weastie

I hate to get so semantical but using the word pedophile incorrectly just desensitizes the word. Pedophilia means being attracted to children, primarily meaning before or in the early stages of puberty, usually younger than 13. In fact, many pedophiles would not be attracted to someone aged 15+ because they are typically exclusively or primarily interested in prepubescent bodies.

That doesn't mean this guy isn't a total asshole, but he's not a pedophile, and I think anyone can understand an adult sexting an older teen, while still absolutely horrid, is quite different from sexting a child.

Once again, absolutely not defending this guy, I don't even know who he is... but I think it's important not to desensitize the word.

This doesn't legalize weed, but arguably it's a step in the right direction.

Actually, vegan meats have won multiple blind taste tests over real meat. Google it, it's happened on multiple occasions -- in actual studies as well as DIY tests.

I mean, most vegans would still commend your effort to reduce animal product consumption.

But from a moral standpoint, simply eating less animal products really doesn't have much value. Imagine using your argument for other moral dilemmas.

"Racism is wrong, so I reduced the amount of racial slurs I use to only 1/3"
"Rape is wrong, so I only rape on Mondays now" (in reference to meatless Mondays)

I hate to be so militant about it, but you either think animal abuse is acceptable or you don't.

Now, what I do think could be a moral standpoint, if you really want to still be able to eat meat, is to only eat "humane" meat. I put "humane" in quotes because even farmers with the best intentions are still killing animals young. I don't personally believe any animal product can be humane, but even then I can recognize that any animal that was raised on a pasture and ate real food is more ethical to eat than one in a factory.

So if you genuinely only ate pasture raised beef and chicken (and you were sure about it), then I would say that is quite honorable.

Summer. Especially at night. I feel like summer nights are always the perfect temperature, makes up for it being too hot in the day.

Here's an actual scientific study where participants chose fake meat over beef burgers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996923003587)

While not a scientific study, we also have some funny events like:

Sausage expert, trying to prove that plant based sausage isn't as good as the real thing, accidentally praises it: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-11485203/Sausage-expert-tricked-praising-vegan-alternative.html

Professional chefs were often wrong about which meat was real and which wasn't in blind taste test: https://www.livekindly.com/professional-chefs-cant-tell-the-difference-between-vegan-and-animal-meat-in-blind-taste-test/

Okay but there's a moral hierarchy when it comes to eating meat. Humans used to hunt, meaning we would kill animals that lived natural lives. Not to mention, we would typically target animals that were older or sickly, because we would have a harder time killing animals that are in their prime.

That's so much different from modern day agriculture practices. We raise animals in fences so tight they can't turn their heads, and feed them nasty stuff. We abuse the shit out of them until they reach the point where we deem them the most profitable then we kill them. There's nothing natural about that.

Also, it's really hard to know for sure, but we have a good amount of evidence that humans didn't eat that much meat. First of all, the animals we hunted wouldn't be nearly as fat as the animals we eat today. Secondly, there's evidence that many humans ate roughly 100g of fiber per day, which is not possible if you had any serious amount of meat. Humans ate a lot of plants. 100g of fiber is an insane amount of plants.

Honestly I feel like the idea of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is so lame. Like I understand that you could find something technically ethically wrong with everything, but that statement just feels like a way for people who don't want to give up certain things to justify themselves.

Capitalism, especially modern day capitalism where the government and companies collaborate, does lead to a lot of ethical issues. And yes, I understand that it is not liveable to give up everything that is unethical. But you can still have boundaries.

I mean like, buying oats and grains from a grocery store, which are typically grown domestically, compared to buying dead abused animals or bananas from a company that uses slave labor. Those are totally different things.

If you prioritize buying things that are made in countries that have better labor laws, and avoid animal products, then that's a pretty damn good start.