#absolute nothing burger of a statistic

[bugsbenefit]

every year people start spotify wrapped posting i check mine purely for fun because i barely use it and the results are as always funny/not representative of my actual music taste whatsoever as a result. my absolute top artist is someone i spent a total of 59 minutes listening to (i played an album as background music once) to which spotify generously congratulated me on my 'dedication'

[wild-magic-oops]

Reading bioware's nothing burger answer (that I saw someone cite) about why Lucanis gets together with Neve if Rook chooses Minrathous but locks his romance for Rook, and how Shadow Dragon Rook wasn't even mentioned nor given even remotely the same treatment as Neve, actually makes me think that they decided to lock Lucanis's romance (which was known before the game even came out) just to make the Minrathous vs Treviso choice more balanced bc considering where Act 3 takes place, the devs probably didn't think Treviso was logical enough choice to rival Minrathous. And it absolutely was known to them that Lucanis would pull most of the (man-loving) women players bc the alternative is an old man and a black man (who are dead last in the romance chart, sadly but unfortunately unsurprisingly), and looking at the statistics and also considering how many times I've seen people say they chose Treviso bc of Lucanis - bioware was in fact very correct. Still incredibly frustrating and it ruins the supposedly equal choice between the cities, on top of placing a double standard between Neve and Shadow Dragon Rook

[wardowrites]

“Can’t we just go to McDonald’s?”

Wardo turned, eye twitching, to bestow a glare on the teenager he found himself lumbered with. Bryce simply scowled back, hood up, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, looking every bit the petulant fifteen-year-old he was. His scuffed sneakers kicked at the sidewalk as he sauntered along behind Wardo, dragging his feet in such a deliberate manner, Wardo would have been impressed by the insolence if it wasn’t being directly weaponised against him.

“Uh, no, we can’t just go to McDonald’s,” he argued. “It’s Burger King, or bust. Have I taught you nothing?”

“You literally never teach me a thing,” came Bryce’s bored reply.

Wardo couldn’t help but roll his eyes like that. There were many things that he could have taught Bryce, like how to pick a lock or, better yet, a pocket, but he was trying to make sure the kid didn’t wander down the same path that he had all those years ago. And even the morally upstanding things he could have imparted his knowledge about like literature held absolutely no interest to Bryce. Despite their shared love for ratty leather jackets and distaste for anything resembling a hairbrush, Wardo and Bryce couldn’t be more different when it came to what they liked. Wardo pored over his paperbacks and old records; Bryce preferred to plug in his airpods and deafen himself with shitty electronica, all the while bemoaning the fact that Wardo had never shown a lick of interest in sports. 

That anomaly - Bryce’s affinity for throwing a ball whilst Wardo had only been interested in handling a very specific type - was the only reason Wardo figured Bryce had even accompanied him outside today. He wasn’t a fan of the cold weather, huffing every time Wardo told him to shut the damn thermostat off and grab a blanket instead so he didn’t run up the heating bill, but he had ventured outside anyway to pick Ivy up from work.

They’d heard almost too much about Ivy’s job recently. Particularly about her hot yet Satanic co-worker. Bryce didn’t really care about that - again, another striking contrast to Wardo who wanted to know everything - but he did want to know about the hockey team, rattling off statistics about the New York Rangers that had both Wardo and Ivy boggling at him like he’d grown another head.

When Madison Square Garden came into view, Wardo realised Bryce wasn’t following him. He glanced over his shoulder, huffing out a laugh at the awestruck expression on the kid’s face as he tipped his head back to stare up at it. He would never get the sports thing, but it was always fun to see Bryce’s cool and impassive persona crumble right in front of him. Try as he might, that boy couldn’t hide his passion about anything, no matter how much he wanted to seem disinterested and uncaring.

“Come on, shitbrain,” he said, fisting a hand in the collar of his jacket and dragging him across the road.

Laughing all the while at Bryce’s protestations, he led them over the door Ivy had told them to meet her at. Where there was, of course, another man standing. And that man was, of course, Louis Denver. Because why the absolute fuck wouldn’t it be?

It didn’t long for the shock to wear off. In fact, it was almost instantaneous. Because Wardo had actually already come to terms with the fact that the universe hated him and would do whatever it could to throw him in his ex together in close proximity, including outside a fucking hockey stadium. It just made sense.

No matter how much he could reason with the facts in front of him though, that didn’t stop the shaking of Wardo’s hands as he let Bryce go and stared at Louis.

Would New York ever love him enough again to keep that man away from him? He knew he couldn’t trust the universe to keep his heart safe, but New York had always been on his side, or so he’d thought.

Before he could say anything, Bryce had already clocked Louis and his eyes narrowed in a way that spelled danger for Wardo. Without giving Wardo a choice to do anything that would stop the inevitability of drawing Louis’ attention, Bryce, the absolute little shit that he was, pointed at him.

“That’s the guy from the photo on your shelf,” he said, loud enough to break the goddamn sound barrier. Immediately, Wardo moved, with reflexes that even years of domesticity and a full-time job in a library could not dull, and yanked at Bryce’s hood, pulling it down over the other boy’s eyes and, with a little more effort, his big fucking mouth.

[zkzm500a2]

feel like answering them but nobody ever asks so i'm going to pull a major funny and just answer them all here

1. yeah for the most part

2. my girlfriend

3. who doesn't

4. yes, not cripplingly so but definitely notably so

5. taken, i have a girlfriend who i love

6. gunshot to the head. 9x19mm or .45 caliber preferably

7. slice o pizza from my work

8. no, but when i was in high school i signed up for my school's CS:GO comp league and then never participated

9. not compulsively, but i do usually bite them off instead of clip them off

10. good question, probably back in elementary school. 4th or 5th grade

11. as in, do i have a crush on someone? or just a general positive opinion of someone? elementary school ass question. anyway i have a crush on my girlfriend whom i love

12. i've gone over 24, but never hit 48 (and don't plan to)

13. public figures yeah, but nobody i know personally

14. who doesn't

15. two cats :)

16. pretty neutral, not stoked about going back to work but definitely not bad

17. not yet, but i can see it happening

18. i mean i'm not arachnophobic but i think i have a normal human level of fear of spiders. i respect them and their space and go out of my way to avoid killing them

19. yes but only to shoot my past self in the head. oh and to see the Crab Nebula in person :)

20. my girlfriend's bedroom

21. work son!!! today's saturday and i have work tomorrow too

22. i've long said it depends on who i end up with

23. no i do not, i wouldn't be opposed to getting my ears pierced though

24. history and other social studies. i'm not a r/history guy but i've always liked it

25. isn't this also question 14?

26. some fuckin... gotdamn uhh... not much really

27. yeah

28. not that i'm aware of

29. yeah

30. my shoes!!! my work shoes fucking suck i'm getting new ones asap

31. yes. go ahead and guess who it is

32. yellow orange

33. nothing too extreme i don't think

34. hell if i know, i rarely remember my dreams. last one i remember involved a former coworker flirting with me and i was like "woah hey i have a girlfriend"

35. hard to remember. my mom, probably

36. i mean i give them out but only when reasonable to me. also i don't have such shitty friends that i need to give second chances

37. forget!!! i don't remember a goddamn thing

38. i mean statistically yeah but we're only six days in. 2023 was pretty solid for me though

39. Twenny

40. not completely naked but i have been in my backyard naked from the waist down before

51 (it jumps from 40 to 51 lmao). idk man i can't pick favorites. americans do be eating cheesed burger though

52. yeah but that reason isn't spiritual

53. drew a fake website named "i love you dot com" in ms paint and sent it to my girlfriend

54. i want to say no but my parents got together through cheating on their previous partners and they've been together the whole time. so like, in 99% of cases no

55. no i'm niceys :) i used to be a dick online but i've always actively tried to be nice in person

56. one guy, but at least twice

57. i mean i guess it depends on your definition of "true," but generally yeah

58. overcast and chilly is a go-to but i also love the sunny and chilly that comes after a storm in the winter or early spring

59. conceptually yes, but i would never want to drive in it

60. yeah

61. depends on the context of course but generally i'm into it

62. bideo games give me pleasure, but hanging out with my friends or my girlfriend makes me actually happy

63. i mean i'd prefer to keep my current name but in the event i had to, i have one in mind that i like

64. absolutely not, it's easy as hell

65. i'd be like "sorry i have a girlfriend. and you know this. she's all i talk about"

66. yeah

67. my girlfriend

68. how deep are we talking? probably my girlfriend though no matter how you define it

69. in a spiritual sense no, but it's still a helpful term

70. man i'd die for 20 bucks. but yeah there are several people i'd die for

70 horrible questions ... Fuck it

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents? 02: Who did you last say “I love you” to? 03: Do you regret anything? 04: Are you insecure? 05: What is your relationship status? 06: How do you want to die? 07: What did you last eat? 08: Played any sports? 09: Do you bite your nails? 10: When was your last physical fight? 11: Do you like someone? 12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours? 13: Do you hate anyone at the moment? 14: Do you miss someone? 15: Have any pets? 16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment? 17: Ever made out in the bathroom? 18: Are you scared of spiders? 19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? 20: Where was the last place you snogged someone? 21: What are your plans for this weekend? 22: Do you want to have kids? How many? 23: Do you have piercings? How many? 24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)? 25: Do you miss anyone from your past? 26: What are you craving right now? 27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart? 28: Have you ever been cheated on? 29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? 30: What’s irritating you right now? 31: Does somebody love you? 32: What is your favourite color? 33: Do you have trust issues? 34: Who/what was your last dream about? 35: Who was the last person you cried in front of? 36: Do you give out second chances too easily? 37: Is it easier to forgive or forget? 38: Is this year the best year of your life? 39: How old were you when you had your first kiss? 40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked? 51: Favourite food? 52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason? 53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night? 54: Is cheating ever okay? 55: Are you mean? 56: How many people have you fist fought? 57: Do you believe in true love? 58: Favourite weather? 59: Do you like the snow? 60: Do you wanna get married? 61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? 62: What makes you happy? 63: Would you change your name? 64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? 65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? 66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? 67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? 68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? 69: Do you believe in soulmates? 70: Is there anyone you would die for?

[asya-chernaya]

Some Simple Healthy Eating Advice

It's the time to have a good health and proper nutrition, check out to prepare fast nutritious meals we can use healthy foods on our daily basis. If you have time you can also click here to learn more use healthy foods in more exotic recipes.

Nowadays our society is in the middle of a health trend. There's information about being healthier no matter where you are. Eating healthy foods is one of the best ways to improve your health. So often when people hear those two words they think of boring, tasteless foods that can only be purchased as a natural food co-op. But healthy foods are things that you already eat every day, some times just prepared differently. The huge impacts on how our bodies function when were older and how we can take care when we're young. Just take a gander at some current medical and health statistics if you don't believe in me. . These are easy enough to come by on the World-Wide-Web.

All I wanted to figure out is that every living human being should take in a healthy eating regime and fitness program. These two factors are essential to staying healthy. The question is what are you're currently eating on a regular basis and what physical keeps on your toes each day? I hope that you didn't answer this question with fast food and no exercise. If this is the case, then it's high time for some healthy eating advice and exercise routines. Are you psyched? In this time you can attain healthy eating advice where ever you please. It's absolutely simple to come by.

You just only approach that check out counter in the grocery store, take a look at the nearby magazines and I'm sure 50 percent of them regard to healthy eating advice and fitness. And the other 50 percent is from Hollywood gossips. You can and should avoid that garbage with your life. You should use your extra hour to plan out a healthy eating schedule for the week. You will feel and look better after eating decent and nutritious meals only just for one week. Now, add a effective exercise routine on to that and you're good to go. Spend an hour a day, five days a week exercising. This is nothing! As time passes by, you will love your new figure and energy levels. If everyone is consuming poor foods they should acquire some sort of healthy eating advice. It's time to stop if you eat fast food each day because in that matter is not only killing you, it's also slowing you down. If you eat high fat meals it makes you feel drowsy and tires. Your body doesn't get the proper nutrition to function well.

All you need to do to find a healthy eating advice to better your lifestyle is to drop your deadly routine. It's all in the cyberspace. It can be very pleasing to the taste and plate when eating healthy foods. The main thing to remember with healthy foods is that the closer the food is to its natural state the healthier it is for you. By cutting down on the number of preferred foods you eat; you can begin changing your eating habits to more healthy foods. Prepackaged foods are loaded with preservatives and artificial ingredients. Packaged foods are suitable, but healthy foods can be also, once you get in the habit of preparing them. It is very easy to prepare healthy foods. In eating healthy foods it doesn't require more time and money. Here is an example of a great meal that is easy to prepare, inexpensive and features healthy foods. Grill lean hamburger patties until well done. Place the patties on whole grain all natural hamburger buns. Serve the burgers with a large tossed salad and a side of steamed green beans.

Follow this simple meal with an offering of fresh fruit for dessert. Grilling or baking lean meats, fish or chicken is not time consuming. Tossing a salad of fresh greens and vegetables can be done while the meat is cooking. You round out the meals by using fresh or frozen vegetables. You can add variety to your meals by trying different healthy foods that you haven't tasted before.

[bace-jeleren]

Absolutely 100% forgot Lukka is apart of the 10-Planeswalker-Lineup in Phyrexia All Will Be One. Completely forgot he existed, have utterly forgotten to factor his ass into the equation of who is, statistically, most likely to be compleated.

Anyway, now that I have factored in his completely nothing-burger ass, here's my predictions, with what we know (via official spoilers)

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 11: Cusco - In Which I Eat An Alpaca

I was still reeling from the effects of altitude sickness as I awoke, today. Less so than I had been the previous night, but still enough to keep me from being my normal, chipper self

Pictured.

We (Sam, who it should be noted, was not suffering from altitude sickness to the same degree that I was) decided that we should continue ignoring all available medical advice and spend the day, not resting, but instead exploring the historical centre of Cusco. I had, in theory, managed to argue her down to it being a small, relaxed excursion, but knew deep in my heart of hearts, that in practice, this probably wasn't going to end up being the case.

We plodded our way down the same route as we had taken the evening, before, down a million and three sets of stairs, past an almost solid stream of conmen, tat-peddlers and women holding baby alpacas, who apparently demand money should you want to touch them , take photos of them, or even look at them for too long (the alpacas- not the women). As bad as Iquitos had been for people trying to take money off of us, Cusco was ten times worse. Fortunately though, I am basically a curmudgeonly old miser, counting his coppers in a lavish mansion which he shares with no one but the ghosts of childhood loves, and so, they have yet to squeeze even a single sole out of me and I will do literally everything in my power to make it stay that way.

We wove our way to the main square of Cusco: the Plaza De Armas, through a slalom of gaudy souvenir shops, which were all basically the same with the prices of the tat changed based on how much extra the owner thought he could squeeze out of you, and soon arrived at our, not entirely unimpressive, destination.

Beautiful, yet irritating.

After a quick poke around the historical centre, wherein the sheer density of people trying to rip us off must have increased tenfold (making it one hundred times worse than Iquitos- a statistic which I absolutely stand by), we broke away from the plaza to quickly ascertain the meeting point for the excursion we had planned for the next day – Quad biking around the mountains, salt-flats and various points of historical intrigue; an outing for which the cost, as we had only learned in the past couple of days, did not include the approximately twenty extra pound ticket prices for the sites we were set to visit, during it, so that was a cool thing to find out when running low on money. Fortunately though, as irritating as it was no doubt going to be having to pay all those extra soles, that we could not spare, the agency's office was remarkably easy to find and took nearly no time at all to get to.  I suppose you could call that a silver lining, if you tried hard enough.

We moved quickly on to the nearby San Pedro market; a loud, bustling bazaar, in the centre of the city. The market was pretty much what you'd expect, from such a place; dimly lit, packed to bursting with all manner of trinkets, food, smoothies and alpaca clothing and generally just not a hugely relaxing place to be for anyone with even the faintest whiff of anxiety. We meandered around the stalls for a while, our hands, probably unnecessarily glued to our belongings – a behavioural remnant of our days in Iquitos – taking in what was on offer. Sam bought a smoothie, which much to her delight actually ended up being two smoothies and I bought nothing at all, because, as mentioned previously, I am a miser, sharing a mansion with the ghosts of lost loves.

