Unusually aggressive lone star ticks, common in the south-east, are spreading to areas previously too cold for them

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    257 days ago

    This is what we call a negative feedback loop. More CO2 emissions->more ticks->more meat allergy->less demand for cattle->less CO2 emissions

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    417 days ago

    Remember non vegans, your lust for meat and the resulting impact on the climate will eventually force you to stop eating meat. You played yourselves.

    • Admiral Patrick
      link
      fedilink
      English
      68
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      Remember non vegans, your lust for meat and the resulting impact on the climate will eventually force you to stop eating meat. You played yourselves.

      FYI: This ☝️. This is why people don’t like vegans. It has nothing to do with your dietary choices or choosing to not use or consume products derived from animals - seriously, no one gives a shit; you do you. It has everything to do with the militantly self-righteous, condescending, preachy, holier-than-thou attitude, the constant proselytizing, and the demonizing/name-calling/general shitty behavior that comes with the former.

      Sincerely,

      A vegetarian who doesn’t make it my whole personality


      Edit: Every single direct reply to this has further illustrated the point I was making. Maybe instead of being preachy and condescending, you just lead by good example. If people see and want what you have they’ll follow. Otherwise, you’re just shooting your own cause in the foot with your abominable behavior.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        127 days ago

        People hold strong, defensive opinions about all kinds of things, funny how you don’t react this way to those too.

        It’s pure carnism defense mechanisms in action. If you ever wonder how MAGA supporters can be so detached from reality, remember you’re doing the same thing.

        The truly self-righteous position is thinking you have a right to their bodies.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        117 days ago

        While i understand that it is human nature to not want to listen to people who are talking down to you, or who say things that make you feel bad about yourself and your choices, i don’t think “someone made me feel bad so I’m going to continue to destroy the planet” is a valid excuse to avoid reflecting on personal habits and their consequences.

        But it’s a good reminder in how to speak to people. If youre dealing with someone in the maga cult you could try to say 1 liners at them but you probably aren’t going to get them to actually listen to you. Same applies to trying to talk to omnivores or vegetarians

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        87 days ago

        Isn’t similarly militant and self-righteous when someone feels this way about trans rights or abolishing slavery?

        • trevor (he/they)
          link
          fedilink
          English
          67 days ago

          Nooooo. I have to reduce veganism to a dietary preference instead of a rights movement so it’s easier to dismiss it because a vegan was annoying or whatever one time!

        • NSRXN
          link
          fedilink
          46 days ago

          comparing slaves and trans people to animals is gross.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                25 days ago

                But my point is that animals should not be treated “like animals” either. They should be included in the social contract and afforded a basic minimum of respect and autonomy, not enslaved and exploited.

                • NSRXN
                  link
                  fedilink
                  25 days ago

                  treating animals like animals is absolutely appropriate

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            127 days ago

            FYI: This ☝️. This is why people don’t like the lgbtq+ movement. It has nothing to do with who you’re attracted to or what gender you feel you are and has everything to do with the militantly self-righteous, condescending, preachy, holier-than-thou attitude you run around with.

            Sincerely,

            A gay guy who doesn’t make it my whole personality

            As a queer person I’ve read plenty of comments like these. It’s a common fallacious argument against liberatory movements that people who perpetuate the status quo use to defend their indifference to injustice by deflecting blame onto the people who call out their complicity. If you see veganism not as a lifestyle but as a movement for the libration of animals everything clicks.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        46 days ago

        Good thing I don’t care what carnists (including vegetarians) think of me 🤷🏻‍♀️

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          36 days ago

          Not everyone can afford to be vegan yknow?

          So why don’t you get off your high horse privileged ass and consider that this vegetarian person is obviously trying to mitigate some damage by not eating meat.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        137 days ago

        Remember non vegans, cloned meat will trigger your nearly acquired meat allergy the same as hoof-grown meat. It is, after all, meat.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        If this lab grown “meat” can be created in petri dishes or whatever without animal exploitation and suffering then it will be vegan by definition.

        Edit: Ah it’s not lab grown meat but genetically altered animals that they farm. :/

      • Cousin Mose
        link
        fedilink
        4
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        People will eat insects rather than stop fucking with animals. The lengths y’all go to are insane.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            26 days ago

            I think that is what they are saying. People would rather eat insects, which are animals, rather than just go vegan

            • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ
              link
              fedilink
              English
              15 days ago

              You’d rather eat a bean with 6 pairs of legs instead of a bean with no legs?

              the “insect farming” idea is mostly hype to get subsidies, as the demand is absent, the subsidized insect farming will just end up as concentrated feed for the usual vertebrate animal farming operations.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    36 days ago

    There’s a ton of these where I live. Probably the most common tick, actually. They are extremely aggressive, especially in the fall. The larva is so small you can’t even tell they’re not a fleck of dirt until they move. So many of them can get on you at once I describe it as a “plume” of ticks.

