... it's time for the late-morning snack, third breakfast, or early lunch, if you will. Never brunch, not unless you're a breakfast skipper. Breakfast skipper — that sounds like another name for Cap'n Crunch. The term "brunch" goes back to 1895, according to the OED, which finds it first here:
1895 Independent 22 Aug. 2/1 Breakfast is ‘brekker’ in the Oxford tongue; when a man makes lunch his first meal of the day it becomes ‘brunch’: and a tea-dinner at the Union Club is a ‘smug’.A smug, eh? That never made it into the OED as a definition of "smug," but I think a tea-dinner at the Union Club sounds really nice. You'll have to wait a few hours for that, and you'll have to come up with your own notion of the "Union Club" — which was a "gentleman's club" in London from 1800 to 1949.
Posts
113 comments:
When you're an early riser, the day lets you grab it by the...
"When you're an early riser, the day lets you grab it by the..."
Star.
I sense the return of the fish eye lens is at hand.
The dinning habits of the British Aristocracy died out with their Empire. A moment of silence for Winston Churchill, please. He was half American but his talents extended their Empire for 10 years.
"the fish eye lens"
not suitable for running.
In my family there was breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. You didn't eat every one of them everyday. On a Sunday breakfast and lunch got merged into brunch on occasion or Sunday dinner got moved from early evening to mid-afternoon. My grandmother was an Edwardian lady, and she ruled in the dining room. My husband loved the idea of a late evening meal on occasion. Supper was his favorite new idea when he joined my family.
According to wikipedia "Brunch" usually has alcohol served with it. Man, a little early in the day for some wine, dontchathink?
what is supper vs. dinner?
Has Slow Joe tried to grab this photo yet?
I see some of Georgia O'Keeffe in that photograph.
That looks like an abstract expressionist painting (or something not far from Georgia O'Keefe, if you've got a dirty mind). If American painting is about the American landscape, maybe some of it was just tilted 90 degrees.
what is supper vs. dinner?
Supper is the last meal of the day.
Dinner is the big meal of the day. Usually supper is dinner, but not on Thanksgiving, or (often), Sunday.
Eat like a Hobbit:
Breakfast - 7 a.m.
Second Breakfast - 9 a.m.
Elevenses - 11 a.m.
Luncheon - 1 p.m.
Afternoon Tea - 3 p.m.
Dinner - 6 p.m.
Supper - 9 p.m.
Supper is more akin to British tea--it is a modest meal at the end of the day. Dinner is a big meal, typically mid-day, in farm families. I think the usage has become interchangeable in the Midwest environs where I grew up. In farm families, Sunday noon would be a big meal with all the best food. Supper would be....leftovers from dinner.
Nevermind brunch, I prefer linner and deakfast.
I rarely eat breakfast because I'm not hungry in the morning, and now I'm a breakfast skipper?
Isn't the absence of something the nominal state? The state that must be bettered to justify partaking?
Munch on that you, you, BREAKFAST EATERS!
I've been a skipper since my mom stopped making me eat it as a teenager. First "biccies" and now "smug"! Those Brits and their abuse of our language!
On an unrelated note: there is a sidebar ad from our friends a coronavirus.gov suggesting that "if you have symptoms, stay home" and if "you don't have symptoms, stay home". Okay then.
Hauntingly sexual.
Never brunch, not unless you're a breakfast skipper.
That depends on which dictionary you use.
When my German grandmother came to visit us in America, she just couldn’t get used to the idea that my father didn’t come home from work to have lunch with the family which she thought should be the main meal of the day. Nevermind us kids were in school. She was a strict Oma and my poor mother was relieved when her visit was over and she returned home to Germany where she ruled over the household of her youngest daughter. We went back to our scandalous American ways after she left, she was better loved from afar.