We decided to risk getting some lunch at the market, despite each purveyor of food looking thoroughly filthy and almost certain to give us some kind of intestinal parasite. Almost as if her body were pre-emptively warning her, however, the last remnants of Sam's illness reared their ugly head(s) once more and forced us to leave San Pedro, in order to find her a bathroom.

After around a fifteen minute search and a lot of complaining, we found one. Unperturbed by what had just happened, however, Sam insisted that she would like to return to the market to try some of its dirty, dirty food, which I suppose you could describe as brave, if you tried hard enough.

We settled on a stall, which literally could have been any other stall, there – they were all basically identical – and I ordered lomo saltado, a sort of beef stir-fry sort of thing, except with chips all through it, which was as weird as it sounds and also about as good as you'd imagine it might be, being bought from a market-stall. It was also served with what had to be close to a quarter of a kilogram of rice, which is just simply not an amount of food that a human could conceivably consume in a single sitting. Sam, still feeling a little peaky opted for a chicken soup, which may as well have been served in a bucket. It, too, was an absolutely staggeringly huge portion and loaded with noodles and dumplings, to boot. Neither of us even came close to finishing our meals, though for like 15 soles each, even we found it fairly difficult to complain about the value. Not impossible, though, I should note.

My pedometer was now readying over ten thousand steps, which definitely is not an amount you'd associate with a relaxed, easy going outing and so, now feeling thoroughly grotty thanks to altitude sickness, once more, we decided to head back to the apartment. We wove, in reverse, through largely the same souvenir shops we had been to on the way there, except uphill, so much, much less fun and by the time we had actually arrived back home to our little icebox of a house, I had once again been stamped, haphazardly into the ground by the big boot that was high altitude sickness.

After a long rest, which may or may not have involved naps, we decided to head out again to an incredibly well-reviewed burger restaurant, around five minutes walk away.

It was busy when we arrived, though, there being just two in our party, we managed to get a table, basically right away. Sam and I both ordered the same thing – an alpaca burger, with Andean cheese (because novelty of eating something that appallingly cute was hard to ignore) and were delighted to realise that the burger (a relatively cheap affair at 18 soles each) came with a free drink. Less pleasing was the fact that the free drink could not be a bottle of water and instead had to be half a pint of passionfruit juice, served in a manky glass. Sam drank both of ours, because I definitely wouldn't have touched mine with a shitty stick.

The burger itself was very nice, though. Cooked to perfection and from what I could taste - my sense of smell still not having quite recovered fully – very delicious. It was not helped however, by being smothered in quite a strong tasting fruity sauce, which didn't really let me experience the full flavour of the alpaca, , but that is probably a minor niggle at most. It even came with a side of fries and five little dollops of all different sauces, nearly all of which I could take or leave. I also had a big chunk of bone in the middle of my burger, which I nearly broke a tooth on, but didn't, in the end so 10/10 experience.

We made the short trek back to the apartment, which, despite only being five minutes, was still enough to re-fuck me into oblivion and so, much as I had the previous night, I spent my evening swaddled under all the blankets I could find, desperately trying to keep any amount of warmth I had left still inside my body, as I blogged and bibbled and bedded and secretly wished for death.

[snacc-noir]

Kim Week, Day 4: Trophy

Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

(I didn’t know what else to do for this prompt)

The fact that Alix loved her skates wasn’t to be presumed as ‘simple’ knowledge to the classmates around her, like what the cafeteria served on Wednesdays or that Adrien was as dense as a fence (though that circumstance seemed to be climbing the scales recently).

They didn’t just know she loved them, but were in constant reminder that Alix’s whole life was embedded with the wheels-on-shoes. Most things she was ever caught doing were to do with rollerblading, whether that was skating everywhere or going to the principal’s office again for doing so in the hall, and her most fascinating stories involved a minimum of one roller-skating mention.

Every student was well-aware her own skates probably came before their friendship; so much so it wasn’t the phrase ‘the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’ that caused fed-up groans to rumble around the classroom from over-hearing, it was: ‘Alix sure loves her skates’.

(Well, it was second, statistically. Kim held the title with anything with the word ‘dare’ in it.)

(Third if you count, ‘She’s just a friend.’)

Alix bladed to school, bladed home, bladed to her classmates’ houses and always withheld them in her school bag or locker (or somewhere else within a close radius) when they weren’t appropriate for use. If she went out—no matter the weather, unless of course if it was icy (because, duh, ice-skates)—her rollerblades would come along for the trip.

Although all her classmates knew this, one knew how deep her love ran more than others.

Kim.

Why? Because he was there on her sixth birthday when she’d unwrapped them with the widest caerulean eyes and euphoric smile, and he was there from then on when she would not shut up about them. The rich passion and elation spoken about the last gift her mother ever bought her before passing started to pile into something Kim could only describe as fed-up annoyance, so it was justified to say a portion of him was happy when she’d outgrown that particular pair.

Until she got a new pair.

And another one after that.

The way she ranted about her ‘children’ (—Max and Kim’s mocking term; Alix’s dead-serious one) never failed to tick him off in a way that was so irreparably identical to the fumes that smouldered out her nose whenever he boasted about his latest accomplished dares ‘she’d never be able to emulate’.

Of course, they both knew the others’ dislikes towards their bestowments, and it was an—important—portion of their rivalry/kinship. Their banter about their mutual annoyances was friendly, stimulating, and furthermost, repetitive. It caused the whole class to express their annoyances towards the arguing duo, too.

“Can you two please stop fighting?” Mylène  whispered to Alix during class once while the rivals were feuding over what flavour of 2-minute-noodles were best, prompting the pinkette to have air leave her mouth instead of another obscenity at Kim. “It’s just… well, you’re very loud.”

They both received a plethora of complaints all during the school year, but it was just so them a day couldn’t go past without a jab at the other. Their ruckus was nothing eccentric towards the classroom. It even seemed a vital part of their class’s formulation, and so if someone told them to shush, they would—but only until the next argument.

He figured out from an early age that if he ever wanted to win… whatever was going on between them (because if there was anything with even the slightest insinuation of a challenge, you bet your bucks Kim was doing it), he’d have to gain what he dubbed, ‘the trophy’.

Over the years from sporting events, races, swimming awards and much more, Kim had collected his fair share of trophies (which were on proud display in his room), but there was one trophy—one impossibility he was never able to grasp. And to him, it was the only trophy that mattered.

Alix’s skates.

He knew he would never get her skates. That was whole reason why he wanted them. Just thinking about it hit him with the trepidation that came from knowing when something was unreachable (reminder that this was: ‘I bet I could race a panther and win’ Kim), so it was no wonder it’d been years without the back-of-the-mind thought ever spurring to existence.

With the skates, he could have the power over what about her he found most annoying (that was from a big list, too). If she had power over his dares (though, how could she even do that?) he gave mostly to her, the same would go for Alix—a chance to gloat, and seemingly win their ‘feud’.

In some metaphorical way, owning what the other person loved the most would mean the ultimate win. One of Kim’s dreams was to have custom over her rollerblades just for the short glory (short because she was super rich and stuff and would buy another pair a week later). But he could never have them. She didn’t even let him touch them. He gave up any idea to get them a long time ago.

Because, really, there was no way he’d ever manage to get her skates—

“Let’s do a bet. You and me.”

Kim retracted his eyes off his burger to make sure she was serious.

“What?”

“I said a bet, deafo,” Alix repeated, pulling her popper straw between her progressively-curving lips. “You just said before you could beat me running on foot while I’m on skates; I think you can’t.”

He put his burger on his cafeteria tray. “Um, I can though?” He looked at her like she was the dumbest thing on earth. “Besides, what would we even bet—”

“No dares for the rest of the school year.”

Surprise flooded his expression.

He opened his mouth in a partial gape and in case he remembered he could speak, but she kept going.

“The class and I were talking. They said I was the only way to get rid of your dares.” She took a purposely-long sip of her juice, holding her finger up at him so he wouldn’t speak. “And what you just said is the perfect way for me to get rid of your dumb challenges. Marinette’s even gonna make a banner.”

“Okay, first of all,” Kim pushed back his tray, lunch long forgotten, “I would win, as I just made before clear in impeccable detail—”

“Do you even know what impeccable means?” Max caught his attention, who was leant forward and peering past his glasses with his notorious Fed up™ hazed eyes.

Kim frowned. “Yes. Me.”

Both teens around him rolled their eyes.

“Anyways, before I was interrupted I was talking about this bet. Where was I up to… oh! Second of all,” he raised a finger, “what do you mean you spoke to the whole class? I’m part of the whole class. That’s what we learnt in Math in like, grade three. How was I not there in your ‘discussion’?”

“I’ve talked to everyone about your dares individually.” She waved a dismissive hand. “They want them gone. So what do ya say? Race me at the Trocadaro?”

Kim hummed, pulling a thoughtful face. He did want to race her. Racing was fun. Though the thought of Alix placing the bet instead of him—since he tended to formulate them towards her—was perturbing. It also felt like there was something about the conversation they had missed.

Right, his brain recalled. My prize.

“And what about my side of the bet?” He leant in. “What do I get when you lose?”

Alix looked impatient. “Well, what do you want?”

It took Kim another ten seconds of thought (with Alix sighing in irritation near him) to answer her.

When the idea hit him—the absolutely, astonishingly brilliant idea—Kim grinned the widest he could.

Only one gloating thought then ran through his mind;

I’ve finally got her.

His eyes were even twinkling when Alix nudged him. “Oi, did you think of something?”  

He swerved his derisive gaze to her, and she almost gulped from the look.

The smugness in his tone tripled when he said,

“Your skates.”

…

Alix ended up agreeing after the argument of ‘You don’t even fit my blades’ and they had the race on her birthday. Alix won, got akumatized, and everyone forgot about it.

Kim never ended up getting his trophy.

(A/N) Ok but in Timebreaker, Max clearly states Kim will get Alix’s rollerblades if he wins the bet, but Alix is like, tiny compared to him. There’s no way he could fit in her little skates! I don’t know why he wanted them in the first place and the fact’s been bugging me, so I’m just playing with this idea. 

[catofthecanals289]

For the prompt: "I can explain!" Jonny shouted at Pat, while wading through a ball pit.

prompt fill 1988: @cuddlefighter

"I can explain!" Jonny shouted at Pat, while wading through the ball pit, trying to make his way over to Patrick who keeps diving in and coming back out, looking more and more frustrated with each appearance.

“I can explain,” Patrick mimics him, voice dripping with mockery and anger. He’s glaring at Jonny now, which would look ridiculous with him standing almost to the hip in a surprisingly deep ball pit. “How the fuck do you explain throwing my phone into the fucking Mc Donald’s ball pit? What the actual hell, Jonny.”

“I…” Jonny starts, rubbing his neck sheepishly. He doesn’t really have a good explanation. He has one but it’s pretty damn ridiculous and even more embarrassing. It’s not like he really planned on tossing Patrick’s phone away, it had been a stupid impulse, fueled by jealousy and stupidity and now he’s standing thigh deep in a fucking ball put, having to make amends to his boyfriend. It’s so stupid. “I’m sorry, Pat, c’mon. I’m gonna help you find it.”

Patrick throws a ball at him, hitting him right against the forehead. “That is not an explanation, Toews,” he snaps, looking even madder than a moment ago. “And you bet your fat ass you won’t just help me find it, you will find it. I’m gonna go and finish my burger.”

He doesn’t wait for Jonny to reply just wades back to the edge of the ball pit, climbing out and throwing a pointed glare over his shoulder. “I’m gonna eat your disgusting veggie wrap thing too if you don’t find my phone.”

“Pat!” Jonny calls after him, but Patrick only flips Jonny off before stomping back to their table, leaving Jonny alone in the ball pit where a mother and her child are glaring at him from the slide. Whatever. The kid is going to learn curse words soon enough, and really, it’s not Jonny’s fault that Patrick overreacted to Jonny overreacting like this.

Sure, maybe Jonny should have found a more mature solution to watching his boyfriend text and text and text with his Switzerland abroad semester buddy during their lunch, than tossing the phone away, but-

But sometimes Jonny is an idiot too. Patrick had been an idiot for going to Switzerland even though he’d told Jonny if he’d do a semester abroad he’d do it together with Jonny. He’d just presented Jonny with the done deal and they had almost broken up over it. Now Patrick is back but he’s suddenly best buddies with that Seguin guy from his Marketing class (why Patrick is taking it when he’s majoring in Mathematics and Statistics is beyond Jonny anyway) and they hang out a lot and when they don’t they text. It’s annoying especially since the guy is objectively hot and Jonny has absolutely nothing in common with him. And that sucks because Patrick and Seguin seem to have so much in common and what does that say about Jonny and Patrick’s compatibility?

Nothing good. But it’s not like being a jealous douche and tossing Patrick’s phone away without an explanation is making things any better.

With a sigh Jonny pulls his own phone out of his pocket, dialing Patrick’s number.

It takes a second to connect but then Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ starts playing, making Jonny groan. Patrick can be such an asshole. The longest time he’s had ‘Brown eyed girl’ as his ring tone for Jonny to annoy him but lately he’s been doing this overly patriotic shit since Jonny agreed to spend the next 4th of July with Patrick and his family.

The ringing gives him a general direction so it only takes Jonny a couple awkward dives with his face mushed in the plastic balls to find Patrick’s phone on the bottom of the pit. The screen isn’t cracked thankfully and Jonny is half ready to end the call so that annoying song stops playing but he gets distracted by the caller ID picture Patrick has set for him. It’s not the old one where Jonny looked like a dumb fuck, scrunching his nose at something, but actually a nice one, it’s of Jonny driving and if Jonny remembers correctly it’s from when Jonny had picked up Patrick from the airport, after coming back from Biel.

“I’m sorry for throwing your phone,” he says quietly when he returns to the table, pushing it over so it’s next to their shared tray. Jonny’s wrap is still untouched.

“Well, why did you?” Patrick asks, continuing to munch on his burger, not even dignifying Jonny with a glance. “I mean I know you hate Apple because it’s an evil corperation or whatever, but that’s no reason to attempt a hit and run on my Iphone.”

“It’ wasn’t about Apple,” Jonny admits, sheepishly, causing Patrick to snort.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really,” Jonny mutters, clenching his jaw. There’s a curl peeking out from the band of Patrick’s backwards snapback and it’s looking really ridiculous. And cute, and really fucking awesome too.

“Then what, Jonny?” Patrick asks, eyebrows raised. “What the hell was that?”

“Iwasjealousofthatseguinguy,” Jonny says then, all in a rush, the words tumbling over each other, because fuck it, if Jonny doesn’t say them now, Patrick will stay mad at him for not telling and Jonny will stay mad at Patrick for being mad at him and it’s just going to be a pain in the ass, because Jonny knows he’s being unfair. Patrick is allowed to have other friends, and jealousy is not something Jonny wants as a trademark. That’s not who he is.

“Come again,” Patrick says, frowning a little and Jonny has no clue if it’s because he really didn’t understand what Jonny said or because he thinks Jonny is being an idiot or epic proportions, which- Yeah. Maybe.

“I was jealous,” Jonny repeats, slower this time. “Of your Seguin. You’ve been texting with him all day although you’ve just seen him last night, which you cancelled our movie night for. I just overreacted, alright? He’s always all over you and you get along so well and-”

“Aww, Jonnyyyyy,” Patrick coos, interrupting Jonny mid explanation. “You are so cute.”

Jonny frowns at him. “Jealousy isn’t cute.” It’s awful. It feels awful and it’s making Jonny act awful. It’s not hot possessiveness or whatever. It makes Jonny feel all ugly and he doesn’t like it.

