Sandcastles

And both movements are better for it.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 sides can fix. In this essay, I argue that the arrival of transformative AI makes animal welfare a wholly-owned subsidiary of the broader "Make AI Go Well" movement, whether either side likes it or not. For animal advocates, that means putting AI at the center of our strategic thinking, including designing our campaigns with AI training data in mind. For alignment researchers, it means recognizing that a post-AGI world full of factory farming is a failure mode, not a footnote. I make the case that both movements need each other more than they realize, and that the skills each has developed are exactly what the other is missing.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Open rescue isn't an alternative to pragmatic campaigning. It's the missing piece.I came out of open rescue retirement to join hundreds of activists in storming a dog factory farm in Wisconsin. In this essay, I tell the story of the Ridglan Farms rescue, what it felt like to be back, and why the experience resolved a tension I've been wrestling with for years. Open rescue and focused, winnable campaigns aren't alternatives — they're different types of artifact that belong together. But the deeper argument is about something I'm calling proportionate action: a movement that claims to be fighting a moral atrocity of historic proportions will lose its soul if no part of it ever takes action commensurate with that claim.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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/36eenMwaMqNThe episode contains some context that might make this exercise more useful to both you and me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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 with a related controversy from the year prior. In part 2, I share my own thoughts on “Forget Veganuary” and on the troubled relationship between animal welfare and veganism.One of my most edgy and unique opinions about the animal rights movement is that Infighting Is Bad™. Whether it’s cancelling people for having the wrong political views or carving the movement up into illusory factions like welfarist vs. abolitionist or grassroots vs. professional, I think the movement wastes a lot of energy on pointless infighting.Yet even I must admit that not all infighting is pointless. In some instances, our movement has suffered from a lack of substantive strategic debates. For years, as abolitionists and pragmatists feuded over cage-free campaigns, there was no forum for systematic public debate between the leaders of each faction. That left grunts like me stewing in resentment, unable to properly evaluate the other side’s position. (When I finally got the chance, I found it surprisingly persuasive.)I write about how animal activists can focus on what matters, and avoid getting distracted by what doesn’t matter. Subscribe for free.So today, we’re going to learn about two master classes in constructive infighting, two campaigns that forced the movement to wrestle with big strategic questions. Both case studies came out of the London activist scene, cementing its status as the top animal rights city in the world.Each story is rich with lessons, but a few commonalities jump out right from the get-go:* Each debate was sparked by an actual campaign– that is, people weren’t just running their mouths on social media, they were doing something bold in the real world.* In each case, proponents and opponents maintained an open line of communication and engaged in vigorous public debate, preserving friendships without pulling any punches in their criticisms.* While some observers changed their minds, all this public debate failed to clearly resolve the question one way or the other. But it pushed both sides to gather better evidence and become more rigorous versions of themselves.I know what you all came here for, so I’ll start with the more recent story first, and we’ll see in the course of that how it couldn’t avoid bringing up an old wound.Case #1: Farmkind says VEGANUARY IS F*****G LAMEOn December 27, 2025, the movement awoke from its post-Christmas reverie to stories in right-wing British tabloids with headlines like “Veganuary champion quits to run meat-eating campaign.” At first, it seemed like the same familiar “Why I’m no longer vegan” story we’ve all read a hundred times. But this one was different.Toni Vernilli was renouncing veganism. She was joining hands with some of the most prolific meat eaters in the country– the second, third, and fourth-ranked national competitive eating champions.But while she was telling people to eat whatever they want, her message didn’t end there. People who care about animals but still want to eat meat, she said, can offset the harm of eating meat by donating to charities that oppose factory farming. Specifically, they should go to forgetveganuary.com, use a handy calculator to determine what size monthly donation is needed to offset their meat consumption, and let the organization Farmkind distribute that donation across the most effective animal charities.The first thing a sympathetic meat eater will see once arriving on the site is this comparison mocking Veganuary participants for annoying their loved ones and craving meat (an earlier version mentioned “feeling bloated from plant protein.”)Next, they’re faced with an impossibly hard flash game testing their ability to survive 31 days as a vegan, navigating a frowning carton of oat milk through challenges like “vegan meat processed ingredients” and “iron deficiency.”Finally, they reach the donation calculator. This is meant to be a relief– there’s something I can do besides be vegan! The user inputs their weekly serving of different animal products, and the calculator spits out a recommended monthly donation sufficient to offset the suffering it causes. For an average omnivore in the UK, the donation is £17, or $23, a small fraction of what they pay into the industry for consumption.(The calculator is based on something like suffering-adjusted days, where for each animal you eat, you need to offset an equivalent amount of suffering by helping several animals. For instance, Farmland argues chickens raised according to the Better Chicken Commitment suffer around 50% less, so you need to pay for campaigns worth two BCC chickens for every chicken you eat.)The vegans reactVeganuary, of course, did not take this lying down. Quoted in the Daily Mail, they likened Farmkind’s approach to “deliberately setting a fire and then donating to the fire brigade,” dismissed it as “a symbolic gesture designed to generate headlines,” and insisted that no donation can offset the harm of paying for an animal to be brought into the world and slaughtered for your consumption.Across vegan group chats and message forums, other negative reactions poured in, including from many individuals who have previously expressed skepticism of the movement’s focus on veganism.Maya Pardo (Communities Against Factory Farms):I find it offensive and misguided. Surely there is another way to raise money for animal welfare without sabotaging another campaign through infighting? It’s a publicity stunt which comes very close to encouraging hating on vegans.Alistair Stewart (former head of Plant-Based Unis):I worry that the money and people this FarmKind campaign will bring into the animal movement won’t be enough to justify a) the infighting the campaign may cause in the movement and b) the harm it may do to the public’s perception of veganism… there are probably good reasons why the pro-Palestine movement doesn’t tell people not to bother doing BDS and instead donate, and the anti-abortion movement doesn’t tell people it’s okay to get abortions as long as they donate. At worst this approach misunderstands human psychology.Most of the comments on the Mail article are criticising her for some combination of hypocrisy, bad faith, and seeking attention and money. One benefit of veganism is that even lots of anti-vegans recognise that there is some degree of logical consistency and personal/social costliness to it, which is admirable.Anonymous:Most people dislike factory farming, yet they still pay for it because it’s cheaper/more convenient. Are we really expecting those people to start spending £15 more on charity every month? Realistically, they’re more likely to use this campaign as an excuse to continue eating animals whilst also not donating.Some commenters saw the potential, but worried about execution.Billy Nicholles (Bryant Research):Instinctively, is this the sort of “infighting” that could be effective? Farmkind is targeting a very different part of society to Veganuary, and so it may be ok for them to pit themselves against each other (if it results in more donations for Farmkind without significantly damaging veganuary’s campaign). I do find it pretty cool that an article in the Daily Mail just introduced their anti-vegan readership to effective animal welfare giving…I also find the idea of paying competitive eaters to eat excessive amounts of meat uncomfortable. I get the theory of change, and if it works in getting hype/donations, then that’s good, but I’m still worried that this endorses/encourages excessive/thoughtless animal product consumption.Zuzana Sperlova (Animal Charity Evaluators):I don’t know if this specific article would do a lot of harm, intuitively I’d think not because of the audience, but that’s a guess. The majority of the article was about leaving Veganuary and veganism itself behind, and it might be that people skim it or see the headline and make a negative conclusion without getting to the mention of FarmKind and offsetting.And some were even supportive:Cam:I lowkey think on a meta level it’s good there are new strategies being tried, and also that we have to meet meat eaters where they are. Most people don’t go vegan overnight (I know I didn’t) and donating is a lot more palatable of a first step.The twist: Team Veganuary was maybe on board with the whole approach?As the angry reactions spread, the Farmkind team arrived to announce: this is not what it seems.Veganuary has been so successful establishing itself in the UK media ecosystem that every December sees predictable backlash from right wing tabloids. The Farmkind team saw in this an opportunity for a unique 4-dimensional chess move: if an anti-vegan backlash is going to happen anyway, can we grab hold of it and redirect it to help animals? As co-founder Thom Norman explained:We let Veganuary know about our intention to launch this campaign at the very start of our planning process and have kept them informed throughout. Our campaign provides them with another opportunity to put forward the benefits of diet change. We are all on good terms and there is absolutely no infighting…The goal of this campaign is to get the question of ‘should you do Veganuary’ more media attention, and shift the focus from ‘is eating animals bad’ to a focus on the question of which solution(s) to factory farming an individual will choose to participate in. In other words, we want the debate to be about whether to choose diet change or donating, rather than whether factory farming is a problem worth dealing with or not…The campaign encourages people to offset their meat this January by donating to help fix factory farming. As part of this, we hired three top competitive eaters to talk about donating to offset the animal welfare impact of their diet as they undertake one of their typical eating challen

