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Cake day: August 24th, 2023


  • I work at a small, premium pet food manufacturer. People already complain about our prices. While most of our ingredients are sourced domestically, specialty meats are not. Lamb, duck, venison, goose, etc. going up will dramatically raise our prices.

    Many of our products are chicken, pork, or beef-based, and these ingredients are sourced domestically. The fun twist is the rise in popularity of breeds and designer mixes that are predisposed to ingredient sensitivities or allergies. Many of these breeders advise against chicken or beef in these dogs’ foods.

    You’d think people spending 3-9 thousand dollars on puppies would be in a position to afford special diets, but my experience says otherwise. It’s about to get a lot worse.

    We’re lucky, in that we’re one of the few brands who utilizes mostly domestically sourced ingredients. I would expect pet food to jump generally, which doesn’t bode well for the increased pressure shelters and rescues are already facing.



  • GiantChickDicks@lemmy.mltoLeftism@lemmy.worldDiscussing Left Unity
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    7 days ago

    People with a conscience are all trying to make the best decision in front of us in the moment we find ourselves in. This election was one of those moments.

    I voted for harm reduction and the ability to safely push and advocate for future change. Instead, apathy and right wing extremism held hands to send a demoralizing message. Whatever your motivations were for sitting it out or voting in protest, you didn’t achieve your goal of less suffering. That’s not a judgement, it’s a simple fact. Your passive act is actively contributing to the acceleration of the policies that have you so outraged.

    Looking at the social media feeds of my undocumented and non-cis friends hurts. Seeing the fear and sense of rejection about the implications of this election is not like anything I’ve personally witnessed in my lifetime. A candidate for president discussed using an act that allowed the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, and people didn’t take that seriously. I do, and I hope anyone else who does is actively planning ways to resist.

    So great job, I guess. It’s time to go from bad to worse. Life requires hard choices in hard times, and so many Americans couldn’t or wouldn’t meet that moment. Now we all get to endure the consequences.




  • It doesn’t take enthusiasm to make an active move toward harm reduction if and when you see the opportunity, especially when the consequences are this serious. I would love to see ranked choice voting and a diverse and motivated number of parties to challenge the dichotomy we have now, but I live in the reality of the viable options in front of me in this moment.

    This isn’t about an acceptance or endorsement of the system we have now. Unfortunately for all of us, however, this is the system we currently live in. If my choices are between bad and catastrophic, I’m going with bad. Doubly so in cases like these. The choice is either the people who are suffering may or will continue to do so, versus these same people suffering even worse while making multiple new groups of people suffer, too.

    If Trump wins and things get as bad, or worse, than the scenarios that have been proposed on record, more people will continue to lose their homes, autonomy, and lives in the United States. Many people who are suffering from atrocities actively going on in places other than the Middle East will likely also be worse off under these policies.

    I hope those people who feel as if they own the moral high ground will remember they had an opportunity to stop it and chose to do nothing if we suddenly all find ourselves living in that world.





  • I appreciate and agree with most of your post, but I disagree that we are all so disconnected from each other’s feelings. Perhaps it’s a regional thing, but many of us have relatives, if not friends, who deeply disagree with our politics. We not only get exposed to the others’ views through social interactions, but we also absorb any political media they have on in the background on holidays and other get-togethers. Some of us also want to understand what the other end of the spectrum is exposed to and seek out some content from these sources for a variety of different reasons.

    I don’t understand the mindset and thinking of people in my life that are so far on the other side when it comes to these issues, but I don’t write them off or feel disgusted by them as people unless and until they start promoting hate speech in most cases.

    I’m also not experiencing any delusions about inevitable outcomes on election day. I’m preparing for either reality, but I’m more actively preparing myself for the opposite outcome of what I’m hoping for. Lemmy does a great job of reminding me how possible this is in comment sections every day.

    I’m doing what I can by helping and encouraging friends, coworkers, and my partner to vote. He even requested an absentee ballot after months of telling me he wasn’t going to vote. I didn’t push, and I don’t consume most news media when we’re together. He has just had a harder time ignoring the evidence of his eyes and ears lately.

    Nothing is decided. If we care at all about not feeling the gut punch that was November 9th of 2016, if not worse, then we should do what we can to prevent that from happening again.





  • Be as sarcastic as you like, but I’m grateful for my education. We thoroughly covered these types of topics from elementary through high school. These, and many other topics, gave me a small window into other cultures that left me wanting to learn more. It gave me an open minded curiosity about people who were different from me, even though the area was about as homogeneous as it gets. It made me excited for opportunities to go out in new communities and talk to people from different backgrounds.

    I find now that I’m older that this type of genuine curiosity about other people pays off in a number of ways. I’m sorry that you don’t seem to have had a similar experience.



  • I can only speak to my own experience. Most of their communities I’ve seen are not a place where nuanced views are appreciated. I saw a particularly 4Chanesque take where a guy was trashing a girl he dated for her interest in astrology. He was more than fine supporting it and humoring it while they were together. Once dumped, though, he had to use it as an example of everything he had to be tortured with in the relationship.

    I had a couple of things to say about that kind of attitude, but the whole of my response centered around learning to pick partners who are aligned with our own values and goals. They banned me because of my username. I have no idea why, other than making assumptions about my views and values in a negative way. A peep into my post history should suggest otherwise, but anyway.

    I don’t have a lot of respect for people with strong views that are sensitive about having them challenged. It isn’t a good faith argument.