“I know, I know,” Patrick allows, holding up his hands. “But you are. Segs and me are just friends. And I know you didn’t like some of our Biel pictures but I swear to you nothing ever happened between us. You know that.”

“Don’t remind me of those pictures,” Jonny grumbles darkly, thinking about that damn hand on Patrick’s hip, Seguin on his knees, and no. Jonny does know nothing happened in Switzerland. He trusts Patrick, but what if the whole texting 24/7 and is a sign of Patrick maybe falling for Seguin? Maybe Switzerland was just them building the base and-

“We’ve been texting a lot this past week because I’m trying to help Tyler figure out if he just has the hots for his dorm mate or if he actually likes him,” Patrick continues, looking at Jonny intently. “Because you know, I’m apparently the only of his friend that’s in a functioning relationship so he decided that I must be emotionally mature enough to help him figure his shit out.”

“Oh.” Jonny blinks. “So you aren’t, like, falling in love with him because you two have so much more in common and you are suddenly into shizzled beards and tattoos?”

“No, what the fuck.” Patrick laughs, his eyes crinkling. “No, Jonny, you dumb moose lover. You, your lousy amish beard grow abilities, and your tattoo-less arms are the only one for me. I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He’s reaching out to take Jonny’s hand now over the table and Jonny gladly takes it, squeezing it tightly. He feels even more like an idiot now. When Patrick is looking at him like this, there’s no doubt in Jonny’s mind that Patrick loves him.

“Okay,” Jonny says, smiling at their joined hands. “Got it.”

Patrick grins. “But if you throw my phone again, I’m divorcing you.”

Now it’s Jonny’s turn to snort. “We aren’t married, idiot.”

“I’m going to marry you, just so I can divorce you, how about that?”

“Sounds fair to me.”

[vladynews]

You are what you eat

You've certainly heard the expression many times, "You are what you consume." Have you ever actually considered what it implies? And also do you think about it when you're making food options?

Let's think about vegetarian lifestyle

In some ways, we do become what we consume, actually. Have you ever seen an example of your blood plasma after consuming a convenience food burger? What was previously a clear fluid becomes over cast with the fat as well as cholesterol that's soaked up from consuming a high-fat burger.

As well as when you think regarding it, we also become what we do not consume. When we switch over from eating meat to a vegetarian-based diet plan, we end up being less fat, much less susceptible to many kinds of cancers. When we're leaner and also eating fewer animal items, then several other wellness as well as physical fitness issues are lowered.

If you have a family history of high cholesterol or high blood pressure, after that it's particularly incumbent on you to revise your eating practices. Relocating towards a much more vegan diet plan has been revealed statistically to decrease the incidence of so many of the diseases of industrialized countries. Vegetarians are statistically healthier than omnivorous persons; they're leaner as well as live longer.

Isn't it time to think about what you want to be and to eat appropriately? Do you want to be sluggish and fat? Do you desire the risk that goes with consuming pet products, with their high fat material? Or do you want to resemble and be what vegetarians are? Leaner and fitter with a longer anticipated life-span. It's never ever far too late to transform what you're doing and also raise your chances for a much longer, fitter life.

Humans did not constantly consume meat

Do you ever before think of just how much we've drawn away from the course of our pre-historic forefathers and they're consuming patterns? Take into consideration how the earliest humans progressed, as well as what they ate. They were hunter-gatherers as well as did not develop with the characteristics of carnivores. People aren't made to tear pets apart as well as eat their flesh. When you check out carnivorous animals, such as wild felines, you can see their teeth are created to rip and tear, not eat.

Also our gastrointestinal systems are not specifically suited to consuming meat. Possibly earliest male observed predators consuming meat, and also if they could not locate any of the natural foods they were used to eating, such as vegetables, berries, nuts as well as grains, then they may have thought that eating meat would certainly at the very least sustain life.

We naturally would have foraged for our food, consuming roots and berries, fruits as well as nuts. We would certainly have watched the apes peeling bananas, or crushing nuts on stones to obtain at the meat of the nut.

Eating meat needs prep work as well as most importantly, fire. Until guy found fire, he was mostly vegan, living in what was the natural order of points. Vegetarian eating is a much more all-natural means of consuming, in addition to being healthier.

Why did people begin eating meat?

It should have felt abnormal at first, to eat pet flesh. After all, we're not so far removed from animals ourselves. Perhaps it also really felt cannibalistic. There could not have actually been that much intellectual distinction in between humans and other animals. When humans were pure vegetarians, they were staying in harmony with the planet as well as with the various other animals co-habiting the world with them. Their closest pet relatives, apes, were vegetarians. Consuming the items of the planet, like plants, grains and fruits that they might gather as well as consume would have seemed the all-natural order of points.

But necessity is the mom of creation. Primitive men that stayed in icy locations, or that stayed in a location that came to be ruined by fire, would certainly have consumed anything to survive. Just like the soccer players whose plane collapsed in the hills of Chile, and also were required to consume the flesh of various other gamers who died in the accident, earliest guy eventually had to make the option for survival, which might have consuming meat for the very first time as well as transforming human background-- and health and wellness-- forever.

We can think of that guys initially consumed meat that had actually been charred or prepared by virtue of being caught in an all-natural woodland fire. They might have ultimately consumed raw meat, if essential, but we can additionally think of that our earliest digestive systems rebelled versus eating raw meat.

Visualize having actually consumed raw foods as well as veggies for ages, and also all of an unexpected, including meat products into your system. You may have heard buddies who were vegetarians inform tales of attempting to consume meat and also coming to be violently unwell after that.

Biologists will inform you we're actually not developed to eat meat, yet we adjusted to it. In the timeline of human history, eating meat is a fairly recent transformative advancement.

Animal suffering

What are the reasons we consume food? That might seem like a silly concern, since we consume to feed our bodies, first off. Much of us also obtain an emotional gratification when we consume, and the majority of us are omnivores, indicating we eat whatever, consisting of meat and also chicken.

There are many compelling factors to relocate towards a vegetarian diet plan, most of them health-related. Many individuals decline to consume meat because of the savage therapy of the pets that are mass-produced to feed the populace. Animal farming on the range that it requires to be to satisfy U.S. usage is grotesquely harsh. When you eat meat, you're eating the flesh of an animal whose life has been unnaturally shortened by overfeeding it to obtain it to an abattoir earlier. They're kept in little pens and cages, where they sustain chronic tension. If they birth their young online, their children are taken from them, often a day after they're birthed. They're fed development hormonal agents and anti-biotics and avoided the natural habits and also actions that define the typical life expectancy. Pigs aren't enabled to root. Calf bones are kept stable. Poultries are kept in cages, their beaks scorched off with a burning hot knife to combat aggressive habits that are the outcome of unnatural confinement.

Do you actually think the flesh of the pet is different from its spirit as well as its energy? Is a pet so really different? We do not need meat or milk for survival.

Isn't it time most of us started assuming in different ways of what we eat to nurture our bodies? We're progressed from herbivores, as well as yet we've diverted off our very own transformative path. One can make an instance for hunting and also consuming meat when it's the only ways for survival. That's no much longer the case and also our alternatives are abundant. Do they have to include the flesh of enduring pets? How can that possibly be taken into consideration nourishment?

Different sorts of vegetarians

Many individuals consider vegetarians as one uniform group that just doesn't eat meat. Absolutely nothing could be additionally from the reality. There are different classifications of vegetarians as varied as the factors for going vegan to begin with.

A vegetarian is typically specified as a person who doesn't eat meat. A lacto ovo vegetarian does not eat meat, fish or chicken, but does take in eggs, milk or cheese.

A vegan is somebody that doesn't eat any type of animal product or by-product, including dairy products food. They consume just vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and also vegetables. They also don't use pet products, such as natural leather. Vegans likewise don't use white sugar since it's frequently processed with a material derived from pet bones that lightens the sugar.

There are various other classifications within the vegan community. Fruitarians, for example, consume only fruit. Their rationale is that fruits, including fruits such as tomatoes, are self-perpetuating and also do not need to be grown to develop the food source. They consider it a way of consuming that's most in balance as well as consistency with the earth, the most all-natural.

Every one of the above will consume cooked vegetables, fruits and beans. There is likewise a growing activity in the direction of consuming only raw or living foods. This based upon the presumption that cooking food processes the majority of the nutrients out of it, as well as to get all the dietary worth, vitamins and also amino acids from food, it's finest taken in raw, or juiced. If cooked in all, it ought to only be prepared to a little over 100 degrees, so the nutrients are still kept.

The more limiting you come to be with your diet, nonetheless, the more enlightened you need to end up being to make sure you're getting all the required proteins as well as vitamins that you require to keep good health, especially muscle mass and also heart wellness.

Cleansing

When individuals speak about detoxing as well as cleansing the body of unsafe contaminants, it's often seen as an edge component of vegetarians. People actually do not like to think of unsafe toxins accumulating in their colons or in their arteries, but it's frequently a spin-off of a carnivorous diet. A diet plan that's high in fat and also refined foods has a tendency to reduce our gastrointestinal systems, as well as our removal procedures are additionally disturbed.

This can permit unsafe germs and contaminants to collect and also can produce a basic feeling of sluggishness, as well as a host of digestive system conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome or colitis. When we start consuming a more healthy vegan diet regimen, we begin to obtain even more nutritional fiber into our systems, as well as all of a sudden, our digestive system systems begin to work better,

When you get rid of high-fat meat and also refined foods from your diet plan, then much of your body's energy is freed from the extreme work of absorbing these foods. Every little thing comes to be clearer-- your blood, your body organs, your mind. You start to become extra familiar with the hazardous nature of the food you would certainly been consuming before.

Poisoning is of a lot greater problem in the twentieth century than ever before. There are lots of brand-new and stronger chemicals, air and water air pollution, radiation as well as nuclear power. We ingest new chemicals, utilize even more drugs of all kinds, eat more sugar and also refined foods, and also day-to-day misuse ourselves with various energizers and also sedatives. The occurrence of several toxicity illness has actually boosted also. Cancer and heart disease are two of the major ones. Arthritis, allergies, obesity, and also several skin problems are others. Additionally, a vast array of symptoms, such as migraines, tiredness, discomforts, coughs, intestinal issues, and problems from immune weakness, can all be connected to poisoning. When you begin a vegetarian consuming strategy, your body at some point cleanses itself of the unsafe impacts of these harmful foods.

Possibly earliest male observed carnivores consuming meat, as well as if they couldn't locate any of the natural foods they were used to consuming, such as veggies, berries, nuts as well as grains, after that they may have thought that consuming meat would certainly at least sustain life.

Many of us likewise acquire an emotional gratification when we consume, as well as most of us are omnivores, meaning we consume every little thing, including meat as well as chicken.

When you eat meat, you're eating the flesh of an animal whose life has actually been artificially shortened by overfeeding it to obtain it to a slaughterhouse earlier. Several people assume of vegetarians as one homogeneous group that just does not consume meat. A lacto ovo vegetarian doesn't eat meat, fish or chicken, however does consume eggs, milk or cheese.

[thisislizheather]

2019 Resolutions Revisited

2019 was actually a pretty great year. Some highlights? I moved in a great new apartment, Nathan did The Tonight Show, I went to Niagara Falls with most of my family, I celebrated ten years with Nathan by going to Vermont, I spent Thanksgiving in the Bahamas with my parents, I went to New Orleans with Jenn, I went to Canada for the holidays, and there are so many great photos that I love (and I started using the free Google Photos so I never lose my photos again). As you may recall, I made some resolutions last year, so let’s see how they went.

1. Read at least one book per season.

For winter, I read Busy Philipps' This Will Only Hurt A Little, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper. For spring, I read absolutely nothing. For summer, I read Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. And for autumn, I read Abbi Jacobson’s I Might Regret This and Lindy West’s The Witches Are Coming. So since I read six books all year, I’m counting that as a success since my goal was four.

2. Go to the gym or do some kind of physically strenuous activity at least ten times a month.

I crunched the numbers and let’s just say that I didn’t quite hit my target. This was the first year in a long time that I really just hated going to the gym and I’ve gotta change something about that because I used to love going to my old gym (they had a wicked pilates schedule, but unfortunately closed down). I miss pilates. I hate NYSC. I’ve got to make some changes this year.

3. Juice at least five times a month.

January: 11 times

February: 7 times

March: 8 times

April: 3 times

May: 1 time

June: None

July: 2 times

August: 2 times

September: 9 times

October: 2 times

November: 1 time

December: None

Yikes. I mean… I started off strong and then fully fell off the wagon. Will try harder in 2020.

4. Take Baby Dog on an adventure at least twice a season.

I only managed to take her on only one outing per season. I can do better. I must do better.

5. Properly go on a date with Nathan at least once a month.

I just looked over the entire yearly schedule that I keep and holy shit, we completed this. The only months we didn’t do were October and December which were arguably the busiest ones when I look back at the calendar. This is great! Some of the dates included: dinners, drinks, movies, museums and a Raptors game.

6. Go on an alone trip.

I really, really wanted to do this one but it didn’t pan out because of other trips that were taken. I will do this one day!

7. Clean makeup brushes on the first of each month.

There were only four months that I didn’t do this one! That’s a fucking miracle! And when compared with my numerous zero-times-a-year statistic, I’m counting this one as a raging success.

8. Try at least one new restaurant each month.

January: Emily (love this place, such great pizza, the burger is good but wildly overpriced), Xi’an Famous Foods (really good, one entree is enough for two people for sure), The Dutch (which has one of the best steak tartares in this whole damn city), Tavern On The Green (it was very okay but the service was great) and Dough (too dough-y! Ugh!)

February: Ten Bells (the food was average, the service was surprisingly good since the place is so crowded), Charlie Palmer Steak (nothing great, needn’t go again), The Huntress (great wings and I’m a wing-hater), Scarr’s (too inconsistent, won’t return), Empellon Al Pastor (too expensive for Avenue A, not really worth it), Mama’s TOO! (as good as they say) and Sardi’s (I ordered badly, which is my fault, but the service was impeccable)

March: Manhatta (fantastic for lunch, phenomenal view), Lilia (for my birthday, great pasta, though mafaldini is way too al dente), Pulqueria (pretty good!), Lions & Tigers & Squares Detroit Pizza (just a party, so so good), Raclette (nothing special, won’t return), Al Di La (again, nothing to write home about) and Daily Provisions (big fan, but hate the no-cash aspect)

April: Cactus Club in Etobicoke (fucking in love with the short rib pappardelle)

May: Cronuts at Dominique Ansel Bakery (good but way too sugary) (and yes, I’m six years late to this trend, SUE ME) and La Contenta (disappointing)

June: The Astorian (insanely good poutine - just shockingly good), Chama Mama (decent but there’s no reason to ever go again) and Whit’s End (good but I wish the burger was larger)

July: Misi (it was good, but it’s in Brooklyn so I’ll likely never go again), Pat LaFrieda’s Original Filet Mignon Steak Sandwich (really good for a stadium sandwich) and Village Yokocho (crazy good)

August: I was going to name this one dive-y place that my brother took me to for their calamari but it’s so aggressively average there’s no point in me listing it here, I hope you’re reading this, Robbie.

September: The Happiest Hour (super forgettable, you’d think that a place with this name would have cheapish food/drinks, THINK AGAIN) and Bar Sardine (hard pass)

October: Fish by José Andrés (one of the best meals I’ve ever had, the service was perfect), Drago’s (charbroiled oysters aren’t for everyone), Commander’s Palace (very lovely), Luke (great oyster happy hour), Mr. B’s Bistro (great service, great food), Brennan’s (the bananas foster is much too sweet but the performance of making it is fun?), Meril (decent), Delmonico (the service was so odd and not good and the food was equally unimpressive)

November: Mister Paradise (complete bullshit) and Joe & Pat’s (the service is laughably mean/bad, which is fine since the pizza is the most average slice in maybe the whole city? Staten Island can keep it)

December: Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecake (weird, kind of fun, but ultimately nothing special)

9. Limit online shopping to once a month (exception being Christmas).

I think I was actually pretty great at doing this. It helped that I developed an intense hatred for Amazon specifically, so this really worked out.

