• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Sure, you don’t need to stress eat while you’re bored. But eating is already a thing you do, it makes you feel good, and it’s there.

    Imagine if you actually had to smoke a cigarette 3 times a day. The smoke is a requirement for your body. It makes you feel good, but you can go to excess and it’s bad for you. This is MUCH closer to food.

    You HAVE to eat. You eat daily. Not doing so is a disorder. So you can’t just not eat, you have to develop a healthy relationship with food. With this thing that tastes good, makes you feel good, and you have to do anyway. Well, that’s okay. We can have a healthy relationship with it!

    Oh no. You’re sad. Something bad happened. You need something to help you out. Well, how about some food? It’s usually pretty enjoyable. You eat every day anyway, so like… It’s not a HUGE deal, surely, and you’re fuckin SAD man. Fuck it, whole pizza it is! Let’s get happy!

    Rinse and repeat, because life is inevitably a big series of bad things (and good, but we’re not focusing on those) happening. Now your emotional coping is tied to food. It’s not as addictive as nicotine, but it is a requirement for life. It’s a lot harder to change THAT than it is to just say “don’t smoke.” It’s like going to a smoker and saying “smoke, but only 3 times a day.”


  • I don’t see any normalizing of obesity. I see a lot of empathy for people whose circumstances have led them to this point. I see a lot of explaining why someone may actively choose foregoing physical health for another reason.

    You can support people who are in a position, even by “their own hand” without saying it’s cool, or normal, or anything. You can give just a little back to these people, to hopefully help move them back towards an actual normal living without saying where they are now is good or healthy. That’s what I’m seeing.




  • We also extend some sympathy to the cigarette smoker, to the self harmer. Quitting smoking is HARD. It takes a ton of effort, nicotine is literally addictive. Self harm is indicative of any of a number of mental and emotional issues. Those are a nightmare to address

    But at the end of the day, they should just grow up and do it, right? Just don’t smoke. Just don’t cut yourself. Just don’t eat to excess. Simple.

    Never mind the literal good deserts some people find themselves in. The decades of misinformation from lobbying groups. The fact that everyone has their own one weird trick,so you don’t know who to believe. The fact that the cheapest food is often the least nutritious. The fact that, increasingly, people have to work more hours to get by, leaving less time for things like cooking a proper meal.

    There are real societal factors that play into the obesity epidemic. We didn’t get where we are because everyone was collectively like “let’s just get fat, yeah?” - we were all brought to this point by the influences of the world around us. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but it’s also not the whole game.


  • Why does it necessarily have to be a celebration? Are quiet hours at shopping centers celebrating sensory disorders?

    It’s not about celebrating, even if some people will use it as such. It’s about allowing different people the comfort to experience a thing that most of our society takes for granted.

    I’ve never met a fat person who doesn’t want to change their lifestyle. Sure, there are a few who claim that, but in my experience, that’s a defense mechanism from all of the people who look down on them daily. Something like this is only a good thing, offering encouragement at no significant cost.







  • I’m not an expert on any of this. Just a caveat, I’m sure anything I propose will have it’s share of flaws.

    State law enforcement (men armed with guns apprehending private citizens) should be the LAST step. For in-the-moment intervention, cops are already useless - unless they happen to be on site already, whatever violence happen, will happen before they get there. There’s no good answer to stopping a determined violent individual, short of empowering people to defend themselves and others around them.

    I think there’s always going to be some level of violent crime. Some people simply don’t function the same way. For these people, we clearly need some kind of active response force. It’s use should be limited, based on hard fact and actual threat to civilian life. We also clearly need some kind of (humane) separation for people who cannot or will not rehabilitate, people who cannot be reintegrated into our society. These are two of the only acceptable uses of state violence, in my opinion.

    I don’t know the exact way it would look, but I’d like to see a move towards communities looking after themselves and those around them, in all aspects, and this includes safety and security.

    Unfortunately, for property crimes, the only way to actually enforce property ownership is through violence, either direct threat of violence (break my shit and I’ll end you), or state violence (break my shit and the state will send armed men to apprehend you unless you reimburse me). We have to determine what level of property security versus violence we seem acceptable. I tend to fall a bit more extreme towards violence not being okay to protect property - I don’t think there’s a single piece of property worth killing or maiming an individual over. Thus, if the only way to protect property is this level of violence, I believe it is wrong to intervene. I don’t believe it is right for the individual to intervene, and I don’t believe it is right for the state to intervene. The sad truth is that most of what the police force does now is enforce these types of crimes.