While I appreciate how universities have made some limited embrace of foss in the advent of open coursework, it doesn’t change that there’s a lot wrong with them. They have too much of a conflict of interest in their own profits to support a system of truly free postsecondary education. It’s also shitty how the system is designed to basically funnel every student into one corporate industry or another, basically a training regiment to bolster the status quo. Usually.

I’ve felt for a long time that what we need is educational programs that are foss from the ground up, federated, and actively seeking reform for free public university education for all.

Cause let’s be real, Harvard ain’t ever gonna do that.

When Libertarians are in charge, garbage lines the streets and bears attack.

When Republicans are in charge, gas prices skyrocket and everyone gets explosive diarrhea.

Put that on a t-shirt.

There are two layers to the weirdness. The first layer is that, when you remove your conflict of interest, it becomes clear right on the face of it how bizarre and macabre it is to consume the excretions or mutilated body parts of other sentient beings. The second layer builds on that, with it being a secretion that was previously consumed by a multitude of other sentient beings, partially digested inside their internal organs, and then regurgitated before being stolen from them.

Doesn’t change that it’s weird. And it doesn’t sound gross, it is gross.

There are plenty of other sweetener options out there, with whole blended dates or date sugar in particular being a much healthier option.

Awesome. Also worth pointing out, eating honey by choice is kind of weird too if you think about it. It’s literally nectar that’s been regurgitated by bugs, I don’t get why so many would want that in the first place.

Or just don’t eat either.

Here is an article about why honey is not vegan. I’ll quote some notable excerpts.

The latest research in the field suggests bees are indeed sentient, and experience a host of sophisticated emotions. In his 2023 book What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann states that bees are “self-aware,” highly intelligent, and possess a “primitive form of consciousness.”

The Guardian reported on the book earlier this year, saying bees’ apparent ability to recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and feel optimistic, playful, and scared raises “complex ethical questions” about our treatment of them.

…

…by using a piece of mesh that worker bees can pass through but [the queen bee] cannot, or clipping her wings. The structure contains horizontal sheets, where, because the queen bee is trapped nearby, the bees build their honeycomb.

To harvest the honey, beekeepers either smoke the bees to subdue them, or trap them with a clearing board over one or two days. Others kill the colony altogether.

Oftentimes, beekeepers replace the honey they remove with a sugar water substitute. This practice prompts honeybees to overwork themselves to replace the missing honey. Meanwhile, the sugar water lacks the nutrients, fats, and vitamins that bees need to be healthy.

Think of how labor rights, and even basic human rights are a constant struggle. Now imagine that you are a species that is regarded in such a way that everything you produce and everything you are is thoroughly classified a commodity. You do not have the capacity to speak against it. You are smart enough to suffer, but lack the degree of intelligence necessary to even begin to comprehend the enormity of what you are entrapped in. One species of animal has decided that all other species of animal are its products. None of the others can raise a voice against that. If human rights abuses abounds, how often do you think any kind of animal agricultural system is going to operate in a way that’s anything other than systematic abuse and suffering?

Is that really the kind of world you want to continue to create?

It’s easy to dismiss bugs, easy to think they don’t matter. But I think of them as a litmus test. We are the real equivalent to bugs, of what we think a God is like to us. Are we the kind of deitys that we would want to exist?

If you actually care about a mutualistic relationship between pollinators and humans, grow a garden.