Sandcastles

<p>Sunday morning, I joined Chris Bryant’s popular Youtube stream for a wide-ranging discussion on all of my favorite topics: pragmatic campaigning, movement factionalism, and AI’s impact on animals.</p><p>This was a...

<p>Please join me and 2,000 other people in Wisconsin on April 19 to tear a Beagle farm apart brick by brick and rescue every one of the 2,000 dogs still languishing inside. Sign up here.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public...

<p>And both movements are better for it.</p><p>The animal welfare movement and the AI alignment movement grew up in the same community, but they've been operating in separate lanes. That's a mistake — and it's one both...

<p>Open rescue isn't an alternative to pragmatic campaigning. It's the missing piece.</p><p>I came out of open rescue retirement to join hundreds of activists in storming a dog factory farm in Wisconsin. In this essay...

<p>In search of the missing social movement for farmed animals.</p><p>In 1995, thousands of people—disproportionately meat-eating moms and grandmas—laid their bodies across a road in a tiny English coastal town to stop...

<p>Advice for animal advocacy orgs and job seekers in the age of agents 🦞🦞🦞</p><p>AI agents aren't coming — they're here, and they're already reshaping what it means to work in animal advocacy. In this post, I break...

<p>Punchline: I’d be grateful to anyone who spends time engaging at the link below, which is meant to elicit a wide range of ideas for what projects animal advocates should be prioritizing if we think AI will turn the...

<p>Rumors are poisonous to activist movements. As with meat, the problem is demand– and self deception.</p><p>We all know gossip is a problem, but we keep doing it anyway—and we've gotten good at convincing ourselves...

<p>Veganism isn't scaling, but a two-tiered movement could.</p><p>In this follow-up to my last episode on the Forget Veganuary controversy:</p><p>* With meat consumption skyrocketing and rates of veganism stagnant...

<p>Thus begins a double feature inspired by the recent firestorm of debate over Farmkind’s anti-Veganuary campaign. This post brings readers from across the world up to speed on the best arguments from both sides, along...

<p>I have heard from a few people who enjoy this newsletter. But I’ve heard from many more people who say, “WTF man, I can’t listen to a 90-minute post every week.” To the latter group, who apparently don’t care about...

<p>Counting the weeks until the future slips out of our hands.</p><p>AI researchers are sprinting toward AGI because they think the finish line is five years away. Animal advocates should be sprinting too. In this post...

<p>We can align our ego with our advocacy goals. But wanting to be a good person might be your most dangerous motivation.</p><p>What really drives people to devote their lives to a cause? And when does that motivation...

<p>Abolitionists’ antipathy towards cage-free reforms is rooted in an old idea– one most activists want nothing to do with.</p><p>Why do animal abolitionists hate cage-free campaigns so much? The standard answer is...

<p>Progressives’ voracious appetite for rules, from the societal level to the interpersonal, has earned us a reputation for authoritarianism.</p><p>In this episode, Aidan digs into the hidden authoritarian streak within...