We had home made burritos for dinner yesterday and lunch today. It reminded me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYHHCRm-R-U
I hope to see some discussion on this
https://arilive.aynrand.org/index.php/2020/04/24/qa-panel-yaron-brook-onkar-ghate-keith-lockitch-and-gregory-salmieri/
The COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it at all levels of government have disrupted all of our lives. As we begin to contemplate the challenge of reopening and rebuilding the economy in the face on the ongoing spread of the virus, it’s critical to employ the right philosophical framework for thinking about these issues, and to not be misled by false alternatives, wishful thinking, tribalistic finger-pointing and other forms of distorted thinking.
This Q&A is the final talk recorded on April 18, 2020, as part of AynRandCon-LIVE, a free online event offering a framework for thinking about the COVID-19 crisis from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism.
For the love of God, anyone who didn't sell some stock before the decline should sell some here. IMO.
My comment on the cafe thread from sometime earlier this morning explains why that makes sense, with more in the way of specifics.
Reminds me of the inside sleeve on an 1980's Cocteau Twins record.
In case anyone thinks that the Asian Giant Hornets are funny, this video of a hornet killing a mouse may disabuse them.
WARNING: This video is graphic and not easy to watch. I'm no fan of mice or other rodents but this poor little thing dies painfully.
Found out today that my grandmother was once named Wisconsin's School Nurse of the Year. A Wisconsin connection of which I'd been unaware! (They lived in Illinois at the time.)
The dinning habits of the British
Bloody noisy over there with those euro police sirens going off all the time.
My Oma and her German friends always had late-afternoon coffee and pastry. I don't know what German term they used, if any, but it was a wonderful tradition.
Narr
I blame her for teaching me that a skinny boy could never eat enough . . .
My Oma and her German friends always had late-afternoon coffee and pastry. I don't know what German term they used, if any, but it was a wonderful tradition.
Narr
I blame her for teaching me that a skinny boy could never eat enough . . .
Breakfast is my favorite meal. The great thing about it is you can eat it for lunch and dinner. One of our favorite dinners when we were kids was pancakes and sausage. We only got those when my dad had a meeting that kept him away.
Well done!
we were thinking strictly in the abstract in the other cafe
...when we requested turn the pic vertical !"
really. No "Georgia O'Queef" stuff.
love that pic!
Nothing is better than breakfast for dinner.
second Breakfast is one of the six most important meals of the day!
Geez, the hits keep coming for ARM and his Jan/Feb/Mar serial propagandizing for the ChiComs and their laughable "Generosity Campaign" hoax:
"FDA Pulls Approval for Dozens of Mask Makers in China"
"Tests during the pandemic have shown many imported masks fall well short of N95 filtration standards"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-pulls-approval-for-dozens-of-mask-makers-in-china-11588873151
Ouch. Heckuva of job ARM. Heckuva job.
when i was 19, living at the folks, and working 3rd shift; i'd wake every evening Just in time for family dinner (which was Always at 6:30pm).
J Farmer is close to right, when he says "Nothing is better than breakfast for dinner"
I'm guessing he never got to have dinner for breakfast
I'm guessing he never got to have dinner for breakfast
Usually only when heavy drinking had been involved.
Breakfast! It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore!
Fed Study Ties 1918 Flu Pandemic To Rise Of "Right Wing Extremist" Nazi Party
In a staff report published on Monday, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that German regions with higher mortality rates from the virus had a higher vote share for the Nazi Party in the elections of 1932 and 1933.
Have decided that I could limit my diet to poached eggs with salt, pepper, and a bit of good olive oil, with dry toast, and the occasional salad. Don't want to put this notion to the test, however.
The first time I ran across the term 'second breakfast' was in what's her name's translation of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. There was some serious eating indulged in at the sanatoria up in the mountains.
Hey JF,
I read your reply to me on last night's cafe this morning. I am sorry I have treated you that way. I hope you will forgive me. If I do it again, please nudge me.
This picture triggers flashbacks of 2001 A Space Odyssey..."Open the pod doors HAL...I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that..."
Brrrr!
