u/MilesTegTechRepair

Parked up in a nice little spot, a small car park by the river. Settled in for the night. Hear an engine running, for a while. I could probably just put my nose-cancelling headphones on but I've not come to this spot to have to do that.

I go to investigate. It's a 2012 BMW sportsish car with semi-tinted windows. There's music on. It's 11.15 and the engine has been running for about half an hour by now. I walk around to the side to see what I can see, which is moving flesh. Don't particularly want to invade their privacy so I go round to the back and start waving my phone flashlight in their direction.

This goes on for about 10 minutes, before I start losing my patience and shout 'would you mind turning your engine off please mate'. They clearly just want a soundtrack and need the engine running for that. Maybe they're having an affair, maybe they don't like either of their homes, whatever.

Anyway, the flesh slowly stops moving, presumably some pants get pulled on, the door opens, and a youngish face, maybe mid 20s, pops out.

'sorry mate, are you going to sleep?'

'yeah, would you mind just turning your engine off please?'

'no problem, sorry to disturb you, we'll be off soon.'

'thanks'

Left 5 minutes later.

Just a reminder that sometimes it pays to stand your ground. I don't know how lucky I got here, though.

It's clear to me that veganism as a concept is the most ethical choice to make, given the degree to which we can consider factory farming one of the worst atrocities committed by humans. Factory farming is inextricably capitalist and thus not only requires the cheapest possible expenditure for the highest profit margin, leading to awful conditions, but is also subject to overproduction, meaning demand must be manufactured to match supply.

On top of that, food waste itself is profitable, leading to the suffering from birth to death of these animals - poor genetic relations of their wild forebears - completely in vain. Even relatively unprocessed meat is worse for you than a diet of fruit and vegetables and grains.

If that were the end of the story, it would be not only the most ethical, but the simplest too. The problem comes when the map gets mistaken for the territory, and vegans fall in love with the identity and think that's all they have to do. When you fail to differentiate between factory farmed, highly-processed meat with crazy amounts of antibiotics and hormones injected, and locally-sourced, responsibly-reared and sustainable practices by indigenous communities, you are being reductionist for the sake of sparing yourself the difficulty involved in treating these as entirely distinct.

Unless someone can provide me arguments / data or otherwise, my understanding was that the charge against veganism whereby they import fruit or veg from another continent is not in and of itself a climate problem (due to relative efficiency of sea travel + need for some produce to ripen), but that it is at least a problem with regards to pricing locals out of their own produce.

Ultimately it seems to me that some vegans engage in 'identity fusion', whereby they place the suffering of animals as not only a more important ethical consideration than the environment, indigenous local practice, or the welfare of locals, but the only ethical consideration.

As a case in point, while my understanding is that there's more and more specifically 'vegan' chocolate that mostly avoids the issues around child slavery in Africa, there is at very least the problem that chocolate is only behind beef in terms of water requirements per kg.

Vegans also seem to place their ethical concerns above food waste. It upsets me quite a lot when I see people waste food. If you're at a restaurant and order more food than you can eat, you can always get a box. At least, I've never seen a restaurant say no.

The goal should be to be better than you were. We overestimate the influence we can have on others, and underestimate the degree to which others get pissed off when you tell them they're doing something immoral. Food choices should be a personal thing, to a large degree - you're not going to get Mcdonalds to stop their dodgy business practices by protesting when it's a structural issue. So you compare yourself to how you were, and if you're better, than that's the only thing that's important. Perhaps you can also make the world better by setting an example for those around you - but you do so by being a quiet vegan who is making consistency an enemy of the good and placing your own feelings of virtue above the good of the planet.

Quick edit: I should mention in my post body that my argument is specifically about some vegans. You may well be a conscious vegan and if so I admire you. But if your experience is anything like mine you'll have met or at least talked to other vegans who are far less conscious about their choices.

Can't tell whether it's just a fun meme, or there's an actual reason why you're all going to efforts to dry these things when they instantly get wet when we use them. I'm struggling to imagine how drying is necessary on the assumption you also clean and use yours regularly (I do)

Edit: I now understand that it's not about specifically drying it as much as it is not screwing it together in between use, which is not something I do.

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I'm aware that this question is quite subjective, but then so is most of history. Happy to repost in askhistory if no good here. I'd love to hear a) more detail on these ideas or b) corrections on my oversimplifications and misconceptions or c) comparisons or d) why such comparisons are futile and not particularly revelatory or e) filling in the gaps in my knowledge.

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**Coffee / tea**

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The claim here is that the 'Enlightenment' (doesn't seem very enlightened to me, but that's another topic) wouldn't have happened the way it did without the influence of coffee and tea. Where people in Europe generally met up socially to booze beforehand, some of those boozers became coffee houses and the caffeine boosted our mental powers and thus we get Hobbes and Mill and Rousseau.

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**Sugar**

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Sugar is addictive, and was more easily producible, storable and transportable than honey. With improvements in refining technology during the industrial revolution, sugar became the main export of many places with a suitable climate. The brutal conditions imposed on plantations became a driving factor in revolutions in the 19th century, like Cuba.

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**Cotton**

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Don't know much about this one. I am aware of it having been a factor in the american civil war, as cotton plantations were where a lot of slaves worked. At this point I don't know what a cotton gin is and I'm afraid to ask.

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**Salt**

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Again, not much knowledge beyond an awareness that salt taxes were a factor in the French Revolution.

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**Tobacco**

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How did tobacco trade impact humanity?

First it was Fwi Song and the eaters.

Then it was The Wasp Factory (though no one thing triggered me, the overall effect was disturbing).

And then I started reading The Algebraist, and the way Archimandrite Lusiferous casually tortures his victims just got to me. I read on a little bit, but wasn't enjoying myself, and gave yup. Blimey. Enough to make me take a bit of a pause on hunting down more Banks. What's good by him but also not overly triggering please?

As per above. Wrote out a long post with my symptoms asking for diagnosis or opinions but realised it contravened the rules. TYIA for directing me to resources.