no-matter-who has always been a time-buying strategy. But if you want things to go great, we have to do something with the time we buy.

The core of that something is organization. Not just locally (though yes, locally), confederate with other groups. Until we have a MAGA level movement with MAGA level engagement and MAGA level narratives, the left will remain a fractured archipelago.

That means getting along with all the thousands of “wrong” leftists long enough to build common ground. That means a dead-simple, unified narrative. That means recognizing poisoned vocabulary and framing policy in more 'murican terms.

Just in general, swallowing our pride to focus more on getting results than being right.

Step by step. I’d rather push left from the Democrats’ status quo than the Republicans’.

Maybe early detection?

That’s not an exhaustive list, just long enough to show that “Dems never improve anyone’s life” is just nonsense. And further, most of the things you go on to complain about them not doing are things they tried to do that got blocked by obstructionist Republicans.

If you can taste cinnamon, you put too much. It gives almost a smokiness while making the sweetness of the tomato pop. But you should use so little you worry it won’t do anything.

I love nature. Termite mounds are nature, honeycombs are nature, spiderwebs are nature. Humans are a part of nature and our infrastructure is a part of who we are.

Carving out exceptions for human artifacts like this takes for granted that a bunch of arboreal primates figured out how to melt down the rocks themselves to extract their purest essence, then wound that essence into ropes that contain the lightning we learned to generate ourselves to power the many other artifacts we developed to bring light into our dwellings, communicate with primates on the other side of the planet, and automate the menial tasks of our lives.

While certainly selfish and misguided at times, everything we make is nature, just as much as honeycombs and spiderwebs.

I don’t know of a single fruit that’s poisonous to every animal. There are fruits that are poisonous to certain animals, but that serves mostly to select for particular animals. A popular example is capsaicin, which is painful for mammals to eat but doesn’t affect birds. This suggests that these fruits do want to be eaten, they’re just selective about which animals eat them.

And even assuming the most woo-woo levels of plant consciousness, fruit farms create nowhere near the suffering of factory farms. Factory farms are a life of constant suffering, fruit farms are just plants vibing.

Again, you’re just debatelording at this point.

Because “good” and “bad” have nothing to do with my point, which is about purpose. The purpose of fruits is to be eaten, that is their explicit function. While the pigs get some benefits (in principle, in practice factory farms are horrific places which are absolutely less desirable to the pigs than the wild) they do not volunteer themselves for slaughter the way plants volunteer fruit for consumption.

Being eaten is the core benefit of fruit, and all else being equal being eaten is preferable to not. All else being equal, the pig benefits more by not being eaten, and just living peacefully on a farm.

Yes, and this is an undesirable result. You can eke out an existence with no legs, but it is not the preferred state of things. You’re just debatelording now.

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Time matters because that’s how evolution cements biological distinction. Domesticated cow and pig varieties can certainly survive off of farms. There’s the famous example of the cow that escaped to live with a herd of bison, and feral pigs are a well known phenomenon. Yes they are in symbiosis, but it’s not biologically obligatory symbiosis.

Angiosperm co-evolution goes back hundreds of millions of years. Animal husbandry goes back what, 10,000? That’s an evolutionary blip. Yes, long enough to select for traits we prefer, but not long enough to develop the kind of symbiosis we see with fruits. Domestic pigs and cows do get some benefits from being kept, but we certainly aren’t necessary, except maybe some sheep.

Yes, that’s how agriculture works. You select the ones that are the plumpest and tastiest and breed those. Doesn’t change the origin.

Basic botany and critical thinking skills. The difference between fruit bearing plants and animals is that slaughter isn’t an intrinsic part of animal reproduction. If you can present an alternate theory that better explains why angiosperms spend the energy to encase their seeds in stuff that animals find delicious, I’m happy to concede. All the evidence suggests they co-evolved with animals to take advantage of an efficient method of seed dispersal.

You’re saying that again as if I didn’t just enumerate the several fundamental differences. I get that you made an observation that you like, but it’s not really accurate.

Oh if they did I’d love to see Obama throw his hat in the ring.