Perhaps it's worth remembering that if we did not eat cows, nor take their milk, nor their calves, that they would be fecking extinct.

Cows have evolved to be food.

Why am I not surprised that a GROUND sloth went extinct

Did a quick search on your first one because stuff like this interests me.

The prevailing opinion seems to be the most intuitive; the Americas also had a variety of Pleistocene cats/cheetahs (explains the speed) and dogs/hyenas (explains the seemingly uncharacteristic endurance as compared to their Old World "counterparts") which evolved alongside the nigh-extinct family ( Antilocapridae) of which pronghorns are the last living
members.

The second one, I don't know, because the plant got bored one day (as they are wont to do) and decided to spice things up?

The concept of veganism is to reduce unnecessary suffering and exploitation, no more no less. A lot of vegans don't even understand that concept. Letting nature take it's course, is not the vegan concept. If a lion jumped out and started mauling you I'd still try to save you (assuming I wasn't running way LOL), but of course I'd try to do it in a way that did as little harm to the lion as possible with weighing in the speed at which I'd have to act in order to have the least harm done to you by the lion as well.

It's not a black and white rule book, rather it's a philosophical and ethical balancing act that takes in a lot of considerations. I hope no vegans would be against the guinea worm going extinct. As far as I know (I don't know much about it) is that won't affect any other eco system if it goes extinct. It's not exactly a sentient being either. So removing it from existence as far as we are able to tell will do more good than bad. It will in that case cause less suffering.

Of course some nut job from PETA might disagree with me.

This is why vegans get ridiculed.

EDIT: I'll assume you hate President Carter with a passion, as he's trying to make the Guinea worm go extinct. ;-)

I have an agenda, I have several actually, and they are all solved with not consuming animal products for food or materials.
1. I don't want the environment to be destroyed, through mass extinction, waste, and global warming.
2. I don't want animals to be exploited, tortured and killed for profit and pleasure.
3. I don't want to die young as a result of eating myself into chronic disease. (And I don't like that 90% of people in hospitals are there because of easily preventable disease. Where I live it is a massive cost to the government and it could be used for quality education instead).

If that is self righteous then show me to my high horse.


Gluten intolerance means you can eat literally everything but three types of grain plants.

In the books I mentioned, you'll be blown away at how much food there is to eat, and how little of it contains wheat, bulgur or rye. And even if some recipes do, you can substitute those with dozens of other ingredients.

The books also contain thousands of references to peer reviewed studies. I mentioned those because they contain a lot of recipes too, but if you want one that is purely scientific then there is always "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. After reading that you'd be INSANE to keep eating any animal products.

All of the evidence is in these books, and I'm sure if you take the time to read them you'll see (like I did) how wrong the modern lifestyles are.

Also being lactose intolerant, I'm sure you know you can enjoy many different types of milk such as rice/soy/hemp/coconut/hazelnut/cashew/almond etc

I understand that you have to be more careful about what you eat being gluten intolerant, but you don't have to be a victim to it, read the books I have suggested and you'll be able to live your life to the fullest.

I was like "I'm safe, my immune system has been kicking without antibiotics forever!", then the meat thing and now I'm screwed with all of you.

To extinction!

I'm not disagreeing with you that there are farms where the animals are treated well in comparison. But the majority of food does not come from these farms. Like you said these are usually small scale operations like your aunt. We're talking 50-60 billion animals a year. Millions of animals per hour in the US alone. They simply need to kill them as young as possible to even meet the demand, through industrialized means. They call it factory farming for a reason.
And no factory farmers don't care about the well-being of animals. Any minor growth benefits of happy animals are easily outweighed by a few hormone injections. It's cheaper and faster. If they cared: They wouldn't rip piglets balls off with their bare hands to neuter them. They wouldn't keep "cage less" chickens in the dark to save on electricity. They wouldn't hold a chickens head to a sander or iron to de-beak them. They wouldn't grind up baby male chickens in a blender alive. They wouldn't cut off pigs tales without anesthetic. So on and So on. Your food might comes from some nice farm like your aunts, but for most of people it does not.

