My biology teacher had this thing where every test you had to submit a question. My question was always the same - how the fuck does atp synthase work?

She did not appreciate my question especially after the first time, but it was always genuine… How the fuck does that shit work? If you understand it, please attempt to put it into words

It looks like dirt. Or, depending on your perspective, a forest

How does it work? Imagine nanobots created to control nature. It connects to all the plants, creating little tubes to exchange nutrients and electrical messages between them, in exchange for a nutrient “tax”. Split the network in half, and now you have two. Put them back together, sometimes even entirely different species of mycelium, and you have one.

How do they reproduce? All the ways. They range from 2-8 distinct stages of lifecycle. Sometimes they have haploid reproduction, sometimes they recombine their own genetics, sometimes they clone themselves. Sometimes they have more than 2 parents.

Sometimes they have extra special forms like truffles that only come out in certain conditions. Sometimes they have multiple variants of mushrooms with the same genetics. Sometimes they possess multiple distinct sets of genetics

Mushrooms are just the sexual organs of the mycelium… Sometimes they spread based on time, or based on moisture, or just when they feel like it. Sometimes they don’t have mushrooms at all

Mycillium does everything in every way, their spores can literally call down rain and they choose what plants live and die. It looks like they have language based on analysis of the electrical signals running through them.

The more you talk about them, the more insane you sound

I think this is just whitewashing history… Even if you look to the ancient Western world, they had goddesses like Artemis

Generally, men fought wars. Like a lion pride - the males are the defenders because they’re bigger and stronger. Hunting doesn’t require raw strength - it requires diligence, patience, and/or endurance

But they all hunt. Lionesses are known for it, but lions do it too. Complete division of responsibilities is an insect thing

I feel awkward being in public without interaction. It’s like my brain goes into overdrive, trying to predict a sudden interaction incoming like a quick time event

I’d comment on something slightly more relevant than the weather, because the conversation can then fade to comfortable silence (for me at least) knowing no more conversation is likely, or I’d do what I always do when someone engages - everyone has something interesting about them, I’ll throw the conversation in random directions until I find a topic worth speaking about

I keep joining discord rooms because I just want to search for something specific real quick… I don’t want to dig up my real account or join, I just want to take a peek inside and dig up the answer to my question

Almost every time I sign up with a username and get just enough time to start looking for what I need before it decides to kick me out for “suspicious activity”

At this point I just search the project name when it happens… I’m usually there to evaluate a project, and if that’s not enough I just drop it

Then you should definitely go vegan. A vegan diet comes with the least amount of plant deaths and plant suffering, since lifestock is being fed with billions of individual plants before being slaughtered. You can save all of them.

Sounds like there is still some room for improvement in terms of “eating as sustainably as they can” then.

What is your goal, and what are your methods to get there?

You genuinely asking yourself that means far more to me than winning some Internet argument. Our goals are mostly aligned - I want you and your movement to succeed. But your methods push our shared goals further away.

It’s frustrating.

Ok, I’ll draw the through line for you

Meme about bees being animals or not, to know if honey fit the rules for veganism. No discussions about the well being of bees, the environmental impact of beekeeping, or anything else was present. Only if it followed a rule or not

I find this ridiculous - it’s lost the plot. Being vegan isn’t some cosmic good - the farming industry is horrible in numerous ways, but bees cannot be battery farmed.

Industrial honey production requires large untamed fields of wildflowers, which I consider good. Bees are good pollinators, I consider them good. Bees are dying out due to unrelated human activity, which is bad. Honey production requires more bees, and harming the delicate insects is disincentivized by nature - the well being of the bees is required for honey production

I then made it clear I was operating under my own moral framework, which from what I know of beekeeping (and I could be missing information), judges beekeeping as a good thing

I then alluded to my own moral framework, which recognizes that to live, the suffering of life is required. We are animals, and while we can minimize the suffering, we can’t live without it. Damage to the environment causes more suffering to life than anything else, so it’s the priority

Then you asked if I was already vegan, I said no. I explained that I eat little animal products, ethically sourced when practical. You took that opportunity to say I should do more - but by eating meat rarely I reduce the meat consumption of others easily, doing far more to further what should be our shared goals than I ever could individually

I don’t need or want praise for my eating habits - I want my habits to spread. I want as many people to do what they can when they can - that’s all I ask of others, and that messaging works. I’ll tell them it saves money if that’s their concern, I’ll tell them of the horrors of the meat industry in passing, I’ll tell them about how obesity is unnatural and result of highly processed foods, or the health implications. I tell them what will resonate with them, without judgement.

I know my goals, and I’m using the best methods I have available to spread them. I’m not confused at all - I know my goals, I’m conscious of my choices. I’m deliberate in my words and actions.

Our goals are mostly aligned, and yet I believe your messaging undermines mine. Our goals require collective action. You demand more of me under your moral framework, yet I feel no understanding from you, you’ve offered no new information, only judgement. Why is that?

This is why I find it confused.

I just told you how I’m doing what I can, and having great success convincing others to do the same

I told you I don’t subscribe to your moral system

You’ve entirely ignored most of what I’ve said and failed to engage me in any area where we have common ground. Instead, you attacked me for not doing more under your own value system

You’re working at cross purposes to your goals… You’re a hardliner. This approach is why some of my family gatherings have a vegan and a “normal” option for foods that taste basically the same. This is why I can’t reach some of my family members on this topic - they were attacked and talked down to for their eating habits, now it’s about winning and losing for them

Veganism is not the highest ethics of eating habits. The correct answer to my concern for the suffering of plants was a fruititarian diet… But it isn’t higher in my own value system, due to the transport involved

Doing more for me means growing my own food, and maybe keeping chickens. Maybe hunting the occasional deer. It means reintegrating with the ecosystem… But I’m not able to do that yet

Also, voting with your wallet is a lie to keep people complacent. Systematic issues must be solved systematically - already there’re huge subsidies for the meat industry to keep prices down and for big agro to over produce certain crops. This can only be changed through collective action

So if you don’t want me to see you as confused, ask yourself “what are my goals?” and “am I using the best methods available to me to meet my goals?”

