What do any of those things have to do with anything?

Look it up - we have access to this horrifyingly huge lump of interconnected data called 'the internet'. A search engine can help you do this. Also look for articles here on raddle in the appropriate forums.

Maybe poverty because they have to buy whatever food is cheapest but rice and beans are way cheaper than meat so nah

More things to look up: 'time poverty'. Look for the perspectives of people who have to work multiple jobs and also do housework and feed kids, while living in a food desert.

Look for disabled people talking about how they struggle to feed themselves at all and cannot do the meal prep required to eat/live vegan or vegetarian, and therefore would have to survive on processed foods, and how that means health and environmental impact.

Go actually looking for the nuanced, detailed, and multitudinous perspectives of people who struggle.

If you really really believe that a plant based or mostly plant based diet will save the world, start offering people assistance (when they want it, in ways that work for them) to get there, instead of refusing to entertain the real, systemic, roadblocks individuals face to doing so.

I will go vegetarian/vegan the day a bunch of folks like yourself decide my disabled ass is worth helping to do so. I'd need:

• help doing the groceries (me and spouse can baaaarely manage to get out and do this most weeks)

• help doing the huge amount of veggie prep needed (again, we barely manage, and I hate having to compost $$$ worth of good organic veg cause we couldn't cook this week, cause neither of us could move, cause they are burnt out from working with multiple chronic illnesses and I can barely move cause my pain has been at 6-8 out of 10 all week)

• and we'd need someone to help us cook in bulk on weekends or something. Time poverty means weekends are often 'recovery' and 'feed ourselves as best we can' and 'goddamit, takeout again, and the attendant guilt'.

For goodness sake, HELP people. Grow your compassion. Recognize how much the systems we have to navigate are a bunch of the issue here, not just 'the will to do it'.

And leave people and cultures who aren't part of the 'super consumption of meat/factory industrial farming' alone because white folks have been telling them what to do and what to eat and where to live and how to farm for waaaaayyyyyyyy too long.

I really can't read Arwa anymore - she's been too TERF-lite in too many articles >_<

I've had 3 abusive parents who all have abused me to varying degrees, that I've had different relationships with ongoing because of it, so I have some exp with this.

I am a big advocate of cutting people out of your life who are mostly damaging to you or who you're just not interested in maintaining relationship with. I am also a big believer that no one deserves, or can earn, relationship with someone else, and that it's okay that some acts of harm can mean they never get a chance to.

When it comes to dealing with parents, or others, who have been abusive in the past or are still abusive, I think it's very much up to the individual, and that safety and what I can only term 'sanity' should be centered for the affected party.

I have one parent who is what I can only describe as 'evil'. He is violent, unashamed, unchanging, and a direct threat to me. I have not been in touch with him since I was 10, and make every effort to ensure he can never find me. I will never, ever speak to him or be in the same room as him, and that's okay. I think everyone has the right to cease contact with a parent who is abusive and unlikely to change.

I have another parent/set of parents who are well-meaning but emotionally, psychologically, and physically abusive. I was financially dependent on them for many years, and therefore could not cease contact. I spent many, many years trying to address the issues with our relationship, to be heard, and to draw boundaries. None of this worked with them (ie none of this meant change in behaviors toward me).

Once I was no longer financially dependent on them, and after a particularly nasty incident, I cut off all contact. I recognized they were the only people in my life who could make me 'crazy' and sought to dominate and control me. So I just stopped. I didn't speak to them for 7 years.

Recently, we started speaking again, for a bunch of reasons, and the reason I continue to right now if that they have changed those behaviors. This is not something I ever expected, I really thought that wouldn't be a thing. Like, shock of my life really. But since it has, I am giving them the chance to be in touch as long as their behavior remains low impact and not damaging to me. The minute they revert or don't listen when I call them in or draw boundaries, I will cut them off again with no qualms.

So my answer to 'is it possible' is this - it may be, but if there's change enough to support it is entirely going to be about the choices and motivations of the individual who has been abusive. We can't make them change, and usually I think it's best not to make decisions hoping they will. I think it's best to make decisions based around what we can cope with, what we want, and if we value the relationship and wish to continue it. If you think of your family member's behavior and you wouldn't tolerate it from a friend or community member, then don't. Center your own safety, autonomy, and sanity if you can and as much as you can.

With abusive parents who seem to have changed, my personal feeling is that if you want to be in contact do so, but continue to center your safety and sanity, and cease contact if the abusive behaviors re-emerge, or boundaries are violated. If you have trouble standing up to/setting boundaries with your parent because of their past abuse, that is something to take into consideration when considering the safety of a potential relationship for you. And always remember that no amount of changed behavior means you owe them interaction - it's okay to just not want to have anything to do with them.

I really hope this is helpful.

Sorry but at 'Marxism, which is a science' I choked on my popcorn and now I have to laugh until I puke.