You're right that eating animals that died of old age is probably the only truly ethical way you could eat them. Though they'd have to have reproduced naturally too.

I'm not a fan of the eat less concept because of the morality aspect. It might work for some people, and it's probably not a bad short term stepping stone to get to people thinking about the consequences. But it just doesn't add up to me ethically: I wouldn't go from kicking a dog 10 times a week to just 3 times a week, because it means I'm kicking 7 less dogs. It's still a terrible thing to do, so why even be part of that cycle.

Because most people are raised as meat eaters, I think their perspective is completely wrong, as was mine. When they talk to vegans they always give reasons to not give up animal products. But to me the question really is: What is the reason TO eat any animal products at all?


Health wise it's a no-brainer there are a ton of good books about nutrition, like "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger, or any book by Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn, or Dr. John McDougall. ( all their work is based on thousands of peer reviewed and published research papers ).

Animal compassion wise it's a no-brainer. Animals want to live and be happy period. Everything else is just an excuse to keep exploiting them.

With documentaries like Cowspiracy and Earthlings coming out, it's people are becoming aware that we're all on one planet and if people went vegan overnight, that's 1/2 of the global warming gone. That's 1 football field a second of rainforest (and all of the animals and unique species ) being destroyed. That's the fish not going extinct in the next 10 years. That's GMO's not killing the pollinating bees and earthworms (which are necessary part of the ecosystem, we'll die without them).

So what reason is really left to eat any animal products?

Taste. People don't want to become vegan because they think they are giving up something and it's not true. It's more like trading a bad habit for something truly great. And it's free. And it has the potential to change the world.

I'm yet to hear a good reason to eat any animal product.(from anyone I mean)

That's a nice strategy they got going there but it's fairly shortsighted. If you're mainly killing and terrorizing muslims, you're gonna run out of muslim supporters one day.
The same people whose families and friends you enslaved, raped and murdered won't help you.
The muslims that are somewhat moderate and far away from you will begin to understand that you are their biggest problem now, image wise and direct threat once your reach is big enough to touch them. They won't help you. They will look after their own interests, mainly deescalation.
Muslim nations will start seeing you as a problem as you hurt their economy, just consider how important tourism is for Turkey. Rich people will loose money. Money means more than faith.
Those true believers have many martyrs willing to die for the cause. The world has enough bombs for each one of them. No matter who presses that button.

They will fail. They will become insignificant or extinct. Somebody new will come along and fail as well. Repeat.

Your first sentence was...
"If it were a public figure or an elected official, I wouldn't have a problem at all with them being fired."
The obvious implication is that, because he's NOT a public figure or elected official, you DO have a problem with him being fired, even though you admit they have the right to do so.

The company sells it's services to the public. If the public doesn't want a racist asshat working for them, they won't hire the company. Most of the public doesn't want a brain dead racist asshole working for them on their property and/or projects, so it DOES have a tangible bearing on a construction based job. If the public knows you employ people like this, you won't be getting that construction based job....that's pretty tangible.

Absolutely it's fair to expose people's public actions and tie it to them personally. 100% fair and proper. Period. People should own their actions, some need to be forced to own them.

It won't be forgotten. It's on the internet forever, probably when you simply google his name, so any employer with a brain will put his application in the round file. I'm sure there are plenty of racist employers out there willing to 'take one for the team' and give this upstanding young man employment, they just need to get together. I'm thinking he should apply with the Trump campaign.

Obviously public ridicule was not even a thought for him, much less a concern. He didn't care a whit that he was being recorded being a dumb racist douche, knowing it would be posted publicly (or, if he didn't understand that, he's simply too dumb to employ anywhere, especially in a field like construction where properly doing one's job is a serious public safety issue).
The only thing that makes a difference to people like this, and indeed most people, is effecting the pocket book.
This is 'free market' in action, and how it's supposed to work....but for it to work, people MUST be informed about the people they're hiring (and products they're purchasing). An informed consumer is a necessary, if not the MOST important part of the free market economy, and it's in danger of extinction, even with all the info on the internet (or maybe in part because of it).