@Anne:
No worries.
Ladies who lunch is one of my favorite expressions and I will shoehorn into places it doesn't want to go just because. Brunchers have given brunch in NYC a terrible reputation. Chefs hate it, but they have to do it anyway because it's profitable and because without that service, it's difficult to make ends meet in a small restaurant. Here's noted chef and talented writer Gabrielle Hamilton musing on the closing of her great little bistro, Prune, with the chef's obligatory brunch brushback.
When I read Farmer's often impressive recitation of facts and hyper-rational reasonings, it makes me wonder: does Farmer know that life is a tragic condition? It's hard to reason your way into (or out of) that perspective, but it is very real.
@daskol:
does Farmer know that life is a tragic condition? It's hard to reason your way into (or out of) that perspective, but it is very real.
What makes you believe I don't "know that life is a tragic condition"? If anything, I tend to get called out for being excessively dour or pessimistic.
p.s. Even if "hyper-rationality" was preferable, it is not possible. That's just not how human beings operate. We're too easily fooled. Especially by ourselves.
Life isn't tragic--it's much worse than that.
Narr
I always wonder about 'hyper-rational' myself
This isn't about pessimism or optimism. For example, life is tragic, but I stay pretty optimistic. It is an aspect of our tragic condition that our most powerful tools for puzzling things out, reason and analysis, are useless or misleading when applied to our weightiest matters.
I hate the misuse of the word tragic. Something is a tragedy when it involves a hero bringing about his own demise through a fatal character flaw, often hubris. /pedantry
Life is only "tragic" if one is convinced that what happens in our current existence is all there is. If one accepts that the Divine is in charge and works on a scale unimaginably larger than this world, then life becomes, if not a comedy, then an opportunity to conform oneself more closely to the image of God.
I realize that many people don't believe in God. So, for them, I guess life is a very sad thing.
It's tragic for the God-lovers, too, being born helpless and with the stain of sin.
Daskol,
I am not sure I understand you. And I think you misunderstood what is meant by original sin, at least in the Orthodox faith. We are not born stained by sin--we are born innocent. We are born with a propensity to sin, which is a different idea.
As for helplessness, perhaps if there were no God, we would be helpless. But instead, we are born with a Redeemer who lives--the farthest thing from helpless.
@daskol:
It is an aspect of our tragic condition that our most powerful tools for puzzling things out, reason and analysis, are useless or misleading when applied to our weightiest matters.
I don't deny this. In fact, I've said over and over that it's true. I am not out to "debunk" religion or claim that some secular rationalism can replace it. I think a lot of people, particularly progressive-minded ones, tend to vastly overestimate what is known and what can be known. That's one of the reasons I'm a conservative.
As mentioned above, the 'third breakfast' reference reminded me of the Hobbits
“Found out today that my grandmother was once named Wisconsin's School Nurse of the Year. A Wisconsin connection of which I'd been unaware! (They lived in Illinois at the time.)”
Congrats to your grandmother, back in the day! As yesterday was Nurses’ Day, discovering that honor was apropos.
All We Have
.I.
What was given was not what was expected:
The hour in the dust, the snow melted,
And the streams dry: something more intelligent:
Wild meadow, a thousand flowers,
The overbearing noise of birds,
The useless, therefore, unsaid words,
Our bodies searching into silence
An attempt to forget, your smile
At a weight the world had pressed upon you
Wondering if you were dead.
I wondered if I was dead.
We asked whether we could live
After such insult, such injury.
An answer, tentative, to desperately sought,
Demanded of but there if we allow.
We are reluctant to live once more
Yet it is no longer our decision.
We can only die again.
.II.
The vague questions that bore us forward
They are still there. If words no longer answer
Then our hands continue to.
Over what does the world have power?
Not us, my love, not us.
We always walk beyond, together.
.III.
Come forward where there is light, let me see:
For I could not see but had a feeling
Of dread, as if a ghost might ask me
If this were not death, as if you could
No longer answer, were gone, had gone.