It's not that it couldn't be categorized as such (I mean, a social/political science or philosophy) - it's more that that's what you care about and think is a winning argument that cracks me up.

You: 'What will convince the anarchists to take ML seriously? Oh I know, reify it as a science full of le logics and reasons, approved of and codified by the academy of peers! Sneer that any disagreement with this glorious doctrine is juvenile and classed! Then I will link them to a Youtube video, their tiny minds will explode with scientific understanding, and my great and effective argument will have been made!!!!'

Way to win friends and influence people >_>

I will take this kind of ML seriously when they learn to be faaaaaaaaaaaar more critical of the academy, and academia, and the power structures/hierarchies inherent to them. Which will be never, I hope my readers understand.

Wow.

The only good rich people I know don't want to be rich and don't think they aught to be because it's wrong, so they correct that as much as they can and still be surviving ok.

Though like it depends what you mean by rich. Rich, to me, is 'anyone earning 6 figures+'. You might mean 7 figs, or something else. I think there's some level of riches that requires concerted effort + hoarding to get there, and idk if those people can be 'good'. It really depends.

I mean also I guess I'm technically one of them once my parents pass, even though for now (and for most of my adult life) I'm at 0 income/unemployable - they will be passing their family trust to me, and I will be liquidating that shit and giving it all to community survival. Because keeping it invested is an evil I cannot countenance.

I know people with 6 figs who give away most of it because they believe it's wrong that they have it, yeh. Without one of them, I wouldn't be alive (and a bunch of other folks, too).

Yes - especially when they are indigenous, not-white, not living in the colonial 'west', impoverished, disabled, or any number of intersecting experiences and identities that frame their meat-eating (and its impact) differently than the dominant narrative.

Nuance is everything, rly.

I get frustrated when people talk about single, rather than multi-faceted approaches to combating hate speech and abuse online (which trolling is part and parcel with).

'Don't Feed the Trolls' too often has been twisted into 'look away and ignore hate online, never call it out, never offer a counter-perspective for the silent listeners/readers, never combat the seeding and growth of toxic and dangerous rhetoric/actions'.

This kind of thinking comes wayyyyy to close to 'if you don't like it, ignore it' which proliferates on sites like Reddit, and encourages an attitude of 'if you don't touch the poop, it will somehow go away' or 'if you can't see it, it's not harmful'.

I think block/report/ignore is totally part of a healthy toolkit for fighting hate, and the one often most appropriate for the average run of the mill person to stay safer. But it's not the only tool in our kit (and shouldn't be). There are ways to engage hateful, abusive, trolling in online spaces that doesn't engage the troll or really provide them oxygen. These are still going to be useful in spaces where the banhammer is weak or nonexistent (like twitter etc).

It's not the case in this article perhaps, but I often see a big overlap between the 'just ignore the bullies' folks and the 'what we need to do is debate the fascists instead of de-platforming them' kind of liberal, and I wonder how they deal with the cognitive dissonance? Perhaps they think the trolls and the fascists do not overlap - which is, of course, why 'ironic racism' seems to have been such a winning strategy for the right.

I used to save seeds from flower I bought, but seed seems less prevalent in the legalized weed I'm buying now. I used to find the most seeds in bottom shelf or less legal MJ. I would germinate them, grow until I could sex them, and keep the potentially flowering ones.

Once when I grew my own under prohibition I actually ended up getting seeds from a friends dad who didn't use but was growing for his elderly friends cancer/pain management (he hid them among his spliced tobacco and tomato plants). If you know anyone who grows their own, or can find local folks, I'm sure seed share is possible.

Here in the US, I've noticed some dispensaries sell seeds and/or clones, so if you're in a place with legalization that could be a go. I've seen clones for ~$10 a plant.

I'm not as aware of the like, under the table, online ordering landscape but people also seem to get all sorts of things that way, seeds for MJ or spores for shrooms, etc.

Good luck!

A huge tactic of abuse is for an abuser to isolate their victim from community, to cause their victim to distrust or question themselves, to paint their victim as abuser

This has happened to me multiple times. It's really hard.

Newsfeed?

Sticky News Post?

All the Trouble in the World?

There are good and happy things about being trans!?

(I wish I was joking - being a nonbinary trans person has been 100% unfun in the world, and I guess this is why sharing the positive things is important. It would be nice to see that it's not like this for everyone)

Oh and OP? Many of the men who raped me as a child and made money off my torture and rape were people who 'do great good in the world' - cancer researchers, doctors, educators, etc.

I don't believe they should get a pass because of it. The evil they did outweighs any number of cancer cures or amazing research or students educated or patients treated. Because the evil they did in the world has flow on effects for entire communities and populations that include impacts on health, well being, social connection, everything.

You're thinking too naively about what trauma and harm of this kind creates in the world. No amount of 'but my GNU' will balance that shit. It's not a numbers game. You can't set up 'children raped' against 'free software developed' and act like that's a fair trade off.

