Hey, it’s Quinn.

This (from 2004) is one of my favorite Onion headlines (which is really saying something):

It’s hard to quantify how game-changing the Gillette Mach3 was back in the day. It was everywhere. It was life-changing.

3 (!) fucking blades. Ride or die. Can’t be beat.

Which is exactly how I felt about our eight *Actually* Pro Life Principles. Indestructible. Non-negotiable. Can’t be topped.

Until last week.

Here’s the thing: back in May, I told you there were eight things every person deserves, whatever else we disagree on. I listed them. I said they were our non-negotiables, and I said take them all — all eight — or get the fuck out.

Six weeks later, in case anyone was keeping track, I said it again: absolutely non-negotiable. No backing down now.

Some news: there are nine now.

Let me walk you through it: what was missing (all along, and we knew it), the easy fix we struggled with, and why I truly believe a living world belongs on the same list as a home and clean water.

Because — I swear to god — how we got to nine is exactly how this thing is supposed to work.

Which is that we missed something. We found it. We fixed some of it. But not all of it. More on that below.

You are a human on earth so you have, at some point, used the internet — actively or passively — to watch an octopus change seven different colors and one more to finally exactly match a coral, upon which to hide from a predator, and then, because of algorithms, watch another escape their tank through the smallest opening imaginable.

You have watched David Attenborough narrate an octopus using fucking tools. You’ve maybe also watched My Octopus Teacher or Remarkably Bright Creatures. If we’re close friends, you might’ve even read a draft of my cranky octopus children’s adventure book.

You are among the millions who’ve used Merlin Bird ID to get to know your neighborhood flying friends, or made actual friends with a crow. Perhaps you’ve visited a beach, mountain, forest, desert, or stream this year and marveled at the world around you, in which you feel like a guest, not simply the apex predator you are simply because you have thumbs and a big brain that barely fits through a human pelvis.

Perhaps you’ve snorkeled and bore witness to beautiful fish and bleached out coral or read about how their used to be actual crocodiles that could fly (?) and walk on two legs (?) and been thankful for the asteroid but also fuck, man, can you even imagine? But also, do you have any idea how dangerous a platypus is?

It’s all a wonder.

One of my earliest podcast conversations was with a preacher who described to me how he and his specific flock hold a different interpretation of our supposedly God-given “dominion” over the world: that a literal reading actually requires a duty of care, not an order to, you know, rape the ecosystems of which we’re inextricably part of.

It is possible you have a favorite leaf or animal that is not a goldendoodle.

It is possible, also, that you’ve read about the massive decline of insect species these past few decades you and I have been alive, or about the horrors of industrial meat, or chickens. You’ve read or listened to my convo about over-fishing, or the last white rhinos. Maybe also though about all the strides made to clean up New York’s harbors and the Chesapeake Bay, or how whales have rebounded from when we used their oil to light the world.

Maybe Jane Goodall meant something to you, and so do verts of pandas eating shit as they fall off a barrel. Maybe Free Willy and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, changed you, too.

If any or all of that is true, then you too, may struggle with, on the one hand, a firm belief that all of those creatures deserve to live, full stop, and while they live, not be treated cruelly, and especially for profit.

But also, on the other, that most of the world eats animal meat of some kind, most days; that all the glass skyscrapers that kill so many millions of birds a year are also better for land-use and other ecosystems than the alternative; that the wooden toys we want for our kids have to come from some forest, somewhere; or that organic farming uses more land than conventional.

Maybe you cheer for the apes in the newer (excellent) Planet of the Apes franchise. Or the real-world orcas doing our dirty work to billionaires and their yachts.

It’s possible, like me, you’ve heard how pigs are as smart as a third-grader, taken one look at your own eight year-old looking into the wrong end of a fake lightsaber and wondered whether a pig might be less picky about which peanut butter brand you buy and might actually listen and not yell “STOP PRESSURING ME” when you ask them for the seventh time to put on their goddamn shoes.

How the hell do we balance it all?

When we launched Position pages in October, I told you something had been missing from *Actually* Pro Life for two years.

Like dark matter: I knew it was there, it had to be there, I just couldn't put my finger on it, etc.

I also told you we couldn't lean on duct tape more than we absolutely had to, and that there was still a long list of orphan Actions and plenty of gaps left.

But there was another gap I hadn't named, and it was sitting inside some of the Positions I'm honestly proudest of.

Even though — in creative writing lingo — we’d really “written ourselves into a corner.”

Everything comes back to the Thread: every Action traces back through a Position and a Principle to the Foundation, or it doesn't belong.

An example of the Thread in action:

There are a million other examples. But at the same time, we knew that a few of our best Positions could only get back to the Principles by…squinting.

For example:

Both of those traced back up the Thread through clean water, clean air, and healthy food, and…nothing else. Fishing within science-based sustainable limits traced back through healthy food, full stop.

(squints)

Is it arguably legit? Sure.

But is that the primary reason most people fight for 30x30?

Kind of?

Narrator: it got worse.