10. Write for at least two hours per week & submit pieces to publications at least five times each month.

Now this? This makes me feel like shit. I’m going to make this resolution again and try my goddam best to keep it. No more excuses.  I sporadically did this on and off all year but man… this is the year. I’m gonna do it this year.

2019 was really a great year. Thank you so much for continuing to read all of the thoughts that I post on here, it really does means more to me than you’ll ever know.

[pushbreezango]

RULES: Tagged? Write a note with 92 truths about you! Tag 25 people.

I was tagged by @codyscurll

LAST:

LAST THING I BOUGHT: A chicken burger at Hungry Jack’s 

LAST STORE I VISITED: Probably Red Dot or some discount store

LAST TEXT MESSAGE: My dad texting me at 11:30pm asking whether I was on the way home from the wrestling last night

LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO: Excluding songs that were in youtube videos i may have watched today, it was probably Good Dirty Fun on the way home last night

LAST THING I ATE: A bowl full of diced bell pepper

HAVE YOU EVER:

DATED SOMEONE TWICE: Probably not in the way this question means?

BEEN CHEATED ON: Nah

KISSED SOMEONE AND REGRETTED IT: Don’t think so

LOST SOMEONE SPECIAL: Ye

BEEN DEPRESSED: Only most of my life

BEEN DRUNK AND THROWN UP: Nope

IN THE PAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

MADE A NEW FRIEND: Many :D (shout out to the Breezango Chat for newest online friends)

FALLEN OUT OF LOVE: No

LAUGHED UNTIL YOU CRIED: Absolutely

MET SOMEONE WHO CHANGED YOU: Maybe?

FOUND OUT WHO YOUR TRUE FRIENDS WERE: Probably not

FOUND OUT SOMEONE WAS TALKING ABOUT YOU: I mean that happened yesterday when the ring announcer told me that the kids near his table kept asking whether I was a cop

GENERAL:

HOW MANY PEOPLE ON TUMBLR DO YOU KNOW IN REAL LIFE?: Over a hundred

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?: Nope, just The Boys (my friend and I feed pigeons and call them our boys)

DO YOU WANT TO CHANGE YOUR NAME?: Yup. Gonna be Kristopher. 

WHAT TIME DID YOU WAKE UP THIS MORNING?: Like noon

WHAT WERE YOU DOING LAST NIGHT?: I volunteered at a wrestling show and I had a nice bath afterwards. The doors opened at 6:30, show started at 7:00, had about 7 matches on the card, finished before 10, clearing up finished at 11-ish and it took me over an hour to get home

NAME SOMETHING YOU CAN’T WAIT FOR: Seeing my fiance again. 70 and a half more days. 

HAVE YOU EVER MET SOMEONE NAMED TOM?: Yep. My partner’s best friends. 

WHAT’S GETTING ON YOUR NERVES RN?: Only having a week off school, having more people in my house for a month and not having the ability to concentrate to get things done in a timely manner. 

BLOOD TYPE: A-

NICKNAME: Kris kind of was a nickname. My friend called me Prince Pretty a couple weeks ago. Nicknames don’t stick to me very well. 

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Engaged

ZODIAC SIGN: Aires

PRONOUNS: They/them or he/him (in that order of preference)

FAVORITE TV SHOW: It really depends cus it’s kind of genre-dependent and what I’m feeling. I mean I’m big into wrestling, but also I want it to be better. Safest answer is Avatar: the Last Airbender because it’s a near-perfect show.

COLLEGE: I go back tomorrow and I’m 2 whole assignments behind but we’re starting new ones. Time to scream. 

HAIR COLOR: Dark brown. Kind of miss the hot pink/turquoise streaks but I have a least 3 occasions in the next 2 months where I’m cosplaying Breezango. 

LONG OR SHORT: Short

DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON SOMEBODY: I mean I have a fiance. 

FIRSTS:

FIRST SURGERY: Don’t think that having my tongue snipped counts (I was born tongue-tied) so my first surgery was June 15, 2007 on both my legs to lengthen the calf muscles and Achilles tendons

FIRST PIERCING: Ears for my 8th birthday. My dad said I couldn’t get them done until I was 16 but I was a stubborn child. 

FIRST BEST FRIEND: Kerry, Dexter, Kaylie or Jessica. They all lived in my neighbourhood and I don’t know what order I met them in. 

FIRST SPORT YOU JOINED: Probably like tee ball or figure skating

FIRST VACATION: I mean the first trip I went on was probably to Ontario because that’s where I got baptised but as far as being able to form memories, it was statistically Vancouver because my family went there every summer

FIRST PAIR OF SNEAKERS: I was very very young and wouldn’t remember

I ASSUME THESE ARE A DIFFERENT CATEGORY

EATING: I ate pizza since earlier in doing this

DRINKING: Water

I’M ABOUT TO: Probably take a picture for the insty-gram

LISTENING TO: FUCK MY HEADPHONES ARE ON AND NOTHING IS PLAYING

WANT KIDS: Nooooooooope

GET MARRIED: Hell yeah. Gonna marry my cutie fiance. Excited. Probably won’t be for a couple years tho. 

CAREER: Dunno. Something that doesn’t suck? I’d love to get back to selling adult toys. I’m enjoying helping with wrestling and selling stickers. 

WHICH IS BETTER:

LIPS OR EYES: Eyes

HUGS OR KISSES: All about that hug life but why not both

SHORTER OR TALLER: No strong preference but my fiance is a tall boy

OLDER OR YOUNGER: I’ve never liked anyone older than me but all the ppl I’ve liked have been less than 4 months younger than me. 

ROMANTIC OR SPONTEANOUS: Romantic

SENSITIVE OR LOUD: Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief

HOOK UP OR RELATIONSHIP: Relationship obv

TROUBLEMAKER OR HESITANT: Hesitant

HAVE YOU EVER:

KISSED A STRANGER: Nope

DRANK HARD LIQUOR: Yep

LOST GLASSES/CONTACTS: Not for any amount of time

SEX ON THE FIRST DATE: I’m ace as fuck and haven’t done the do

BROKEN SOMEONE’S HEART: Not to my knowledge

BEEN ARRESTED: Nop

TURNED SOMEONE DOWN: Not really?

FALLEN FOR A FRIEND: Hardcore. 

DO YOU BELIEVE:

IN YOURSELF: I mean I’m very confident in many ways?

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: Not really. Instant infatuation sure. 

HEAVEN: Not really

SANTA CLAUS: No but I like all the stories. 

I’m tagging @littlekiwi37-archive, @heelgrendel @proceduralbob @breezesdango @silly-luke-skywalker @thshield

[ficdirectory]

The Fosters: Our Thoughts on Episode 5x02 “Exterminate Her”

We’re back for more of our thoughts on this week’s Fosters.  As usual, check out @tarajean621‘s thoughts on Jesus and brain injury representation in italics below:

You Know What Could Have Happened, Callie?/Honey, She Was Terrified:  I can totally understand Callie wanting to focus on the good side of things.  I’m sure she is keenly aware of just how badly things could have gone.  And Stef being short with her and Lena taking the time to explain how scared Stef was rings so true to Real Stuff Parents Do.

This Is Nothing to Celebrate!/Surprise!  And, naturally, all the charges are dropped.  But how awkward is this surprise party led by Robert?  Especially Mariana leading her brothers in a rousing chant of “hip hip hooray” because “our sister’s a hero!”  So cute, though.

How Long Are You Gonna Stop Speaking to Your Brother?/How Long Are You Gonna Stop Speaking to Mariana?  I missed this part somehow when it first aired.  

How’s The Treehouse Going?  Has She Taken Over Yet?/No, She Just Found Us a Tree:  Wow, everyone’s crabby today, aren’t they?  Settle down, Emma.  Only a few more days and you can be really far away from Mariana.  (And Jesus.  I wonder how that will go?)

Hey, Can I Talk to You for a Second?/Uh, Yeah, Sure:  I hate that everyone is now actively fearing Jesus.  It’s especially disheartening seeing Mariana react out of fear here.  And the camera stays with Brandon as he jumps and then leaves the table. I’d love for the assumption that Jesus now resides at Intimidation Station to not be a thing.

I have been looking for statistics on how likely it is that people with TBIs assault their caregivers, since this seems to be the slant the writers are taking with 5A.  I could not come up with one link.  

I did, however, find pages of links (over 3 million results) about disabled abuse and victimization.  

One source says that disabled people are 4-10 times more likely to be victims of violence, abuse or neglect than nondisabled people.  It goes on to share why people living with TBIs are likely to encounter victimization - the list includes the use of undue force (which I covered last week when Gabe restrained Jesus), caregivers misperceptions about TBI leading to abuse or not believing us when we report abuse, or having to endure abuse “in return for” help with tasks of daily living.

Definitely.  In just existing as a disabled person and talking to others who are, I can say that everybody I know who is disabled, has, at some point, been abused.  (Usually, this is by a caregiver.)  Another source I found on the maltreatment of children with disabilities states that:

“Children with disabilities may have increased vulnerability to abuse because...[they] may be perceived as less valuable than other children. Their reports may not be considered trustworthy. Discipline may be more punitive and accompanied by a lack of respect.”

So, I’ve Been Thinking and I Wanna Do My Senior Project By Myself/Well, You Can’t:  Um.  Wow, Mariana.  Maybe you should have been honest with Jesus from the start about this.

Yes, this might have been a more timely conversation weeks ago.  Although, it was really up to Moms and Drew to deliver this news to Jesus, so Mariana is not the only one to blame here.

I’m Gonna Talk to Drew Myself and See What He Says:  You pretty much have to, Jesus.  It’s the only way you’re guaranteed the truth.  

But wait, if Jesus speaks to Drew all on his own, who will Drew look to if there is not a suitable nondisabled person present? <-- Sarcasm

Was This Emma’s Idea?/No.  I Just Need to Prove That I Can Do Something on My Own:  Of course, Jesus would feel strongly about this.  His family doesn’t respect him as he is.  It makes sense for him to feel like he has to prove his capability to get them to take him seriously.  Nothing else is working.

Our society views productivity as the be-all and end-all.  You go to school to produce meaningful work so that you can graduate and get a job, thus becoming a contributing member of society.  You are useful and worthy then.  Jesus feels like he needs to produce a meaningful senior project without help to be seen as useful and worthy again.  And it doesn’t hurt that it might earn him points with Emma to distance himself from Mariana.

I Just Wanna Help/I Don’t Need Your Help/Well, We Do/So You Want Me To Go Live with Robert?  Honestly, though, what else is Callie supposed to think?  Moms are pretty much saying she is too much for them and they need backup to handle her.  

Callie, We Love You But There is Only So Much That We Can Do For You:   I guarantee you the only part of Lena’s sentence that Callie heard was “We love you, but...” which feels exactly like, “We don’t love you,” or “We used to love you, but don’t anymore.”  (Please think about what you’re saying Moms, these words will stick.)  

You Need to Decide Who You Want to Be Going Forward, Because This Girl is Not Acceptable:  OMG talk about a back-to-back gut-punch!  Jeez...  What is Callie supposed to do with a statement like this?  She is who she is.  She can’t change who she is.  She has had a ton of stuff happen to her before she ever came to Stef and Lena.  That all impacts who she is and her decision making process.   

This morning I read an article called 3 Reasons Traditional Parenting Doesn’t Work With Kids From Trauma.  Callie has lived months as an adopted child, as opposed to 7 years in foster care.  She is in survival mode all the time, and completely shut down during Moms’ and Robert’s lecture.

I’ve heard similar remarks as an adoptee myself and that is exactly how they resonate.  Moms’ words must feel like such a rejection.

After This Last Thing With Callie, I Just Don’t Know What To Do/I Know That Was So Awful For You.  I’m So Sorry.  How Can I Help?  What Can I Do?  This is probably a bit of a raw wound for me personally, because Stef absolutely needs and deserves comfort.  But it feels so jarring to see this scene after the previous two with Moms and Callie.

Lena excused Stef’s anger at Callie in the car when Stef talked about how Callie could have been beaten or raped (she has experienced both in foster care, Stef.)  Then the lecture.  But we just don’t see that level of love and support for Callie herself.  Nobody is asking Callie “How can I help?”  or “What can I do?”

I Need You to Say You Can’t Help Unless It’s Both Our Projects, Because You Can’t Choose Sides: Mariana, I get that you are always at least 25 billion steps ahead, seeing every possible bad eventuality but you need to try to reign in this impulse to manipulate the adults in your world.  Maybe talk about that in therapy?  (But speaking of Kids Who Came From Trauma...pretty textbook behavior.)

(On the positive side, give Brandon Quinn all the points for the physical comedy of trying to put those jeans on!  So funny!)

He’s Lucky I Didn’t Suspend Him/And You’re Lucky I Don’t Sue You.  And The School:  Yes, Lena!  (Also how gross is that pro-privatization piece in the ABCC school paper?)

Portfolio?/Your Body of Work:  I find it hard to believe that Callie would have zero idea of what a portfolio is, but maybe she doesn’t hang around a lot of art students?

Mariana Just Told Me That This Treehouse Project is Approved for Her and Not Jesus Because He Might Not Be a Senior Next Year?  It was news to me, too, Gabe!  I’ve literally been thinking (for months) that Mariana went in to support Jesus for his senior project.  That it was his meeting.  And that when it was not approved for him that was the end of it, but Mariana couldn’t let it go, so she lied and said it had to be both of their projects.

But Jesus Has No Idea, Right?/We Don’t Want to Frighten Him with All the What-Ifs/Keeping Things From Him Blew Up in a Pretty Big Way:  I mean, Gabe’s not wrong...

Dean Bayfield:  Well, hello, new neighbor.  Looks like Stef’s a little tongue-tied around you...

When Do They Send the Paper to the Printer?/They Already Did/What If It Caught an Error and Sent a New File?  Mariana Adams Foster...put that big, beautiful brain of yours to good use and be careful.  (I’m so proud!  But I’m so conflicted about being proud!)

Pick Up Your Senior Project/Toss It:  This Girl Is Not Acceptable.

The Art Professor...is Gonna Let Me Audit Her Class and Help Me Put Together My Portfolio/That’s Amazing:  This Mama Sandwich for Callie is so bittersweet because she looks so relieved that they still love her.  

Do Think I’d Be Better at Scooping Ice Cream or Flipping Burgers?/That Depends.  You’d Be So Bad at Both:  OMG Callie!  Hahahaha!

Maybe This Could Be My Still Life.  I’m Salty, Right?  Why would she want to find an object that defines her if the girl she is is not acceptable?  No wonder she is struggling so hard with this.

I Used to Blow Dry My Hair Straight, Too, Mariana.  It’s Called Time-Management:  These are the moments that I love.  Because Mariana’s hair is not a lost issue, and Lena remains supportive about it, giving Mariana advice from her own experience.

We Have 5 Teenagers/Oh God Bless You!  We Just Have the One:  Hahaha!  I love Theresa!

A Good Basic Case With All the Essentials:  Can’t go to art school without supplies!  

The Article Doesn’t Appear to Quote You or Anyone on the Administration.  It’s Just One Kid’s Opinion, Right?  OMG Lena, I love you!  Also, check out the screencap Tara got of the article in the Sea Breeze!  Love that it cites IDEA and points out what this article says, in part, which is “ If the private...school does not accept any federal funding, then the school is not required to provide accommodations” to students with disabilities.

What Did You Bring to Sketch?/I Think I’m Just Gonna Sketch My New Art Set:  Because nothing says Callie like an art set you got 10 minutes ago... :(

Grace!  Are You Okay?  Are You Hurt?  Why Are You Handcuffed to the Bed?!  Brandon, your reaction to Grace here was, hands down, my favorite part of the episode.  You give me hope for humanity in this moment.

Otherwise, Why Would You Be Here?  I also love Ximena!  There is such a shortage of positive female friendships depicted on TV that I would love to see Callie and Ximena develop one.  But it looks like Ximena’s complimentary question to Callie isn’t sitting quite right...

