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[Rolan7]

I knew a person who punched a grown male pig unconscious once.

He established superiority.

3) Producing meat is resource inefficient; that land should be used to grow soybeans instead. (etc)
This is a very "human centric" (as in, maximizing immediate human use), and less "Ecologically mindful" view! While factory raised meat animals certainly fit this bill, free-range actually serves a valuable role as a preserve for a wide assortment of wild ecologies, which is NOT WASTED LAND.  Monoculture, which "plant all that to soybeans" et al directly requires, is devastating to the environment. Animal pasturage can happen on tracts of land not suitable for crop based agriculture. (Brush and trees, rocky, brooks and streams etc...) This is very apples and oranges. Asserting that you can just turn that pasturage into productive cropland like magic is nonsense: Production will be very low, cost to cultivate will be very high, and chance of crop failure will be very high. It works best being what it is-- marginal land left to wild plant and animal species, with food animals allowed to graze on it. This produces an economic incentive to leave that land alone (so it does not become an erosion hazard, or worse) Granted, this only works properly when PROPER grazing practices are observed, and economic forces favor cramming too many animals into too small a space, but it is still much more feasible than turning it into soybeans.

I'm lowkey this.  Monoculture fields are certainly a blight as well, but much more efficient than even battery chickens or industrial hog farms.  Growing feed for chickens is like the Matrix robots "using humans for energy".  Not exactly a "waste" of land, but inefficient and ecologically disruptive.  And the REAL reason is that America is culturally used to consuming far more meat than is normal or healthy.

But eh, chicken is my favorite meat, with occasional pork ):  It's also relatively cheap and easy to work with, my friends with lyme disease can eat it, there's a Rolan iz Taurankin meme among my friends...  And I just hate the taste of even good steak, heh.  And I've *had* to eat it at important dinners, such a waste on me ):

[Grim Portent]

To expand on Weird's post about cows eating meat, that's actually not uncommon among herbivores. Most are not obligate herbivores but rather opportunistic omnivores. As has been mentioned meat's rather easy to digest, high in energy and nutrients and just generally good for animals barring a few that can't consume high protein quanitities without succumbing to urea poisoning, and even they will still usually eat it till they die. It's like eating so much chocolate that you die from a sugar overdose in a way.

Carrion or birds that fall out of nests are usually where herbivores get meat from, eggs if they can get them. Some tortoises eat bugs and most will eat carrion*, uromastyx lizards will eat bugs until they fall dead from urea poisoning (they don't handle meat well.) Deer occasionally knock over birds nests and eat the eggs/chicks. Hippos eat the odd animal as well despite mostly eating grass. First I heard of it was one eating part of a dead hippo calf. Rabbits and Guinea Pigs I think very rarely eat a bit of meat/egg, and they're about as herbivorous as they come.

*Mine likes cat biscuits, which is apparently quite common, some will eat various feeder worms or scraps of raw meat.

[Arx]

I've been accused of being a very nice person a few times over the last couple of weeks, which I internally find hilarious, since you guys know I can be the most jaded, sarcastic edgelord. It's pleasant, but at the same time it feels a bit weird for people to like me for reasons other than being witty or useful.

Also, I've ended up sorting out a whole bunch of complicated social situations lately. If, last Christmas, you had told me that this year I would be the first person other people approached for social tips, I would have struggled to believe you. O_o

[Arcvasti]

Rabbits and Guinea Pigs I think very rarely eat a bit of meat/egg, and they're about as herbivorous as they come.

Sometimes mother rabbits will eat their kittens if they get super spooked and think that their litter won't survive, which seems pretty carnivorous to me.

[Egan_BW]

Learning that basically the whole animal kingdom likes a bit of meat when they can get it... I'm not sure if this excuses meat-eating or just makes it worse.

[Grim Portent]

Rabbits and Guinea Pigs I think very rarely eat a bit of meat/egg, and they're about as herbivorous as they come.

Sometimes mother rabbits will eat their kittens if they get super spooked and think that their litter won't survive, which seems pretty carnivorous to me.

That's just a common small animal thing. All(?) rodents and lagmorphs do it, but not all of them will eat animal protein at other times. Mice, hamsters and rats definitely do to the point that some commercial feeds for them include dried mealworms. I've not seen rabbit or guinea pig food containing animal proteins or parts though, so I don't think it's something they normally choose to eat.

That said the fact they can even digest their babies properly implies that meat is probably part of their diet sometimes anyway now that I think about it, you don't develop the systems needed to eat meat solely to eat your babies.

Learning that basically the whole animal kingdom likes a bit of meat when they can get it... I'm not sure if this excuses meat-eating or just makes it worse.

Animals are pretty horrible things on the whole. Lot of messed up shit they do, especially dolphins.

[EnigmaticHat]

I try not to get too cynical about it.  Evolution has given humans have some messed up tendencies too, even if we try to bury them.

[scriver]

Saw an image of Steve Martin, the actor guy. It seems he has finally grown into his hair.