Amidst the woods the darkness terrifies.
Hold my hand, come into the light.
Yet still I cannot see you and all I grasp
Is your hand. If the stars are not enough
They are all we have. Do you not see?
I would like to nominate Freeman for Wisconsin's Homeschool Nurse of the Year.
Eat like a Hobbit:
The old fad was to eat a bunch of small meals throughout the day (Hobbits get an extra one); a newer fad is to go 14 hours straight without eating each day.
life is a tragic condition
Personally I don't think so, occasionally sometimes, but for the most part I feel like I'm having more fun than I deserve, living in comfort as a mammal with an entertainingly encephalized ape brain to keep me company.
reason and analysis, are useless or misleading when applied to our weightiest matters
I think reason and analysis are quite handy for understanding and dealing with any and all "weighty matters".
For which weighty matters do you think they're useless or misleading?
China, it's CCP, is cattle-trucking 100,000 Uigher 're-educated' slaves to man the factories that 'ordinary' Chinese won't work in. I defy you, Facebook, to eliminate that fact. If you do, we know you are not only cowards, but hypocritical losers. History knows no lies!
Guess what they did?
Bastards, all - I only say that because I like 'The spy who came in from the cold' - I have no feeling about 'illegitimacy', I being a bastard, too, as is my son.
Where Are You?
“Where are you?” Then the smile,
The simple entrance, as if survival
Was just an accident, one fell off
The bicycle, one bruised ones head.
And yet I was beginning to die
And perhaps I wanted to.
Do I feel joy? I might do.
With you, for you, I survived too.
Everything
Wandering in the woods
It might all be over, be ended –
Yet here it is:
Without words, everything.
@Fernandistein:
Personally I don't think so, occasionally sometimes, but for the most part I feel like I'm having more fun than I deserve, living in comfort as a mammal with an entertainingly encephalized ape brain to keep me company.
There is a difference between "life" and "your life."
Brutalities.
How many times have we heard her say
“Bring him back! Bring him back!”
Or the constant calling of a name
(Spring bird without mate);
And we,
Helpless before the incomprehensible tragedy,
Singing (duet)
“What’s wrong?” and “What can we do?”
The ache and impotence of rage
Thus then became the first limit of age.
And now,
When we have spiralled
To the wider (maybe limiting) view
It comes to seem that that ‘great tragedy’
Was the farce that broke the cow.
And all that ache and strain and pain
(Burning in a bottle)
Was it (in our wide, wild children’s eyes)
The last ditched nobility of a twitched body
Singing: “John, John, John, John!”
And now:
“Mother, mother, mother, mother!”
Star.
How did that star break
Against this O to dark a dust
Lit for a moment
Of accidental end,
Swallowed among
A million furnaces?
We’d watched last flicker
Of evening sun and
Were surprised by a dawn
Blazing the south side
In evaporate glare,
Lost among the irate
Fools of panic
Running to the west,
To the east, to any
Sure concept of sense.
Shadows Of A Life.
.I.
And down those corridors
He’d half croon his inclinations
Among chatter of abstraction
Or when a passion raised him
To exclamations of ‘cosmic praise’.
Till around concrete insignificances
We had drawn ourselves
Full circle to renew, as if in echo
Of the larger seasons, our crawl.
Happy those times
Brought to exhaustion.
.II.
I would find him on the stair:
Confined within the confusion
Of intentions he’d grow
His forests of words.
He’d laugh, perhaps intending to cry.
The ending nous of disinclination
Later to be found stopped altogether
. III.
On that last day he had come
To a point he had long prepared.
Meticulous in his assault,
Gratifying in his politeness.
His passion was obtuse,
That is not acute.
His decline not at all
Unexpected
Or so he said in the chance
Of a later glance.
. IV.
In invitation to his later lair
I noticed the quiver of memory
Hidden on the lips.
“But, ah, mere memory,”
I later expressed
“Where does it get you?”
