A survey of issues:
• Against breeding, see Antinatalism
• Many pedigrees are bred disabled.
• Neutering
• Inherently exploitive and controlling.
• Unreasonable burden that a pet’s everyday existence must give you meaning in life.
• Their unmalleable character and behaviours may disappoint expectations
• Carbon footprint.
• Meeting their exercise and company needs with job/lifestyle compatibility
• How can I plan to be a sole guardian ~15 years in advance?
• Is there any way to flexibly share guardianship with soluble commitments to co-guardians or even the pet themself, while honoring my obligations to the pet?
• A pet may want a variety of carers in its lifetime.
• Rehoming old, small dogs minimises commitment…but it still takes a network of people (or another dog and a big garden) and financial independence to resiliently accommodate a dog’s needs.
PS. Cats are murder machines
A survey of issues:
• Buffers/the threat of proximity in age of ICBMs and MAD
• Soft power effectiveness
• Escalation/bluffing/appeasement
• Means-end reasoning at collective/state scale; Putin’s aims
• Just wars; consistency of principles, rhetoric and realpolitik
• Third-party intervention
• Secession
• Biased news. “Hear the other side”, eg Early on, western media neglected to explain Ukraine’s alleged Nazi associations.
• Is the West’s banning of RT Orwellian?
- Racism of white Europhile homophilia; co-opted anti-Brexit animus
Some controversial positions one might entertain for discussion:
• Ukraine should stop prolonging suffering and just surrender
• Putin’s creation of a neutral buffer state may have prevented WW3
• Almost anyone could commit war crimes given the right situation