[IronTomato]

ever since my music teacher pointed out to me last year that Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas time has a constant high note playing in the background, every time i have heard it i have wanted to die

[Hanslanda]

Not as bad as hearing that 'you're sixteen, you're beautiful and you're mine' pedophile song five times a day.

[hector13]

Thank for sharing information that will make an annoying time that little bit more awful.

You bastard.

[Yoink]

Didn't Steam just have a huge sale? Now there's this Winter Sale business and pretty much everything on my wishlist is discounted.
...In other news, WTF are half of these games on my wishlist? I skipped to the bottom of the list in search of a particular game, and there is a tonne of weird shit on here that I don't remember ever seeing before, haha. And almost all of it is so freaking cheap. Probably was a bad idea to glance at my wishlist right now. I have a feeling there is much unhealthy spending in my future. >.>   

1) Animals are friends, not food (and associated "all meat is cruelty" and other hyperbole)
No, sorry. Not buying it. Having raised food animals free range in my youth, and personally knowing people that still do, no. Just no. If you want to believe that, you can join the ranks of other irrational belief holders, but you wont be able to convince me you are right. I will budge a little, and agree that most food animals are grown in abysmal conditions-- but most is not *all*. I do just as much to help combat factory farming by buying exclusively from known free range growers as you do by boycotting meat entirely.

So you're calling me "irrational", yet failing to explain just why you consider such beliefs irrational?

Also - you've known people involved in the meat industry all your life, so that makes it okay? That's... I'm sorry, but that is some of the dumbest reasoning I've ever heard. If everyone thought that way there would be no progress. And this may surprise you, but you're not the only one who has experienced such things. I spent an unfortunate amount of my childhood in a rural area, encountering plenty of farmers and what-have-you, and my father apparently grew up on a farm. Hell, my high school had a cattle farm on-campus! It really doesn't get much more hicktacular than that.
I never had m/any vegetarians and such amongst my family or friends, either, as far as I can recall.

The thing is, I have this strange habit of doing something called "thinking for myself". I assess and judge things based on the data available to me and make my own decisions, rather than simply accepting whatever is considered the norm by my family and peers. It saddens me that so many people refuse to do so, often even becoming angry when their beliefs are challenged. This is most likely usually because, deep down, these people do in fact have at least a shred of empathy and realise that what they're doing is wrong, but lack the strength of will to make changes and improve their way of life.
Fortunately, it is becoming both easier and more obvious to make such changes all the time. And the number of people who truly fail to see how wrong meat-eating is continues to rapidly decline. I like to remain optimistic, and hold out hope that society will have improved enough to entirely forsake such practices before some sort of catastrophe eventually destroys it.        

[scourge728]

If I didn't know any better, I would say what you said

hold out hope that society will have improved enough to entirely forsake such practices before some sort of catastrophe eventually destroys it.        

Makes it sound suspicously like you think meat eating is the number 1 problem with society, although I doubt you actually do think that, I just wanted to point that out.... in related news, can we make a thread about this so the things that make you go WTF thread doesn't turn into one.... again

My WTF:I don't understand Satanists, you guys are LITERALLY WORSHIPING THE DEVIL!

[Yoink]

It... kind of is? I mean, I guess I can think of other things that are probably as bad, but most of them are basically integral to the whole idea of modern society itself.
Eating meat (and the use of animal products in general) is wholly unnecessary and avoidable, but for some reason deeply ingrained in people's minds.   

My WTF:I don't understand Satanists, you guys are LITERALLY WORSHIPING THE DEVIL!

Don't a lot of so-called "satanists" actually follow some weird set of beliefs that aren't really devil-related at all and just use the "satan" part to be edgy?
I wouldn't really know, but I seem to remember something along those lines being the case. About to sleep now, so I haven't time to look it up.   

[wierd]

I think you misunderstand satanism.

It isn't "Oh dark lord, come and ravage the earth!"

If you actually look at the bible, and what satan offers, it is more "Do what you want, enjoy yourself, and be your own master; You do not need an overbearing, puritanical despot controlling everything, and dominating your mind."

Satanists see that message, and say "Yes, Please." while acknowledging that the abrahamic god exists.  (this is what makes them different from atheists, who say this being does not exist, and so any rationale relying on the existence of that being is absurd.)

The bible's message is that if you follow the siren song of the devil, you will ultimately be destroyed, because any system that tries to come out of it will suffer from being imperfectly managed (again, leveraging the axiom that God is all knowing, and thus his instructions are inherently perfect and unimpeachably correct.) and any such system is doomed to "breaking eggs", and if you stay in such a system, your odds of being a broken egg approaches 1 given sufficient lengths of time.

This is kinda the WHOLE POINT behind the "Wide is the road, and easy the way that leads to destruction, while narrow is the gate, and straight the way that leads to salvation." quotation from the bible.

Satan offers you everything you could possibly want--- The consequences being the natural ones that come from such a system. Satanists see this, and say "Yes, please."

You can find this interpretation directly stated by "Church of satan" officials.  It's not hard to understand at all.

Here, have a video interview with the "Black pope"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=estGvCQgg1o