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

We can align our ego with our advocacy goals. But wanting to be a good person might be your most dangerous motivation.What really drives people to devote their lives to a cause? And when does that motivation quietly start working against us? In this essay, I argue that animal activism is almost always ego-driven, and that this isn’t a moral failure but a psychological fact. Drawing on personal stories from my years in the movement, I explore how our deepest needs (for meaning, belonging, ambition, and moral self-regard) shape the way we show up as activists. The danger isn’t having an ego; it’s pretending we don’t. When we understand our “inner elephant” and learn how to align our personal motivations with the movement’s real needs, ego stops being a liability and becomes a source of endurance, initiative, and power. This episode is about ambition without apology, leadership without purity tests, and why lasting change for animals will come not from a few heroic saviors, but from thousands of people pulling in different directions.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Abolitionists’ antipathy towards cage-free reforms is rooted in an old idea– one most activists want nothing to do with.Why do animal abolitionists hate cage-free campaigns so much? The standard answer is strategy—they think asking for incremental reforms undermines the push for total liberation. But what if there's something deeper going on? In this episode, I trace the "freedom over welfare" instinct all the way back to John Milton's Paradise Lost and a 17th-century theological problem: if God is all-powerful and benevolent, why does he let us suffer? Milton's answer—that freedom matters more than happiness—launched a revolution in political thought that runs through John Locke, the U.S. Constitution, and, I argue, straight into modern animal activism. Most of us have discarded the Protestant theology that created this framework, but we've kept the solution without realizing it. Once you see it, the cage-free debate looks very different.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Progressives’ voracious appetite for rules, from the societal level to the interpersonal, has earned us a reputation for authoritarianism.In this episode, Aidan digs into the hidden authoritarian streak within progressive activism — not the cartoon version from Fox News, but the subtle, internal drift that turns idealistic movements into miniature bureaucracies. Drawing from personal experience, movement history, and examples from environmental and animal advocacy, he explores how perfectionism, moral policing, and rule-addiction undermine the very causes activists fight for. The episode makes the case for “joyful militancy” instead: a way of organizing rooted in trust, pluralism, and effectiveness rather than control, shame, or ideological purity.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

