Not in a great spot. My material needs are met, so don't worry about that. Just want to break out of the cycle I'm in of "oh hey, you have only a few hundred from this paycheck before you're negative again."

      • MerryChristmas [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This has always been my plan if I ever end up in prison! From what I have been told, the animal tamer niche sort of let's you bypass some of the tribalism. Everybody loves pets.

    • TyMan210 [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I know a couple who built up a whole aquatics business off the back of breeding and selling ramshorn snails at the beginning. They don't go for much individually (depends on the variety), but they breed so prodigiously that it doesn't take long before you have more than you can easily sell lol. And they have basically no care requirements lol.

      I wish my neos would breed though. :sadness: I'm not even wanting to sell them, I just want more lol. I think I just don't do enough water changes, but unfortunately I don't always have the time to

      • MerryChristmas [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        If we can get enough interest to start a c/aquariums, I swear I will be the number one power poster on this site.

        I've found a few things that really help with keeping your neo colony going: lots of java moss, diffused lighting and a decent calcium source. Aquarium Coop sells these calcium blocks called "Wonder Shells" that seem consistently trigger spawning behaviors in all of my inverts.

        Edit: Holy shit I'm reading this thread and nevermind on c/aquariums.

        • spectre [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          If we can get enough interest to start a c/aquariums

          Do a regular "aquariums" thread to start out with

        • TyMan210 [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I would 100% be down with that. I think it's pretty easy to get a new community to be made, there just has to be people willing to be mods beforehand.

          Good to know, thanks! I'll have to spend some time and see if I can't get them going better. About a third of the tank is a big patch of rotala that gives them a lot of space to hide that's out of direct light, but I've had bad luck with moss growing string algae that I can't get rid of without removing the moss. Probably also to do with the water changes lol. I hadn't heard about the calcium thing though, I'll definitely try that when I can!

    • pocket_tofu [she/her,fae/faer]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Animal exploitation and murder are horrible and disgusting and you should deleted this comment.

      Shrimp and fish are sentient creatures, and you should feel ashamed that you're proposing torturing others as chattel slaves and commodities for a quick buck.

      https://www.shrimpwelfareproject.org/are-shrimps-sentient

      https://viva.org.uk/blog/do-prawns-and-shrimp-feel-pain/

      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/science/depressed-fish.html

      https://aeon.co/essays/fish-are-nothing-like-us-except-that-they-are-sentient-beings

      • MerryChristmas [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I absolutely understand why this wouldn't be an "agree to disagree" sort of thing for you, but I'm not having this argument right now. I'll read and consider the links you shared, though.

          • MerryChristmas [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            If I saw someone's actions as tantamount to genocide then I wouldn't simply agree to disagree. That's what I understand and that's why I'm not asking her to hear me out.

            • Maaskarpone [they/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Not good enough. You clearly don't view the animal holocaust as genocide. You don't have the right to simply disengage when the facts don't suit your material interests. Your actions have real-life harmful consequences on the lived experience of subjective, animal people.

              Three questions:

              1. How do you define sentience?
              2. What is the base value of humans?
              3. What do you call systemic killing?

              I'll give you the answers now to save time:

              1. capability of feeling
              2. capability of feeling. Therefore, you should extend the base value of humans to other animals, who are also capable of feeling.
              3. genocide
                • Maaskarpone [they/them]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  I did say:

                  You don’t have the right to simply disengage when the facts don’t suit your material interests.

                  So... ...engaaage and stop ignoring / avoiding the issue vegans raise?

                  • MerryChristmas [any]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    You're right, you did say that.

                    I've already said that I'm going to read the articles that were suggested to me and consider whether they support the idea that breeding pet shrimp is a form of genocide. I don't know what else you expect to get out of this interaction.

                • Maaskarpone [they/them]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  The insult doesn't bother me. I had to actually google that term because I didn't know what it meant, and I'm actually quite impressed I gave the impression of a philosopher, as much as I find them as a general rule of thumb revolting people.

                  Your insult does beg the question, though: Are values unimportant to you? I focus a lot on values in the points I make. I value human life, for example, and that's why I became anticapitalist. My value for them means I believe shelter should be a human right, and therefore I'm against capitalist private property, like landlordism, for example.

                  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    Don't worry, you didn't give the impression of a philosopher.

                    And values are ethics, not ontology. Both metaphysics, but not the same. Ontology is the study of "being" and of the attributes that make a "thing" that particular thing.

            • Maaskarpone [they/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Your tone indicates you're not taking me seriously, when I expect a serious response requiring proper engagement from you on the issue of animal abuse. Why aren't you vegan? Please read on the principle of charity. Unironically, though, there is an animal holocaust; you are right. :)

                • Maaskarpone [they/them]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  I think the systemic killing of all animals is genocide. The animal kingdom includes wasps, so yes, killing wasps is genocide.

                  They are the same thing in terms of genocide. However, as clarification, would I more broadly call the oppressions the same thing in an imprecise way? Yes and no. Yes, because of the co-constitution between animal and human oppression, whose context, values, ideologies, socialised/codified social behaviours and social structure/material conditions are full of continuities. No, because they still have different contexts and have unique oppressions in their own ways. An imprecise answer to that question is analogous to someone saying racism and queerphobia are the same things, which is something I wouldn't claim. Everything needs to be looked at and explored in its unique entirety. We need to acknowledge both the similarities and the differences of the oppressions and consider their unique entireties in order to uproot their evils to our best extent.

                • pocket_tofu [she/her,fae/faer]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Why the fuck are you even bringing up genocide, the Holocaust, and Judaism as a response to me telling you to stop hurting animals? You're very obviously using us as a prop and it's fucking gross and antisemitic. Your very mature response of "no u" when I said you're using Jews as a prop is belied by the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with carnists like you mocking vegans for saying we shouldn't breed and murder shrimp and fish for money because they're sentient beings who deserve consideration and don't want to die.

        • pocket_tofu [she/her,fae/faer]
          ·
          2 years ago

          It's not a comparison, they're literally chattel. They're literally sentient. Stop being a slavery apologist, human supremacist

            • pocket_tofu [she/her,fae/faer]
              ·
              2 years ago

              You exclude nonhumans from personhood so you can excuse forcing them to labor and die for your own profit. You don't want to call it slavery because you're a human supremacist

                • pocket_tofu [she/her,fae/faer]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Perhaps the social schematism of perception in anti-Semites is so altered, that they cannot even see Jews as human beings. The ceaselessly recurrent expression that savages, blacks, Japanese resemble animals, or something like apes, already contains the key to the pogrom. The possibility of this latter is contained in the moment that a mortally wounded animal looks at a human being in the eye. The defiance with which they push away this gaze – 'it’s after all only an animal' – is repeated irresistibly in atrocities to human beings, in which the perpetrators must constantly reconfirm this “only an animal,” because they never entirely believed it even with animals https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/ch02.htm

    • Maaskarpone [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Ew, how disgusting, vile and unethical. Have some dignity as someone that calls themselves a leftist, and show some dignifying behaviour towards animals who have continuities with humans, like feeling pain. Your behaviour towards living beings falls short of basic, bare-minimum standards.