Lab-grown flesh inherently and explicitly revolves around animal exploitation, and for that reason alone, I must condemn it.

Lab-grown flesh being validated in the animal emancipation movement reminds me of all of the harm that Singerian utilitarian brainrot has done to veganism, and Singer's facade is too damn strong. The man is literally not even vegan by the layman's definition of the word vegan, yet for some reason, too many damn people in the animal liberation movement uphold him as some prominent figure to use as an example of what a strong supporter of animal liberation looks like.

Shit like lab-grown meat is seen as a loophole because it appeals to the human supremacist mindset a lot more. Those who still feel like they don't want to clear themselves of the mentality that non-human animals are okay to treat as slaves think they need something like lab-grown meat as a crutch just to give animals the basic decency and respect that they deserve, and it still doesn't do that!

I'm also curious about y'all's take on imitation meat as well.

Things that emulate hamburger patties and sausage links without involving animal flesh and secretions are fine to me. My mentality has gotten to a point where I've distanced that stuff from flesh very well. To me, a burger made out of soy doesn't make me think of even comparing it to a burger made out of flesh. I literally take it as what it is: a burger made out of soy. It is its own thing to me. With enough time being vegan, I was able to disconnect the association honestly.

I'd have moments where I'd tell a friend that I tried this delicious macaroni and (cashew) cheese recipe while omitting the "cashew" portion of the sentence by mistake because it sometimes doesn't cross my mind that most people see cheese as something that comes from cow titties. The moments where I snap back into reality and focus on the fact that 99% of the world is carnist, however, end up making me frown.

mfw gender

For people that tell trans people that they "make it their entire personality," they sure do struggle to shut the fuck up about my gender more than I even do.

relax, it was just a heated gamer moment

What I mean when I say "send me your buttposts"

People think I'm being a creep!

Joseph ZeDong Vance

I misread "Burgerbrains" as "Burgerbarians," and I felt like I acquired a totally new term to refer to Americans with.

Well, even though it was just through my mind misreading it, I acquired a totally new term to refer to Americans with!

I fucking love Andrewism, and I still watch him quite regularly even though I'm now a Marxist.

He's from Trinidad and Tobago, which is where my family comes from. I feel really connected to lefty content from someone like him as someone born to Trinidadian/Tobagonian immigrants who are quite conservative.

I'd never be sectarian, but I'm definitely over the deeply unserious anarchists that'd rather be "anti-authoritarian" edgelords than push for actual effective leftist action. Thankfully, a good deal of anarchists, especially ones you encounter IRL, are not like that.

"Inverse Shinigami Eyes isn't real, it can't hurt you."

Inverse Shinigami Eyes:

I love saying "tankie and proud" as a response to "anti-tankie" discourse. It really is just a thought-terminating cliché, often used by misguided westerners who truly do not understand class consciousness and materialism, with some of them going as far to paint "tankies" as "reactionaries disguised as leftists," when in actuality, "anti-tankie" sentiment is actually what seems to be more of a reactionary tendency posing as leftist, especially when you know of the horrors supported by prominent "left" anti-communists like Orwell.

I used to hang around anarchist/demsoc spaces a lot more, and in the past, I fell into this trap of painting AES states as being as "evil" as capitalist propaganda wants you to believe they are, and I tried whatever I could do to distance myself from them, their thinkers, and their ideologies. However, in the grand scheme of my life and the path that my material conditions led me down, three things eventually ended up turning me away from that kind of thinking:

1. Joining Hexbear: When I got tired of using Reddit, especially since I was fed up of all the bigotry and discrimination that was seeming unavoidable on that site, I joined Hexbear because I was looking for an alternative that was not only accepting of marginalized peoples but more inclined toward leftism as a whole. Though I was still an anarchist when I first joined Hexbear, I quickly came to understand that the people that are commonly demonized as "tankies" are not this evil group of horrid people that many anti-AES leftists paint them as. It's actually been the contrary!
2. Reading Theory: Reading Lenin especially helped with me overcoming this, but of course, just gaining an actual better understanding of the theory of Marxism in general was a huge plus as well.
3. Connecting With Black Radical Thinkers: This is a bit of an extension of the previous point, but as a black person, I noticed that the common leftist tendency of many black radicals, such as the Black Panthers, was more in alignment with Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc. I didn't find black nationalist associations with anarchism to be as common, and I wondered why. Being able to examine the words of thinkers like Kwame Ture, Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, etc. helped me process the connection of black liberation and how it pertains to radical ideology that I felt like I had a more difficult time grasping when I was mostly hanging around white, western anarchists and demsocs, considering their own ideological understanding of leftism and then tying it to the construct of black liberation. Black liberation was much harder for me to wrap my head around looking at it through a more anarchist lens than it was looking at it through a Marxist lens.

Though I am a former anarchist and a Marxist now, this isn't meant to be a sectarian dig at anarchists. It's just more of me being frustrated with how such "anti-tankie" sentiment has painted genuinely effective leftists as monsters and "fascists in disguise" when they have been nothing but the opposite, and ultimately, they have led the greatest and most broadly applicable implementation of tactics that can actually liberate so many oppressed people, both in the context of class and identity.

nutrient D E N S E