outside

 last night was unnecessarily rough, because we could have booted mr smear out of our bed after the first siren and i would have had a much better night's sleep.

today was a bit weird.

i invested quite a lot of time in getting stuff to work on my home machine that i already had working on my work machine, stuff that - as usual - really shouldn't be that complicated.

gd had a phone appointment with our doctor, which resulted in me calling multiple clinics because ours was closed only to continue to run into dead ends. then we all went on a pharmacy mission, and a bit of a grocery mission on the way back home, and then we dropped everything at home and jumped on a bus to dizengoff center, with a little bit more of a walk than planned.

which was good. we've all been pretty cooped up for a week.

i couldn't find what i was looking for, but gd got sorted and i was inspired to upgrade her phone (she's been unhappy for a long time) and hopefully the new model will be a better experience. and then mr smear inherits her old one, and that gives us a way to manage his "banking".

we had a great hummus lunch, which i think was pretty brave considering nobody had any idea when the next attack would be, but we managed to make it home before the sirens.

mr smear convinced me to take the windows machine off facebook marketplace and reinstate it as "his" machine, and that led to me spending a good chunk of the evening (and our shelter time) on getting it set up, enthusiastically testing out shutup10++ and being pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to clean up the windows experience.

i'm also pleasantly surprised by the fact that i managed to get mr smear to do another training session with me this evening, and although the main focus was on boxing drills, i think the most important lesson was in shutting the fuck up and following instructions.

we had a bit on an incident with kevin, our little eight-legged boarder, who's been insisting on hanging out in our bed. i tried to get him out of our room, and i may have accidentally injured him :(

then he decided to scoot off into mr smear's room, so mr smear was very nervous about checking his bed thoroughly before going to sleep. but then he couldn't sleep, because he was feeling so bad for how unfairly poor kevin had been treated...

kiddush and dinner with my mom were nice, and the food was great, even though it was really late.

mr smear got siren'ed out of a shower - so much for canishower.com showing 11% - after that was bedtime and then my shower time, and now i've watched lots of politics and other garbage and i think i'm ready for bed.

...

if you want to understand what's going on with the war, and what its all about, this tom nash report is eye-opening.

everything on mainstream media - CNN in particular - is unhinged propaganda. seeing so much AI-generated slop of destruction in tel aviv is pathetic. who believes this shit?

months later

four hostages have just been rescued! it's an enormous relief, even while there are still so many left...

...

this story still isn't over, apparently. i had sinus pain on thursday, and yesterday, and while it seems to have calmed down a bit my nose is still pretty stuffy. is it allergies? is it the same covid? is it covid again?

...

yesterday was pretty productive. i got mr smear to school, and gd joined me on a mission to exchange the shitty rollerblade pads and buy a wallet. none of their pads were any good, so i exchanged for a basic basketball instead.

the bus ride there was bad, because there was something particularly wrong with the buses suspension and we had to get off early and walk off the motion sickness. the bus ride back was awful, because there was an old easily-misgenderable person with a small dog who was clearly abused and their treatment of the dog was rough, but ambiguously so. gd and i were both upset by the experience.

mr smear called us from school trying to get us to bring him home early, because he urgently needed to poop and is disgusted by the state of the school toilets. i tried and failed to get him to go there, and fortunately (for him) he managed to hold it in until he got home, after which i gave him a simulation in using filthy public toilets. i hope he gets over this and doesn't a) get sick or b) have an accident at school :/

we had a bit of homework drama, but things calmed down and he got everything done. his hebrew's improving at a steady pace, but i'm impressed by how well the prodigy math game is serving him.

in the evening before kiddush / dinner time, i played some more portal, and mr smear "gave me a hand" and became *really* excited about it ^_^

today:

mr smear got up really early and brushed his teeth without instruction, because he really wanted to play portal again. i obliged, and that's how we started our day - he began from the beginning, and got further than i had. there was a level (android hell) where i had to step in, but by and large i was impressed by how well he did on his own! at some point i had to walk away, though, because although i can play by myself without motion sickness, there's something about how mr smear manipulates the mouse that makes me very queasy.

otherwise, i had an interesting chat with horseman, read some more of the hobbit graphic novel, and i've been really tired and taking quick naps every now and again. right now i'm busy setting up keybase after having had to reset my account, although i'm not sure it has much value, and i'm simultaneously doing the production deployment of my side project before settling down to watch spirited away again.