“In the glare of the bulb
The written word.”
It’s true, I was surprised,
He had cared.
.V.
Scared, as if at the chance
Of a dear photos loss,
Memory of gathered acquaintance,
I insisted on the written word.
The thinned line of the past
Made us dear. From there
The blossom of balloons
Or let us say
The new creation
Of the new world.
.VI.
Ingenious, gratifyingly proud to know,
His obscurity pleased me.
As if saying something
Not quite commandable
He would display
Volubility
Expanded to the creation
Of an old inclination.
.VII.
And yet I was somehow detained.
Only later I found his grave.
On it was written
Someone’s stupidity:
“Hard to remember the past
Now frozen at last.”
What did Nietzsche say - to right in ten sentences what everyone write in a book - what everyone doesn't write in a book!
the Verticality Cafe sure turned my head.
Gil are,
6 on 12 off 3 section watchstanding on Zulu time, so the time bore no resemblance to where the sun was up above the water. When you got up, it was breakfast, regardless of what the menu called it. Before you hit the rack was dinner. If you were a chowhound and ate in between, it was lunch. But midrats was always called midrats, and were usually leftover something else. One midrats per week was pizza.
J. Farmer said...
F: "Personally I don't think so...
There is a difference between "life" and "your life."
If any one life isn't a tragic condition it falsifies the general statement "life is a tragic condition". And that's what the word "personally" means, eh?
But I don't think life is "tragic" or anything close to that except in short doses, for most living things with higher nervous systems, including for most humans, especially first world humans.
As far as that goes, most life isn't even capable experiencing anything like "tragedy", or even suffering, hence the ref to nervous systems.
@Fernandistein:
But I don't think life is "tragic" or anything close to that except in short doses, for most living things with higher nervous systems, including for most humans, especially first world humans.
Well, "tragic" obviously lends itself to a lot of semantic differences. I have no religious conception of the topic, but for me the "tragedy" of life is how arbitrary and random it is. Why is there child abuse and slavery and sexual torture and exploitation? Because shit happens, and the universe doesn't care. That's "tragic" enough for my liking.
She Was A Lady.
She was a lady of unfolding passion
Drowned in dark, unfolding passion;
Whether battered by bottles or men
She could not be fitted into maturity.
Somehow those brutal arms had barred her
From pains of youth, overriding reach
Of missed paternal sway:
Sometimes she’d laugh
The suckled bottled held
Whilst dancing on her grave.
She was a desperate sort
Yearning for some new time
And we were never quite sure
Whether death or drink would take her mind…
(Now with such pain and gloom it is
A physiological extension of the soul
Fluttering in a hollow heaven.)
Roots And Flowers.
Let not the burst thunder
Or the licked light caress
Of the breast of the wave
Or slouching sea
Laid low in humble cry
Disturb you, prove you
Blind, glitter upon the ice
You made
Slow fate
Wind you in ascending stairs
To the stars; and the bell tower
Runed with light sings, rings
Time, moments of sonic
Blessing – they bless you
And your eyes ecstatic distend
This world of ice,
A world of blackened depths:
Roots and flowers.
but for me the "tragedy" of life is how arbitrary and random it is.
That's what makes life interesting - think how boring it would be otherwise; predictable, set and known in advance, perhaps.
Why is there child abuse and slavery and sexual torture and exploitation?
Because some people suck and others are unlucky; but most people are neither.
Because shit happens, and the universe doesn't care.
That doesn't bother me either - what difference would it make if the universe did care?
"Why me?" he asked. "Why not you?" nothing answered.
My theory of the universe is that there is a single, universal Misery Function (kind of like a quantum mechanical wave function for the universe). The universe seeks to maximize the value of this function. Necessarily, good things happen to some people as a result; it's not possible to shit on everybody all the time. The universe doesn't begrudge them their good fortune, as long as the misery function integrated over the entire universe is maximized.