I think we've just about reached the "agree to disagree" point. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the other person keeps any of the truth the other said in their mind and mull it over. Thanks for the chat.

I agree that inhumane is a silly word. "Inhumane" acts are often acts only perpetrated by humans.

I dislike the argument about the fact that farm animals would go extinct if we didn't keep systematically breeding and killing them. So what? Then let them go extinct. I personally think it's morally accetable to let an animal go extinct naturally -- especially if the alternative is to perpetually keep them un-extinct just to, essentially, torture them for our pleasure. I do, however, agree with your later comment that it would be a clusterfuck to figure out what to do with the ones that do currently exist. Easiest solution: keep eating them but don't breed them. Unfortunate human consequence: meat would become expensive. Also, during the time that we eat off the rest of them, those workers could train for another (hopefully) less miserable job. I can't believe many, regardless of how they rationalize it, can enjoy killing something before its time.

I'm fully aware of how the slave comparison is a bit off the edge (I even said so), but it's a hyperbole for the purpose of making a point: it is immoral to treat any animal to pain and suffering -- regardless of how you treat any other one of them. One mercy killing does not absolve you of another horrific one.

I am not saying that animals are not always treated poorly and without thought for their comfort. I am just saying that they are not allowed into the safe moral haven that handicapped humans are let into. If we mercy killed even one handicapped person, there would be an uproar that deafened the world. A mercy killing. Imagine if they did any of the (even "humane") things they do to animals to a handicapped person. It would be morally disallowed to an extreme degree. I don't know why animals don't get the same treatment.

Again, when you bring anything up about "evolution", I roll my eyes. We're humans with supposed free will. We're supposed to be above that, right?

If every vegan food you ate was inedible and made you sick than either your cook does not know how to cook, it was gluten-free, or there was something horribly wrong with the food. Fresh fruit? Beans? Peanut butter? Nuts? Berries? Greens? Carrots? B12 supplements? They made you sick? Something you ate was horribly wrong.

Your Olympic athlete statement is just factually incorrect. I would think you'd google that before stating something as fact.

And agaiun. "Evolution". Yeah, that happened already. Let's move on.

Stop making me feel bad about my cats! I already confessed guilt! :-P I actually do spend a ridiculous amount of money so that the food is better than just crap. I'm lucky enough to be wealthy enough to do it and I am extremely thankful for that. And! The amount of wealth that cat videos have garnered for advertisers is hardly unproductive.

And my partner and I are also on board about not having kids. She and I both think they're the worst thing you could ever do to the planet, animals, or people. Utopia got it right.

It's not inhumane ('humane' being another oxymoron, because it's meaning, and acting like a normal human, are opposites) because 1)they have a life at all, which they would not if not given the opportunity by my family 2) they have a place to live that life, which they would not if not given the use of the land and 3) nature also creates barriers to movement, so it's not unnatural for an animal to live it's entire lifespan in one place...perhaps for cattle, but not the rest. Farm animals are not humans, and those that have an aversion to being stationary have no place on a farm. You could say that not being nomadic is 'inhumane', as our natural state is not sedentary, but few would argue it's 'cruel'.
'Animals' are not humans, so are not slaves. That idea makes you sound ridiculous. See the South Park episode for a good example.
Stopping suffering is not within our scope.
There are many reasons why stopping meat eating is not reasonable, but the one you should be the most interested in is, if humans didn't eat cattle, they might be extinct. The same goes for many animals we eat, and if we didn't eat things like pork, the ecological disaster feral pigs create would be almost as bad as what humans do.
It would be easier and cheaper to change the conditions in the slums of India and elsewhere than it would be to eradicate the meat production (edit:and consumption) of the entire planet. What do the people do now that no longer have jobs? What do you do with all the animals that no longer have a 'use' and don't own property to move onto? How do you control their numbers so they don't destroy what's left of the planet?
Technically, yes, all humans are animals. Mentally handicapped humans are not TREATED 'like animals', by which you MEAN treated poorly and without thought for their comfort and well being, which in fact is NOT how most animals are treated in our first world society, no matter how much you think so. Factory farms are a different matter.
When dolphins take control, they can treat mentally handicapped dolphins better than average humans. It's not arbitrary to treat your own species as the most important, it's an evolutionary trait almost all species likely possess.
No, I can't eat an entire vegan diet. I've tried many vegan foods, and found them ALL inedible, some made me sick.