that's the plan, at any rate.

the world at war

the war on the west is in full swing. i participated in a psyops webinar on thursday evening, and it was horrifying to have all the pieces of the puzzle come together to draw a picture of what we are - and have been for decades - actually up against. it's a massive, coordinated campaign not just against israel, but against the west in general, and it's far more insidious than quatar funding western universities.

it's the BRICS countries working together, specifically iran, russian and china, to subvert western values and ideologies. it's the tools they're using - students, social media, and filling roles in western institutions with ideologues (like the UN, and the ICJ). the noise from the past week or two in the news is directly due to this.

it's distressing, mostly because it's hard to come up with ways to combat it. the speaker was quite pessimistic, and i personally can't abide by that.

...

thursday:

a pretty good morning, feeling less stuffy/allergic (i'm still not 100%, but i'm not feeling sick at all)

frontend magic, but with some concerning findings. leaving work with less enthusiasm following an argument with the boss

the psyops webinar, and all the while working towards proving my boss wrong (and, in my opinion, succeeding)

friday:

after three days of sticking to the fasting regimen, i broke and had breakfast early...

comics shopping, learning (again) not to ask mr smear his opinion. we picked up the second bone volume in hebrew, a miles morales comic in hebrew (although it doesn't have nikud), and הילד הכחל, which so far seems to be a winner.

picking up vegan cholent, being proved wrong about the plastic bag leaking but fortunately not losing any clothing over it.

intervening to prevent a fight on the bus (gd called out a woman with tacky facial tattoos for being rough with her dog, who in turn responded with a curse)

forgetting i was on-call, fortunately the incident that occurred wasn't too severe. spending a couple of hours investigating and putting together a runbook, but ultimately my boss had a few additional tricks up his sleeve that were needed.

joining a pre-shabbat call on antisemitism that turned out to be not very interesting, particularly after the previous psyops talk

watching the rest of ice age 5 (i've skipped a few). at this point, the characters are clearly a vehicle for a story that doesn't have anything to do with them or their world. it's a fun movie if you watch it fore-armed with the knowledge that it's just an animated series of irreverant and random jarring or subtley (sometimes not-so-subtley) age-inappropriate gags that doesn't care about making sense.

reporting a neighbor's dog stuck on the balcony

passing out quickly on the couch

the shoot

 another relatively unstressed morning

mr smear's understanding of how a cannot works vs his excitement when i explained a rifle's firing mechanism (after seeing a kid on the street playing with a belt of empty shells)

coming home to a haircut tweak

half an hour on the phone with credit card companies discovering that gd's card was compromised over a month ago and we didn't know it had been blocked (for internet purchases)

the baguette and vegan cheese and photo shoot morning, one of my yemenite coworkers' enthusiasm for the haircut (before telling his story of flying off a slide and miraculously not dying) and the photographer repeatedly exclaiming how "photogenic" i am. my boss' very sweet but timid dog, i don't approve of how he treats her even if i can see it's not malicious.

a mixed-bag work day, one of the highlights being helping my boss after he helped me and telling him "see? i'm not the only one whining today" :P

and another being getting a script working before leaving the office, in spite of the fact that python's datetime arithmetic is broken by design.

another highlight of the day in general was a surprise (and surprised) report that mr smear not only didn't argue about doing hebrew reading, but he dived into the spiderman comic i bought him and read far more than he's been asked to ^_^

a sync with urchin on the way home, who's shady potential new employer refused to countersign her contract until her starting date. wtf is wrong people?!

resolving a production issue, eating a delicious curry dinner gd tried out, and then jumping into the second middle east webinar. it was generally very interesting, and i was surprised at how real it's getting as multiple opposition groups make sincere pleas for assistance in toppling their regimes. they very much want to be allied to israel, and it feels like these are honest attempts to continue what the arab spring promised.

i ate better today, but although i could have used the exercise i realized that until my sinus / allergies thing is over it doesn't make sense to go rollerblading.

post-proc

tues:

most of tuesday is too far away to remember.

mr smear and i having a reasonably good time accompanying gd to the hospital for her nerve block, and doing our usual laffa dinner.

