Photos, The Big 3-0, and Good News

From Vox, which has become the place for the most left-wing, doomer take on everything, Bryan Walsh offers "Good News":

While our brains are wired to focus on threats and our media and tech ecosystem amplifies the alarming, there are remarkable things happening all around us right now — innovations, breakthroughs, and everyday acts of progress that deserve our attention. 

Spring in Tucson:

Palo Verde in bloom.

Saguaro buds and blooms.

I got this when I asked ChatGPT to create an image of Anne as a cat.

Finally: there have been more than 30 reviews of Losing My Religions, but below are excerpts from the thirtieth official US Amazon review (written by someone in Greece):

The first time I felt Matt Ball's influence was in a warehouse in Seattle in roughly 2003. An animal advocate said to us: "The approach Matt Ball is suggesting really resonates with me."

It was a new concept, this idea of not being in a vegan "club" or making it about your own personal purity. This concept helped me--especially as a new vegan at the time--in the way I approached both my own advocacy and myself. I no longer feared minute ingredients or felt the need to check A-Z ingredient lists, nor did I need to worry about suggesting anyone exploring plant-based foods do the same. Bottom line: Make it easy not to eat animals, and don't make it about me.

And this is where "Losing" shined for me -- the flipping of conventional narratives. The most powerful example in the book, and my personal favorite is "The End of Veganism." 

Provocative title? Indeed. But Mr. Ball isn't here to hold your hand! He's here to slap your hand from your eyes and/or ears. To provide post-slap glasses to experience an alternate vision to the one where we are vegan, full stop we're done, end of suffering. To shift the focus from what IS vegan to creating a world with less suffering, vegan label begone.

For me, beyond shifting from vegan-as-identity, this means we approach others with the same compassion we're asking them to consider.

As noted in this chapter, one of the biggest barriers to people trying vegan is other vegans. I have experienced this directly when people tell me a version of "You're the most normal vegan I know." Another said to a friend: "I usually don't like vegans, but she's cool." [This reviewer is super-cool, by the way. -ed.]

Kudos to Matt Ball for his years of advocating for a more practical approach that could actually move the dial for animals.