CW - CSA, ICSA, rape

Did you know Stallman has been a pedosadist apologist, rape apologist and misogynist for ~30 years? People have collected his statements and opinions over this time in one place, it's trivial to find it if you like, actually go looking.

Anyway - 30 YEARS

He is a grown-ass man who has held these opinions consistently for literally decades. Your hero is a rape apologist, which means your hero is probably a rapist. This is not new, he's unashamed, he's unchanged, and he's therefore a danger to people around him

I can 99.9% guarantee he's acted on his 'opinions'. I know this as a survivor of organized CSA and someone who knows intimately how these kind of people operate. In my experience, no-one bangs on about how ICSA and child rape aren't actually bad unless they are collecting ICSA and raping children.

Anyways - having been raped by near 100's of men just like Stallmen when I was an actual child, and knowing that ICSA is out there online of me being looked at by men like Stallmen, I don't feel the need to be 'the bigger person' over weather I want pedosadists/apologists anywhere near me, or in my communities. That's my hill, and I'll happily die on it.

I call these 'regret flashbacks' and I get them while lying in bed, but also entirely randomly in waking situations too, often with no real trigger for them.

Me: walking along the street

My Brain: HEY REMEMBER THAT TIME THAT HUMILIATING THING HAPPEN WHEN YOU WERE 16?

Me: implodes with remembered shame and regret

Oh and also I can't sleep without music or audio books or rain sounds or something. Or I will lie awake forever listening to what my brain has to say about everything.

Lifelong insomniac (and night owl) here - am intrigued by people who can do this naturally

The only way I have managed this is:

a) lots of weed b) application of alcohol c) ensuring intense physical exhaustion (work/dancing/sex) d) doxylamine or other sleepy-inducing drugs

Sometimes all at once

Back when I was oh, maybe 25, I worked FOH at a local community venue. So we got all the local schools end of year concerts.

The year 6 or kids (so 11 or 12yo) did interpretive dance to 'Enter the Sandman' - music that, when I was a kid, was banned in our house for being too well, Metal.

That's when I knew I was old.

I have a lot of 'well I'm old' moments every day now cause I'm hitting 40 soon, but that was the first major cognitively dissonant ones.

It was good interpretive dance, tho! And their parents were all in the crowd in Metallica shirts throwing up devil horns >_>

abuse

And it only took ~30 years of him airing his 'opinions' for there to be a modicum of consequences!

facepalm because of course he does

Hey thanks

On the kids who might go off to this forever war, these discussions made me think about what freedom of movement was like for those privileged with it back before all the security theater. And how a lot of people I think kinda thought the new world order would be 'temporary' while we 'fought the war on terror'. I mean it's clear ideological 'wars' don't work like that right?

And it struck me that kids going to fight would be fighting for rights they've never experienced, that will probably never exist again. Like being able to go meet your family at the gate in an airport. Not to see 'Homeland Security' vehicles in your town, not to have the govt. and corporations undermine every right to privacy we used to think we had.

I think part of the horror of the idea of people who weren't born when this started going to be part of the meat-grinder is that they are people who don't remember, have never experienced, and can never know what the world was like before.

On my experience in Australia - nowadays, on balance, I understand better the motivation of the attacks, and how much it was a predictable response to US imperialism. I can't celebrate the deaths of random individuals caught in that event, nor can I lionize them. People making a joke of it hurt at the time, but I understand the response more now. Folks always seem to have trouble separating US citizens from US govt/administration. I was 20 and scared and it felt like people wanted me dead, but people weren't thinking in empathy with individuals.

My issue with mainstream (so like, not anarchist or leftist) Aussie anti-US-imperialism tends to still be the smug, back-patting 'OUR colonialism is better than THEIR colonialism' denial of what a shitty, white supremacist, colonial wannabe-imperialist, xenophobic, racist, violently misogynist, nation Australia is . There was a tendency when I was growing up (idk if there still is, but I'd guess so) to see 'US cultural imperialism' as the source of all ills, which always seemed to become a way to never focus on the ills of white Australian colonial history and present.

Spouse creature is away right now, wrapping up stuff at oldplace and deciding on which job to take (they are super lucky in this). But they get home tonight, so I don't have to be bored and antsy anymore! 4.5 days is too long. I think 48-ish hours is my cap on 'be without spouse' time.

Enjoying my time in newcity very much though - have been walking around a bunch more, joining all the co-ops nearby, and reaching out to anarchist + antifascist orgs. Gonna hook up with Infoshop peoples tomorrow even! Good times.

The news cycle is awful and I cannot today. But good things are occur, so that helps.

I'm chatting here more cause the Annual Lurker Thread actually encouraged me to a bunch, a whole bunch. Am anxious but I hope it's a good thing in the end.

That's despicable (the Patriot Day book). It must be so difficult parenting a school-age child in this country, trying to field all that shit.