#industrial slaughter

[we-rule-the-kingdom-inside]

don't really care to add to the commentary on that particular post, but the "vegans are against animal death" argument being counter-argued with deer overpopulation and invasive species needs to be so fucking serious. bestie nobody eating deer at a widespread scale, and of course vegans understand that animals die in nature. generally the animal death being protested is the cruel and inhumane meat industry. those industrial farm complexes? have you ever seen those? they're a moral affront to the animals cruelly raised and slaughtered there, to the humans working in atrocious and unsafe conditions, to the damages that the meat industry does to the environment.

I'm not a vegan, but I do think it's important and worthwhile to be aware of the provenance of what we eat, and to understand our complicity and place in this system. and yes, this also includes the agricultural industry in regards to fruits, vegetables, and grains, and the human and environmental costs those entail. being aware of this is especially important if we don't struggle with food security or scarcity.

vegans can be really annoying, and they're far from perfect. but at least they're asking the right question in: "what if what is being done to these living creatures kinda really fucking sucks?"

[vegandude72]

[romanceyourdemons]

i really enjoyed no country for old men (2007) and the way it reframes violence and lawlessness. in the film noir and western genres, the genres on which the film strongly draws, violence is generally portrayed as a broad but recent perversion of society, which stands separate from and in conflict with the american dream. this film, however, frames the horrible, dead-faced violence that drives the plot forward as the very foundation upon which america and the american dream are built. the film invokes and intertwines hunting, livestock agriculture, the vietnam war, and the violence with native americans and mexicans demanded by white americans’ colonial project. all four of these are considered foundations of american culture and especially of american masculinity culture; all are grotesquely violent, blended into the background as they may be, and the nonstop apathetic violence does not stem from a state of becoming blood simple as shown in the coen brothers film of the same name, but rather from the long cultural history of violence that allows the characters to shift responsibility for violence outside of themself. this is what makes carla jean’s ultimate refusal to call anton chigurh’s coin toss so powerful. chigurh speaks circles around his violence, his rhetoric forcing characters to accept the violence enacted against them without him having to actually threaten any violence, and as such absolving him of the act before it is done. playing his coin toss game, putting up your own life on the line in order to gamble for it, implies that it is acceptable for you to die if you lose, because those are the rules of the game. that is the way things are. ed tom bell’s great uncle stole native americans’ land and was killed by them for it, llewelyn moss still mexicans’ money and was killed by them for it, and violence and the violence it begets is just the way things are. but carla jean’s refusal to play forces a space outside of the rules and traditions that have the administration and acceptance of violence so deeply woven into them. the refusal does not save her, but it forces chigurh and the audience to see the rules for what they are. the loose and ragged ending of this film does not imply, the way the cathartic, last-man-standing structure of many noirs and westerns does, that the good men with guns have wiped out the bad men with guns in a brutal but necessary slaughter to end all slaughters, after which all violence will cease. there is no catharsis in this film. there is no payoff to obeying the rules and structures that demand the infliction violence. in its weighing of destiny and free will in the wild, rule-following west, no country for old men (2007) concludes that it is the worst of all worlds: people always have a choice, they just don’t let themselves see any option but the cruelest one

[fatehbaz]

[M]onk seals continued to live in large herds along the largely unexplored Atlantic seaboard of northwest Africa. It was not until 1434 that Portuguese explorers landed on these [supposedly] untamed coasts, and discovered thousands of monk seals. Almost immediately, an intensive and lucrative trade in skins and oil was established [...]. Constantly vying with Spain [...], Portugal was determined to increase its sphere of influence in Africa. While Spain eventually became preoccupied with Columbus’ elusive vision [...] [and] his celebrated 1492 expedition [...] Portugal’s colonial influence in Africa was reaching its height by 1500. The first expeditions to Africa’s Gold Coast were recorded for posterity by an official chronicler, Gomes de Zurara [...]. In his book [...] he relates how the Portuguese Infante [royal prince], eager [...], dispatched explorer Afonso Gonçalves Baldaya in a cargo vessel to make contact with the mysterious “moors” or “pagans” who were believed to inhabit the region (Zurara, 1437).

“But these are people, no matter how beastlike they may be,” proclaimed the Infante, “and they need to be governed... I command you to penetrate this land as far as you can and that you work in order to learn about those people, perhaps taking one captive, so that you may become acquainted with them.”

It was in “the year [...] one thousand four hundred and thirty-six” that Alfonso set sail [...]. [T]he barinel eventually reached the shores of the Gold River, the Rio de Oro, situated at the Bay of Dakhla in the western Sahara. [...] Afonso and his crew sighted their first seals. Literally thousands were suddenly in their field of vision. [...] “Upon seeing on a reef at the mouth of the river a large number of sea-wolves,” relates Gomes da Zurara, “which, according to the estimates of some, amounted to five thousand, he ordered killed those that could be killed and had their furs loaded onto the ship [...].” Despite the windfall in skins and oil, Afonso was still dissatisfied, having failed to take captive any of the elusive natives. He therefore ventured a further 50 leagues “to see if he could capture a man or at least a woman or child in order to satisfy the will of his master.” [...]

---

[In] 1437 [...] another Portuguese ship was dispatched to the Gold River to fill its hold with the furs and oil of the sea-wolves. [...] In 1441, [...] the Infante ordered his young wardrobe keeper, Antão Gonçalves, to captain a small ship and return to the Gold River. [...] “[T]he reason for this voyage, as instructed by his Lordship,” writes da Zurara, “was none other than to load that ship with a great quantity of hides and oil from those sea-wolves.” It appears to have been a lucrative undertaking. ��� [...]

