Check out this adorable video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_Sk6p8mpw

Some info about pigs:

One study carried out in Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest pork producer, found that when interviewed, all 44 participating pig farmers believed that pigs are capable of feeling pain. Participants also overwhelmingly agreed that pigs are sentient beings who can feel stress, fear and joy. Farmers additionally attributed personality traits to the pigs including stubbornness, friendliness and gluttony. Seventy-three percent of the farmers agreed that the pigs in their care are intelligent.

Among the indicators of pigs’ intellectual abilities are the ways that they interact with each other and members of other species, their ability to display emotional contagion, their natural desire to maintain a clean living space, and their ability to feel pain and suffer.

There are numerous studies that show pigs have impressive cognitive abilities. In a study carried out in 2009, for example, pigs were able to interpret a mirror image in order to find a food bowl. This demonstrated that the pigs could understand that they were seeing themselves in the mirror, and use this information to solve their problem of finding food. The ability to recognize an image of themselves, known as self-recognition, is only found in the world’s most intelligent species.

An animal displays emotional intelligence if they are able to recognize and manage their own emotions in response to another’s emotions. Numerous studies have shown that pigs can display emotions and understand the emotions of others. The ability of pigs to experience a wide range of emotions was demonstrated in a recent study where pigs reacted differently to different types of music being played. One of the things emotional intelligence also allows us to do is work together to resolve conflict. In another study carried out in 2022, it was shown that pigs can resolve conflicts within groups. The pigs demonstrated an ability to know when a conflict had taken place, and determine whether it was the aggressor or victim pig that they should approach in order to best resolve the conflict.

Animals have different ways of expressing that they are in pain, but we do definitively know that all animals are able to feel pain and suffer. In some species, signs of pain are more difficult to detect, but even those unfamiliar with pigs and their intelligence are able to recognize suffering when they hear the high-pitched squeal of a pig in pain. This is a sound heard all too often from piglets being mutilated on factory farms.

With an average lifespan of 12-18 years, pigs don’t live long enough to test their long-term memory to this extent, but they do still have an impressive long-term memory. In one study, pigs were given a box containing food with a sliding door, and the pigs were able to learn how to solve this test, and retain the memory of the solution for at least six months.

As intelligent as our furry companions[dogs] are, pigs are widely considered to be more intelligent, particularly when it comes to their problem-solving abilities. In a study published in 2020, dogs and miniature pigs were each given tasks to solve. With the more difficult tasks, pigs persisted until they solved them on their own, whereas dogs turned to humans for help.

What we do know about pigs, however, is that they can play, learn and explore. They have their own personalities, recognize emotions in others, and know their own likes and dislikes. This means that when pigs are generally compared to human children, they are estimated to have the equivalent intellectual capability to a three-year-old child.

https://sentientmedia.org/pig-intelligence/

In one study, pigs were confined to two sets of crates for varying times: one set for 4 hours, the other for just 30 minutes2. Most pigs preferred the 30-minute container over the 4-hour one when given the option to choose between the two. As a result, researchers came to two key conclusions: Pigs are capable of both time perception and decision-making based on lessons learned from prior experiences.

(Which would also imply a lack of consent to being confined, something which is done to them for the majority of their unnaturally shortened lives).

Pigs are excellent communicators, both with humans and other pigs. You may have heard about how strong pigs’ sense of smell is, such as how they can detect odors up to 25 feet underground. Their sensitive snouts, however, also enable them to interact with one another through pheromones that are jam-packed with data. Pigs also use body language to effectively communicate with humans, whose noses aren’t quite as keen. They use their nudges, tail wags, stubbornness, playfulness, and even smiles to express their feelings and desires. They can be very noisy when this doesn’t work and will employ a variety of oinks, grunts, and squeals to communicate. Researchers have identified approximately 20 unique noises used by pigs to transmit their emotions.

https://petkeen.com/are-pigs-smarter-than-dogs/

https://www.worldanimalprotection.org.uk/latest/blogs/piglets-factory-farms-day-life/

And to add to all this, the company that maintains Brave is run by a well known anti-lgbtq bigot.

I've read that vegans average fewer nutrient deficiencies than omnivores. People should be worrying more about getting enough whole-food fiber than they are about protein.

Because it's rational to hate when people kill other living beings just to wear their skin. That's fucking bizarre and grotesque.

They're only getting 5 years in prison. The article also says Macartney had been in prison previously. Since the US prison systems are designed for sadism and punishment, it probably did more to make the guy amenable to this kind of horror. It's also known that slaughterhouses frequently get their workers from the prison system, so it's very possible that this guy will simply have his unapproved abuses exchanged with ones that our society sanctions.