It’s For This Foster Family That Has, Like 12 Kids.  Some of Them Are Special Needs:  First of all, it seems illegal that one family would have 12 foster kids at once?  And secondly?  Pretty much no one in the disability community likes the term ‘special needs.’  

Since I Got This TBI, People Treat Me Like I’M Special Needs:  So revealing there, Jesus.  I always say, the hardest part about being disabled isn’t the disability, it’s the way we’re treated as inferior.  I imagine that dealing with a sudden disability as Jesus is, that feeling is even stronger.  (And I can’t shake the feeling that the ‘people’ Jesus is referring to is his family.  And honestly, nobody should be treated like they’re less when they’re disabled, especially by family.  It’s bad enough to experience it in general society.)

Having a brain injury is not a bad thing, but it does take some adjustment.  The way Jesus says, “People treat me like I am special needs” is revealing, as Tonia pointed out.  People treat him like a pile of unreasonable demands - like a list of symptoms - instead of as a human being who has a brain injury.

Talk to Your Moms/All They Do is Lie to Me and Keep Secrets.  They Aren’t Going to Tell Me.  So, What Is It? I can’t say I wouldn’t be making the same call Gabe ends up making here...and so far, Gabe is one person whose ableism is at a minimum, and Jesus feels that.  He feels respected by Gabe.  His experience with Moms post-TBI has been that they treat him as less now.  They have lied to him and he doesn’t need anymore of that.  He’s out of the woods, healthwise, he doesn’t need to be ‘protected’ in this manner.

No Longer Funding Any Junior Student’s Senior Projects: Of course you aren’t, Drew...

Did You Talk to My Father?  Robert Quinn?  Oh Lordy, this isn’t gonna end well, is it?  How humiliating for Callie.  Like she needs Robert calling in favors for her to get to audit art school class...

I’m Not Gonna Be a Senior Next Year?/We Don’t Know That, Jesus:  Now Jesus knows, and Stef still won’t give him a straight answer?  Really?  At least tell him what you DO know...

Also, inquiring minds would like to know what IS happening with regard to Jesus and school?  Stef and Lena are both back at work and Jesus is home all day, talking to Gabe as he builds the treehouse.  Lena’s an educator.  School is always on this family’s radar.  Even if Jesus isn’t ready for full days, I’d think a teacher coming to the house for a bit wouldn’t be out of the question.  But school hasn’t even been mentioned by Moms except to say that Jesus is missing a lot, and taking Drew of all people as the expert on post-brain-injury reentry to school.

Jesus, I Need You To Calm Down/No, I Am Not Going To Calm Down/Then You Can Go To Your Room Until You Are Willing To Listen To Me. Now:  

In my opinion, Jesus is not out of bounds or out of control here.  He has a right to be upset, but Stef sends him away.  (Instead of sending Gabe and/or Mariana away so she can have a private conversation with Jesus.)  She tells him to leave until he is willing to listen to her - but Stef is in no way willing to be around his feelings in this moment.

Too often, disabled people are expected to “be nice” in the face of ableism.  And let’s be clear, not telling Jesus about what is going on with his schooling is ableism.  Dismissing Jesus’s current upset?  Also ableism.  

If any of the other kids found out Moms withheld information for weeks about them possibly not being promoted a grade, upset would be an expected reaction.  In Jesus’s case, it is not justified in Mom’s eyes.

I’m Not Going Up There With Him!  Did You See What He Did to Brandon’s Room?  What If He Takes a Baseball Bat to My Head?  Kids learn ableism from their parents...and Stef doesn’t refute Mariana here...  So harmful.  (And also - if Mariana isn’t comfortable going upstairs, the least Stef could do is tell her to go to the living room or something.  Anything so she is not right there when Stef tells Gabe that if he can’t respect Stef and Lena’s authority as the twins’ parents, he’ll have to leave.  Awkward.  And not a conversation for one of the kids to overhear.)

Is This a Bad Time?/Jesus is Up in His Room and I’m Sure He Would Love to See You Right About Now:  Um...  If Jesus is supposed to be being punished or taking a break or whatever, why would you send Emma up there?  (But I have a pretty good idea why.  Disability as a Plot Device, anyone?  Because up until now, Emma was the only person who wasn’t fearful of Jesus.  The choice to send her up there just to witness Jesus throwing things is a conscious choice to continue his ostracization and isolation.  To make sure he has no one to turn to or lean on.  

Notice how this “outburst” comes immediately after being dismissed.  

Also, here is another example of how traditional parenting does not work on kids with traumatic backgrounds.  And a Traumatic Brain Injury is yet another trauma for Jesus to juggle, in addition to his unstable infancy and childhood (until age 8).  Sending Jesus to his room just drives home the fact that he, like Callie, is seen as unacceptable now.   

I Wish I Had Somewhere to Unleash My Beast/You Do.  Your Art:  Jesus, do you hear this?  You and Callie could totally channel all your feelings into art.  That’s what it’s there for, and you’re both good at it.  (I’d actually really like to see this!)

How Did Your Job Interview Go?/I Was Late So I Probably Didn’t Make a Great First Impression:  Yeah, like when your girlfriend calls you with fake emergencies when she KNOWS you have a job interview soon...

Pretty Sure She Was Trying to Have Sex With You/Oh, My God:  I loved this!  Rang so true to me that the adopted kid would totally get what Grace was trying to do with Brandon while Brandon remained innocently oblivious...

I Wanna Try to Be a Senior Next Year, Even If That Means I Have to Go to Summer School/Honey, That’s Really Great to Hear, But Your Senior Project Will Have to Wait Until Then:  Okay but Jesus literally did not say anything about his senior project.  He’s talking about his education right now.  Why does no one take him seriously?  (Oh wait, I know...)

“That’s really great to hear.” What does that even mean?  “That’s really great to hear that you still desire and value an education even though you have a brain injury?” 

It sounds as if that was Lena’s way of possibly skirting the education conversation.   

Because I Got Mad?  Are You Punishing Me?  Of course, it feels like a punishment.

Drew’s Not Funding Any Senior Projects by Juniors/You’re Lying:  Moms, remember Stef’s brilliant take on ‘trust has to be earned?’  I feel like it’s time to work on starting to earn Jesus’s.  Because right now, he can’t trust anything you say, and why should he? 

Also, I’m pretty sure Monte said last episode that Drew isn’t the principal because she hasn’t yet resigned.  So...why is the vote invalid but his word about Jesus’s senior project like signed, sealed and notarized by a judge?)

I Could Probably Get Jesus’s Uncle to Donate/Birth Uncle: This is interesting, because we watched this episode with a friend who adopted her daughter.  And she specifically commented on this scene.  Said she never corrects her daughter when she wonders about her birth mother.  And she felt it was out of place for Moms to correct Gabe here.

I Do Wanna Keep My Senior Project/We Took It to the Dumpster Already:  Ouch, Callie :(

I Didn’t Give Her Any Money, I Just Asked Her to Give You a Chance, But Only If She Believes in You, Which, Obviously, She Does/You Don’t:  Bam.  It’s truth time, by Callie.  And that really is what Robert’s actions communicated.  Instead of helping with her or giving her advice on what to do next, he went behind her back and appealed to the teacher’s pity, and that never feels good.

I Know You All Think That I’m Unacceptable/That’s Not What We Meant/It’s What You Said:  Right, Callie?  And no matter how many other times she is affirmed, those words will be inside her, challenging the love she’s shown.  It’s this thing: anger resonates as the “truest” feeling, while love feels forced.  It’s hard to explain...

When You First Met Me You Told Me I Wasn’t Disposable and I’m Really Trying to Believe That:  We keep track of every single word.

We Don’t Want You to Throw Away Your Past, We Just Want You to Stop Repeating It:  But that might not be entirely in Callie’s control.  How often do we rehash or recreate an aspect of our past in an effort to work through it, or because it feels familiar and that feels safe?  Moms want Callie to feel safe, but safe is new.  And it’s going to take some getting used to.  (Also I’m really glad Lena rescued Callie’s senior project from gettting thrown away.)

So, I’m Not Going to See You Before You Go?/I’m Sorry/I Love--:  Emma’s pulling away so hard and fast.  This sucks.

I really hope that this whole Aggression Is A Symptom storyline does not end up Teaching Jesus A Lesson.

Did Mamas Talk to You About The Treehouse?/I’m Gonna Ask Emma to Do It With Me...If That’s Okay:  Ugh, and the twins aren’t getting along still.  And at this point it seems like working with Emma on the treehouse this year or next is gonna be a bust...

Not being able to connect after an injury is a thing, and I appreciate that it is being depicted.  To add to Tonia’s comment about Emma, we don’t know what is going to happen with them.  He is trying to make things work with his girlfriend while putting Mariana in her place.  We will have to see what happens...

I Guess I Shouldn’t Have Read Fifty Shades of Grey:  Oh, Grace, what a terrible book!

I Don’t Know Where The Keys Are.  I Think They’re Over Here/Okay, I’m Coming:  Hahaha!  Don’t play with handcuffs, Brandon and Grace...or Stef will have to come unlock you...and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

Fearless:  I love Callie showing Ximena her necklace from her mom as her object for her Still Life and I love Ximena’s reaction to it!

Tess/Oh, My God!  Stef!  So, I was in the shower, the morning after this aired, and it occurred to me.  The thing that everybody already knows about who Tess is.  But in case someone hasn’t made the connection.  I realized Tess was Stef’s high school friend who she was cuddling and got caught by Stef’s dad.  Also the reason Stef was sent by her dad to see a priest, who told her being gay was a sin (episode 1x06, I believe.)

For more: Fosters Recaps

[filmfanatic82]

Anything: Chapter 4

AO3 (HERE)

Chapter 4 

“The Avengers.” 

“No way!” Zack snags a few french fries off of Trini’s tray and shovels them into his mouth.

Trini shrugs and continues to pick at her pathetic excuse for a hamburger. “You asked.” 

“Seriously? The Avengers? C’mon. They don’t even have Zords.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’d still kick our asses.” Trini gives up on her hamburger and slides her tray towards Zack. “You want it?”

Zack doesn’t even need to respond. He digs right into the hamburger as if he hasn’t eaten in over a month. 

“How can you even eat that shit?”

“What? It’s food,” Zack replies with a mouth full of burger. “You’re the one that bought it.”

Trini lets a chuckle slip and watches as Zack plows through the rest of the hamburger and fries.

Trini could easily bring her lunch. Hell, she practically has to talk her mom out of packing her one at least three times a week.

But Trini also knows that Zack won’t accept it, if he thinks it something that she’ll actually will eat.

So on days when Zack shows up to school, Trini makes it point to buy something from the cafeteria that she isn’t a big fan of. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. Even the occasional sloppy joe or two. She takes a few bites, all for show, and then eventually pawns it off on Zack who’s always more than will devour it.

Trini feels a bit guilty about having to go to such elaborate lengths, but then again it’s Zack. She’d gladly give up the clothes on her back for him if he needed it.

“Billy! You’re the expert. Who’d win in a knock down, drag out, all of human race is on the line, style battle. Us or the Avengers?” Zack scoots over, allowing Billy to take a seat next to him at the lunch table.

“The Avengers are fictitious.” Billy pulls his lunchbox from his backpack and carefully starts to unload its contents, lining them up in a precise order.

“Yeah. But if they were real. Who’d win?”

Billy stops for a moment, contemplating the hypothetical scenario, and then--

“The Avengers.”

“What??” Zack shoots his head back in a laugh of sheer disbelief. “C’mon. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. We’d so win.”

“Statistically speaking, given their combined super powers and amount of combat experience, we wouldn’t stand a chance against them.”

“Told ya,” Trini mutters with a smirk.

Billy finishes arranging his lunch and then suddenly looks up at Trini as if a thought has just popped into his head. “Trini, you remember that thing you asked me to investigate?”

“Yeah.”

“You were right. Alpha 5 detected a disturbance by the ship’s entrance around the same exact time you saw that flash of green light.”

This strikes Zack’s curiosity. “Green light?”

“What green light?” Jason approaches the table with Kimberly only a few steps behind him.

Trini catches sight of Kimberly and her mind instantly short circuits.

Yellow beanie.

Trini’s signature yellow beanie -- the one that she was sure up until a second ago that she lost -- is there, sitting on top of Kimberly’s head.

And god, does it look absolutely, freaking amazing.

Normally, Trini would throw a full blown tantrum if someone other than herself attempts to wear her beloved beanie. Hell, she almost “accidentally” broke Zack’s nose a few weeks ago when he jokingly attempted to snatch it from her head.

But, for some odd reason… No. Scratch that. It’s not odd at all. Trini knows exactly why she suddenly doesn’t care.

Kimberly Hart could wear her beanie for the rest of eternity and Trini wouldn’t care.

“Trini?” Jason gives Trini a friendly nudge of the shoulder, in a subtle attempt to cue her into the conversation.

Trini snaps out of her thoughts and suddenly notices that all eyes are on her. She shrinks into herself a bit as her cheeks turn a noticeable shade of red. “Sorry. Was distracted. 

“Wonder why?” Zack shoots Trini an all-knowing smile with a slight nod towards Kimberly.

Fuck. 

Trini isn’t the only one who’s noticed the beanie. She knows that she’s going to have to deal with Zack. But not here and definitely not now.

“You saw a green light? When?” Kimberly asks, gently drawing Trini back again.

“The other night at the quarry. It wasn’t anything crazy. Just saw some strange green flash. That’s all. I asked Billy to look into it,” Trini mumbles back. She starts to fidget with one of the strings of her yellow hoodie as her skin crawls from the unwanted attention.  

“Sounds like something. Especially if Alpha 5 confirmed it. Let’s plan on checking in with Zordon before training just to be on the safe side,” Jason responds in-between bites of his sandwich. “The last thing I want is us to be blindsided by another attack.”

Trini fingers instinctively trace over the faint, white lines on her neck at these words. A permanent reminder of what can happen when they are taken off guard. 

She might not be able to control what’s to come, but at least she can be better prepared to fight back this go around.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Trini stares up at the clock, beyond desperate for it to move faster.

30 more minutes.

30 more minutes until she’s free from her daily torture session… otherwise known as AP European History. 

30 more minutes and then she gets to see Kimberly, albeit only briefly, but still it’s better than nothing.

Trini glances back up at the clock again and to her dismay, the second hand appears to have completely stopped moving altogether. 

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me,” Trini mutters under her breath. She slumps her head into her hands and lets out a semi-frustrated sigh.

BUZZ.

Trini perks up, reaches into her pocket and ever so discreetly, pulls out her phone.

PinkPrincess: Whatcha up to? 

SaberToothTrini: Death by AP boredom. Y?

PinkPrincess: Come meet me.

SaberToothTrini: Where? 

PinkPrincess: Girls bathroom by our lockers.

Trini sinks her teeth into her bottom lip as she re-reads the last text.

It’s only been 48 hours since that moment in Kimberly’s room. The singular moment where everything that Trini had known to be true had been blown to bits.

48 hours and they still haven’t really talked about it… Not like they have had an actual chance to anyways.  

Only a mere second after they had kissed, were they interrupted by a barrage of texts from Jason and then Billy and followed by Zack, reminding them that they were already late for training.

And that had been it.  No discussion -- or even actual acknowledgement -- of that moment ever since.

Regardless of that, though, Trini knows, deep down inside that everything between her and Kimberly has seemingly changed due to that one kiss.

But the real question is… has it changed for the better?

Only one way to find out.

Trini types a quick response and hits send.

SaberToothTrini: Be there in three.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Kim?” Trini calls out as she pushes open the bathroom. She cautiously takes a step inside and--

BAM. 

Trini suddenly finds herself pinned up against the cold tile wall with Kimberly’s lips savagely attacking her own.

Holy shit… Holy shit… Holy shit…

Trini’s sure she’s died and gone to heaven. There’s no other way to explain it. She’s up and died, smack dab in the middle of the girls bathroom, and now experiencing what can only be described as the afterlife… the one where she gets to re-enact all of her wildest -- including the non-PG rated ones -- Kimberly Hart fantasies for all of eternity.