gd's nerve block going well, but her being kicked out to the waiting room by an ignorant nurse

high-stress on arrival, trying to keep gd from interfering with her own recovery and mr smear going from uncooperative to downright nasty

a really shitty bedtime followed by a really shitty evening - otherwise pleasant, but ended with a literal poke in the eye when things were finally feeling calmer

yesterday:

interesting spring rain start to the day, gd feeling surprisingly good

a very intense day, our first release of the tool i've been working on

picking mr smear up from school and taking him to the therapist

afternoon tummy troubles, suspecting the barrista oat milk

dropping mr smear off at home, returning to the office for an hour or two

arriving home just in time for dinner after bumping into an old teammate

another rough bedtime and bad feelings

falling asleep on the couch

today:

moving to the bed at 3.30am

a better morning, "hot mama takes smooshy poo to school", gd starting to hurt again

fetching half the pharmacy

pod coffee

trying to help move stuck military equipment

losing an hour to forgetting to connect through my phone

the excitment of mr smear passing his first jiujitsu grading and being given a grey belt

finding and reporting an abandoned kitten, mr smear running off to sob while i tried to help

scrapper surprise, with a challenging conversation

putting mr smear to bed after a pretty good day

exhausted. brushing teeth and showering cost me, but i really needed to get this all down. i need to help mr smear finish his homework tomorrow morning, and i need to make up some work hours once he's in school. i'm stressing about a million things that need doing and i'm trying and failing to avoid thinking about the geopolitical situation.

gods help us all.

don't be greedy

wednesday:

after my complaints the previous week, we received a very postive email from our boss - we have a budget for office chairs! so we're all off on sunday for a test drive together.

the contract signing in the evening was... an experience. signing the cheques was a less of a strain than anticipated. then our landlord arrived, and she wasn't more awkward than usual. the signing was fine, we talked a bit (i mentioned that our neighbors had left because their landlord got greedy, and now that apartment's been empty for a year), i showed her the things we had fixed on sunday and we talked about the mold in the cupboard situation (after gd had managed to clear it, hopefully we're done with it now at least for a while).

we then discussed whether she actually needed guarantors on top of the deposit and the cheques, which was very awkward and confusing. then she left. then she called, two minutes later, to remind me how they hadn't been greedy and raised the rent (even though all the rents in the area have been dropping recently) and how i should expect to take care of all the maintenance stuff 🤦

i told her we'd take it on a case-by-case basis. regardless, she managed to add a sour feeling to an otherwise positive evening.

thursday:

it was a tricky morning with mr smear, but we were managing it well. then i breathed out (as a form of self-regulating) in a way that upset mr smear, and then things got ugly.

i didn't manage to de-escalate before getting him to school, but i'm pleased to report that i managed not to escalate things, either.

still a kak feeling.

i had lunch at the sarona market with a couple of coworkers, one a new parent and one with a toddler, and All The Things about discipline and emotional regulation came up - the new parent announced at the end that he's about ready to take his kid back to the hospital :P

in the morning, my boss asked me to put the work i've been doing aside for a rainy day after i intuited an obscure test that managed to break one of the update's dependencies. in the evening, i left with a good feeling having made real progress on an entirely new piece of work.

i passed out watching evangelion again. at least gd's enjoying it.

today:

as i left the apartment this morning, i felt a sharp pain in the right side of my lower back (sciatica, seems like) and i've been struggling with it since.

the school run was fine, but i saw mr smear's nemesis' dad at the gate and i spent most of the walk back thinking about how much i dislike him and his bitch husband (him more by association, to be fair). the bad feelings at the end of the walk were for the old guy dragging his jack russell on a short leash; he didn't like being asked if he'd be okay with doing that to a small human.

gd and i hopped on a bus to dizengoff, where gd got her eyes tested, i picked up a replacement for my broken watch*. the prescription lenses she's getting are ridiculously expensive and not at all covered by insurance in any way, shape or form.