When he comes out, his mind is most likely to be more disturbed than when he went in.

Love seeing more vegan memes and content.

This. There's more than an ample credible threat to justify an executive order to have them all shut down as a matter of national security.

I was going to post the original wapo article, but then I saw wapo wouldn't even let me read the whole thing. I don't knowingly link to articles that are paywalled.

No, they should not. What the fuck is wrong with you?

One popular answer is that sometimes people just experience things that they find scientific answers to not be able to answer adequately. We as a species are still far from knowing everything.

https://bitesizevegan.org/is-wool-vegan-is-it-humane/

PGP/GPG. I would like to see the web of trust take off. Also I love the aesthetic for anything that's been signed, and would like to see blog posts everywhere be nested by long blocks of random symbols.

Every person still buying and consuming animal products paid for this.

Revolt is promising in that it's trying to be a direct Discord clone, but it's also being made by one person as a passion project, and it sounds like it's their first time doing a project of this size. Last time I checked, encryption was not even implemented in it yet.

Matrix is distinctly different from Discord, but it's certainly more mature and featurefull as well.

Well said.

I've relied heavily on gore-tex style rain-proof outerwear for being outdoors in bad weather. Their breathability and water-resistance is miles ahead of dead animal skins.

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

It's a sample size issue. What percentage of people make the effort to get swole? It's maybe (maybe not) a similar figure to how many vegans bother to get strong. Now what percentage of all people are vegan? Estimates range from 1% to 10%, with 3-5% being probably the most reasonable estimate.

But you're the one making the claim without backing it up. Vegans can get all the protein they need, even when strength training. And the best part is we do it without the heart disease, cancer risk, and autoimmune diseases.

No mention of Record of Lodoss War yet? Still one of the most underrated Diablo-clones.

It'll be interesting to try when it comes out, but there are already plenty of good brands out there.

https://www.tastingtable.com/1134914/best-vegan-cheese-brands-ranked-worst-to-best/

I've definitely had some good hot dogs and brats. I don't remember which stadium style hot dogs I've tried, but I usually go for some flavor of Field Roast.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LwpAS5_RVxM

Then that's just one more reason to go vegan, since animal ag workers are some of the most exploited people. Plus, animal ag industry is one of the top funders of the republican party. Supporting the exploitation and commodification of non-human animals is one of the best ways to just keep on supporting fascism in general, so congrats on that I guess.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWyK389BJoI

The point of vegan cheese is that they most certainly do not taste like murder. 😁

I can respect that you mean well, but there's a lot of issues with your comment, which I'll get into.

Haven’t really seen it mentioned here, but for those who don’t know, the male chicks are not used for chicken nuggets, but primarily for pet food or plant fertilizer. Also not every country does this practice.

The first problem here is that you're still treating chicks like they're commodities. What their carcasses are used for is irrelevant, because we're never going to continue progressing morally until we can learn to see these beings - who think, feel, and have their own qualia - as someone, not something. We can discuss side issues all day, everyday, like the environment, health, and pandemic potential. But we also have to stop being afraid to recognize this as a matter of justice.

Not only that, but eliminating eggs from the human global diet would be unfeasible. This is because eggs are the best source of protein, with only whey protein coming second.

Protein is not the only nutrient that matters, and it's generally effortlessly easy to get all the protein you need on plants alone. The view that people can't get enough protein on plants is such a thoroughly debunked myth that it's embarrassing that vegans have to dispell this nonsense in virtually every discussion still.

They are also the only food with such a high protein content that also contains all essential nutrients.

This is a dangerously bad take. In the first place, eggs do not contain all essential nutrients. Eggs either completely lack some essential vitamins and minerals, or have them in such low quantities that you would have to eat an insane amount of eggs to meet your daily needs. Just as importantly is that the nutrients are a package deal - eggs contain almost as much fat as they do protein, and are so high in cholesterol and saturated fats that the more you eat, the faster you are on your way to a heart attack, stroke, and/or erectile dysfunction.

And before someone posts “but da beans!” - no, they’re not on the same level. Although beans are a good source of protein, they’re neither complete

Protein "incompleteness" in plants is so misunderstood that it's effectively an outright myth. Virtually all plants have all 9 of the amino acids that are essential for humans. Where the incompleteness comes in is that human muscle tissue is composed of amino acids in a particular ratio. If we don't have enough of even one of those aminos in our diet, our bodies can't synthesize new muscle. For this reason it was believed that the closer a food matches the amino acid ratios in our muscles, the better that food is for gaining muscle. Obviously this way of thinking supports the idea of consuming other being's muscle tissue since that's naturally going to be the closest to our own (and yes that kind of thinking implies that cannibalism provides the "best" protein).

