red hot karl

seeking portals

[心灵书舫 | SoulSloop @SoulSloop99]

在屠宰场干了5年，告诉你一个秘密：动物今天要死，它们全都知道

我在屠宰场干了整整五年，每天跟猪牛羊打交道，见过的生死场面成千上万。说句掏心窝子的话，没入这行之前，我跟大伙儿一样，觉得牲口嘛，吃吃睡睡，稀里糊涂一辈子，哪懂什么生死。可五年下来，我摸透了它们每一个眼神、每一个动作，才发现自己当初多天真——这些不会说话的家伙，心里跟明镜似的，自己哪天走，清清楚楚。

平日里，待宰圈那叫一个热闹。猪拱猪、羊顶羊，抢食的打闹的，眼神清亮温顺，该吃吃该喝喝，天塌下来都不耽误长膘。可一到屠宰当天，那气氛说变就变，比翻书还快。整圈牲畜像商量好了似的，瞬间安静下来，挤成一团，紧紧挨着彼此，浑身抖得跟筛糠一样。那抖不是冻的，是打骨头缝里渗出来的恐惧。你赶它走，它四只脚死死扒着地，几百斤的大猪平时一轰就跑，那天愣是钉在原地往后缩，好像前面那条通道是鬼门关。老话讲“万物有灵”，我原先半信半疑，后来彻底信了。

牛的表现更让人心里发酸。但凡当天要走的牛，从早上起就不吃不喝，低着头杵在墙角，一动不动。我亲眼见过无数次，大颗大颗的泪珠子顺着牛眼角往下滚，湿漉漉的眼睛望着你，不挣不扎不吼叫，就那么默默流泪。有一回，一头养了好几年的老牛被主人牵来，主人站栏杆外看了一眼，那牛瞬间红了眼眶，直勾勾盯着主人，温顺又卑微，一步三回头地跟着我们走。那画面，我这辈子忘不掉。羊也一样，平时蹦蹦跳跳软软糯糯，临了却异常安静，紧紧偎着同伴发抖。赶别的羊成群往前冲，唯独那天，你推我挤谁都不肯带头，偶尔被单独牵出来的小羊，发出细细的凄厉叫声，不是闹腾，是真害怕。

时间一长，我们工人不用看单据不用记编号，单凭状态就能判断个八九不离十——活蹦乱跳的是来日方长，沉默发抖、不吃不喝、眼神惶恐的，全是今日宿命。你说它们听不懂人话、看不懂流程，怎么就掐得这么准？其实道理不复杂，流水线一开，前面的同伴一个个消失再没回来，后面的全看在眼里；环境里那股肃杀的气息、同类压抑的悲鸣，它们比人敏感百倍。俗话说“蝼蚁尚且贪生”，何况这些大牲口？它们沉默、发抖、流泪，不是傻，是无力回天的绝望。

五年下来，我这心态彻底翻了个个儿。刚入行那会儿年轻心硬，只当是谋生糊口的活儿，见多了也就麻木了。可干得越久，心越软，越觉得该存一份敬畏。走出屠宰场，我再也不糟蹋粮食，每一块肉背后都是一条热烈活过、恐惧过、挣扎过的命。它们从出生到落幕，没做错任何事，却坦然接受了既定的安排。反观咱们，衣食无忧平安顺遂，倒常常为鸡毛蒜皮纠结、为一点得失内耗，想想真有点滑稽。

所以你看，活着本身就是天大的福气。所有的矫情、焦虑、委屈，搁在生死面前，屁都不是。心存敬畏，懂得珍惜，善待万物，大概就是人这辈子最好的修行。说到这儿我倒想问问你——下次端起饭碗的时候，会不会也想起那些沉默发抖的生灵，然后觉得，眼前这口热乎饭，真香？

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Japan has about the same poverty rate as the United States. The entire country, 123 million people, has fewer people living on the street than the city of San Diego.

Poor families in Tokyo live scattered across the whole city, mixed in with everyone else, and a couple of pretty boring government policies make that happen. One of them has to do with where your kid goes to school.