You made blanket statements about how ALL animals are treated, and how ALL meat is produced and then defended that blanket statement. I'm glad you now admit your mistake, I hope you can see it through and stop blanket blaming ALL meat eaters.

What other people eat is farther outside your influence than how they treat their children.

Without the calorie dense food that is 'meat', we would still be nomadic gatherers, if we could exist at all. Eating meat is one of the things that gave us the energy to evolve those 'higher brains' that can choose our actions and determine what's 'rational'.
You will never see a vegan Olympic athlete. (Edit: well, maybe in Olympic curling...)

Daesh has brought about change...a change that THEY see as positive. That's not a good argument.

Yes, you are a monster for supporting such unabashed, unproductive carnivores ;-)...and I would hazard a guess that you don't feed them only free range, gmo free turkey carcasses, so you sound worse than me, the unashamed meat eater that pays the extra money for proper animal treatment....not just for them but because it's healthier meat too.

I did my part for the animals and the planet by not having children. ;-) Too bad I'm such a minority that it won't make a whit of difference.

The gradual extinction of cats?

Now that would be a cat atrophy.

When I watched the first Star Wars movies, it always seemed that the Jedi were just extremely long lived due to the Force and that the Empire had been in power for such a long time people had forgotten about the republic. Even Yoda mentioned he was many hundreds of years old.

It wasn't until the horrible prequels that this was shown to be incorrect and that it had only been a couple of decades. Of course the prequels also introduced other stupid crap like midichlorians (sp?), ship and vehicle designs that seemed far more advanced than anything the empire had 20 years later, tech like robot sized force fields that block light sabers, the Emperor's face being caused by force lightning (instead of just being ancient), etc etc.

Plus, it wasn't just Han Solo who felt this way. For instance:

Tarkin: The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion.

Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort-(begin force choke).

So, to be fair, either the Jedi should have had very little presence in the Republic in the prequels (like to the point that nobody really believed in them beyond 'that's a bunch of hokum), or it should have been many years between the fall and the rebellion. Of course, that means that Luke and Leia would have to have been like great great great grandkids of Vader's, but either way would have made more sense. Having them basically 'running' the Republic's military and people seeing them use the Force all the time just doesn't fit.

New, just released ocean temperature data has shown a dramatic increase in temperatures in the Northern Pacific, and a dramatic decrease in surface temperatures in the Northern Atlantic. As I understand it, those readings are not consistent with normal 'El Nino' patterns. Could this be the beginning of the end of thermohaline circulation? If that happens we'll be facing unavoidable, unpredictable, worldwide, disastrous climate change in short order.
Without the current created by the thermohaline circulations, the oceans die. Equatorial waters become much hotter...fast...and arctic and Antarctic waters become much colder...fast. Ocean organisms can't live through that kind of change, not in any sizeable way anyway. Without the oceans, the entire food web dissolves and we die.
On top of that, without the currents bringing oxygen to the lower oceans, they become anoxic. The bacteria that live in those deep waters will feed on the dead sea life and create toxic gases (hydrogen sulfide) which have, in the past, completed the extinction events by wiping out nearly all life. Once that starts, it's unstoppable and is the end. Let's hope these readings are just an over active El Nino.

What we do today has little to no effect for 50-100 years. That makes us at least 50 years too late to solve this problem, and we are still exacerbating it rather than solving it to this day.
We're hosed.
If you plan on having children in this climate, you are a child abuser IMO, and are adding to the problem with that one action more than almost any other action normal people perform. Your children will most likely not survive to old age, and absolutely won't experience the same quality of life you have.