Firebirdie713

Firebirdie713 , 4 days ago

And yet rice, beans/lentils, pasta, vegetables, and spices are all vegan, and are all the staples for low-cost meals in grocery stores the world over. Where do you live where that isn't the case?

Firebirdie713 , 4 days ago

Fruits are also available but usually tend to be more expensive and are usually considered a treat for people on limited budgets. Me not listing them was part of keeping to the usual budget shopping lists recommend for people with limited income. Unless you are further being a pedant and insisting that tomatoes are fruits and not vegetables.

And while I am fortunate enough to live in the continental US, I mostly buy what is in season and local and therefore on sale for relatively cheap. And anywhere where that isn't available, frozen veggies are available, often for even cheaper and with no difference in nutritional value or content. If you don't have a fridge/freezer, dried veggies are also available in most markets (dried peppers especially) and canned goods are far better for you now than they ever have been, with only marginal decreases in nutritional value.

Where do you live that absolutely no vegetables are available in any form for a dollar a can or five dollars for a family pack that would make a couple dozen meals for a family of four?

(Edit: Or, if not in the US, where you can't even buy local produce, unless you are in an area where there is famine. In which case you may object to the fact that almost half our farmable land is used to grow crops to feed to animals instead of being used to grow more food for humans.)

Firebirdie713 , 4 days ago

Dude, vegans can and do eat fruits. For people who can't afford seasonal fresh fruit, we have fortified foods like bread, pasta, rice, and cereals, most of which are also vegan. I specified rice and beans (and everything else you conveniently ignored, lol) because they make a complete protein, which is usually the only thing you need to monitor closely if you are vegan on a budget. Anything else and you are best off getting a multivitamin for best bang for your buck.

Also, you saying none of us have been hungry and then lecturing us about not getting both fruits AND vegetables when fresh fruit is one of the most expensive things in a grocery store, outside of meat that is? You clearly have never been poor enough that you have been needing to have your 'fruit' be the cheapest jar of grape jelly you can find, or the cans of frozen 'orange drink concentrate'.

Firebirdie713 , 4 days ago

Lol now I know you're trolling. Have a good life.

Firebirdie713 , 10 days ago

I picked a good day to switch to SwissCow lol

https://swisscows.com/en/web?query=%s

Free, uses it's own index, focus on privacy. If there is anything bad about it though, please let me know. It can be hard to find unbiased data on search engines when you ultimately need to use a search engine to find the info, ime.

Firebirdie713 , 10 days ago

Interesting. I have not had any issues using their engine even with the issue with Bing's API, but you are correct that they use Bing's index. Given that there are only four indexes to choose from, that isn't too surprising.

I actually switched to them when I saw that DuckDuckGo was about to start providing 'AI assisted results'. I wanted to ensure I was using an engine that actually respected my privacy and didn't harvest my data for slop.

Anecdotally, I can confirm that the results I get from SwissCows are very different and usually better than the ones I got from DDG. So I wonder how much of Bing's API they use.

Firebirdie713 , 1 month ago

Obviously this is a joke, but there used to be an important reason we kept the flags wrinkled like that: it meant that you never knew who had bought a flag at a Pride event and who brought one they owned.

This meant that people who were 'caught' at an event by friends or family they weren't out to, they could say they just bought the flag to support the cause. It also meant there was no way to tell who had been there longer than others.

Firebirdie713 , 4 months ago

Beau has stated before that he was involved in some awful stuff. But I agree with a commenter on the video: while it is important to not hide past doings, a lot more of society needs to accept that people can, and do, change.

This is someone who very clearly did something wrong, but he also did his time and is now working on further paying back society. It doesn't make what he did go away, but I also don't know why suddenly so many people are wanting to 'expose' him. He isn't in any position to repeat his actions, his current actions are inarguably for the betterment of society as a whole, as well as for individuals in need in his own community and others.

Even if you can't get past what he did, I would ask: what exactly would it take for you to say that he has paid for what he did? Anarchism explicitly calls for the abolition of prisons and our current legal structure, and Beau has (in my opinion) paid for his actions both within the current system and outside of it. After someone has done their time, so to speak, are they barred from society until the end of days? If not, then what would they need to do to be accepted that Beau hasn't done?

I ask these questions, not as someone who is trying to cause issues or argue, but as someone with a lot of respect for this movement. I ask because I genuinely want to know what people expect from people like Beau through an anarchist lens.

Firebirdie713 , 4 months ago

I did watch the video. I also read the sources at the bottom of the video, and like several other comments noticed, the documents do not support a lot of the claims made in the video. However, even if they were supported by the documents, I still don't agree with the stance of the video.

The argument is that because he did something bad at one point, people should consider his past actions before any of his current ones, and that this justifies distrust of his current actions. When we live and operate in a world where trust is necessary for cooperation and survival, even suggesting to distrust someone indefinitely for long past actions and ignoring all steps taken to remedy is asking for him to be barred from that society.

It also assumes that the only reason people would support him is if they were unaware of his past actions, and they heavily imply that people who do trust him are unable to make sound decisions, not in the least by doing one of the least anarchist things possible by trusting the words of government entities known for targeting leftists and charging them with exaggerated crimes.

You are right that you can't institutionalize trust, but I am calling out a pattern that I am recognizing of people who advocate for this particular social model being unwilling to put their money where their mouth is in regards to acknowledging and supporting input from people with convictions or marred histories. The video states nothing new and instead is continuing to repeat this 'questioning' without accounting for the fact that this questioning has already taken place and done nothing except draw people away from a community that values direct action and social support.

If his past had anything to do with his current content and actions, I agree more scrutiny would be needed. But my question still stands, what should the guidelines be for deciding that a person no longer deserves to have their participation in society treated as suspect or worthy of excess questioning? At what point do people deserve to be allowed to change and exist without their motive being questioned?