As a Canadian: fuck, no.
Poutine isn’t visually unpalatable in the least. It’s just fries with curds and gravy. Unless the kitchen did a total hash of the dish and fucked it up six ways to Sunday, there ain’t no way it looks bad.
It’s even better with extras in it, like pulled pork, wiggly bacon chunks, or chopped onion greens.
Sheep’s head, or sheep’s brain?
The former is fine.
The latter screams spongiform encephalopathy.
Dogs only exist in the moment. Any correction that isn’t delivered within 1-3 seconds is going to have greatly diminished effectiveness, and anything beyond 5-10 seconds (depending on breed) is going to not be connected with the behaviour that caused you to provide the correction.
There are many breeds where, in general, the drive is so high that “force-free” training will be the fastest path to the euthanasia table. German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois, and many other herding breeds in particular. Sure, you might get lucky and score a “low drive” dog, but that is relative to others in the same breed – by comparison it will still make any golden retriever look like a high-as-a-kite stoner slacker. But a high-drive dog can and will get itself into situations where treats, toys, and other positive incentives will be utterly ignored. Trust me when I say that under those conditions, there is nothing in the “force-free training” arsenal that can or will reach these dogs to break them out of their focus. And when that focus involves aggression against pets or people, balanced training is the only thing that will keep your dog from being euthanized by the authorities.
Start training at an early age. Even as young as 8 weeks. Sit, heel, recall and others are vitally important in being able to control your dog without a leash, or if they slip the leash. Try to find a MSRP-priced version of Successful Together, as it will do wonders in laying down a good foundation of training.
Look for the videographer MK9Plus (can’t tell if British or Australian), they have lots of excellent reels on how to understand your dog’s body language. Method k9 is another one.
Manhandle your dog, especially when they are young and easy to handle. Don’t hurt them, but do get them used to being strangely handled, especially in cases like when they are at the vet.
Do not take your dog out on extended runs for the first year of life, their joints will thank you for their entire life.
Do not spay or neuter your dog, their lifespan and overall health will thank you for their life. Instead, consider vasectomies and hysterectomies instead, as these leave the hormone-producing gonads in place, leading to longer and much healthier lives.
I hope this helps.
And I see hierarchy as essential and required for anything beyond a small, isolated community of 50-200 people.
The difference being, through technology we can make despot-proof hierarchies that self-prune away those who hunger for power and influence.
For example, direct-participatory democracy is literally political communism, and totally eliminates all politicians. What remains is a network of functionaries and bureaucrats (invariably in meritocrally-elected boards of limited duration) whose sole employed purpose is to action the will of the populace in whatever ministry they occupy. There literally is no one single person in any position who can take any kind of control, and powerful checks and balances exist throughout the system to permit an effective and efficient but subservient state that can deal with issues at scales that small communities cannot.
The downside being that truly effective direct-participatory democracy requires three foundations to be in place:
Once these three are solidly in place, direct participatory democracy can be implemented, and it is only after it has been, that communism has any chance of surviving.
Real communism has a massive flaw in that it is too idealistic and fails to account for human corruption and the pursuit of power. Especially since communism is all about equalizing power among the people. Which is also how it has always been co-opted and destroyed from within shortly after it has been implemented.
This is why I fight against calling any current country “communist”, because those countries so severely violate everything that makes a state communist. These are authoritarian kleptocracies, nothing more. They use “communism” as a thin veneer of legitimacy over a fetid, rotting carcass of dictatorship that violently oppresses the people.
Which is why these were never communist states, any more than North Korea is democratic, or the old East Germany was a republic.
Just because these states wore the word “communism” like a thin veneer of legitimacy, does not a communist state make.
Communism can very much be decentralized, and in fact a correct implementation tends to be exactly that.
Because that’s where “communism” the term comes from - community, communal, etc…
I could get behind that.
But wealth is power, and power does not corrupt so much as it attracts the corruptible. You would need to work with all manner of sociopaths and malignant narcissists. And these are people who have the least justification for existing in a polite society.
Plus, they would also continue to be parasites on civilization, and continue to pathologically hoard more wealth than they could possibly spend in a million lifetimes.
Honestly, a guillotine is a lot simpler and a lot faster. Take out the top 0.01% of civilization, and the remaining members of the Parasite Class will not fight when you implement 99% top-tier tax rates, close all of the high-wealth loopholes, and build proper social frameworks that benefit everyone.
And this starts with the political system, with a high-tech direct-participation democracy which eliminates all politicians in favour of letting everyone vote on all issues. This requires a foundation with a population that is well educated in critical thinking and bullshit detection (which would destroy all conservatism in the first place), and an economic system (even modified capitalism) that meets everyone’s needs so everyone would have the headspace to deal with societal questions without being forced to always focus on economic survival. Without this political framework, socialism/communism of any form would continue to be corrupted and co-opted by strongmen and tyrants.
Because when you look at any attempt to implement communism in the past, it never survived beyond a few months to maybe a year or so. Sure, Russia had its revolution in 1917, but by 1918 Russian communism was effectively dead; taken over by an authoritarian kleptocracy no different than a feudal system.
Congee. It’s a Chinese rice dish. It’s not bad tasting, but it has all the looks and texture of regular boiled rice with equal parts runny snot. It even more closely matches the “runny snot” impression if it’s correctly salted.
Pork Shumai. Also Chinese, but actually delish AF. But like so many other Dim Sum foods, it also looks - if made correctly - like it’s dripping with gelatinous snot.
Chicken’s feet. Also Chinese, these are braised in soya sauce until they look like little clawed grave markers of an incompletely-buried avian body. You’re not Chinese if you don’t eat these with absolute gusto. Meanwhile I’m thinking if the barnyard poop indelibly buried in each crevice of that clawed monstrosity.
Sauce: married to ethnic Chinese first-gen for the last twenty years. I’ve been exposed to a lot of Chinese foods, especially those from the Canton region.