Yup. That’s exactly what is happening.

Because there’s no way that Kimberly Hart is actually kissing her... here in this bathroom... like this. 

Kimberly’s tongue playfully swipes against Trini’s bottom lip and Trini can’t help but grant it access.

Trini lets a moan escape into Kimberly’s mouth as their tongues brazenly explore this new frontier. She snakes her fingers into Kimberly’s short, wavy locks in an effort to pull her closer.  

Kissing Kimberly is nothing short of intoxicating and Trini can’t seem to get enough of it.

After a few more moments--

or could be minutes... Trini has seemingly lost the ability to sense time.

-- Kimberly pulls back out of the kiss with a light nip of Trini’s bottom lip and flashes a coy smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Trini manages to squeak out, still trying to catch her breath.

“God, I’ve been waiting to do that all day.” Kimberly gingerly reaches out and tucks a loose strand of hair behind Trini’s ear.

“Hide out in the bathroom like a gigantic creep and surprise attack me?”

“Yes. Totally.”

“Thought so.” Trini straightens herself up a bit as her trademark smirk cross her lips. She's desperate to give some sort of air of confidence even if it's at best an illusion. “So you gonna tell me why you summoned me here or--”

“Do you trust me?” Kimberly interjects with a slight hint of nervousness to her voice.

Kimberly Hart nervous? No… That can’t be right.

Kimberly is many things. Calm. Cool. Collected. But nervous?

This is new and Trini can’t help but find it more than slightly intriguing.

“Depends. What do you have in mind?”

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“One more left. You want it?” Kimberly offers up a practically empty package of Oreos to Trini.

“All yours, Princess,” Trini replies, rolling over onto her back the picnic blanket. She stretches a bit, lazily placing her hands behind her head and lets out a post junk food binge groan.

Kimberly pops the last Oreo into her mouth and then lays down next to Trini. “I can’t move.”

“That makes two of us.”

Trini and Kimberly lay side by side in a comfortable silence, surrounded by a small sea of candy wrappers and chip bags.

When Kimberly had told Trini that she had a surprise planned for them, this was the last thing she had in mind. But then again, Trini really hadn’t had any idea at all…

Just the sheer notion that Kimberly had planned something, let alone it being an impromptu picnic in the park, was completely and utterly incomprehensible to Trini.

And now, even two hours later, Trini still finds that she can’t fully wrap her head around it.  

It’s safe to say that Kimberly isn’t straight. That’s for sure. But what is she… and more importantly, what is this?

An experiment? Another impulsive act of rebellion?

Sure, Trini isn’t a fan of labels but still, what if--

“I can hear you thinking.” Kimberly props herself up on one elbow and locks eyes with Trini. “Care to share?”

Share?

How the hell is she supposed to share? Trini can’t even seem to form a singular, coherent thought internally, let alone be able to express it out loud to Kimberly.

What if she says the wrong thing? 

What if she has a case of word vomit and then can’t take it back? 

What if-- 

“Trini,” Kimberly gently whispers. Her fingertips graze Trini’s forearm, drawing soothing circles into her skin. “You know you can tell me anything, right? Anything at all.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Then what’s--”

“What are we doing?” Trini blurts out, before Kimberly can even finish her sentence. She shuts her eyes as a wave of instant regret washes over her.

“We’re currently laying in the park, when we should be in eighth period. 

“No, I mean…”

“I know what you mean.”

Another silence creeps in between the two of them, but this time it’s anything but comfortable. 

As each moment passes, Trini can feel her internal level of regret rise higher and higher. She should’ve never said anything at all. Just kept her big, fat mouth shut and just enjoyed herself.

It’s not exactly everyday that a real live goddess, up and surprises her with a--

“Trini, I’m Bi.”

“Huh?” Trini shoots straight up into a sitting position in absolute and utter shock. “You’re… But you never said anything?

“You never asked.” 

“Sorry. I don’t normally go around asking people their sexuality,” Trini mutters with an underlying level of sarcasm. She knows it’s more than a bit dicky of a response, but can’t help it. It’s her go to coping mechanism. “ I just--”

“Assumed I was straight?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I’m not.” Kimberly exhales with a sigh and tucks her hair behind her ears.

“Who knows?”

“It’s more like, who doesn’t.”

Trini searches Kimberly’s face for a further explanation. 

Is she joking? She has to be joking because Trini would’ve known otherwise. There’s no way she could’ve ever missed something like this.

“I came out to my parents roughly two years ago. And most of the school more or less knows. Or at least they suspect it. Especially after the whole Amanda thing.”

“Amanda? Wait. You didn’t…” Trini trails off, almost too scared to finish her own sentence.

 Kimberly sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and gives the slightest of nods. “Yeah. Not my proudest of moments. We drunkenly hooked up once or twice while Ty and I were on a break. But it wasn’t…”

“That makes way more sense.”

“What does?”

“The photo.”

Kimberly can’t help but let a light laugh slip at this. “What do you mean? Don’t totally platonic best friends send each other nudes all the time?”

“Sure. I get like three or four a day from Zack,” Trini quips back with a smirk.

“Ugh. Bad mental.” Kimberly shudders in slight disgust. She sits up and scoots a bit closer to Trini, allowing for their bodies to lightly touch.

“Wait. So Jason, Billy, and Zack… They know?”

“Not sure about Zack or Billy, but Jase definitely does. I think he might go insane though if I talk to him one more time about you.”

“You talk about me?”

“Try obsess.” A faint but noticeable reddish hue spreads across Kimberly’s cheeks.

Obsess.

Such a small word but yet can carry such a wide arrange of meanings.

Trini can’t help but wonder if Kimberly means it in the “can’t eat, can’t sleep, or even breath” sorta way or in the “it’s my latest infatuation” sorta way.

Trini starts to open her mouth, but is suddenly interrupted by- 

BUZZ. 

Both Trini and Kimberly simultaneously reach for their phones and check their screen.

“Jase?” Kimberly asked Trini, after taking a moment to read the incoming text.

 “Yeah. Looks like we’re needed.”

 Kimberly hops up to her feet, stretches and then offers her hand to Trini, helping her get up. “To be continued?” 

“Whatever you say, Princess.”

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 

“Hey. What’s going on? Thought we weren’t meeting til 4?” Trini gathers up her wet locks into a sloppy bun and wrings out the excess water from her the edges of her shirt.

“Change of plans. Zordon said he needed to talk with us asap,” Jason responds as he comes to greet Trini and Kimberly at edge of the entrance pool. “C’mon. The guys are already here.”

As Trini starts to follow Jason towards the morphing grid, she feels Kimberly’s hand delicately rub over the slightly overgrown stubble of her undercut, sending a fiery chill down her spine and straight into her core.

God, does Kimberly Hart have magic fingers...

“Finally. Where have you guys…” Zack trails off at the sight of Trini and Kimberly. He spots Kimberly’s hand and a massive grin spreads across his face. “Ahhh.”

“Don’t,” Trini grumbles back at Zack. She knows where he’s going and it isn’t any place good.

“Ah, Master Trini and Master Kimberly. You’re here.” Alpha 5 scurries into the morphing grid in an extra frazzled state. “Zordon… Zordon… They’re here.”

Trini will never get used to the sight of Zordon, nothing more than a giant body less head, popping up into a wall and talking to them.

Sure, it’s 100% less freaky now than it was a few months ago, but none the less… It still is anything but normal.

“Thank you, Alpha 5,” Zordon responds and then tilts his head to address the rest of them. “As you know, there was a disturbance detected right outside of the ship’s entrance a few nights ago. From our early analysis, the source appears to be both of human and alien origin.”

“Like a hybrid?” Billy questions in slight confusion.

“Not exactly, no. The data shows that the origin of the disturbance came from someone who has been overtaken by an alien presence.”

“You’re talking possession, right?”

“Yes, Jason. Exactly that. Whoever this person is, it appears that they’ve been possessed by an alien life force.”

“You mean Rita,” Trini ever so quietly speaks up.

“Possibly, yes.”

“I don’t get it. We defeated her. Trini bitch slapped her into space,” Kimberly asks, trying desperately to make sense of what’s being said.

“There’s a strong likelihood that right before you kids battled Rita, she transferred a part of her essence into an everyday object in order to protect herself from this very scenario.”

“Oh! Like a horcrux!”  Billy beams ear to ear with a slight level of pride.

“I’m afraid I do not know that reference, Billy.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason responds, shooting Billy a “I love you but sometimes you are just too much” stare. “So, what you’re saying is Rita’s back and we she could be anyone?”

“Fuckin’ fantastic,” Trini mumbles under her breath.

Before Trini can say or do anything else, she feels Kimberly’s hand entwine with with her own and give a light but reassuring squeeze. 

And just like that, Trini knows that this go around will be different. She’s 100% sure of it.  

This time around, she won’t be facing Rita alone.

[weramblers]

We give you top reasons to visit the Annapurna Circuit Trek

The Annapurna Circuit with Tilicho Lake is the most mesmerizing, splendid, adventurous and diversified trek in Nepal. One of the most popular treks, it allows one to experience breathtakingly beautiful sceneries, diverse ecosystems, different landscapes and Hindu and Buddhist culture. There are several reasons for the popularity of the Annapurna Trek among the trekkers. Whether you love the local food, local culture, ease of the trek or the decent accommodation, you will get multiple reasons to trek this one.

Besides the several attractions, the travelers also get to visit the Tilicho Lake. It is located at an elevation of 4919m and is recognized as the highest lake in the world. The other major attractions of the Annapurna Trek include the Annapurna at 8097m, Dhaulagiri at 8167m, Machhapuchhre, Manaslu, and Tukuche among the other high peaks in the Annapurna region.

Statistics of the Annapurna Circuit Trek

·         Located in: Central Nepal

·         Total distance of the trek: It varies from 170km to 230km depending on the route that one takes up.

·         The number of days required for the trek: Between 16 to 20 days

·         Highest point in the entire trek: The Thorong La Pass that is 5416m or 17,769 ft.

·         The height of the Annapurna 1 main: 8091m, it is the highest mountain in the Annapurna massif.

Why Annapurna Circuit Trek is worth a visit?

1.      You must trek the Annapurna circuit for some incredible scenery. ‘The never seen before’ becomes an absolute truth on this breathtaking terrain. From lush green paddy fields, to different terrains and ecosystems, from beautiful landscapes to sceneries and from visiting the world’s biggest mountain pass to the highest lake in the world, there is nothing else that one can ask for!

2.      While any trek will require you to have standard fitness, trekking the Annapurna Circuit Trek does not require a marathon fitness which is indispensable in other treks such as the Everest Base Camp Treks.

3.      The guesthouses and the teahouses are easily available on the entire trek and they are pretty decent too, so accommodation is never a problem right from the beginning to the end of the trek.

4.      You can hike the Annapurna Trek all by yourself or just with a close friend. It is not necessary to be a part of an organized travel group to trek the popular Annapurna Circuit.

5.      The Annapurna Circuit with Tilicho Lake covers all the climatic zones so you can be sure that you will enjoy the 4 different seasons in one trek. From the balmy temperatures in the preliminary days to brutally cold winds in the latter, you can enjoy them all.

6.      The Annapurna trek is an affordable trek when it comes to the cost. If you are travelling in a group, remember that all your expenses are covered except the day to day meals and the respective tips.

7.      Travelling all these kilometers up, you might think finding good food will be a treat but that’s not true at all. The food available here is not just varied but it will also surprise your taste buds forever. From soups, seasonal veggies, momos, the mandatory Dal Bhat to the unexpected Yak Burger, you will get everything here at the Annapurna Circuit with Tilicho Lake!

It is for a reason that this one forms one of the most popular treks across the world. It is only here that you get to experience a unique blend of culture and nature. The side trip of the famous Tilicho Lake is only a Tiara that sits high on the trek and completes it in a sense.

[jeroldlockettus]

The Future of Meat (Ep. 367)

Over 40 percent of the land in the contiguous U.S. is used for cow farming. Can scientists build a more sustainable burger? (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty)

Global demand for beef, chicken, and pork continues to rise. So do concerns about environmental and other costs. Will reconciling these two forces be possible — or, even better, Impossible

?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

Let’s begin with a few basic facts. Fact No. 1: a lot of people, all over the world, really like to eat meat — especially beef, pork, and chicken.

Jayson LUSK: If you add them all together, we’re actually higher than we’ve been in recent history.

That’s Jayson Lusk.

LUSK: I’m a professor and head of the agricultural economics department at Purdue University. I study what we eat and why we eat it.

DUBNER: In terms of overall meat consumption per capita in the U.S., how do we rank worldwide?

LUSK: We’re the king of meat eaters. So, compared to almost any other country in the world, we eat more meat per capita.

DUBNER: Even Brazil, Argentina, yes?

LUSK: Yes, and part of that difference is income-based. So, if you took Argentina, Brazil, and adjusted for income, they would probably be consuming more than us, but we happen to be richer, so we eat a little more.

The average American consumes roughly 200 pounds of meat a year. That’s an average. So, let’s say you’re a meat eater and someone in your family is vegetarian: you might be putting away 400 pounds a year. But, in America at least, there aren’t that many vegetarians.

LUSK: I probably have the largest data set of vegetarians of any other researcher that I know.

DUBNER: Really? Why?

LUSK: I’ve been doing a survey of U.S. food consumers every month for about five years, and one of the questions I ask is, “Are you a vegan or a vegetarian?” So, over five years’ time and about 1,000 people a month, I’ve got about 60,000 observations.

DUBNER: Wow. And is this a nationwide data survey?

LUSK: It is. Representative in terms of age and income and education. I’d say on average, you’re looking at about three to five percent of people say “yes” to that question. I’d say there’s a very slight uptick over the last five years.

So, again, a lot of meat-eating in America. What are some other countries that consume a lot of meat? Australia and New Zealand, Israel, Canada, Russia, most European countries. And, increasingly, China.

LUSK: One of the things we know is that when consumers get a little more income in their pocket, one of the first things they do is want to add high-value proteins to their diets.

DUBNER: What is the relationship generally between G.D.P. and meat consumption?

LUSK: Positive, although sort of diminishing returns, so as you get to really high income levels, it might even tail off a little bit. But certainly at the lower end of that spectrum, as a country grows and adds more G.D.P., you start to see some pretty rapid increases in meat consumption.

Meat consumption is of course driven by social and religious factors as well; by health concerns, and animal welfare: not everyone agrees that humans should be eating animals at all. That said, we should probably assume that the demand for meat will continue to rise as more of the world keeps getting richer. How’s the supply side doing with this increased demand? Quite well. The meat industry is massive and complicated — and often heavily subsidized. But, long story short, if you go by the availability of meat and especially what consumers pay, this is an economic success story.

LUSK: So prices of almost all of our meat products have declined pretty considerably over the last 60 to 100 years. And the reason is that we have become so much more productive at producing meat. If you look at most of the statistics, like the amount of pork produced per sow. And we’ve taken out a lot of the seasonal variation that we used to see, as these animals have been brought indoors. And you look at poultry production, broiler production: the amount of meat that’s produced per broiler has risen dramatically — almost doubled, say — over the last 50 to 100 years, while also consuming slightly less feed.

That’s due largely to selective breeding and other technologies. The same goes for beef production.

LUSK: We get a lot more meat per animal, for example, on a smaller amount of land.

As you can imagine, people concerned with animal welfare may not celebrate these efficiency improvements. And then there’s the argument that, despite these efficiency improvements, turning animals into food is wildly inefficient.

Pat BROWN: Because the cow didn’t evolve to be meat. That’s the thing.

Pat Brown is a long-time Stanford biomedical researcher who’s done groundbreaking work in genetics.

BROWN: The cow evolved to be a cow and make more cows and not to be eaten by humans. And it’s not very good at making meat.

