In medieval times, within the arms race of ever more demonic torture devices, some sadistic genius came up with the idea of the Little Ease.
This was a prison cell built so small in every dimension that a grown man could not stand upright in it nor lie down at full length nor properly sit.
The pain is relentless and without relief and inflicted by one's own body. Prisoners were known to go insane within a few days. A stay at the Little Ease was considered even more cruel than the rack, the thumbscrew, and the other ghoulish machinery of the Tower of London.
A breeding pig will spend her whole life in a version of that box.
These are social, roaming creatures (more intelligent than dogs) who will never leave this corset of steel.
They have been selectively bred to be bigger than their frames can support. Yet we put them in cells so confined that they cannot comfortably sit, and their attempts to do so (for example, by sneaking their limbs into adjacent stalls) reliably lead to fractures and sprains.
They cannot sweat, yet have nothing to roll around in to cool themselves off. Except their own manure, which (contrary to the common misconception) they are so averse to (thanks to their strong sense of smell) that new sows will often suffer from constipation to avoid soiling the space from which they eat and sleep.
Here is how the writer Matthew Scully described what saw at one of Smithfield’s “gestation barn”:
> “Sores, tumors, ulcers, pus pockets, lesions, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting, fighting, and other “Vices,” as they’re called in the industry. Frenzied chewing on bars and chains, stereotypical “vacuum” chewing on nothing at all, stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw. And “social defeat,” lots of it, in every third or fourth stall some completely broken being you know is alive only because she blinks and stares up at you … creatures beyond the power of pity to help or indifference to make more miserable, dead to the world except as heaps of flesh into which the [insemination] rod may be stuck once more and more flesh reproduced.”
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The Save Our Bacon Act is trying to unroll the few state protections we have against this barbaric cruelty - for example California’s Prop 12 - which banned the sale of pork from pigs kept in gestation crates.
It’s incredibly important we don’t end up with this sort of federal preemption.
SOB will not only kill the most important animal welfare related laws in the US of the past decade, but more importantly, it will also restrict ALL future legislative progress (aka how the animal welfare movement has gotten its biggest wins).
The Senate is currently deciding whether to add the SOB Act to the Farm Bill.
With relatively little money now, we can discourage the most pivotal senators in the Ag committee from backing this amendment.
Defeating this bill is even more important given the amount of philanthropic funding I expect to come online in the next year or two.
It will plausibly be over 10x more expensive to repeal SOB than to prevent it from passing in the first place.
All that money that could be spent transforming our society's relationship to mass animal suffering will instead have to be spent just getting us back to where we are right now.
That's why money spent now fighting this bill (and I mean right NOW) is so effective.
If you’re in a position to donate six figures, please DM me.
guy at the bus stop said "trans rights" to me so i smiled and nodded and clearly this was not satisfactory so he said "I said trans rights" and raised his fist in some kinda power salute. I was caught off guard and bowed chinese-style. Im not sure why i did that
Fun fact: the idea that communists see women as public property was the argument employed in the Jim crow south against the CPUSA due to the party's work among black sharecroppers and proletarians in the 20s and 30s.
Actually cannot believe this is a real New York Times story.
Apparently debt collectors are having a tough time financially right now — because many of them are being called by other debt collectors.
The Teamsters Union demands that Disney end its “communal underwear” practices.
Currently, costumed Disney Parks employees have to wear shared underwear because it is feared that their own underwear might be visible under the costume. This has led to many pubic lice outbreaks.
DC elites want to create this centrifugal force of "scandal after scandal" to push Platner out of the race, but all they're doing is cementing his outsider status in a rural state that values independence more than partisanship. The very disconnect that's kept Collins in power.
Over a year and the trad larpers are still mad they were told no when they wanted to hijack a game and universe someone else made for their "le based crusader" fantasy because they didn't like the grimdark aspects
What's important here is that he spent the entire production trying to bait Muslims into assaulting him for acting flamboyantly gay. Only for that to never happen, except with a group of Israelis. It's the only time he broke character during production, to tell them he was acting
They got her age wrong but she is clearly alive and voting. She’s 86 years old, she could have easily voted in 51 elections. This is not evidence of fraud but it is evidence Nick Shirley is an idiot.
Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day