Ending extreme confinement in livestock production, and protecting highly sentient species from exploitation both hung off healthy food alone.

Follow the Thread from the Position that covers octopus farming allllll the way back, and the only thing connecting it to what a person is “owed” was dinner at a raw bar.

Quick detour. I promise it comes back around (sorry Willow, I know).

In 2023 I wrote about why I (mostly) don't eat animals. The subtitle was "It's not why you think," and it really wasn't! (also, weirdly, one of our most popular essays ever?)

One of my best friends had died of cancer, I read one very persuasive book while I was still angry and terrified (and honestly drunk) about it, and in 2011, six months out from the New York Marathon, I dropped meat and dairy so I wouldn't get cancer and would be a little lighter on my feet. A whole new me.

The animals thing came later TBH. And years later, when my kids, who really just seemed to arrive all at once, connected the chicken on their plates with the chickens clucking around the farms near us in Virginia, I decided not to pretend those were different things.

Reader - this is not a decision you can take back.

But now those same children are quite large, and I ask them the questions. I tell them how smart pigs and octopuses are and they kind of believe me, which is more than usual.

But I think that’s because they simply like having been born into a world where pigs and octopuses are, you know, still around. They have grown up not only outside, but when inside, on Wild Kratts, and Octonauts, and more. I showed them the outside and those shows, which went to places I couldn’t take them, because I thought they — and every kid now and to come — deserve to know about it, to be a part of it, to care for it.

That's the framework's story, too. *Actually* Pro Life is originally, and still, built on what people are owed — if they’ll take care of it, like so many tens of generations of Indigenous people have before us.

A living world had been staring at us for a while before we named it as one of those things.

Great news! There was an easy fix.

Less great: it was (nearly) the wrong one.

Our six Guardrails are how we do the work, and one of them says cruelty for profit is never justified.

A quick refresher or if you’re new here:

The obvious move was to let the two animal Positions lean on that last Guardrail and call it a day. What’s one little exception to the rule, anyways?

We almost pulled the trigger on it, but we didn't, and here's why.

I made that call in August and again in November. An exception (almost immediately) for two Positions would have opened the door to more chaos, and made the whole thing harder and more burdensome to explain quickly.

A framework you can't explain quickly is a framework nobody else can use and this is actually the one thing I’ve ever developed that I can explain quickly.

I've said a version of this before, about parenting. I made it a little easier on myself with a firm set of no's, and everything else is, within reason, up for discussion.

Run for Something founder Amanda Litman (obviously) has a better version: "Have consistent values and a clear vision, and/but, be flexible on tactics." The Foundation and the Principles are the values. Which Principles we name, and which Positions sit under them, is how we get there.

So we kept the rule, and, voila, the question got harder, not easier. If those Positions can't lean on a Guardrail, which of our vaunted Principles do they come from? Space?

And yes, I see it. "Animals spared cruelty for profit" is really not far off from "cruelty for profit is never justified." Did we maybe just kind of twerk a Guardrail into a Principle? I like to think “no”.

It's the same line drawn twice: once as what you're owed (by past generations and current leaders/adults), once as how we work.

Here's the Ninth Principle, as published:

The first two words are obviously doing a lot of work.

Every person.

Like the other eight, a living world is something you are owed. The Foundation hasn't moved an inch: “No life is worth more than another”, the line the late Paul Farmer lived every day. The Foundation is and remains about human lives.

So, yes, we believe two things: 1) we are part of nature, and earth’s ecosystems, and 2) a living world is something people are owed, not a claim that other lives count the same as ours.

Even if that doesn’t quite do it for you, we’re not crazy.

None of them mentions animals. And honestly I own that, and we argued about it internally for quite a while and this is where we ended up. It’s where we had to end up, or we would have had to blow up the whole system. We have an opinion, even if you feel like it’s wrong.

So yes, it's still about people. And that’s kind of selfish, in the very grand scheme of things, and on purpose. A kid born in 2080 is owed a world that's still alive when she gets here and we’re going to do everything we can do keep it for her.

Here’s the part where you yell at me. I’m ready. Let’s do it.

"So an animal's life is worth the same as a person's now?" No. Read the Foundation. Read the Principle. Every person deserves.

"Octopuses, but not the unborn?" Yes.

"30x30 is a land grab." Ok, I have to be straight with you: our 30x30 Position doesn't yet (!) say anything about tribal or Indigenous consent. That’s obviously not ideal. I don’t know enough here yet, much less what the answer is yet.

(For the record, the federal 30x30 goal set in 2021 was revoked by executive order in 2025)

"You said eight were non-negotiable." I did! Twice. They still are non-negotiable. Now they just have a sibling.

"Why nine? What stops a tenth?" Nothing? Other than what I described above, there’s no formula. This one had been staring at us for a while and like I’ve said all along, there’s gaps. We’re working on it.

So here's the whole list now:

Six of our Positions and 247 Actions now trace back to a living world. Because you, and every child to come, deserve it.

Remember — take them all (all 8 9) or get the fuck out.

Together or nothing,

Quinn