Meaning: it takes an enormous amount of food and water and other resources to turn a cow or a pig into dinner — much more than plant-based foods. And as Pat Brown sees it, that is not even the worst of it.

BROWN: The most environmentally destructive technology on earth: using animals in food production. Nothing else even comes close.

Not everyone agrees that meat production is the environment’s biggest enemy. What’s not in dispute is that global demand for meat is high and rising. And that the production of meat is resource-intensive and, at the very least, an environmental challenge, with implications for climate change. Pat Brown thinks he has a solution to these problems. He’s started a company—

BROWN: —a company whose mission is to completely replace animals as a food production technology by 2035.

The meat industry, as you can imagine, has other ideas:

Kelly FOGARTY: We want to keep the term “meat” to what is traditionally harvested and raised in the traditional manner.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: everything you always wanted to know about meat, about meatless meat, and where meat meets the future.

*      *      *

What determines which food you put in your mouth every day? There are plainly a lot of factors: personal preference, tradition, geography, on and on.

LUSK: So, take something like horse consumption. It’s almost unheard of to even think about consuming a horse in the United States.

Jayson Lusk again, the agricultural economist.

LUSK: Whereas, you go to Belgium or France, it would be a commonly consumed dish.

But there’s another big factor that determines who eats what: technology. Technology related to how food is grown, preserved, transported. But also: technology that isn’t even related to the food itself. Consider the case of mutton. Mutton is the meat of an adult sheep. The meat of a young sheep is called lamb. I am willing to bet that you have not eaten mutton in the last six months, probably the last six years. Maybe never. But if we were talking 100 years ago? Different story.

LUSK: It’s certainly the case that back in the 1920’s and 30’s that mutton was a much more commonly consumed product.

Mutton was a staple of the American diet; one of the standard items shipped to soldiers during World War II was canned mutton. But shortly after the war, mutton started to disappear. What happened?

LUSK: A sheep is not just meat. These are multi-product species and they’re valuable not just for their meat but for their wool.

Oh yeah, wool. And unlike leather, which can be harvested only once from an animal, you can shear wool from one sheep many times, over many years.

LUSK: So anything that affects the demand for wool is also going to affect the underlying market for the rest of the underlying animal.

And what might affect the demand for wool? How about synthetic substitutes? Nylon, for instance, was created by DuPont in 1935, and became available to the public in 1940. A year later, polyester was invented.

LUSK: So, you know, any time you had new clothing technologies come along, that’s going to affect the underlying demand for sheep and make them less valuable than they would have been otherwise.

So an increase in synthetic fabrics led to a shrinking demand for wool — which meant that all those sheep that had been kept around for shearing no longer needed to be kept around. Also, wool subsidies were repealed. And America’s sheep flock drastically shrank: from a high of 56 million in 1942 to barely 5 million today.

LUSK: It is amazing. I’ve worked at several agricultural universities across the U.S. now, and often the largest sheep herds in those states are at the university research farms.

And fewer sheep meant less mutton for dinner. Is it possible Americans would have stopped eating mutton without the rise of synthetic fabrics? Absolutely: if you ask a room full of meat-eaters to name their favorite meat, I doubt one of them will say “mutton.” Still, this is just one example of how technology can have a big effect on the meat we eat. And if you talk to certain people, it’s easy to believe that we’re on the verge of a similar but much larger technological shift.

BROWN: My name is Pat Brown. I’m currently the CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, whose mission is to completely replace animals as a food production technology.

Brown grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., as well as Paris and Taipei — his father worked for the C.I.A. He studied to be a pediatrician and in fact completed his medical residency, but he switched to biochemistry research.

BROWN: I had the best job in the world at Stanford. My job was basically to discover and invent things and follow my curiosity.

Brown did this for many years and was considered a world-class researcher. One of his breakthroughs was a new tool for genetic mapping; it’s called the D.N.A. microarray—

BROWN: —that lets you read all the words that the cell is using and effectively kind of start to learn the vocabulary, learn how the genome writes the life story of a cell, or something like that. It also has practical applications, because — what it’s doing, in a sort of a deterministic way, specifies the potential of that cell, or if it’s a cancer cell.

Some people think the DNA microarray will win Pat Brown a Nobel Prize. When I bring this up, he just shakes his head and smiles. It’s clear that his research was a deep passion.

BROWN: For me, this was the dream job, it was like in the Renaissance, having the Medicis as patrons or something like that.

But after many years, Brown wanted a change. He was in his mid-50’s; he took a sabbatical to figure out his next move.

BROWN: It started out with stepping back from the work I was doing and asking myself, “What’s the most important thing I could do? What could I do that would have the biggest positive impact on the world?” And looking at what are the biggest unsolved problems in the world? I came relatively quickly to the conclusion that the use of animals as a food-production technology, is by far. And I could give you endless reasons why that’s true, but it is absolutely true. By far the most environmentally destructive thing that humans do.

There is indeed a great deal of evidence for this argument across the entire environmental spectrum. The agricultural historian James McWilliams, in a book called Just Food, argues that “every environmental problem related to contemporary agriculture … ends up having its deepest roots in meat production: monocropping, excessive applications of nitrogen fertilizer, addiction to insecticides, rain-forest depletion, land degradation, topsoil runoff, declining water supplies, even global warming — all these problems would be considerably less severe” if people ate meat “rarely, if ever.”

LUSK: You know, there’s no doubt that meat production has environmental consequences. To suggest that it’s the most damaging environmental thing we do is, I think, a pretty extreme overstatement.

But what about the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with raising meat — especially in the U.S., which is the world’s largest beef producer?

LUSK: Our own E.P.A. — Environmental Protection Agency — suggests that all of livestock contributes about 3 percent of our total greenhouse-gas emissions. So, I mean, 3 percent is not nothing, but it’s not the major contributor that we see. That number, I should say, is much higher in many other parts of the world. So the carbon impacts per pound produced are so much smaller here than a lot of the world that when you tell people, “the way to reduce carbon emissions is to intensify animal production,” that’s not a story a lot of people like to hear.

DUBNER: Because why not, it sounds like it’s against animal welfare?

LUSK: Well, two reasons: Exactly, one is there are concerns about animal welfare, particularly when you’re talking about broiler chickens, or hogs — less so about cattle — and the other one is, there are concerns about when you concentrate a lot of animals in one place you can get all this waste in a location, that you have to think about creative ways to deal with that don’t have some significant environmental problems.

DUBNER: So, the E.P.A. number, livestock contributing three percent, does that include the entire production chain, though? Because, some of the numbers that I see from environmental activists is much, much higher than that.

LUSK: The U.N. estimate that you often hear from — originally was created in this report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” is something around 19 percent. But that 19 percent, roughly, number, is a global number. Actually, there was a study that came out pointing out some flaws in that, so they reduced it somewhat.

In any case, there is a growing concern in many quarters over the externalities of meat production.

LUSK: Over the last 5–10 years, there’s been a lot of negative publicity — stories about environmental impacts, about carbon emissions, about animal welfare. And if you just look at the news stories, you would think, “Boy, people must be really cutting back, given the sort of frightful stories that you see on the front pages of the newspapers.” But if you look at the data itself, demand looks fairly stable. And that suggests to me it’s hard to change people’s preference on this.

There’s something about meat consumption. Some people would argue that we’re evolved to like meat, that it’s a protein-, vitamin-packed, tasty punch that we’ve grown to enjoy as a species. There are some people that even argue that it’s one of the reasons we became as smart as we did, the vitamins and nutrients that were in that meat allowed our brains to develop in certain ways that it might have not otherwise.

Pat Brown saw that same strong preference for meat when he decided that the number-one scientific problem to solve was replacing animals as food.

BROWN: And it’s a problem that nobody was working on in any serious way. Because everybody recognized that most people in the world, including most environmental scientists and people who care about this stuff, love the foods we get from animals so much that they can’t imagine giving those up.

Brown himself was a longtime vegan.

BROWN: I haven’t eaten meat for decades, and that’s just a personal choice that I made long before I realized the destructive impact of that industry. That was a choice I made for other reasons. And it wasn’t something that I felt like I was in a position to tell other people to do. And I still don’t feel like there’s any value in doing that.

Brown makes an interesting point here. Many of us, when we feel strongly about something — an environmental issue or a social or economic issue — we’re inclined to put forth a moral argument. A moral argument would appear to be persuasive evidence of the highest order: you should do this thing because it’s the right thing to do. But there’s a ton of research showing that moral arguments are generally ineffective; people may smile at you, and nod; but they won’t change their behavior. That’s what Brown realized about meat.

BROWN: The basic problem is that people are not going to stop wanting these foods. And the only way we’re going to solve it is not by asking them to meet you halfway and give them a substandard product that doesn’t deliver what they know they want from meat or fish or anything like that. The only way to do it is, you have to say, “We’re going to do the much harder thing,” which is we’re going to figure out how to make meat that’s not just as delicious as the meat we get from animals, it’s more delicious and better nutritionally and more affordable and so forth.

In other words: a marginal improvement on the standard veggie burger would not do.

BROWN: It’s been tried. It just doesn’t work. It’s a waste of effort.

So Brown start fooling around in his lab.

BROWN: Doing some kind of micro experiments just to convince myself in a way that this was doable.

Those early experiments were fairly encouraging.

BROWN: I felt like, okay, there’s a bunch of things I thought could be useful, and then I felt like I could just go in with a little bit more confidence to talk to the investors.

“The investors” meaning venture capitalists. Remember, Brown’s at Stanford, which is next door to the biggest pile of venture capital in the history of the world.

BROWN: And basically my pitch them was very naive from a fundraising standpoint, in the sense that basically I mostly just told them about how there’s this absolutely critical environmental disaster that needs to be solved and—

DUBNER: And they’re probably expecting to hear something now about carbon capture, or—

BROWN: Yeah, that’s the thing. And most people still are. So I just told these guys, “Look, this is an environmental disaster. No one’s doing anything about it. I’m going to solve it for you.”

So how does the almost-pediatrician-who-became-a-freewheeling-biochemist build a better meat from the ground up? That amazing story after the break:

BROWN: Okay, bingo, this is how we’re going to do it.

*      *      *

It’s estimated that more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with all animal agriculture comes from cows.

LUSK: And that is due to the fact that beef are ruminant animals.

The Purdue economist Jayson Lusk again.

LUSK: Their stomachs produce methane. It comes out the front end, not the back, as a lot of people think. And as a consequence — we look at carbon consequences — it’s mainly beef that people focus on, not pork or chicken, because they don’t have the same kind of digestive systems.

There has been progress in this area. For instance, it turns out that adding seaweed to cattle feed drastically reduces their methane output. But the scientist Pat Brown is looking for a much bigger change to the animal-agriculture industry.

BROWN: If I could snap my fingers and make that industry disappear right now — which I would do, if I could, and it would be a great thing for the world.

It is very unlikely to disappear any time soon; it is a trillion-dollar global industry, supported in many places by government subsidies, selling a product that billions of people consume once, twice, even three times a day. Pat Brown’s desire would seem to be an impossible one; the company he founded is called Impossible Foods. It’s essentially a tech startup, and it’s raised nearly $400 million to date in venture capital.

BROWN: So, we’ve only been in existence for about seven years and we have about 300 people. We started by basically building a team of some of the best scientists in the world to study how meat works, basically. And by that, I mean to really understand at a basic level the way, in my previous life, when I was a biomedical scientist, we might be studying how, you know, a normal cell of this particular kind becomes a cancer cell, understanding the basic biochemical mechanisms.

In this case, what we wanted to understand was: what are the basic biochemical mechanisms that account for the unique flavor chemistry and the flavor behavior and aromas and textures and juiciness and all those qualities that consumers value in meat? And we spent about 2.5 years just doing basic research, trying to answer that question, before we really started working on a product. And then decided for strategic reasons that our first product would be raw ground beef made entirely from plants.

DUBNER: Because burger is what people want?

BROWN: Well, there’s a lot of reasons why I think it was a good strategic choice: the largest single category of meat in the U.S., it’s probably the most iconic kind of meat in the U.S., it seemed like the ideal vehicle for communicating to consumers that delicious meat doesn’t have to come from animals, because it’s sort of the uber-meat for a lot of people.

DUBNER: Uber, lower-case “u.”

BROWN: With a lower-case, yes.

DUBNER: People are not hailing burgers, riding them around?

BROWN: No, thank God. And beef production is the most environmentally destructive segment of the animal agriculture industry. So, from an impact standpoint, it made sense as a choice.

So Pat Brown set about repurposing the scientific wisdom he’d accrued over a long, fruitful career in biomedicine. A career that may improve the health and well-being of countless millions. And now he got to work on a truly earth-shaking project: building a better burger. A burger that doesn’t come from a cow. An Impossible burger. So how did that work? What ingredients do you put in an Impossible burger?

BROWN: That’s an interesting aspect about the science, which is that we didn’t look for, “What are the precisely specific choices of ingredients that would work?” We studied, “What are the biochemical properties we need from the set of ingredients?” And then we did a survey of things available from the plant world that matched those biophysical properties of which there were choices.

So what are the main components of this burger?

BROWN: I can tell you what it’s made of right now. What it’s made of right now is different from how it was made two years ago, and that was different from how it was made two and half years ago and the next version we’re going to launch is a quite different set of ingredients.

We first interviewed Brown several months ago. The main ingredients at the time included:

BROWN: A protein from wheat; a protein from potatoes — not a starch from potatoes, but a protein from potatoes, it’s a byproduct of starch production. Coconut oil is the major fat source. And then we have a bunch of other small molecules, but they’re all familiar things: amino acids, vitamins, sugars. Nutrients.

But all these ingredients did not make Pat Brown’s plant-based hamburger meat taste or act or look like hamburger meat. It was still missing a critical component. A component called heme.

BROWN: Heme is found in essentially every living thing and heme in plants and human animals is the exact same molecule, okay? It’s just one of the most ubiquitous and fundamental molecules in life on Earth, period. The system that burns calories to produce energy uses heme as an essential component, and it’s what carries oxygen in your blood. And it’s what makes your blood red.

And none of this we discovered — this has been known for a long time and — so animals have a lot more heme than plants. And it’s that very high concentration of heme that accounts for the unique flavors of meat that you would recognize something as meat. It’s the overwhelmingly dominant factor in making the unique taste of meat and fish.

DUBNER: Is it involved in texture and mouthfeel and all that as well, or just taste?

BROWN: Just taste. Texture and mouthfeel are really important and there’s a whole other set of research around that. Super important — it kind of gets short shrift, because people think of the flavor as sort of the most dramatic thing about meat. But you have to get that other stuff right, too.

Brown and his team of scientists, after a couple years of research and experimentation, were getting a lot of that stuff right. But without heme — a lot of heme — their meatless meat would never resemble meat.

BROWN: So there is one component of a certain kind of plant that has a high concentration of heme, and that is in plants that fix nitrogen, that take nitrogen from the air and turn it into fertilizer. They have a structure called the root nodule, where the nitrogen fixation takes place and for reasons that are too complicated to explain right now they, that has a high concentration of heme and I just happened to know this from way back.

And if you slice open the root nodules of one of these plants:

BROWN: They have such a high concentration of heme that they look like a freshly cut steak, okay? And I did a calculation about the concentration of that stuff — soy leghemoglobin is the protein, which is virtually identical to the heme protein in muscle tissue, which is called myoglobin — that there was enough leghemoglobin in the root nodules of the U.S. soybean crop to replace all the heme in all the meat consumed in the U.S. Okay? So, I thought, “Genius, okay. We’ll just go out and harvest all these root nodules from the U.S. soybean crop and we’ll get this stuff practically for free.” Well, so I raised money for the company and we spent half the money trying to figure out how to harvest these root nodules from soybean plants, only basically to finally convince ourselves it was a terrible idea.

But if you’re a veteran scientist like Brown, a little failure is not so off-putting.

BROWN: You know you’re going to be doing things that are pushing the limits and trying entirely new things and a lot of them are going to fail. And if you don’t have a high tolerance for that and realize that basically, the way you do really really important, cool stuff is by trying a lot of things and not punishing yourself for the failures, but just celebrating the successes, you know, you’re not going to accomplish as much.