But that line of thinking breaks down under scrutiny. For starters, there are thousands of chemicals our bodies make that require amino acids, why are they not a factor in discussing "protein quality"? Second, a food being really high in protein is not necessarily a good thing. There's growing evidence that animal proteins themselves may be harmful for health and longevity.

https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/plant-based-protein-lowers-risk-premature-death-heart-disease-dementia

Anyway, I really want to drive home the point that the protein incompleteness thing is damn near a nonissue. If you're a person who is strength training on a vegan diet, yes, you will make your life easier by diversifying your protein sources. But for the average person, the low amount of methionine in beans can easily be overcome by either simply eating some grains from time to time (or daily, grains are fucking great), or the person could eat 4 servings of beans in a day to get their rda of methionine (and all other essential amino acids).

nor are they actually as high as they seem, because the protein they have isn’t as bioavailable as that of eggs (speaking of, this is why there’s certain practices in vegan diets to gain more nutrients, such as eating leafy greens with an acid to get more iron or soaking pecans to remove the pyric acid in them to absorb the minerals they have better).

Food synergies are important for everyone, not just vegans. If for example you're trying to get the antioxidant and antiinflammatory benefits of eating berries, obviously you would rather increase those benefits by getting the synergies that come from eating a mix of berries, as opposed to mixing those berries with milk or bananas which are known to reduce or cancel out the berries beneficial effects.

Anyway, I'll finish my protein rant with a link to a YouTube video on the subject, from a real nutritional scientist who specializes in the subject. Tl;dw? The bottom line is that it's not only possible, but easy to get all the protein we need on plants alone. Carnists seriously need to just drop the whole protein thing because y'all just do not have a case in your favor here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0aGluZyB5b3Uga25vdyBhYm91dCBwcm90ZWluIGlzIHdyb25n

Removing eggs from the world diet would actually lead to more ecological harm, even without more ethical chicken rearing practices becoming wider spread, because the amount of farm land needed to ensure proper nutrition for everyone with a mixed vegetable diet would be significantly higher than ensuring there’s just enough eggs for everyone.

I'm not going to get into this one because other commenters have already done so. But no, that's preposterous on the face of it. Any animal agriculture is fundamentally going to take more land and resources to produce food because those animals need to be raised on plants, so why not raise the plants for ourselves directly? And before anyone chimes in about the suitability of land for agriculture, maybe take some time to learn more about things like Permaculture and regenerative ag. If a person can grow a small food forest on an abandoned parking lot with 12 inches of manure in the midwest, or Geoff Lawton can re-green the desert, it warrants investigating just how many places we can make abundant. Anyway, Cowspiracy is a good documentary to learn more about animal ag land use.

You don’t like baby chicks getting ground up? Don’t own carnivorous pets, and buy from more ethical egg farmers.

No, the purchasing and consumption of eggs is what drives chick culling. They do it because male chicks are considered a waste product of that industry, and any commodities sold from it likely grew out of a way to recoup costs. If you want to end chick culling, the best way to do it is go vegan.

Or if you can, honestly just get your own chicken or 2. You’ll have enough eggs with even a single chicken to be honest. Hens don’t need much space, males can be eaten once their 4am crowing drives you crazy - although they do keep the hens happy.

From a practical standpoint, raising your own chickens puts you at risk of getting h5n1. The more time goes by, the more that risk increases. From a moral standpoint, you might be causing less suffering to chickens this way, but you'd still be causing suffering as well as being an exploiter of that animal. Chickens have been unnaturally bred to produce way more eggs than their bodies can handle. Not only is this prodigious amount of egg laying an uncomfortable experience for them, it generally leads to nutrient deficiencies that end up causing their bones to break under their own weight. They can regain that lost nutrition by consuming their own eggs, which is something they sometimes naturally do.

As an alternative, consider either supporting an existing animal sanctuary, or start your own. As a bonus, you could use their manure to help grow a garden. Veganic agriculture can involve animals, as long as those animals are free-living, safe, comfortable, and they're not being exploited.

If you can afford it or don’t have very particular diet restrictions, go vegan - you probably don’t need as much protein as you think.

But up there you just said... oh nevermind. 🤔 Yes, go vegan. Also, in most places it's less expensive to be vegan, especially when you factor in the cost of healthcare.

I used to be vegan until kidney failure, and now with a transplant am back to mostly vegetarian (at least for now until I can go back to being fully vegan). I also used to raise animals for food and farm because I came from a poor family initially. If you don’t care, then just consider eating less meat and eggs will ya? Too much ain’t good for your health either. Plus it’ll taste better if you don’t eat it every day. A weekend bbq is way more special when you haven’t had meat the prior everyday.