* a redmi smart band 2, it's the cheapest watch replacement available and feature-wise it honestly seems like an upgrade from the amazfit bip, which cost me about twice as much in south africa in 2018 (and costs almost twice as much here right now).

we got home in time to pick up mr smear from school, then we walked down to ibn gvirol for breakfast and coffee. then we came home. we spent the afternoon mostly uneventfully, but at the end of it we had an incident: mr smear decided he wanted to go to the ice-skating birthday party tomorrow, so i asked one of the moms if it was okay to RSVP so late in the game. then i booked a car. then mr smear decided he didn't want to go.

the ensuing conversation turned into a fight and did not go well. eventually, we all sat down and talked, but the process of getting to that point was very unpleasant. we've no idea what we're going to actually do tomorrow morning, but at least for now things are feeling good again.

rewriting history

it's been bothering me for a little while that there're a lot of posts i haven't redacted that are still linked to by my pages - so if you've ever read my post entitled "summary: the vegan hypocrisy", i've just updated it because i was very, very wrong.

observations

1. i think one of the biggest problems in modern society is that we equate success with job security. instead of working to make our jobs redundant so we can move on to the next thing, we've been trained to perform the same tedious, repetitive tasks and are left worrying about foreigners and robots "stealing our jobs". i know not everyone is able, but i'm talking about general societal values not personal capabilities.

...

the "job market" is premised on jobs being things with inherent value that can be filled and traded. "success" shouldn't be based on your performance doing a specific job, or being an expert, etc.

"success" should be measured by how well one applies one's skills to serving society. when you're doing something that serves society, society will be willing to pay for it.

---2. it's human nature to presume guilt until innocence is proven, because it's a good short-term safety precaution even though we know that for a society it presents long term dangers. the same goes for how we treat animals: we presume they're soulless, consumable objects until they're proven to be intelligent. this is why so many people are up in arms about dog festivals and whaling, but are happy to eat pigs and octopuses who are far more intelligent and demonstrate emotional ranges comparable to humans.

this observation brought to you by octopus - most intelligent animal on earth

conserving energy - part i

it's been a rough few days, primarily because i've been stressed and not feeling at the top of my game: i've been exhausted, my brain's been operating in slow motion and i've been trying to read as much as i possibly can so that i can call up my future boss and be ready for anything.

...

i've been trying out songza now that google's bought it, and i'm listening to coffee shop indie as i write this. pretty cool.

---wednesday:

wednesday morning began with an argument about kendall jones and animal conservation. i originally wrote "she's about as good for conservation as deforestation", but after a couple of articles (here, here and here) i realized that as unfortunate as promoting the killing of wildlife for sport may be, it does appear to be counteracting the disastrous efforts of poachers so from a practical point of view i guess i need to keep my animal rights opinions in check.

the guy i was arguing with was the pro-gun anti-obama moron that i studied with, and on a number of occasions i came pretty close to unfriending him. but i guess the above realization is precisely why we shouldn't ignore people who we disagree with. speaking of which, xkcd's commentary on the ethics of the research fiasco is on the mark as usual. i don't want facebook hiding posts i might not engage with. that's just stupid.

...

i grabbed my ipod to go shopping, and was horrified to find that it's suddenly in its death throes. its screen is faded and crossed with scan lines. it feels like it's too soon since my last one went, but i guess it's had a good run. i don't have the cash to replace it right now and i have to say i'm quite upset that i've no way to back up all the tracks i ripped from my physical cds in israel :(

there were garbage bags outside the apartment building again, i hope we won't have to pay for those. i suddenly remembered that i needed more breakfast shake when i saw popeye's discount bills in my wallet, so i headed over there where i had an interesting conversation about vegan protein with the owner. apparently progressive accounts for vegetable bio-availability when labelling protein quantities, whereas vega doesn't. not cool, vega.

the rest of the shopping was quick and after lunch i read some more dr who comics and took a nap.

...

it had been a tough day so far, primarily because i hadn't the energy to do a damned thing. it was so hot. so far, the best part of my day had been receiving a photo of gd's second journal entry: i've convinced her to try keeping a drawn diary as an excuse to practice. so far, very cute indeed :)

...

i tried studying, and i made a little progress. afterwards i discovered that i can connect humble bundle to my steam account. seriously?! now i don't have an excuse not to purchase their game bundles, previously i simply didn't want to have to add another source to gog and steam. not that i'm in a position to be buying much right now, but in general that's pretty sweet!

i finally updated zombies, run! and ran along the lachine canal. 'cause i live here now, it's kinda silly not to :)
the run was pretty good, considering i haven't simply run in ages and i was being very careful about my form. i'm in serious need of cardio training, and i wanted to get back to the story in any event. my phone won't sync my old phone's missions so i have to begin again, the gps initialized incorrectly so my stats show an average of about 120kph for the first minute or two, and it's not picking up my pace so i never get chased by zombies. aside from that, my playlist is awesome and the route is excellent, so i guess i'm back into running when i don't have it in me to get to the gym.

after yesterday's run, though, i think that i should be listening to french music or podcasts as i go. i'll need something that'll power me as well as alter bridge, foo fighters, godsmack, (hed) p.e., karnivool, linkin park, lostprophets* and marilyn manson.