    Trimming trails doesn’t seem to prevent them from crawling across open ground climb on. I wouldn’t know it if I was allergic to mammal meat, but I’ve heard people having reactions to gelatin pill capsules and other sneaky things.

    It sucks, but the alternative is I don’t experience the outdoors, so it’s just something to deal with and plan for. All my clothing is treated with permethrin. I’m basically in “tick mode” any time I’m walking around except in the dead of winter.

  • Sibbo
    link
    fedilink
    987 days ago

    On the plus side, meat consumption will decrease.

      • Of the Air (cele/celes)
        link
        fedilink
        2
        edit-2
        6 days ago

        Please when sharing wikipedia links remove the m. as the browser will decide if it wants the mobile version anyway. Thanks!

      • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ
        link
        fedilink
        English
        37 days ago

        There are A LOT of negative feedback loops. We don’t like to talk about them because they are usually trouble.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        77 days ago

        It is demonstrably true that life on a planet alters the conditions of the planet (which then alters the life, etc). Most glaring is the abundance of oxygen in our atmosphere. We don’t look for oxygen on other planets because oxygen is necessary for life; we look for oxygen because it’s unlikely to exist in high densities without life to produce it.

        The sci-fi novel Death’s End by Cixin Liu (third in a series) further suggests that life alters the universe rather than just local systems, which was a fun idea. He’s a rather long-winded author, but he’s easy to forgive.

        That said, this is the first time I’m hearing of the hypothesis by name, so I can’t be sure what all it says. A quick skim lines up with reality though.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          37 days ago

          It’s more that life itself almost evolves an entire planet to best benefit life itself. Or that when life on the planet as whole is threatened, life evolves to address the crisis. For example, in the caboniferous, trees evolved undigestable lignin, and this caused a misbalance in nature as forests grew and died with nothing to digest the dead trees. In time, organisms arose that could digest wood, and the balance was restored.

          Here, the problem is greenhouse gas emissions. And meat consumption is one of the biggest drivers of meat consumption. So nature responds by making humans allergic to meat!

          The Gaia hypothesis is quite out there because it ascribes a sort of collective will or intention to nature, rather than just the blind machinations of evolution.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            46 days ago

            The hypothesis kind of seems like selection bias to me. It seems more likely to me that in order for life to flourish as it has on earth, it has to (by pure chance) create a self regulating system, as otherwise it will eventually die off. What’s interesting (and I hadnt thought about prior to reading the wikipedia article) to me is that it seems possible that the current rapid temperature rise will lead to some organism(s) we don’t know or think about multiplying like crazy, and that has some form of cooling effect due to the organism’s emissions or w/e. Industrialized humans appear to be the most extreme (in the sense of rapid, persistent change) climate event to happen to this planet since it has had life, but at the very least we’re not the first time something fucked up the climate. Maybe we’ll just get lucky after all.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        57 days ago

        I can fuck with this. Spookier if you consider humans.

        Neurodivergence (and all immune-mediated conditions) are increasing in response to the environment which results in people like Greta who directly resist the damage that’s causing the increased incidence.

        • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ
          link
          fedilink
          English
          3
          edit-2
          7 days ago

          Is it increasing or is testing for it increasing + becoming more socially visible?

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1
            edit-2
            6 days ago

            Both.

            It’s much harder to prove this for things like neurodivergence but easy to do so for things like autoimmune conditions, type-1 diabetes, MS, etc.

            And the fact that they’re co-morbid isn’t coincidence!

            https://me-pedia.org/wiki/RCCX_Genetic_Module_Theory

            The RCCX genetic module is a chimeric region that stays linked, adapts, and spits out mutations in response to environmental factors. Most complex gene cluster in our genome, in the most complex region, and state of the art techniques still struggle to sequence it in all its detail still. Recently shown to be behind sex biases in immune conditions by MIT. But personally I think it’s fascinating and meshes well with the Gaia hypothesis.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      46
      edit-2
      7 days ago

      Given that we’re gutting our health care sector to the tune of $850B, that might not be due to people with meat allergies switching to vegetables so much as it is people with meat allergies simply dying.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    87 days ago

    “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.

  • Lovable Sidekick
    link
    fedilink
    English
    37 days ago

    Unpopular opinion but hear me out - doesn’t a nice bowl of ticks go great with iced tea on a hot day?

  • Guy Ingonito
    link
    fedilink
    16 days ago

    Climate activists should be air-dropping these over population centers like those radioactive screw worm flies

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    57 days ago

    Oh boy! Prepare for conspiracy theorys of BIG VEGAN creating ticks in labs to make Americans turn gay.

  • KT-TOT
    link
    fedilink
    English
    67 days ago

    (Based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based based )

    That sucks :( i hope not too many people get bitten