A weekend bbq is a lot more special when it becomes fully uncoupled from the guilt of living on the commodification, exploitation, suffering, and atrocities of other sentient beings. Reducitarianism might be gaining traction, but it really hasn't led to any appreciable results. Experts in fields like health coaching all insist that the most effective way to adhere to a more ethical diet and lifestyle is to go all in. If you mess up, that's okay, just forgive yourself and try again. It's absolutely worth it.

If you bang your knee every day, you might be so used to the pain eventually that it's like you don't feel it anymore.

Physically if you don't know what it feels like to not consume a damaging and inflammatory diet, it's easy to mistake feeling like shit all the time with normalcy. But it's not normal, it's killing you.

And emotionally if you only know what it's like to do something that causes so much trauma and suffering (both to the animals, and the people who do the slaughtering), you might be so used to a background noise of guilt that you're not even aware that you're carrying it. The only way to know the difference is to change and watch what happens in your mind when you stop running away from the violence you're complicit in.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyGkvdvvuE

Tofu is made essentially the same way cheese curds are made, but using beans instead of dairy. It produces the iconic brick of compressed bean protein (and sometimes calcium depending on what catalyst is used). It's existed for something like 2000 years, and Ben Franklin may have played a role in bringing it to the US.

TVP is very different. It involves using solvents like hexane to remove most everything from the bean except the protein, and generally results in small amorphous chunks of material, or even tiny bits that are used as an alternative to ground up muscle tissues.

Oh it's you again, I didn't even realize in either of those cases. Well stop having bad takes about animals, and start doing right by them. They need you.

Unusual? You should check your biases. Plant milks have been around for a long time (at least the 1400s), are anything but unusual, particularly when the majority of the world has intolerance to baby cow growth formula.

https://vinepair.com/articles/history-of-plant-milk/

No, they had advance warning that they were the winners. That victory was stolen from them based on rules that were added after the fact.

Refined sugar is generally not good, and certainly whole food sources of carbs are much more beneficial than simple sugars - however, sugar is not nearly as much of a demon as popular health influencers make it out to be. Importantly, it also needs to be kept in mind that the "standard american diet" (sad) or standard western diet is one that's high in animal products, fat (particularly saturated fat), refined carbs; while being low in whole fruits, vegetables, and fiber and phytonutrients in general.

Walter Kempers rice diet is worth learning about. It was a terrible diet - patients could basically only eat white rice, sugar, and fruit. But despite being an absurdly high sugar and high carb diet, a lot of patients saw dramatic improvements in their health, particularly when it came to things like obesity and type 2 diabetes reversal.

https://www.drmcdougall.com/education/information-all/walter-kempner-md-founder-of-the-rice-diet/

Leather is not a byproduct. Virtually no one is raising cows just to be nice. It's a business, and no business is going to waste resources on unprofitable "assets". This means the cows are raised specifically for their skin (in the case of the leather industry), and they are killed while still young. The same is true for both the animal flesh and dairy industries - older cows are less profitable.

So to accurately compare it to humans, imagine a bunch of babies and young children being confined in cramped, unsanitary conditions, regularly getting abused, and then being slaughtered long before they ever had any opportunity to do anything with their lives - having only ever known suffering and abuse.

And you think there's anything normal about that?

Or maybe you need to recognize when a message is only going to continue to grow, and get louder. Get with the times.

Just because something is popular doesn't make it normal or right. Maybe you should try visiting a slaughterhouse some time.

From the little I've seen of discussions, it depends on the implementation. I haven't looked at the details yet, but apparently there are some groups who require at least an initial animal biopsy, and I think someone said something about some growth mediums requiring animal exploitation as well.

Then there's the animal testing side of things.

Since both health and animal rights matter to me, I have no interest in consuming the stuff. If a commercially viable company emerges that can make these meats without any animal exploitation or suffering though, then I might recommend them to others.

If you skip the mass produced stuff, there are plenty of great naturally fermented plant-based cheeses. But in my experience it always feels like something is missing, which probably has to do with dairy's addictiveness. How do you compete with drugs?

Looking forward to getting a Pinetime. It might not be polished, but community support never truly ends.

Some of them are, and it doesn't take long (maybe a year) on a plant-based lifestyle to start naturally preferring more plant-forward burgers.

There is a vegan keto, and at least one study has found it to not have the same harms that other variants of keto has. The problem there is that it's an extremely restrictive diet, so good luck to anyone trying to stick to that.

Aside from the one legitimate use it has - alleviating seizure symptoms - keto is just plain a diet that makes no sense for humans whatsoever.

This is not true.

https://bitesizevegan.org/is-leather-a-byproduct-of-the-meat-industry/