* as i said, i'm not going to stop listening to their music but i do think about the whole thing with disgust every time one of their songs comes on.

it was so hot and humid that i got out of the shower still sweating :(

[gd surprising me with an uncomfortable discussion that seems to have been about something we don't need to worry about but was a residual effect of an argument we had a while back]

gd and i went to p.m. for dinner, which was delicious but the pad thai was so incredibly spicy that we gave up halfway (made for a good following lunch, at least). we went to bed tired and still sweating.

[continued...]

self destruction

tuesday:

kickboxing was killer. i received a nasty, tender bump on my shin when i was checked at the beginning of the exercises, i've iced it since but it's still not good. the really slow guy was in our class and i was really happy that i barely had to work with him. i've got a lot - a LOT - of tuning to do, our instructor told me that i was doing great before he left and that i've regressed considerably. that kinda sucks...

... he called on me to demonstrate one of the stations - told me to protect my head and proceeded to hit me pretty damned hard. i'm not sure if my forehead being tender is from that or from the following evening's sparring...

gd and i had dinner while i introduced her to freaks and geeks (yay! an excuse to watch it again) before we resumed watching rick and morty. this series is astoundingly smart and crazy!

---wednesday:

comixology: i eventually ended up purchasing qui a besoin de la lune? and neil gaiman and charles vess - stardust. since then i've read the first issue of the wheel of time (great rendering into comic form!) and the third volume of kill shakespeare, which is gorgeous and very, very clever.

...

i dreamed of having to land a plane remotely, which, i thought, is just like what psychologists do; suddenly i found myself transported on board, but the seats were somehow constructed around the center of the fuselage and we were spinning around with a deep drop in the middle, i had to somehow navigate my way out of there without falling...

...

wednesday morning was chilled, i spent it clearing emails i've been meaning to get around to. for weeks. and months. that included going through pictures from pg of all of my cds and dvds to figure out what i want her to keep and what she should give to scrapper to sell on my behalf. that's been a lot of work.

gd and i watched the video for solar roadways and got into a heavy argument about the nature of humanity. and the differences between our perceptions of reality. this went on for some time, eventually ending well but hitting some stressful points for the both of us along the way.

...

my nose was still running and my legs were very sore from training the night before.

...

the cleaning lady arrived, which led to some funny moments as she and gd ganged up on me on a couple of things; one of which was my treatment of the plant that pg left me, because i was following her instructions to the letter and i thought they were doing well. apparently the vase needs to be cleaned at least once a year.

---retarded people shouldn't own dogs. sorry. we passed a woman with down syndrome on the way to gd's place and gd wasn't the only one on the street to be disgusted by the fact that she's walking her fourth dog in a year. she keeps killing the poor things, obviously not maliciously, and nobody's doing anything about it. gd tried talking to her but she's, well, handicapped. she couldn't be reasoned with.

---i agreed to sort out gd's computer, which was running xp and was so filled with malware that it was barely functioning. we spent a stressful hour or two trying to figure out what she needed backed up before formatting...

the weather has flipped from winter to summer in a single day, and the afternoon was warm and sticky.

after i was supposed to have finished eating i suddenly found myself absolutely ravenous; between that and being stupidly relaxed after a massage from gd (she's really, really good with them and i needed it after the kickboxing) i was precisely NOT ready for the boxing class, but i forced myself to go anyway.

i arrived early enough to spend twenty minutes or so kicking my legs into gear and stretching, doing some good bag-work in spite of my runny nose. the warmup started and i hopped to it with my jump rope (sorry), figuring something out with our coach's assistance (he was being nice?!) and deciding that if half-way through the warm-up i was having difficulty raising my arms then i couldn't hope for a good class to follow...