What if the shrimp guys are the most radical extremists in the animal movement? In this essay, I argue that the animal movement has radicalmoderate all mixed up, and reconsider what kinds will and will not help in the fight against factory farming.Note: moments after sending out Tuesday’s post, I learned that Tuesday was the start of International Shrimpact Week, a competition between Substackers to raise matching funds for the Shrimp Welfare Project. For every $1 you donate, SWP can spare 1,500 of the most neglected and exploited animals on the planet from the worst abuses (more details below.) I refuse to be left out so I chugged a single dainty little cup of green tea and got this post out ahead of schedule. This one goes out to the shrimps. Join me by making a donation here. In addition to the 50% match on the whole campaign by some big funder, I will match the first $1,000 of donations made with the code shrimpcastles, meaning your donation helps 3x as many shrimps, or 4,500 per $1!If you haven't seen footage of shrimp eyestalk ablation, maybe you should.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

A new generation is revolutionizing the grassroots animal movement, by learning the same way superintelligent AI learns.This essay examines some of the ways I went wrong as a young animal activist, especially my failure to seek out evidence for or against the strategies I believed in. This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.Note: the quotes from Sarah Schulman and Ian Morris are in their own real voices! Thanks to Sarah for narrating her own audiobook! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

The animal movement will keep devouring its own until we find the courage to accept discomfort. This essay discusses the consequences of moral absolutism in activist communities, and proposes different ways activists could relate to each other.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack.Note: the quotes from Sarah Schulman and Ian Morris are in their own real voices! Thanks to Sarah for narrating her own audiobook! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

After 10 years in animal advocacy, I realized my attachment to being 'grassroots' was holding me back from thinking clearly about what actually enables movements to mobilize activists. This essay lays out how my perspective changed and what both grassroots and professional organizations can do to mobilize more activistsThis audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an ElevenLabs clone of Aidan’s voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

This post is meant to help animal advocates start thinking about how the artificial intelligence revolution will impact our work. If you’ve been feeling anxious about AI but weren’t sure where to begin, or if you’ve never considered that AI technology could be disruptive to animal advocacy, you’re in the right place.Additional reading/listeningIf you’re not convinced that intelligence, reasoning, and creativity are appropriate words to describe what LLMs do, here’s some options for further reading:“Automating Creativity” by Ethan Mollick (already more than two years old, aged well but some details are out of date)Download the DeepSeek app and try talking with the DeepThink reasoning model, which gives you full access to its Chain of Thought (CoT), the thinking it does before giving you a final answer. Experiment with easy questions and hard questions. Or just search reddit for examples like this one.Sparks of AGI talk by Sébastien Bubeck (or the accompanying paper) – this was what GPT-5 recommended when I asked for its favorite lecture on the intelligent nature of LLMsIf you want to dig deeper on AI capabilities or help your brain think about what those capabilities could mean, here are some further readings:Dwarkesh made this fun animated video about how an all-AI company would workThe field of AI is moving so fast that by the time anyone has written a ‘comprehensive’ update, it is out of date. Given that, this explainer of AI scaling has aged well.Situational Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner goes broader and deeper on everything I’ve covered and is a favorite among AI junkies.My go-to sources for staying informed are Zvi Mowshowitz’s newsletter, the Cognitive Revolution podcast, the 80,000 Hours podcast, and the Dwarkesh podcast.If you want to go deeper on how weird the AI future could get, here are some links:If you could only listen to one interview to grasp the magnitude of change AI represents, make it Prof. Ian Morris on the 80,000 Hours podcast. Many of the ideas in part 4 were borrowed from Ian.The AI 2027 report is a detailed telling of how an AI takeover could play out. Useful to ground your imagination. Another episode of 80,000 hours explores how AI could enable unprecedented concentration of power via coups.If you’re up for something academic, Gradual Disempowerment by Jan Kulviet et al spells out the reasons to expect human displacement even without coordination by a hostile actor.The links discussed in part 5 are too numerous, so head to the post on Substack: https://sandcastlesblog.substack.com/p/the-tsunami-is-coming This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com