Antão Gonçalves had fulfilled the command of his master, his ship’s hold brimming with hides and casks, but the young man was eager to pursue his adventures rather than return home as ordered. He assembled his 21-man crew on deck, and addressed them with a rousing speech: “Friends and brothers, our cargo is complete, as you can see, so the principal aim of our mission has been accomplished, and we could well return should we wish to limit our toil…” He then proposed an adventure that would gladden the men’s hearts, providing relief from the laborious and tedious task of hunting, skinning and melting-down seals - a hunt for native slaves [...].

---

These first tentative expeditions to the Gold River paved the way for hunting on a more intensive, industrial scale, with 15th century Portuguese explorers dividing their time between lucrative massacres of seals and the equally profitable slave trade [...].

Indeed, within a few years of the sea wolf discovery, a purpose-built installation to process seal hides and oil had been constructed on Ylha de Lobos [...] in the estuary of the Rio de Oro [...]. Around Cap Barbas [...] no less than three sites once bore the name of the sea wolf [...]. [T]he [French and British] colonial plundering of the region [in the early twentieth century] [...], like [...] [Portuguese] conquest before them, were also portrayed as essentially idealistic endeavours. Just as the conquest of the Rio de Oro by massacre and slavery [...] “proves anew that the pursuit of disinterested geographical knowledge [...] were never the only motives of colonial conquest, so the slaughter [...] [today] would today be called “rational exploitation” [...]”,

---

All text above by: William M. Johnson. “Monk Seals in Post-Classical History: The role of the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) in European history and culture, from the fall of Rome to the 20th century”. Mededelingen 39. The Netherlands Commission for International Nature Protection. 2004. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[y-rhywbeth2]

Who decided the drow should have so much fucking lore anyway.

('I should've been a drow.' You can't fucking stand Cazador or your 'siblings' you would not fucking want to be a drow. Although I guess Astarion would make a fair Vhaeraunite.)

[cultreslut]

my bootleg copy of songs for a child a compilation tribute to pier paolo pasolini

[devoted1989]

Image with kind permission from Compassion in World Farmimg.

[regicidal-defenestration]

One day I'll actually read Year of Intelligent Tigers but until that point comes I'll keep imagining it as something not dissimilar to the Fallen London tigers on the Elder Continent

[radiophd]

in slaughter natives -- taste of human

[sl33py-g4m3r]

it feels like a complaint but idk~~ hope it's not~~~ i kind of worry me telling anybody about anything is a complaint somehow~~

but saw something on a local PBS channel that I don't understand~~

are so many people into being the omnivores we think we are; to find lampooning a swordfish being hideously barbaric, watching it die in the boat with it's blood everywhere, and then throwing it on ice to be sent to local restaurants.... they think it's absolutely barbaric~~

I forget the word they used, disgusting/disturbing or something of the sort, it was yesterday and I don't remember~~

and at the same time EATING AND ENJOYING IT ANYWAY~~

I don't understand~~ you see that, are revolted by it, yet eat it anyway?

a little light doesn't click on in your head and goes "we aren't supposed to be killing and eating animals if we are disgusted/disturbed by it?"

true omnivores would see a feast of that fish~~ or any slaughterhouse really~~~ and yet humans are so disgusted/disturbed by it that we hide them from plain sight and make the act of slaughter hidden from view~~

if people are so disturbed by seeing their food be produced; then why and how can we see it as food to begin with?

I've been vegetarian so long that I no longer see meat as a viable food source and get genuinely confused when other people actually do, despite the slaughter and bloodshed witnessed....

like how can you still eat it and not be turned off by it? there are more compassionate ways of eating that don't involve taking the sentient life of another being~~

also unrelated thing that makes me feel really old for saying it to begin with; my 24 hour news station had inexplicably been replaced with another instance of a 24 hour shopping channel, and I don't understand... it is the exact same as the one a channel over..... ???

BRING MY 24 HOUR NEWS CHANNEL BACK DARN IT~~~!! WE DON'T NEED 2 OF THE SAME EXACT SHOPPING CHANNEL ON LOCAL TV~~~ I DON'T CARE~~~ I JUST WANT MY NEWS STATION

[vegandude72]

[general-sleepy]

I used to be afraid of failure and disappointing the people I love. Now, I'm older, I've done therapy, I'm in a better place, and I'm afraid of reasonable things, like falling into a dumpster and getting knocked unconscious, then getting picked up by a garbage truck and only waking up when I'm about to get crushed by the trash compactor. That's a proper adult fear. Also falling into a meat grinder and chimpanzees.

[news4dzhozhar]

Free to go wild like a mass murdering sociopath in a weapons cache. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

[atlanticbones]

My Spotify Wrapped:

[quotesfrommyreading]

Temple’s deepest feelings are for cattle; she feels a tenderness, a compassion for them that is akin to love. She spoke of this at length as we made our way to our next destination, a feedlot—how she sought gentleness, holding cattle in the chute, how she sought to transmit calmness to the animals, to bring them peace in the last moments of their lives. This, for her, is half physical, half sacred, this cradling of an animal in the last moments of its life; and it is something she endlessly tries to teach the people who operate the chutes in the slaughter plants. She told me a story of how one plant manager, while very defensive about being advised on this by her, was fascinated by her power to calm excited animals, and how, unknown to her, he had spied on her through a hole in the ceiling as she worked. This had occurred when she was consulting at a slaughterhouse in the South, and the entire scene, and its context, kept returning to her mind: she told me the story half a dozen times in the afternoon, each time at length, and in virtually the same words.

  —  An Anthropologist on Mars (Oliver Sacks, 1993)

[foundfootagevstheworld]

this ep is crazy good you should listen to it i think