... but i was wrong. i worked with the assistant holding pads for me and did so well i quite impressed myself, and on the last exercise on the bags when everyone else was giving up and bowing out two of us didn't hear "time" being called and carried on until someone came to stop us :P

i stayed for sparring, and went three rounds. i wasn't amazing, but i definitely wasn't bad. i'm glad i managed to keep up and i felt as good as i felt exhausted by the time i left.

it was shirt and sandals weather, and that's how i went shopping. my body was so stiff and sore that it was almost as hard to get to the supermarket as it was to get back. i felt old, and very slow indeed.

gd was supposed to come over but her back was still hurting her, so i had most of a salad and then headed over there.

---yesterday:

the moon was full and appeared far larger than usual, its light followed me through the dark streets to gd's. i was totally bombed even before i arrived, and we watched episodes 8 and 9 of rick and morty while i thoroughly enjoyed a vegan grilled cheese.

...

i slept incredibly well, though i still woke up sore and slow in the morning. i had a worrying headache but i assumed it was just my sinuses still and not related to my tender post-punches head.

[an amusing moment meeting a family friend of gd's and her saying precisely the wrong thing]

we'd finally organized a copy of windows for gd's computer but it couldn't be read... then it struck me that ubuntu might be a good option for someone who doesn't really tax her pc very much.

what a pleasure installing it off my thumb drive! almost everything she needs was a breeze to configure, and in some cases - like input languages - i managed to set things up in a far more usable way than windows would ever let me. the only complicated things is updating grub, which i'm not prepared to do until i have the time to focus properly and not make any mistakes...

feeling pleased and really hungry, we went out to midi 6 for lunch. the asian waitress has never heard the word "vegan" before, and started explaining to us that there's no difference in the menu between weekdays and weekends.
not "weekend", i said, and we sent her off to the kitchen to find out if i'd be able to eat. eventually we came right, but i do wish they'd add their option to the menu already...

we walked out into proper summer, sated and happy. we said goodbye at the metro station and i came home to fall onto the couch. my death nap was interrupted by the balcony door banging in the wind. then horseman called to say he was on his way. i wasn't sure about that until i'd gotten some coffee in me, after which i felt much better.

we played tekken and i gave him a speech about his life choices. because that's what friends do? for months he's invested himself in finishing high school and has given up on the last exam. it's statistics, and the reason he's given up is because he can't make sense of it. which is fair, because it's a bullshit subject. i just hope he gets over himself and then the exam, because the longer he waits the less chance he'll have of finishing.

statistically speaking, of course.

---i've spent some time thinking about organizing poetry evenings during the summer while the throw poetry collective's dormant, an idea which rabbit instigated. i asked horseman what he thought about it and he added a surprisingly good idea to the mix: he's working with youth from the projects and we could bring them in for a workshop each month. now we just need to secure l'artere and figure out how to get to break-even, then we'll be good to go.

---i was far too broken to train yesterday, so i finished going through my discs that pg's holding. just before heading out to gd's i received a message from the office saying that the legal team is putting together my permit application. i think this means that things are progressing well.

...

on my way there i remembered something important about poetry: if it's not accessible enough to please everyone to get high scores, then it doesn't deserve them. so sayeth shakespeare, or at least that's how he rolledeth.

...

gd put together a delicious dinner and we had so delicious ice-cream from dessert: we're in agreement, soya ice-cream is better than dairy. it's a texture thing, the taste is about the same. every ice-cream should be available in soya! just sayin'.

we finished season one of rick and morty. it's so profound! i think the world is better for it.

---today:

i spent the night in total discomfort. this morning i woke up feeling accordingly shit, but once again felt much better after some coffee. i wasted half an hour or so at the walmart on my way home, looking for items that they didn't have in stock, then crashed on the couch reading comics.

aside from reading comics, eating and breaking glass, today's been about posting and relaxing. now that i'm done with the former i'm going to spend some more time doing the latter.

