Ciaran O'Loughlin

@yginbar @Lewis_Bollard As opposed to them never existing? And please tell me which animals die nicely.

@Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard That's because "ethical farming practices" still involve the key practice of killing animals in the prime of their lives, if not earlier. And even the most "humane" slaughtering methods, with the best of intentions, inevitably involve much fear, pain and suffering.

This is a pig who spent years confined in a gestation crate. She was left behind when factory farms flooded in Iowa and then rescued by some volunteers. The volunteers took her home and dug her a mud pit. She ignored it. They assumed years of confinement had extinguished her natural instincts. Then they noticed her wandering into the woods on their property. They followed her — and found her rooting in a pile of dirt, digging her own mud pit. The pork industry claims pigs adapt to confinement. They don't. Inside every gestation crate is an animal who still yearns to root, wallow, and just be a pig. This is the tragedy of factory farming. We tried to reduce feeling animals to machines. We failed.

@yginbar @fanoonman @Lewis_Bollard @PeggiBosquez Who said we have to act like praying mantis? No one.

@Reframe_Reality @fanoonman @Lewis_Bollard @PeggiBosquez It's also natural for a female praying mantis to eat her mate during or after copulation - that doesn't make it the right thing for humans to do, even assuming it's equally nutritious.

@JMer3963 @Lewis_Bollard Yeah, ultimately it is not the solution and will also lead to way less of these animals even existing in the first place. As well as taking money away from good farmers.

@Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard As a former vegetarian who now eats mainly raw milk, soy-free eggs, and regenerative grass-fed (and finished) cow, I delight in converting vegetarian and vegan friends by arguing the philosophy of veganism is a well-intended but ill-thought out reaction to factory farming.

@akirathedon Tbh I think even those of us who see ourselves as not being like this do it way more than we realise. The human mind is amazing but also simultaneously a mess of biases and wilful delusion. I've never met a person who wasn't at least sometimes completely retarded.

As far as I can tell most people don't have such realizations, as they exist in a constant state of seemingly unfathomably impossible cognitive dissonance and simply don't realize that they're doing it

@Nigel194288 @fanoonman @Lewis_Bollard Yeah we get it, you can't participate in adult conversations and also aren't funny. Bye.

@Reframe_Reality @fanoonman @Lewis_Bollard Bacon roll for me tomorrow morning mate..... Lovely 😄

@PeggiBosquez @Lewis_Bollard Yep. And the reality is that a lot of vegan produce comes at the cost of animals habitats anyway, rather than providing them a home (which farmers like yourself do)

@Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard I agree with this so much!! It doesn't have to be torture and cruelty or nothing.

I don't feel there's anything wrong with participating in the food chain, the same way animals do. It's natural. But modern industrial farming practices are not natural at all, and are actually akin to creating hell on earth. There are many great farmers like @PeggiBosquez though, who are giving animals the opportunity at a safe, healthy life where they're cared for. That is better than them not existing (which is the alternative, because most vegans aren't paying to raise cows and pigs) in my opinion. If I found out my life was part of some sort of alien experiment and that earth was some kind of enclosure, I would still be glad to have my loved ones, my family, my pets, my hobbies, my dreams, etc. But if you took all of those things away from me and put me in a box not big enough to stand up in then I'd definitely rather not participate in their experiment. That's how I see it.

@Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard That's true as far as it goes, and any step in the direction of less cruelty is a good thing. But too many people have no sensitivity whatsoever, and couldn't care less how many animals suffer or how much they suffer. Many who do care start wondering if they really need meat.

@fanoonman @Nigel194288 @Lewis_Bollard I've never understood these people either. I think they're the equivalent of a kid at the dinner table, listening to grown-ups talk, not understanding their conversations and going "I know, I'll make a fart sound!! That'll show them". It's insecurity masquerading as humour.

@Nigel194288 @Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard There's usually one asshole in every comments section on a post about animal welfare who feels some sort of demonic need to make a 100% gratuitous and pointless remark to trumpet his insensitivity. What do you gain? Some bizarre pleasure in thinking you annoyed nice people?

@dollrubyjane @Lewis_Bollard Well actually that's pretty much exactly what 90% of animal rights activists are telling people, along with the entire vegan movement. The people who believe in buying local, ethically reared meat are a tiny minority in comparison.

@Reframe_Reality @Lewis_Bollard No one's realistically telling anyone that veganism is the only alternative. The solution is eating less meat but making it higher quality, more expensive meat bought from local farmers.

TV nowadays is so over-stimulating. We tried watching Masterchef España the other day but they only had the most recent season available online and it was unwatchable. We had to turn it off. Insanely bright lights, way too many colours. Weird sound effects and whacky edits every five seconds. At one point there were two different songs playing at once. How can anyone watch this? It was honestly exhausting to look at, just horrible. No sense of subtlety or atmosphere, just a garish nightmare. Try looking up seasons 2-5 of Dragons Den on YouTube and compare them to the new ones. It's an utterly different viewing experience, to the point of being psychedelic. And not in a good way.