And the idea of buying up all the root nodules of the U.S. soybean crop wasn’t a complete failure.

BROWN: I mean, we got enough that we could do experiments to prove that it really was a magic ingredient for flavor. But then we had to start all over, and then what we did was: we said, ”Okay, we’re going to have to engineer a microorganism to produce gobs of this heme protein. Okay”? And since now we weren’t bound by any natural source, we looked at three dozen different heme proteins, everything from, you know, paramecium to barley to Hell’s Gate bacteria, which is like this —

DUBNER: That’s a plant? Hell’s Gate?

BROWN: It’s a bacteria that lives in deep sea vents near New Zealand that survive with temperatures above the boiling point of water that we mostly just looked at for fun, but funny thing about that, the reason we rejected it is that it’s so heat-stable that you can cook a burger to cooking temperature and it still stays bright red, because it doesn’t unfold. But anyway — and then we pick the best one, which turned out to be, just coincidentally, soy leghemoglobin, which is the one we were going after—

DUBNER: So your terrible idea was actually pretty good.

BROWN: It wasn’t really a brilliant idea, it accidentally turned out to be the right choice.

Through the magic of modern plant engineering, Pat Brown’s team began creating massive stocks of heme. And that heme would help catapult the Impossible burger well beyond the realm of the standard veggie burger — the mostly unloved veggie burger, we should say. The Impossible Burger looks like hamburger meat — when it’s raw and when it’s cooked. It behaves like hamburger meat. Most important, it tastes like hamburger meat.

Alison CRAIGLOW: I would like the American with an Impossible Burger.

WAITER: And how would you like that cooked?

CRAIGLOW: Oh, I didn’t realize — I’ll have it medium … medium. Is it pink in the middle when it’s … it is?

The Freakonomics Radio team recently ate some Impossible burgers in a restaurant near Times Square.

Zack LAPINSKI: I mean, I actually can’t taste the diff —

CRAIGLOW: It tastes like a burger

Ryan KELLY: Good day for the Impossible Burger

Greg RIPPIN: Yeah, approved by Freakonomics.

Their meal happened to coincide with the release of Impossible Burger 2.0 — an updated recipe that uses a soy protein instead of a wheat protein and has a few more tweaks: less salt, sunflower oil to cut the coconut oil, and no more xanthan gum and konjac gum. In my own tasting experience: Impossible Burger 1.0 was really good but a little slushy; 2.0 was burger-tastic.

These are of course our subjective observations. Here’s some actual evidence: Impossible Burgers are already being served in roughly 5,000 locations, primarily in the U.S. but also Hong Kong and Macau. These include very high-end restaurants in New York and California as well as fast-food chains like Umami Burger and even White Castle. This year, Impossible plans to start selling its burger meat in grocery stores.

BROWN: We’ve grown in terms of our sales and revenue about 30-fold in the past year. And our goal is to completely replace animal as a food technology by 2035. That means we have to approximately double in size and impact every year for the next 18 years.

DUBNER: Are we to understand that you are taking aim at pigs and chickens and fish as well?

BROWN: Yes, of course. So when we first started out, we were working on a technology platform and sort of the know-how about how meat works in general; we were working on understanding dairy products and cheeses and stuff like that. And then we decided, okay, we have to pick one product to launch with, and then we have to, from a commercialization standpoint, just go all in on it for a while.

DUBNER: As the scientist, or as a scientist, were you reluctant to kind of narrow yourself for that commercial interest, or did you appreciate that this is the way in this world things actually happen?

BROWN: Both. I mean, let’s put it this way: I would like to be able to pursue all these things in parallel, and if I had the resources I would. But if we launched another product right now, we’d just be competing against ourselves for resources for commercialization, so just doesn’t make any sense.

We put out an episode not long ago called “Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet.” It featured the science journalist Charles Mann.

MANN: How are we going to deal with climate change? There have been two ways that have been suggested, overarching ways, that represent, if you like, poles on a continuum. And they’ve been fighting with each other for decades.

The two poles are represented by what Mann calls, in his latest book, The Wizard and the Prophet. The prophet sees environmental destruction as a problem best addressed by restoring nature to its natural state. The wizard, meanwhile, believes that technology can address environmental dangers. This is, of course, a typology, a shorthand; a prophet doesn’t necessarily fear technology any more than a wizard fears nature. That said: if there were ever an embodiment of the wizard-prophet hybrid, a person driven by idealism and pragmatism in equal measure, I’d say it’s Pat Brown. Which means his invention has the capacity to upset people all across the spectrum.

The consumers and activists who might cheer a meatless meat are often the same sort of people who are anti-G.M.O. — genetically modified organisms. And the Impossible Burger would not have been possible without its genetically modified heme — which, by the way, the F.D.A. recently declared safe, after challenges from environmental groups like Friends of the Earth. Another group that might object to Impossible Foods? The meat industry. You know, the ones who use actual animals to raise food.

FOGARTY: My name is Kelly Fogarty and I serve as the executive vice president for the United States Cattlemen’s Association. And I am a fifth- generation beef cattle rancher here in Oakdale, California.

DUBNER: I’m just curious, as a woman, do you find yourself ever wishing the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association would change their name or are you okay with it?

FOGARTY: You know, it’s funny you mention that. There’s always a little bit of a notion there in the back of my mind of, you know, of course being in the industry for so long. I take it as representing all of the livestock industry. But you know, definitely having a special nod to all the female ranchers out there would be nice to have as well.

DUBNER: And what is the primary difference between the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association?

FOGARTY: As the United States Cattlemen’s Association, we are made up primarily of cattle producers. So your family ranches. You know, cow-calf operations run by producers and kind of for producers is what U.S.C.A. was built on. Whereas National Cattlemen’s Beef Association does include some more of packer influences as well as you know some of the processing facilities as well.

DUBNER: Can you just talk generally for a moment: how big of a threat does the beef industry see from alternative, “meat”?

FOGARTY: So from our end you know, in looking at the “meat” — and I appreciate you using those quotes around that term — from our end, we’re not so much seeing it as a threat to our product. What we are really looking at is not a limit on consumer choice or trying to back one product out of the market. It’s really to make sure that we’re keeping the information out there accurate and that what is available to consumers and what is being shown to consumers on labels is accurate to what the product actually is.

In 2018, Fogarty’s organization filed a petition with the U.S.D.A. to prevent products from being labeled as “beef” or “meat” unless they come from a cow.

DUBNER: Does that mean that your organization thinks that consumers are confused by labeling? Is that the primary objection?

FOGARTY: So the primary objection from the United Cattlemen’s Association is that we want to keep the term “meat” to what is traditionally harvested and raised in the traditional manner. And so when we see the term “meat” being put on these products that is not derived from that definition, what our producers came to us and really wanted us to act on was what we saw happened in other industries, specifically when you look at the dairy industry and where the term “milk” has now been used.

“Almond milk,” for instance. Which comes from almonds, not animals. Which led the National Milk Producers Federation to argue that it should not be sold as “almond milk.” The FDA agreed; its commissioner pointed out that “an almond doesn’t lactate.” There are important differences between so-called “milk” that doesn’t come from animals and so-called “meat” that doesn’t come from animals. Almond milk has very different nutritional content than cow’s milk; the Impossible Burger, meanwhile, has a similar nutritional profile to hamburger — including the iron content, which vegans can have trouble getting enough of. That’s another reason why Kelly Fogarty and the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association might not want the Impossible Burger to be labeled “meat.”

DUBNER: I am just curious about the mental state of your industry because I was looking at your Facebook page and one post the other day led with the following: “Eat or be eaten. Be at the table or on the menu. Fight or be forgotten.” So that sounds — it would make me believe that the future of meat is one in which cattle ranchers feel a little bit like an endangered species or at least under assault.

FOGARTY: I think that speaks to a lot of misconceptions that are out there regarding the U.S. beef industry. Whether it be in terms of you know nutrition, environment, animal welfare. We’ve really been hit from a lot of different angles over the years.

DUBNER: Okay, well, according to some scientific research, meat production and/or cattle ranching are among the most environmentally damaging activities on earth, between the resource-intensiveness, land but especially water, and the externalities, the runoff of manure and chemicals into groundwater.

FOGARTY: I think one of the first points to make is that cattle are defined as what is termed as upcyclers, and cattle today, they’re turning plants that have little to no nutritional value just as-is into a high-quality and a high density protein. And so when you look at where cattle are grazing in the U.S., and then also across the world, a lot of the land that they are grazing on are land that is not suitable for crops or it would be you know kind of looking as a highly marginal type of land. And the ability of livestock to turn what is there into something that can feed the world is pretty remarkable.

Fogarty believes her industry has been unfairly maligned; that it’s come to be seen as a target for environmentalist groups and causes.

FOGARTY: I would absolutely say, the livestock industry and to that matter, the agriculture industry as a whole I think has really been at the brunt of a lot of disinformation campaigns.

Fogarty points to that U.N. report claiming that the global livestock industry’s greenhouse-gas emissions were shockingly high. A report that was found to be built on faulty calculations.

FOGARTY: So, it was really an inequitable and grossly inflated percentage that really turned a conversation.

The inflated percentage of around 18 percent was really around 14.5 percent — so, “grossly” inflated may be in the eye of the aggrieved. Fogarty says that even though the error was acknowledged, and a revised report was issued.

FOGARTY: Folks have not forgotten it as much as we wish. It’s still something that it’s hard to have folks kind of un-read or un-know something that they initially saw.

The fact is that the agricultural industry is massive and massively complex. Without question, it exacts costs on the environment; it also provides benefits that are literally the stuff of life: delicious, abundant, affordable food. As with any industry, there are tradeoffs and there is friction: activists tend to overstate their claims in order to encourage reform; industry defenders tend to paper over legitimate concerns.

But in the food industry especially, it’s clear that a revolution is underway — a revolution to have our food be not just delicious and abundant and affordable but sustainable too, with fewer negative externalities. Some startups, like Impossible Foods, focus on cleverly engineering plant matter to taste like the animal flesh so many people love. Other startups are working on what’s called lab-grown meat, using animal stem cells to grow food without animals. This is still quite young technology, but it’s very well-funded. I was curious to hear Kelly Fogarty’s view of this.

DUBNER: One of the investors in the lab “meat” company Memphis Meats is Cargill, which is a major constituent of the big meat industry. I mean, another investor, for what it’s worth, is Bill Gates. But I’m curious what’s your position on that. Because the way I think about this long-term, presumably a firm like Cargill can win the future with alternative “meat” in a way that a cattle rancher can’t. So I’m curious what the position is of ranchers on this kind of investment from a firm like Cargill or other firms that are sort of hedging their bets on the future of meat.

FOGARTY: You know it’s a really interesting point, and it’s been a bit of a tough pill for producers to swallow, the fact that some of the big three, some of these big processing plants that have been so obviously heavily focused and have been livestock-dominant are now kind of going into this alternative and sometimes the cell-cultured lab meats, alternative proteins. And it really has been a point of contention among a lot of producers who are kind of confused, unsure, feel a little bit — I don’t want to say betrayed by the industry, but a little bit so…

Others may soon feel betrayed as well. A company called Modern Meadows is using similar technology to grow leather in the lab, without the need for cattle. The Israeli company SuperMeat is focused on growing chicken. And then there’s a company called Finless Foods.

Mike SELDEN: Finless Foods is taking the seafood back to basics and creating real fish meat entirely without mercury, plastic, without the need for antibiotics or growth hormones, and also without the need for fishing or the killing of animals because we grow the fish directly from stem cells.

That’s Mike Selden, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Finless. He’s 27 years old; he started out as a cancer researcher. Like Pat Brown, you could call him a wizard-prophet hybrid. He does take issue with the idea of “lab-grown” food.

SELDEN: The reality is, labs are by definition experimental and are not scalable. So this won’t be grown in a lab at all. It’s prototyped in a lab in the same way that snacks are prototyped in a lab. Doritos are prototyped in a lab by material scientists looking at different dimensions of like crunch and torsion and all these other sort of mechanical properties. So what our facility will look like when we’re actually at production scale is something really a lot closer to a brewery. Big steel tanks that are sort of allowing these cells space in order to divide and grow into large quantities of themselves, while accessing all of the nutrients that we put inside of this nutritional broth.

The fishing industry, like the meat industry, exacts its share of environmental costs. But like Pat Brown, Mike Selden does not want his company to win on goodwill points.

SELDEN: So, the goal of Finless Foods is not to create something that competes on ethics or morals or environmental goals. It’s something that will compete on taste, price, and nutrition — the things that people actually care about.

Right now, everybody really loves whales and people hate when whales are killed. What changed? Because we used to kill whales for their blubber in order to light lamps. It wasn’t an ethical movement, it wasn’t that people woke up one day and decided, “Oh, killing whales is wrong.” It was that we ended up using kerosene instead. We found another technological solution, a supply-side change that didn’t play on people’s morals in order to win. We see ourselves as something like that. You know, why work with an animal at all if you don’t need to?

Indeed: you could imagine in the not-so-distant future a scenario in which you could instantly summon any food imaginable — new foods, new combinations, but also foods that long ago fell out of favor. How much fun would that be? I asked the agricultural economist Jayson Lusk about this.

DUBNER: If we had a 3D printer, and it, let’s say, had, just, we’ll be conservative, 100 buttons of different foods that it could make me. Does anyone press the mutton button?

LUSK: Well, you know, one of the great things about our food system is that it’s a food system that, yes, makes food affordable, but also has a whole awful lot of choice for people who are willing to pay it. And I bet there’s probably at least one or two people out there that will push that will mutton button.

I also asked Lusk for his economic views on the future of meat, especially the sort of projects that inventors like Mike Selden and Pat Brown are working on.

LUSK: I have no problems with what Dr. Brown is trying to do there, and indeed I think it’s very exciting, this technology. And I think ultimately it’ll come down to whether this lab-grown meat can compete on the merits. So, there’s no free lunch here. In fact, the Impossible Burger — I’ve seen it on menus — it’s almost always higher-priced than the traditional beef burger. Now as an economist, I look at that and say, “Those prices, to me, should be signaling something about resource use.” Maybe it’s imperfect; maybe there’s some externalities. But they should reflect all the resources that were used to go in to produce that product. It’s one of the reasons that beef is more expensive than, say, chicken — it takes more time, more inputs, to produce a pound of beef than a pound of chicken.

So, why is it that the Impossible Burger is more expensive than the regular burger? Now, it could be that this is just a startup, and they’re not working at scale; and once they really scale this thing up, it’ll really bring the price down. It could be they’re also marketing to a particular higher-income consumer who is willing to pay a little more. But I think if the claims about the Impossible Burger are true over time, one would expect these products to come down significantly in price and be much less expensive than beef production. You know, this is not going to make my beef friends happy, but if they can do that, good for them; and consumers want to pay for, this product, they like the way it tastes and it saves some money, which means it’s saving some resources; I think in that sense, it’s a great technology.

Whether or not you eat meat; whether or not you’re interested in eating these alternative meats, from plant matter or animal stem cells — it’s hard not to admire the creativity that someone like Pat Brown has exercised: the deep curiosity, the ability to come back from failure, the sheer cleverness of putting together disparate ideas into a coherent scientific plan.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, and Harry Huggins; we had help this week from Nellie Osborne. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Pat Brown, founder and c.e.o. of Impossible Foods.

Kelly Fogarty, executive vice president for the United States Cattlemen’s Association.

Jayson Lusk, economist at Purdue University.

Mike Selden, co-founder and c.e.o. of Finless Foods.

RESOURCES

“Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock,”  Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (2013).

Just Food by James McWilliams (Little, Brown, 2009).

“Changes in the Sheep Industry in the United States,” The National Academies (2008).

EXTRA

“Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet,” Freakonomics Radio (2018).

The post The Future of Meat (Ep. 367) appeared first on Freakonomics.

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