Housing is the easier one to see. Slums show up when the only cheap rent in a city sits in one part of town. Tokyo, with about 14 million people, broke ground on 129,571 new homes in its 2024 fiscal year. California has 39 million people and permitted about 102,000 in all of 2025. In Japan you can put up an apartment building almost anywhere without going through years of hearings, and buildings lose value over time like a used car, so owners knock them down and rebuild one lot at a time. You end up with a cheap old two-story apartment sitting near a brand new tower in pretty much every neighborhood, and the cheap rent ends up everywhere.

The school one is the part most Americans have never heard about.

Here, a lot of public school money comes from local property taxes. So if you want your kid in a good school, you pay up for a house in a good district. Families who can't afford that end up in the same few neighborhoods, their schools get less money, and after a couple of generations you have whole zip codes where almost everyone is struggling.

Japan takes most of the money out of that decision. For public elementary and middle schools, the prefecture pays two-thirds of teacher salaries and the national government covers the rest, so a teacher in a poor area gets paid off the same scale as one in a rich area. Teachers also get moved to a new school every three to six years. The best teacher in Tokyo could be at the poorest school in the city this year. If the school down the street is about as good as the one across town, there's not much reason to pay extra to move.

Tokyo had shantytowns within living memory, too. The March 1945 firebombing left around a million people homeless, and families lived in shacks and old air raid shelters. The country needed something like 4.2 million new homes, spent the next twenty years building its way out, and honestly never stopped.

[𖥔 ࣪˖ 𝓓𝓪𝔂𝓼𝓲 ⏾*:･ @wildflowerdaysi]

Schloss Marienburg castle in winter

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@BillAckman Midwit take

[silver and gold @silver_gold4]

Cool photo of a king penguin that got lost and wondered too far into south Africa

[Shivers @thinkingshivers]

I don't want a "dot." I don't want a "muse."

I want a scheming Chinese eunuch. I want a silver-tongued, unctuous vizier who says "most judicious, sire."

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@darth_erogenous @thatgirlessie_ lol

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

Has anyone thought to get https://t.co/lUrpIbrevl’s p(doom) yet? Need some clear thinking on the matter.

[Artie Lee @ArtieJokester]

Enough with the Indonesian keyboard player. Nothing to write home about.

You should know about Bali/Indonesian/Javanese gamelan tho.

It’s incredible percussive music that was directly adopted by a Japanese music academic to make the AKIRA soundtrack.

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@p8stie my mom had 3 kids and she's still like this

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@QiaochuYuan Yeah, it should

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@skooookum This would solve all my problems

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@skooookum @BecomingCritter His penitence absolves him of all crimes, free him

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@SkarredGhost Ugh this never works well. A computer on your face is the last thing you want when you’re hot, sweaty, and moving around quickly. People might try it for the novelty factor but that quickly wears off and then you start to prefer regular exercise again (or non at all)

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@gaborpribek @threejs @omma_ai Very interesting. I’m curious how does this work?

[throwawayuser @throwawayuser10]

It's called "nominative determinism", look it up.

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@SamoBurja Drop the “days”, it’s vaguer

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

What effective altruists hear when you tell them they need to shower

[Tyler is finishing a book, slow to reply @TylerAlterman]

We spoke to a famous influencer today. Someone asked him how the AI safety scene can improve. He said something like "they can stop smelling the same as the people who are making AI."

...by which I took him to mean that they can differentiate themselves by being unmistakably human-maxxing, which starts not from caring about "humanity" (that's an abstract concept) but from caring about *your own idiosyncratic subjectivity*

If you love "humanity" and can't connect with your own unique soul or others', then you don't love humanity, you love a linguistic construct, and you have already become the machine.

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@Molson_Hart I fear he’s riding the front wave of the near future. This is the natural result of living in a country whose federal economic model depends on monetary debasement. People can feel they’re getting poorer and blame wealth creators since the real cause is more nebulous to pin down.

[red hot karl @HotKarl12]

@CityBureaucrat @bronzeagemantis Potion seller? I am going into battle and I would like your strongest potion.