---i keep finding myself surprised by the surreal nature of my relationship with gd. it's weird how perfect everything is, how good we are for each other! i keep finding myself feeling elatedly grateful and worrying that there's an imbalance somewhere. and then she convinces me that's all's right with the world.

huh.

animal bill of rights

there's a proposal for one? and it needs signatures? sounds like a good idea.

vegans unite!

on friday night i discovered that one of the girls who trains with me is a vegan. only, she's a "real" vegan, an "angry vegan martyr" vegan. she told me that i'm not the first person to whom she's called "bullshit" when he's called himself a vegan, and that real vegans would never compromise.

she became progressively more agitated, eventually storming out in a rage yelling furiously that i'm personally responsible for non-vegans getting the terminology wrong and that i should be calling myself "strictly vegetarian" instead, whatever that means. i was trying to explain to her that you can't "own" language and that if most of us think that "vegan" is a dietary choice then that's what the word means. she compared my abuse of the word to my calling myself a buddhist when i'm not 100% buddhist or claiming that i have a belt in jiu-jitsu that i don't, both of which are fallacious comparisons. she then attacked me for disrespecting her by continuing to claim to be a vegan.
i'm disrespecting you? by calling myself a vegan? FUCK YOU. and that's my response before pointing out that there was absolutely nothing respectful about her statements from the get-go nor the way in which she threw them at me.

there were two other people in the room with us, and what they bore witness to was a vegan behaving really badly towards - get this - a fellow vegan. we're on the same damned side, asshole. you're not helping your cause by antagonizing people who believe in it, and you're certainly not helping it by putting off people who otherwise have no interest in the discussion.

earlier i watched gary yourofsky actually being civil and collected, and remembered that even though my decision to go vegan was predominantly a health choice (thanks, nutritionfacts.org!) his famous talk (here) was a positive influence. in spite of the bullshit a lot of vegans talk, the basic premise is absolutely correct and we really should be good to animals. but there are ways to achieve this end, and getting people on your side with rational discussion, mindfulness and a little bit of compromise is a lot more effective. yes, it would be amazing if everyone stopped consuming animal products immediately, but it's far more productive and practical to get people thinking about the issues on their own terms and accepting that the change we're asking for is a big one.

---the foundation of the argument was watson's definition of the word "vegan", that she claimed means "refusing the use of any animal products". how very interesting for me to now find the following excerpt from the summary of the vegan society's wiki page:

watson coined the word "vegan" to stand for "non-dairy vegetarians" who also ate no eggs.
[...]
the society now defines veganism as "...a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing and any other purpose."

summary: the vegan hypocrisy

NOTE: (december 2018): i have since learned a lot more about both nutrition and the environmental effects, and had plenty more opportunity to review the ethical ramifications of the previous two components. i was wrong. very wrong.

veganism has already had a significant impact, even though vegans are still a tiny minority, and the evidence is now pretty clear that we all need to reduce our consumption of animal products or get off of them entirely if we're to avoid the oncoming train of global heating. a whole-food plant-based diet is the optimal diet for the vast majority human beings, it's the only sustainable diet, and it's the only ethical diet.
to make a change, you can start small. find a veggie dish that you really like, and make a point of including it in your regular diet. then find another. the good food will begin to push out the bad. better is better than no change at all.

PETA is still awful, though. i don't take that shit back at all.

[NOTE: i have since learned a lot about nutrition and a lot of what i wrote here is incorrect. about the nutritional aspects, not the political ones. i'm still unimpressed by political vegans. see nutritionfacts.org 

when you turn vegan, you don't magically correct the way that the animals are treated. i promise. if you care about them, then go for the source and stop lying to yourself that your passivity is making a difference.

is killing wrong? go on, deny your humanity. our existence, specifically the quantity of us on the planet, is what's taking more lives than you can imagine. you're no bloody hero because you started yourself on a diet that at best might cause you to suffer malnutrition. eat a steak, then go do something useful like running a farm that treats its animals right.

or start wiping out humans. you probably want to.

vegan is not a dietary choice - it's a highly politicized world-view

the problem with veganism is that it's rubbish. people do it because it's popular and it makes them feel good about themselves, and superior. being a vegan does NOT make farmers treat their animals better, it is NOT a healthy lifestyle and it IS an aggressive political force that spells big trouble if we continue to ignore the issues.

veganism is essentially a form of homeopathy: the less you do the more effect you have...
people will believe anything that makes their lives easier (or that they *think* makes their lives easier).

there is irony in being against milk extraction when it's necessary for the survival of the cows. is there really such a thing as a total vegan?

some proponents are willing to tell the truth.
here are some interesting points to ponder
in particular, there is much controversy surrounding B12 sources.

did you know that a lack of b12 not only means a lack of energy, but also depression? and can lead to psychosis? most vocal proponents of veganism are crazy enough, thank you very much. this link here is from a "how to be a vegan" website.