@Fernandistein:
That's what makes life interesting - think how boring it would be otherwise; predictable, set and known in advance, perhaps.
That's fine. But that doesn't refute the notion that life is tragic. It only explains how to deal with it.
That doesn't bother me either - what difference would it make if the universe did care?
Again, I'm not arguing that it should "bother" you or that you should feel any specific way about it. My only point is that life is a brutal process of competition for finite resources and defense against threats. The fact that a tiny fraction of that life has managed, in very recent time, insulate itself from those brutalities doesn't refute the nature of the brutality or its existence.
It doesn't sound like we disagree much, beyond semantics.
Things are against us. That's the Law of the Universal Perversity of Matter.
Narr
"Misery Function" is good
“She Said Anthony Fauci Sexually Assaulted Her. Now She Says Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman Paid Her to Lie.
After failing to frame Robert Mueller, Elizabeth Warren, and others for sexual misconduct, the infamous Trumpster hoaxers tried to go after Fauci. But the woman they hired to play the victim had second thoughts.”
https://reason.com/2020/05/07/she-said-anthony-fauci-sexually-assaulted-her-now-she-says-jacob-wohl-and-jack-burkman-paid-her-to-lie/
Good grief, who’s next?
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/politics-government/article242527331.html
“Traumatic” is the crushing word. Unwanted passes or jokes aren’t traumatic.
Byeku for Biden
When you're a star
They still don’t let you slam them
Against a wall, groping.
I am happy to deal with you on this site as an الاوسط Thanks for accepting the post
You don't know what women are like - how they crush your sense of gravity, your spine, your ability to speak. On imagines one will be fred astair - no such luck - more the hunchback of notre dame!
ahmed salim, could you tell me what your aribic means? I sincerely as just to know?
Ask - sorry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVEn1Qc0OeY
Thank you, would you allow this, more to your hear - I almost cut my hair?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lk2KHajp4Y
Fuck them. be brave - who are you hurting? people in 'old peoples home's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4
Protection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpfpqsSALuY
Personally I don't think so, occasionally sometimes, but for the most part I feel like I'm having more fun than I deserve, living in comfort as a mammal with an entertainingly encephalized ape brain to keep me company.
Good for you. Really. But you're going to die. We all are.
You'll be lucky if it's nemesis that does you in. Sometimes it's slipping on a banana peel.
Even just walking next to someone not wearing a mask.
Jordan Schachtel
@JordanSchachtel
·
2h
Taxpayers have spent >$660MM to build mobile field hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients. Most empty. Many closing. Aside from Javitz Center ($11MM cost), all field hospitals put together treated a grand total of 82 patients.
That's $8 million per patient.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals-stand-down-most-without-treating-any-covid-19-patients?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR3CpzC8kmGNE_oRJsNWlrU_T95zCPRJgLKVAUgznpCTkPvCPlmDH4X8aOQ
I'm not wearing a mask, ever - Imagine if you're a survivor of a terrible catastrophe, a Rwandan, maybe, and you're asked to put that 'gear'? Not me, never.
If I thought it meant something in the larger context, of course, I would - I don't want others to feel sick - so I would - but, in reality, the facts show it's meaningless. then it becomes virtue signaling or worse, imposing it on others - that isn't British, as Borris knows or American, as Trump knows - that's your shit joggers in Central Park, not Main Street!
That 'clapping', yesterday, it almost destroyed me - quite litteraly - they were shouting at me "Why aren't you clapping?" " I said fuck you! Call the police for the sin of not clapping!" It's getting worse. Next time, there will be a mob beating me up. That's ok, I'm used to it.
I have no problem with praising shop keepers, bus drivers and nurses - no problem - but I'll do it privately if its all the same to you? And I do.
Anne, they have this effing 'clap thursday' - it drives me nuts - they come out there houses and 'clap' for that shit institution, the NHS, which is failing them all and cheer! That's delusional on a level I just could not expect!