No, I just eat very little meat. Most of my meals are rice and beans with whatever veggies I have on hand mixed in, preferably locally grown. I’ll also add in eggs sometimes, which unfortunately don’t come from a local source because I don’t have one anymore

And occasionally I go out for a burger or sushi, but I do it rarely and consciously. I enjoy it even more because of that And by framing it this way, I’ve convinced most of my friends and family to cut back and think more about their choices.

I don’t subscribe to the vegan moral system, I find it often inconsistent and confused. Like here… What’s best for the bees? What’s best for the ecosystem? What’s best for the humans?

No, I can’t save them. Because systematic problems cannot be solved through individual action

That being said, it’s bold of you to assume someone conscious of the suffering of plants isn’t eating as sustainably as they can with the choices they have available

Also, this is about honey - honey production encourages freely planting wild fields rather than mono crops, and it discourages killing the bees. I don’t share your moral system, but in mine this is about as good as it gets

It seems so silly to me. Do plants not feel pain?

They do. I learned it first hand… You can call it stress if you like, but plants most certainly experience suffering

You can do an extraction on poppy seeds, but the bulbs leak a tarlike substance when cut that is already plenty concentrated

I don’t want to domesticate the animals - it’s cruel because we can barely keep the ones we have mentally healthy

I just want animal friends. I don’t need to own them, they don’t need to live with me, but I want them to come visit for pets and the occasional treat

And I could do it too… I’m very good at getting the trust of animals. You just have to establish a common language and show yourself to be trustworthy over time. But that requires being able to live somewhere with a healthy ecosystem…

It keeps traveling. If you splash some water, where does the wave go? Same question - it terms into something you can no longer see or hear… It never goes away. It becomes part of the world, forever

Music is what you hear - but it was only ever sound waves

Probably not. I was just answering your question - that’s how you’d eliminate that variable from the experiment

You paint a second control group the colors and patterns they already are

That’s like 30 years after the concept was first understood. Even now the concept is downplayed so people don’t reject it outright

And even today, almost no one truly understands the implications of exponential growth… I’d give them full marks

Why do you think C is the one true language? It’s a tool.

There’s a single very simple answer to “what tool should I use?”. Use the best tool for the job

The job is the objective - what are you trying to accomplish? What are your priorities? What compromise is best between time, cost, and quality? What are your abilities? What’s in your toolbox right now, and what could you obtain within the time frame?

For you, the best tool might always be C. I don’t know how you’ve specialized or what you do, but C is powerful. Maybe you have an orderly thought process code meticulously, maybe you struggle to learn new languages. Maybe there’s just no better option for the jobs you take on

For me, C is rarely the answer. Not never, but outside of school I can count on one hand how many times I’ve chosen it. I code intuitively and feel how the code fits together, I can pick up languages on the spot and switch even more easily. But I’m not meticulous, it’s against my nature. I make mistakes frequently - but I learn by doing, and I don’t need to understand to start doing

All that said, why do we keep making languages and frameworks? Because as programmers, we build the tools. We can also share them without losing them. The perfect tool for one job won’t be the same for any other job, but a pretty good tool for many jobs is a valuable tool

The trade-off with our tools is between power, versatility, and cost (generally being time). We all want powerful and versatile tools - but our time is limited, and so we can’t afford the cost

Ultimately, I think you’ve correctly spotted a recurring problem but misidentified the cause. The cause isn’t the tools, it’s the fact that the cost is someone else’s time. And the fact we have no way to translate money into their time

A corporation can fund a team to continuously develop a tool they rely on. An individual can’t - we could chip in a few bucks here and there, but we use a lot of tools. We don’t know good tools from bad ones until we use them, we don’t know what tools are used to build the ones we need either.

So everyone and their mom wants to build a service to fund work on their tools. I hate services, I don’t want to give them my data or my money - I want tools that will work on my devices, not because I don’t want to deny them pay for their work, but because I pick up, drop, and modify tools all the time

That’s the real problem - if I could donate x dollars a month to support the tools I use, I would. If I could choose for us all to pay more taxes to support the tools we all use, I would take that deal. Hell, I’d go through the effort to generalize my personal tools

Instead, the only real profit to be had in OSS comes from companies, because they can afford to fund them directly, or services, which individuals tend to hate but companies barely notice. The tools aren’t the problem - the economics are the problem

It’s actually really fascinating - cats seem to rapidly learn culture while they’re weaning

Cats in Japan are very friendly and trusting of humans, cats in America are more cautious and wary

Japan has folklore about multiple variations of cat yokai that range from fickle trickers to malevolent supernatural ones. Cats are considered good luck, killing them invites bad luck. They have euphemisms like being in no position to refuse even a cats help, and their presence being a good omen

America has folklore about cats being bad luck, and tied to witchery. We still use euphemisms about skinning cats, letting them out of bags, swinging them, etc. Killing cats wasn’t abnormal behavior even a century ago

And apparently, if you bring a female Japanese cat to America, it’ll take several generations for the descendents to localize to the culture. They even meow differently

Stomachs aren’t necessary… You can jump straight to the large intestine. Even humans can survive like that

Obviously, they’re useful. It’s another stage of digestion, which means more energy and nutrients are extracted from your food. It widens your viable food sources, just like chewing does