Vegan Wild Child

super easy vegan caesar dressing;

2 heaping tablespoons of just mayo, 1 flax egg, 1 large dill pickle, 2 pitted kalamata olives, 1 large clove of garlic, 6 tablespoons nutritional yeast, 1 tablespoon mustard, the juice of 1 lime, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, ¾ cups plant based milk, 1 tablespoon dried parsley (optional), ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, 1 tablespoon (or more) sea-salt,

Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Even without fossil fuels, we will exceed our 565 gigatonnes CO2e limit by 2030, all from raising animals.

Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame.

Cows produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day.

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

A lot of these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.

The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease. 

Their senses are in overload. They smell and taste the feces, blood and steam in the air. They can hear so much foreign noise: the clunking of mechanical chains, pneumatic control valves, shouting of the workers inside, industrial white noise. One-way gates prevent the animals from backing away in fear. Many get caught as they sprint forward to remain close to a friend for comfort.

Josh says one of the saddest moments he witnessed was an ex-dairy cow with protruding hips and large pink X spray painted on her back. She moved along the kill line without coercion—she knew the routine of being shuffled around from her years spent trudging back and forth from a milking parlour. Exhausted and depleted, she collapsed onto the cold concrete floor of the slaughterhouse. Instead of euthanizing her, on-site vets made the decision to leave her overnight and kill her for meat first thing in the morning, when the line could be slowed. She was pregnant when she was killed, her baby cut from her stomach.