They need meaning - even if it's nonsense!
I hate thinking of people like that - I want to disaggregate them, to 'feel' them! I can't feel a 'mob! A People'! What bollocks!
Jiri Schellinger, who was the darling of the Czechoslovak Communist gov, then dived into the Danube,on a dare, in Bratislava, and drowned. I love his music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lJdEoNris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgg3OZKSQyI&list=RDG1lJdEoNris&start_radio=1
'Hladam dum holubi' - where do you pigeons live
Peter Green! I didn't intend that. What a lucky accident! Or worse!
Or, perhaps, I'm just delusional - youtube wants to play me songs that hit the nerve - not what I want to play but, like Goebels, what they think I want. Very efficient, they are. Fuck'em
Like this - how did they know I love this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SHCsgqZvQM&list=RDG1lJdEoNris&index=4
Yeah - it seems I swiched the wrong switch I'm sorry - not intended- but so
They think they 'know' me this 'Google' shit - the first five songs I like, but wouldn't choose, the next are slightly of kilter but ok, the next five completely wrong! That's how they getcha - the first five!
But that doesn't refute the notion that life is tragic.
And randomness doesn't make life tragic; maybe it makes it "unfair", but fairness is childish idea in this context. You brought it up.
"what difference would it make if the universe did care?"
Again, I'm not arguing that it should "bother" you or that you should feel any specific way about it.
You said it bothered you, I said it didn't bother me; your statement here is extraneous.
And you avoided answering the question - what difference would it make if the "universe cared"? (Whatever that means)
My only point is that life is a brutal process of competition for finite resources and defense against threats.
So now you've ditched the randomness/caring-universe ideas?
Most life, most living organisms, most of the Earth's living biomass, can't feel pain or suffer (and for > 80% of the history of life on earth nothing could feel pain or suffer because no nervous systems), and for creatures which can suffer, the "brutal process" is short-lived and unusual; the rabbit only gets eaten once, and that death process might last a minute, out of several weeks or months or years of living.
The fact that a tiny fraction of that life has managed, in very recent time, insulate itself from those brutalities doesn't refute the nature of the brutality or its existence.
It doesn't sound like we disagree much, beyond semantics.
We just disagree on the fundamentals.
That the "red in tooth and claw" brutality of life is a defining or major part of life for most, or perhaps any, animals is a romantic idea; most life forms can't feel it and are unaware of it, and for those that can, the brutality and suffering is rare and short-lived compared the rest of their lives. ("factory farm" animals excepted, very unfortunately)
Most life, most living organisms, most of the Earth's living biomass, can't feel pain or suffer
How do you know that? Lots of baby animals cry.
Fernandistein, 'Life' is tragic, full of sorrow and wowe - I don't know what you two are fighting about but it's obviously silly - fighting over an eggshell of land. Stop it - it's boring.
I think I've shown you this before but, sorry, I think it necessary:
Decisions Of A Life.
.I.
She headed to the door
Of some burnt out world
Lost to the dried flare
Of Apocalypse. With words
Telling of that special place
Her mind halved its voices
Where one would call “Where?”
To the others reassurance of
“One foot more, one age less.”
And held by the endless tide
Of works companions
Some sense of proportion was lost.
At home a dear friend
Had uttered the martyred cliché of
“Be yourself!” A thousand victims -
Were there more?
.II.
Down the battle broken world
Where the shadows left around:
Corpses, corpses flew
To glare their unholy cries.
.III.
And among the luggage of travel
A niche was found:
Here a shadow shared a bottle
With a friend or two,
Words scattered among the unintended,
Formed their partial puzzles.
.V.
One friendly companion,
Whose ever forming grin disturbed,
Pronounced, heartily,
Some ending term,
Some clause of binding.
Sealed by the wax of finality
She considered her attention weak:
It had stopped at the cover,
Started at the completion of smiles,
Had broken at the ribboned bow.
Twisted in a distracting knot
These decisions had been made.
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