@akirathedon Most people just shrivel into quiet, resentful bitterness when realising they've been wrong about everything.

I was going to tweet that not a single person has been in touch with me to say, "You were right about it all, I'm sorry." However that is incorrect because ONE person DID get in touch with me in like 2023 to say "You were right about it all, I'm sorry..." ... and one person out of a lifetime's worth of scoffing naysayers with their "do you know how many people would have to be in on it for that to be true etceteras" is not bad, I suppose.

@0xluffy Some people act like wankers on holiday but are still good, interesting people worthy of your time.

the best way to tell if your person is the person you are going to marry is to go on a trip together you can slowly evaluate someone through dates and hanging out, but a trip magnifies every single behavior they have what happens when the plan falls apart? does he get frustrated, or does he laugh and say “let’s find another way” what happens if the airline loses your baggage? does he panic or does he figure it out and make sure you get it back? what happens when you’re both tired, hungry, and everything starts going wrong? does he make it harder for you too, or does he stay gentle? sometimes traveling together is not about the places. it’s about seeing how your person handles the unknown and knowing that no matter what goes wrong, he is still the one who makes you feel safe.

@verritass @conductr_ Now that's some good stuff.

Quitting any addiction doesn’t require discipline, it requires recognising that it doesn’t actually serve you, realizing the effect it has on you and what void it’s trying to fill/escape from. Facing that Truth openly and then allow that desire to reveal itself, and taking steps towards it instead of running away from it. Phone addiction = Aversion of Boredom Boredom = Purposeless The facing and acceptance of being purposeless will lead you towards the discovery and inspired action of that purpose which by proxy automatically dissolves numbing phone addiction. You can extrapolate this to any addiction

People who quit their phone addiction, what was the one small daily habit that actually changed everything for you?

@BuildingJames_ @conductr_ Good tips. So do you use a normal alarm clock instead of the phone?

@conductr_ Two things: 1. Not turning my phone on until absolutely necessary in the morning, and not going on social media until later in the day. 2. Doing absolutely everything I need to do before settling for the phone i.e. work, tasks, cleaning, writing, etc.

In an era of bitesize information and declining standards of conversation, podcasts have, despite their flaws, been one of the few things that seem to have kept people relatively sane and engaged that extremely necessary long form dialogue part of our brains. When I was a teenager working boring manual jobs I used to listen to 5 or 6 hours of podcasts a day. A lot of them were not very good, but it was so formative anyway. Just listening to a variety of different people engaging in conversation is so good for your brain.

It’s sad anyone would discredit podcasts as a medium for intellectualism. Just because the barrier for entry is low doesn’t mean you can’t hold yourself or speakers to high standards. We’ve lost respect for the role oral arguments + dialogue played in Western intellectualism.

@su_dreams I use those blockers too sometimes and they help. iChooseto is really useful. My main hope is that because the problem is so bad and is negatively affecting so many of us, we will do something meaningful about it. But that might actually just be a complete delusion.

It's truly terrifying because of how benign and widespread it appears. Worse actually because you can't really escape it because it's so deeply integrated into our lives whether we like it or not. I'm glad we have app blockers like opal, etc. but they're not quite enough - ultimately we have to learn to become hyper aware of our internal world

I've been thinking about how modern life is specifically optimized to keep your nervous system just stimulated enough that you never have to sit with anything. Notification, scroll, tab, notification. Each one small enough to seem harmless, collectively enough to ensure you're never quite still. The cost isn't obvious day to day. It accumulates in a kind of background restlessness - a sensation that you can't quite locate and can't quite settle.

@conductr_ I think individuals carrying the weight of the world's problems is one of the biggest problems of our time. Even right now writing this comment, I'm talking about problems that are not my own. Why??!! There's some value in it, but it's a slippery, slippery slope.

controversial: in order to live a great life, you have to completely ignore the world’s problems. i like to call it meta minimalism. you just obsessively focus on your mission, on how to create a sustainable value system to make money, and spend as much time with your family and traveling the world. i am convinced that the greatest thing to spend your lifetime on is to see as much of the diverse beauty of this world as possible. combine it with a strong mission in life and you have unlimited energy, inspiration and fun. and obviously you will never have a problem with fear again.

@thought_harbor A tale as old as time. People thinking they're rich and buying stuff that they have the money to pay for but can't afford to keep. This is how most athletes go broke.

Expensive toys and big houses often come with "hidden" costs like maintenance, insurance, and taxes. Before you buy something big, think about how much time and money it will take to keep it running. Sometimes, the things we own end up owning us because we have to work so hard just to keep them. Choose a simpler life to keep your freedom.