Beavers fuck up habitats and ecosystems about as much as humans used to before factories, which accelerated what we could fuck up. Beavers wreck shit up. Sometimes elephants do too, for that matter. And let’s be clear, the modifications these animals cause can have overall eventual benefits for an ecosystem, but they change the ecosystem extensively over a huge area, and any benefits you can ascribe to their actions could as easily be applied to human ecosystem modification too. “Oh yeah, the forest is completely gone, but now there’s new homes for different kinds of creatures that couldn’t live there before.” This sentence applies 100% to elephants, beavers, and yes, humans.

Some animals change their environment. We are one of them. Our tool use and brains allow us to do so on a pretty wide scale, but the destruction the elephants caused was pretty darn huge too. Humans also have the capacity to do with intention towards actively helping an ecosystem… elephants don’t have the ability for that kind of intentionality.

Of course, humans are also fully capable of acting without that intentionality too. It is pure coincidence that new ecosystems appear in the wake of elephant or beaver devastation— they weren’t actively trying to help other animals, they just wanted what they wanted. Our destruction can also have unintentional new ecosystems arise in our wake— the problem is that often we don’t LIKE the new ecosystems (bacteria and viruses, for example), and we often DO LIKE the stuff we destroyed.

But it’s not really different from what animals do. Because we aren’t separate from nature, we are nature. If we are bad, nature is bad. If nature is good, we are good. But this kind of binary thinking is too simplistic, life is more complicated than that, and we as humans have an ability to make value judgements and moral distinctions in a way that most animals cannot. We shouldn’t use that power in such a reductive way.

Not to me. Sounds more like someone who’s been in a lot of social media arguments, has a vague understanding of the counter arguments, and is trying to solidify their answer to it.

Can piefed be accessed through voyager? I heard people talking about it as a good way to avoid all the tankies, but I couldn’t find it on the instance search within voyager.

My understanding is that infidelity is very nearly binary in its commonality.

There are groups of people for whom infidelity is normal, it is the norm. They believe that everyone cheats, and in their experience everyone does, because they are cheaters and are friends with cheaters. They believe that fidelity is impossible, and claims to the contrary is just social posturing

Then you have groups of people for whom infidelity is basically unthinkable. That it is the greatest breach of trust possible. It is not just not normal, it is non-existent— you don’t cheat, your partner doesn’t cheat, your friends don’t cheat, no one you know cheats. If someone you know cheats, or someone known by someone you know cheats, it is legitimately horrifying: this is not merely social posturing, it is literally shocking to you, because in your world, cheating simply does not happen. It is horrible.

Cheaters think everyone cheats. Non-cheaters believe no one cheats, or only horrible people cheat. These two groups tend to self sort themselves into groups. Bad things happen when the two groups intermingle, in fact.

What’s also a tragedy is when someone who would naturally be in the non-cheating group ends up, mistakenly, in a cheating group. They will begin to feel like everyone ELSE in the world cheats, while they themselves never would. They keep getting hurt, they keep getting betrayed, and they don’t understand why. They need a better friend group… and let me be clear: non-cheating groups ABSOLUTELY EXIST. Those groups simply don’t interact with cheating groups— they basically don’t even know that the cheating groups exist, and would be horrified to find out. So if you’re caught up in a cheating social circle, getting out is really hard! You need to find people who have literally nothing in common with the people you already know!

It kinda sucks. I don’t know a solution.

Yes. Mostly “That’s a car! That’s a truck!” And as his interest and vocabulary is growing, “that’s a hydraulic shovel!” and “a concrete boom pump!”

I am in fact learning the names of all kinds of construction equipment I never knew before. I never knew that a tiny front loader was called a skid steer before. Apparently, they’re called that because they turn by having one pair of wheels go faster than the other, literally steering by skidding. I’ve also learned the specific names of different varieties of fire trucks thanks to him. There’s pumper trucks, ladder trucks, refraction ladder trucks… there’s a special prototype in Japan with tank treads named the Red Salamander for disaster area work too. I also now know the difference between an excavator, a hydraulic shovel, a mini-shovel, and a micro shovel, on sight. I am also learning the names of specific Japanese bullet train models… that’s the the nozomi, that’s the hayabusa and komachi (they sometimes connect to each other by the nose), that’s the tsubasa…

My two year old son is just learning a few words right now. I’m looking forward to the day I can have an honest conversation with him, explain things using words, and get to know what’s going on in his tiny little adorable head.