This thread somehow brought out some of the most misinformed, boomer-brain takes imaginable and comes dangerously close to anti-intellectualism. We can all agree that labels can be reductive and unhelpful, but as someone with a neurological disability, seeing people debate whether a disorder that makes it incredibly hard to enjoy my life is even real or not is fucking horrible.

The problem is, a lot of liberals think that criticising democrats for being pro-genocide is “fucked-up shit”. Like, refusing to support a genocidal politician is worse than actually supporting a genocide to some people.

Protest and elect. Emphasis on protest.

1. Get as involved as you can with activist efforts locally.
2. Organize, network, focus on building solidarity.
3. Vote at primaries for the most progressive candidate.
4. Don’t punch down
5. Don’t punch left.

Fraud would be counted under Larceny, which is a pretty broad category - robbery is larceny with violence, burglary is larceny with breaking and entering.

Sorry, just saw your edit - I’m genuinely not working backwards from a conclusion, I’m trying to explore the issue with you, when you replied with your original terse comment I assumed I had touched a nerve so I backed off, but I’m genuinely not sure where I’m going wrong, if you can help me understand your position, I’d genuinely really appreciate it.

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Yeah, I’m against buying animals, like I said. I think there’s nothing wrong with adopting an animal with the intention of caring for and building a relationship with that animal, though, in the same way that one might adopt a child - what do you think about that?

Thanks for the quick and thoughtful reply, I appreciate it! I’m interested in discussing this further, I’ll reply inline, if I don’t mention something you may assume that I agree with you or that I’m happy to concede the point for the sake of discussion

If you can’t get what you want without an animal, then definitionally you need to exploit the animal to get what you want.

I disagree with that - for example, I think you’d agree that birdwatching isn’t exploitative, right? For me, exploitation is when you put your own needs/wants before the needs/wants of an animal. Just simply gaining some benefit from an interaction with an animal isn’t necessarily exploitative - though it certainly can be, and often is.

To your broader point, it sounds to me like you’re kind of scared of yourself, like you don’t trust your own abilities to discern right from wrong. I completely understand that perspective, because I have issues with feeling that way about myself sometimes too.

Your points about emotion clouding our judgment and not necessarily always putting the interests of the animal before our own is well made, but it kind of assumes that the staff at the animal shelter would be somehow more resistant to this issue. It’s like you’re offloading the ethical burden of having to make decisions for an animal’s wellbeing to someone else and assuming that they’ll handle it better than you will - an assumption which, frankly, is probably wrong.

I get the vibe that you want to live as closely aligned with your values as possible, which results in a kind of pathological avoidance of responsibility - we can’t get it wrong/make a mistake if we just choose not to take any action.

But the reality is that, as vegans, we’re far better than average at being able to provide a loving, caring home for animals than most. Shelters have limited space, staffing and resources, and while I agree from a utilitarian perspective that the money you’d spend on housing one animal would do more good if it was allocated to shelters, it doesn’t make the selfish choice inherently exploitative, I don’t think.

Anyways, not criticising you at all, I trust you know what’s best for you, but I’m still very skeptical that acting as a guardian for an animal is inherently non-vegan.

Technically, it could be copyright infringement, depending on the work, a fair use exemption might apply - for example a screenshot from a game would be less likely to be infringing compared to, say, a painting due to less of the copyrighted work being reproduced and the avatar not being a replacement for the original work (i.e. seeing the screenshot wouldn’t give you the same experience as playing the game)

In practice, I doubt very much anyone would ever actually even go so far as to send a cease and desist unless you were impersonating some brand or causing reputational damage.

Morally speaking, I think it’s absolutely fine! People have been using copyrighted works in their avatars and signatures (remember those?!) since dial-up was fast enough to cope with it. If someone asks you not to then you should respect that but otherwise I’d say go ahead!

I’m pretty sure taxes, company profit and land rent are much bigger numbers by many orders of magnitude.

No doubt about that, and you’ll get no arguments from me against that.

This wage theft narrative normalises capitalism while quibbling over a relatively small amount.

Yeah, I can see your point. The reason I present it is because there are lots of narratives in the mainstream press about shoplifting, “organized retail crime”, and how we need to fund the police to detect/prevent/reduce crime, whereas unpaid overtime is pretty much expected, especially in blue collar jobs. It exposes the media and the prevailing mainstream narratives as being biased in favor of the ruling class.

The ruling class have a loophole - extracting the surplus value of their workforce isn’t a crime, sadly. Not yet, anyways. Inshallah.

I have no idea, maybe you could research it and make a post for your own country? Be the change you want to see in the world!

Unironically he could be replaced by one of those toys where you pull a string and it spits out a pre-programmed phrase, it would probably improve his approval ratings tbh.

Yeah, like if you have ever had to work through an unpaid lunch break, for example

Can you explain a bit about why you think being a caretaker/guardian for an animal, is inherently exploitative?

I would say that if you pay to buy an animal, that’s exploitative and harmful, but I don’t see the exploitation in, say, adopting a dog from an animal shelter - the dog is not harmed by that in any way, it is an improvement to the lives of the dog and the human, no? what am I missing?

(vegan btw)

Ah yes, “mistake”, mmhm. I believe it.

Is it? Honestly I think it’s just astroturfed. The entire imperial core suddenly got obsessed with regulating the internet after young people started waking up to the realities of the genocide in gaza.

Thin end of the wedge. Authoritarianism and fascism comes little by little.

Basically, it’ll become a crime to sell a computer with a pre-installed operating system unless it supports an age assurance system.

Not sure Dubai is thrilled its airport has been hit nor how much money they’re losing with airports shut

Right - exactly. Iran is intentionally fucking up the bag for GCC states and hitting as many US-aligned military bases as possible, because that’s how they exert maximum pressure on the imperial core to back down. Making continued profits is more important to everyone in the region than fucking up Iran, with only Israel as the sole exception. The question is, how far will it go before the pressure on Trump becomes too much for him to continue the war.

I think it’s quite unlikely that we’ll see anything like the Gulf War again - there’s just no appetite for it. Nobody but Israel really has very much to gain from this conflict.

but on top of this say UK goes to war with Iran? how does this impact you?

Young people from my country will die. The more the war escalates, the greater the risk of ongoing terror attacks for decades, plus another refugee crisis in Europe. If Iran does get their head kicked in as you put it, that’ll lead to the absolute worst outcome in that regard, basically this is how you get another ISIS, but even worse.