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the following is neutral, useful information on b12 for the whole family:

on b12 absorption

deficiency symptoms and fun facts

b12: the numbers


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fear mongering: heart-disease, diabetes and cancer.

diabetes is not caused by eating meat. there are precisely three contributing factors to developing diabetes: being overweight, not exercising, and aging. if any statistical correlation can be shown then it indicates nothing more than a spurious relation. you see, when you learn how statistics work then others cannot leverage them against you.

cancer? everything causes cancer. there has never been a scientifically run study that shows that meat causes cancer. there has, however, been a rigorous and intriguing study showing that living on a diet consisting of meat, its fat, and NOTHING ELSE has surprisingly excellent health benefits.

we're no longer herbivores, so this makes sense.


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health benefits of humanely raised red meat

the inuit paradox - high fat, lower heart disease and cancer rates

meat CAN be bad for you, but remember: not all red meat is processed meat!

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while we're on the topic: ever heard of PETA? animal rights? did you know that their founding intention is to DESTROY all domesticated animals, because they consider them to be unnatural?

sharp vegan teeth

i've already got a response on the vegan issue, surprisingly enough from scrapper:

well, i find that shit offensive, and i'm pretty sure a lot of the technical stuff is just wrong. i would have written a longer retort, but i'm just so damn lazy. probably the lack of protein, right?

the truth offensive? you need to check that shit. your "pretty sure" means that you didn't do any research, which from a health point of view is my primary complaint. let me know when you figure out how effective vegans are when it comes to the poor animals they care so much about.

it would be nice if some of them cared about humans, too... yes, it IS possible to care about both. at the same time.

"pretty sure" is a matter of speech.
i'm absolutely sure cows have to be milked every six hours because years of selection created a creature that couldn't survive without our aid. i'm absolutely sure that generalizing "vegans don't eat animals so there will be less killing" is a gross generalization. you don't have to be very observant to see that everything on this planet lives at the expense of something else. things die all the time, it can't be stopped. it's how they live that's the problem.
but's that not the real problem with what you're saying. the vegan strategy could be effective in the long run - if a large percent of the populous turns vegan, the corporations will have to adjust to the lesser demand and "produce" less.
but your problem with that is that their plan isn't fast enough?
it's like you're even encouraging people to really build farm and save kids in africa, you address only the minority that is actually making a little effort and telling them that they are wrong and lazy instead of, let's say, addressing the rest who aren't doing squat, and telling them that they are wrong and lazy.

do you see why it might look distasteful from the other side?

it's distasteful that so many people become so self-righteous and aggressive when they're not actually doing anything. no, it ISN'T fast enough. stop talking about "corporations" like they're some distant, evil force, like conspiracy theorists talk about "big pharma" like medicine is made in the bowels of hell. human beings have a lot of ways to affect change, and lying about shit - to themselves or to others - is NOT one of them.

generalizing "vegans don't eat animals because": am i wrong? i'm specifically targeting politicized veganism, NOT people who have personal issues.

the long-run strategy is not nearly as simple as you make out. whether right or wrong, our somewhat symbiotic relationship with cows is the reality, and unless you plan on "correcting our mistakes" by wiping out all cows, deal with it.

i AM encouraging people to build a farm. or to boycott specific farmers until they change their ways. i'm advocating DOING SOMETHING, not harassing other people without even caring enough to check out the effects on HUMAN health. i'm a human being, and i'm not proud of everything we do. but we're still amazing and we still have the potential to do good, and i don't want to watch our species filling with self-hatred. [we have plenty already, thanks]

there's nothing more disturbing than hearing vegans (and i shit you not, i've heard this example a couple of times already) saying that we make animals suffer because we derive sadistic pleasure from it. because of course, when i go out for a hamburger, what's tasting so good is knowing that the animal was treated cruelly.

you're very defensive for someone who's really smart and has access to such a wealth of information on the topic. more than me. i applaud your morality - i applaud the morality of most vegans - but i do NOT applaud your succumbing to what is nothing more than a selfish propaganda push.

when you're all willing to make an effort to figure out solutions to problems instead of adding to them, i'll leave things be.

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i also got positive responses: someone sent me a link to an article about vegan morality