lincolnq's Quick takes

By lincolnq @ 2021-12-30T18:45 (+4)

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lincolnq @ 2026-03-17T03:52 (+77)

I went to jail yesterday in Wisconsin. I helped rescue 23 beagles in a large mass open rescue against a factory farm, Ridglan Farms, near Madison. We were trying to push the police to act on documented animal cruelty at Ridglan. Instead they arrested me and 26 other activists.

I wrote a blog post about why I did it.. Excerpt:

I think some altruists suffer from lack of moral courage. Especially those of us who work on tech: we often have lots of moral conviction, but are typically wealthy and aren’t usually risking much personally, and I think that’s a gap. I want to be asking more often, “how can we be more altruistic?” One answer is to challenge ourselves to do more and more courageous things.

More info and stories from Wayne Hsiung: https://blog.simpleheart.org/p/im-in-jail-for-rescuing-dogs-its

If you're in the DC area, I'll be sharing more about my experience at Revolutionists' Night, an animal welfare meetup, this Thursday. Reach out for an invite.

[Edited to add:] I believe there is a lawful basis for this action and I intend to fight any attempted prosecution in court! I'm not advocating any illegal activity, of course.

NickLaing @ 2026-03-17T19:09 (+10)

This is one of the most inspiring things I've read in months. Its such a good example to have someone with a illustrius tech background like you involved in a protest like this. It might jolt some into action or at least make us think a bit harder about whether we are really morally courageous enough to do the best that we can.

lincolnq @ 2023-08-09T17:10 (+23)

I avoid reading, and don't usually respond to, comments on my posts, or replies to my own comments.

The reason is that it's emotionally intense to do so: after posting something on the EA Forum, I avoid checking the forum at all for ~24h or so (for fear of noticing replies in the 'recents' area, or changes in my karma), and after that I mainly skim for people flagging major errors or omissions that need my input to be resolved.

Lizka's You Don't Have to Respond to Every Comment talks about this a bit (and was enormously helpful for me) - I am not strongly averse to posting stuff and having people read it in the abstract - I just don't like the short term emotional swings that come with individual replies to things.

geoffrey @ 2023-08-10T08:19 (+3)

This was a good nudge for me to lower the frequency on all my notifications (especially the karma one to weekly, which I’ve been checking more than I’d like lately)

OllieBase @ 2023-08-10T07:51 (+2)

Yep, I do something similar! Sounds like I end up replying to more things than you, but I usually disavow the forum for several days or just go on holiday after posting.

Charlie_Guthmann @ 2023-08-09T21:00 (+1)

I feel this. It would be cool if you could drop a post and put a zoom link at the bottom to discuss it in like 24 or 48 hours, that way there can still be a discussion but maybe skirts around some of this obsessive forum checking ego stuff

lincolnq @ 2023-06-05T14:12 (+7)

I wrote up my nutrition notes here, from my first year of being vegan: http://www.lincolnquirk.com/2023/06/02/vegan_nutrition.html

lincolnq @ 2021-12-30T18:45 (+4)

"it is unclear whether" can sometimes mean "I am skeptical that" or "I don't think". It annoys me when people use it this way. Unclear already has a good and useful meaning. We shouldn't dilute it.

The proper use of "unclear" is a sentence like this: "it's still unclear if the intervention worked". A quick heuristic: if the use of "unclear" is or could be prefixed by "still" without changing the meaning, it is probably ok :). Another way to view it -- if more information is likely to come out soon, then it's probably ok.

Some examples of usages of "unclear" I'd like to see less of: