@cstross but. but. disemboweled rodents are one of the best ways to show love and care for somebody!

together with releasing an alive but weakened rodent in such a way that they can have the pleasure to hunt it themselves, of course

@cstross Violets re violet. Blue is not where to file it.

@JdeBP @cstross

OK, but "Amputated zombie plant genitals" probably would've been awkward.

@HighlandLawyer @cstross Yep. Once when house/cat-sitting I found the cat outside the back door straddling the headless body of a young rabbit, licking at the stump. I could have done without that.

@JdeBP @jmax @cstross are you trying to say that reading then while they are still alive is more humane ?

@JdeBP @cstross @jmax To paraphrase Jack Handey: if potatoes could scream, would we be so cavalier about boiling them? We might be, if they screamed all the time.

@cstross you're a wonderful writer, but your poetry could use some work

@JdeBP @jmax @cstross this is why Jainism has the actual most humane diet. They worked out all this shit centuries ago.

@valkenberg @cstross Charlie only makes it weird on days ending in Y

@cstross @valkenberg I steal flowers for R in the spring. He's never given flowers, and plans never to

Still, severed plant genitals are better than severed heads, no?

@HighlandLawyer @JamesPadraicR @cstross I'm still amazed that we took evolution's most perfect hunter, locked it in a house, and convinced the other local humans to call it "Mr Wiggles" or some shit.

@JdeBP @jmax @cstross optional: flay the potatoes alive before boling - or is vivsection followed by boiling in oil more humane?

@JdeBP @jmax @cstross Being reductive about foods and the concept of life is a *great* way to debug your values.
* Complex life needs to kill less complex life to exist.
* All that lives eventually dies.
Thus the thing we’re evaluating is a product of complexity and remaining time. We might even ask about the *quality* of that life, as opposed to just counting the cells.
The value judgements don’t go away when you ignore them.

@dukethinrediv @JdeBP @cstross I've found that flaying, vivisecting, boiling briefly, and then boiling in oil works best.

(A five minute parboil first improves the texture of fried potatoes quite a bit.)

[edit: Botched the order the first time. I should have cold cereal for breakfast today, for safety's sake.]

@quinn @HighlandLawyer @JamesPadraicR

If you compare a house cat and a velociraptor, they both fill(ed) the same environmental niche: crepuscular ambush hunting hypercarnivores that bite their prey's neck to sever the spinal cord then bunny-kick to disembowel.

We have made pets out of velociraptor analogues.

Fear us.

@cstross @valkenberg
I loathe having to say thank you and pretend to be pleased when given cut flowers.
(Didn't even attempt the pretence that time it was a bunch of rare protected wild orchids.)

@cstross @HighlandLawyer @JamesPadraicR @quinn wasn't it more the velociraptor analogues deciding “screw the wilderness, near the hummins it's nice and comfy and there is plenty of prey” and later on “screw hunting for a living, if we play our cards right we can haz *servants*”?

@JdeBP @jmax @cstross Not surprising they're screaming - I've just skinned them alive first.

@marjolica @JdeBP @jmax Eating the skin is the best bit!