Why post this summary article from an obscure news group when you could have posted the actual report from the former official?

It’s written in accessible language, so it’s not like it’s too technical to understand or anything…

I feel like I’ve seen this take a lot more in the past ~5 years than I did before. Not just that zoos are unethical, but that any animal ownership (or really interaction of any kind) is inherently abusive.

You’re certainly entitled to feel however you want about animal ownership and act accordingly, but personally I feel like it’s honestly kind of a weird take?

Humans are obviously not the only species that develops symbiolotic relationships with other organisms (in a diversity of power dynamics), but we are also not the only species who take on specifcally ownership or shepherd roles for other species (like spiders with frog pets, or fungus farmer ants, among many many other examples). Thus, the ontological position this opinion must operate from is that humans are somehow distinct and superior to nature, such that we have separate and unique responsibilities not to engage in mutualistic ownership with other organisms, on the basis that like, we’re somehow “above” that? That we’re so enlightened and knowledgeable that we exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms?

Of course, a lot of our relationships to animals can be described as harmful in other terms without needing to take this specific stance. Like, our relationship with many agricultural animals can be critiqued through the harm done to their individual well-beings and through the harm their propagation does to the global environment. Or irresponsible pet owners can be critiqued for how their unwillingness to control the reproduction or predatory abilities of their pets can harm local ecosystems, like an introduced invasive species might. Or valid criticisms of many zoos when they prioritize profits over animal welfare, rehabilitation, ecosystem restoration, and education. Or that the general public picking up wild animals is a problem because it disturbs their fragile ecosystems and traumatizes them, especially when done on the large scale of human populations (but distinctly not for ecological study, wild animal healthcare, education, etc., like Steve Irwin et. al) But none of these are specific criques of the mutualistic ownership relationship itself as much as problems with the way we handle that relationship.

Idk, I’m interested to understand your opinion, especially if it has detail I’m missing beyond “we shouldn’t have pets, zoos, or farms because we’re better than that”!

You say you don’t like poetry, yet you write a lovely free-form poem. Suspicious…

OF content creators date non-creators all the time, just like other sex workers. There’s more to relationships than sex, and content creation isn’t the same thing as actual sexual intimacy and connection

Hi hello I’m your friendly neighborhood molecular biologist and I want to tell you (or anyone who might think like you) that you’re totally fucken wrong lol

It is commonly accepted by contemporary biological scientists that sex exists on a spectrum. The technical definition of sex involves the size of gametes (in humans: sperm and egg cells) that are created by the organism, but we don’t usually go around “unsexing” people who don’t make gametes (the infertile, the elderly, etc.)

Instead we might look at chromosomes, genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics (beard, breasts, voice, etc.). Although the state of these characteristics often aligns (ie. XY usually means penis and more hair) they for sure definitely do not always.

You can have unusual chromosome combinations (XXY, XXX, etc.), you can have a modification of the signalling pathway for sex hormones (androgen insensitivity), you can have mutations in specific genes relating to secondary sex phenotypes (extra hair, no hair, voice changes, etc.). You might have a person whose gentalia say “female” but chromosomes say “male”. You might get a person whose face, voice, and body says “female” but whose genitalia say “male”.

You might think these things are too rare to bother with, but intersexuality (defined as a person who’s sex can’t be conventionally filtered into male or female) is estimated to be as common as 2% of the population (basically the same as red-headed people in the USA). Many people estimate that the actual incidence of unalignment between all sex characteristics as assigned gender is even more common if we expanded the definition to include internal brain structures relating to sexual and gender identity, or natural differences in hormone quantities that overlap between members of different sexes. Basically, science says non-binary is valid as fuck.

That’s not even to get into the social construct of gender, but there’s a whole scholarly discipline there as well. But I’m a biologist and people weirdly trust essentialist constructs of sex and gender more than social ones, so here I am.

The article only barely mentions orthodontics like braces, retainers, etc. and not as the substance of her major criticism. I don’t think she’s trying to call out the groups that you are mentioning, and in fact, the doctor she rhetorically highlights as “good” is the one recommending braces over veneers.

It’s the veneers and crowns she is mostly critiquing. She also unpacks how the standards for beauty are affected by celebrities doing this as a trend. Specifically, the procedures she is critiquing make an effect that is only achieveable by paying for the procedure, and the cost of getting and maintaining it makes it a class signifier. The financial elite set the standard.

You’re valid and your thoughts are a valid contribution to the discussion, but I figured I could clarify that in case you or other people didn’t see that in the article.

You said it yourself-- the reason those people need to make weird choices like trying to find any way to qualify for more government assistance is because historically their income came from industries that don’t and can’t exist anymore. They don’t have any other choice. The solution is actually more availability of assistance resources so people from those places can have enough stability to be able to make choices like learning new skills or moving to a new place. Why can’t people like him-- who see this happening to the people around him, his neighbors, his family-- empathize?

lol, like 2.5% of the USA are programmers and even if we say twice that number have experimented and taken programming classes, that’s like 1 in 20 people who would even have ever encountered a for loop. This nsf report says ~70% of highschoolers have taken Algebra 2 or a more advanced math course, which is when sum notation is usually introduced. I think 70% is a little greater than 5%!

Your comment and post both kinda seem like bait, but in case you’re serious (and for anyone else curious)-- this artist’s content features racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic themes. He has made comics parodying healthcare response standards for covid, and supporting the police state during times of social disrest (such as in the wake of the George Floyd protests).

That’s my factual take; my subjective one is that he’s an ignorant asshat that doesn’t deserve platforming in any way, even if some of his jokes end up being funny in ways he didn’t intend. I would be happier if I never saw any of his content again.