In search of the missing social movement for farmed animals.

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 trucks carrying live sheep to slaughter. For ten months, crowds of over a thousand showed up day after day, facing down riot police, in what remains the high-water mark of mass mobilization for farmed animals. Nothing like it has happened since. In this episode, I ask why. Drawing on my own years as an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, I work through the strategic mistakes that have kept the animal movement small and insular—from messaging that alienates the public, to campaigns designed for efficiency rather than inspiration, to an abolitionist philosophy that divided the movement over the very campaigns that could have united us. And I propose some directions for what it would take to trigger one more wave of mass protest for farmed animals before the window closes.

This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of my voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.

Advice for animal advocacy orgs and job seekers in the age of agents 🦞🦞🦞

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 down the last twelve months of AI breakthroughs, from Claude Code to OpenClaw, and argue that every advocacy organization should be racing to adopt these tools right now. Drawing on conversations from the Sentient Futures Summit in San Francisco, I introduce a framework for the two roles that will define advocacy organizations going forward: agent orchestrators, who can single-handedly automate the digital work of entire teams, and human interfaces, whose irreplaceable social skills become the true bottleneck to impact. I make the case that spending $20 a month on AI in 2026 is organizational malpractice, that young CS graduates are the movement's most undervalued resource, and that both small and large organizations need to rethink their structures before the pace of change leaves them behind. This is a prediction, a dare, and a practical guide — because every hour you spend deliberating is an hour your agents could have spent working for animals.

This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.

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 world upside down in 5-15 years.

Share your thoughts:

https://www.tricider.com/brainstorming/36eenMwaMqN

The episode contains some context that might make this exercise more useful to both you and me.

Rumors are poisonous to activist movements. As with meat, the problem is demand– and self deception.

We all know gossip is a problem, but we keep doing it anyway—and we've gotten good at convincing ourselves it's something nobler. In this essay, I explore how gossip functions as a demand-side problem: it's not just the people spreading rumors who cause harm, but all of us who eagerly consume them. Drawing on psychology research and some uncomfortable stories from my own life, I make the case that if we want healthier activist communities, we need to stop placing orders for juicy rumors—and I share the questions I'm using to hold myself accountable in 2026.'

This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.

Veganism isn't scaling, but a two-tiered movement could.

In this follow-up to my last episode on the Forget Veganuary controversy:

* With meat consumption skyrocketing and rates of veganism stagnant, strategies focused on individual veganism appear to offer only limited potential for animal advocates.

* The small fraction who are vegan act as a symbolic vanguard, living out our vision for a world without animal exploitation. They also serve as the movement’s crucial activist base.

* We must find a way to expand the movement beyond the small vegan population without alienating our most dedicated supporters.

* The solution is to treat vegans as a priestly class, an elite cadre making a deep personal commitment to live out transformational values on behalf of a wider community, and deserving the utmost respect.

* To achieve this, we must let go of the idea that veganism is for everyone. We must offer a low-commitment way for animal lovers to align themselves with the vegan movement.

* Farmkind’s “offset” framing is the most general solution yet proposed, and it matches a rich historical precedent: the relationship between priestly/monastic elites and the lay communities that support them.

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 animals very much, I say: this post is for you. Gather round, children, and let ol’ uncle Sandcastles tell you what is going to happen in 2026.

Counting the weeks until the future slips out of our hands.

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, I outline ten scenarios for how transformative AI could reshape the world—and what the animal movement should be doing now to prepare for each one.

This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.