domain:kvetch.substack.com
zeke5123a
18m ago
I’ve really come to admire Ian Smith. It is a hard thing to “go it alone” but he was of course right. And not in a cartoonish “white people are always superior” way but in an obvious “look around and see what is happening in Africa with these shitty leaders” way. It was a deeply unpopular position but one that actually was best for both blacks and whites. That requires strength of character.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
25m ago
Most vegans I know aren't particularly fond of Impossible Burgers and such, or other recent "meat imitation products" (non-meatish meat substitutes like tofu are another matter). The supposed constituency is probably "vegan-curious" hipsters who occasionally cook non-meat dishes, though it hasn't taken hold of them, either.
aardvark2
1hr ago
look at the gay/lesbian community. Even if you crack reproduction, neither of these is capable of maintaining civilization, IMO.
Without a way to reproduce they cannot evolve towards goal of maintaining civilization, maybe cracking reproduction would make them to (and possibly introduce a schism)
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
1hr ago
I never had a problem with any of the aesthetics of either lab grown or fake meat. In fact, personally I think both are good in the sense that it would convince people to a least give it a go and in a way that doesn’t affect their lifestyle that much.
Botond173
1hr ago
So after reading of this online trend I decided to look up information on bear attacks in Russia, as I remembered reading that those often become a serious issue on a local level.
There's an interesting tidbit I've found: "Kamchatka brown bears are generally not dangerous to humans, and only 1% of encounters result in attack." (The cited source is a Kamchatka Ecology and Environmental Institute study.)
To be sure, brown bears are no joke, and the Kamchatkan subspecies is even less of a joke: "The Kamchatka brown bear is the biggest brown bear in Eurasia, with a body length of 2.4 m (7.9 ft) to 3 m (9.8 ft) tall on hind legs, and a weight up to at least 650 kg (1,430 lb). It is about the size of the Kodiak bear..."
Anyway, the 1% figure is somewhat surprising and seems to underpin the feminist argument at first sight. However, I'd be very surprised if solitary female-on-male encounters in the woods were statistically as dangerous anywhere in the world.
functor
1hr ago
While consuming far more diesel than ever, far more artificial fertilizers, degrading soil faster than ever and using enormous amounts of antibiotics. Modern agriculture isn't sustainable, it is built on using slowly replinishing resources at a high rate.
Botond173
1hr ago
I haven't read this book. And I don't have certainty on the origins of woke or even what its definition is. I would classify myself as coming from a old "left wing" background, but I detest "I know it when I see it" woke and have somehow missed the call that affects so many other "left wingers."
With that said, what I vaguely think I've seen and know.
- 1 The great aWokeing was in 2016 or so, way later. Civil Rights is clearly not woke (I am not woke and I in theory like the idea of Civil Rights). Civil Rights is however the origin of "Identity Politics." Identity Politics here is distinguished from a universalist project of rights and or socialism. I.e. anti-racism is synonymous with ending discrimination for all universally, not advocating for black rights individually. Clearly woke feeds off identity politics, but again it existed for a long time before it, and I think it popped into existence for clear reasons that are not woke mind virus.
In orthodox Marxism everything is the economy stupid and changing the economic superstructure of capitalism is the only sure way to change negative social mores. Even Engels himself was writing how discrimination of women has its origins in capitalism and industrialism. The project of personal liberation, for a woman, and being a socialist is one and the same. In a post Identity Politics split, such a person would just be a feminist and maybe also a socialist.
The importance of socialism here is that the previous project of universal rights, enshrined in the founding ethos of the USA itself, was old school Liberalism. But the liberals won completely and already wrote all the laws. The old left-right divide in the French revolutions was between republican liberals and monarchists. But you don't see any monarchists around and the Church as a power estate is near nonexistent. There's a point after the fall of monarchies and therefore true ancien regime Rightwing-ism (I'm going to say around 1848) where those that still had the mentality of "let's keep challenging the system but now with say... women" started calling themselves Socialist instead of Republican or pro-democracy. Like you can clearly see the Jacobins are partly proto-socialist, but they're just too early. This is why you don't see, unlike a Paradox game, revolutionaries in South East Asia quoting Thomas Paine and waving yellow don't tread on me flags. Either they're with the status quo or they are Red. Anyone that didn't like this was an anti socialist (liberal) "Conservative."
And so it mostly was until 1960s when Identity Politics happened. And it's easy to see why. Gulag Archipelago happened. The Revolution was not happening. In general "left wing people," synonymous with the global project of socialism, were starting to suffer under constant judgment on the value of the USSR. And here comes MLK to offer actual immediate "we're doing something" change with positive results not bolted to the fucking USSR and making you a domestic terrorist in the Cold War. The "progressives" that went with Identity Politics curb stomped old left universal project socialist in popularity and mainstream political power. None of this is woke.
- 2 Identity Politics has mutated as time goes on, it's become the only way to be a progressive, and it's further fused with the establishment as not being threatening to the true economic elite. Hot take: I suspect one origin of Woke is that at some point the mental egregor that makes up the "progressive" mind started grappling with the initial huge wins of non-socialist Identity Politics starting to bring back embarrassing failure. This is very familiar in the "disparate results MUST be the result discrimination" equity vs equality dialog everyone loves to hate. At first you succeed in black school integration, or women entering the work place, but then the black students still aren't the same as white students and the prophesied cure to the Feminine Mystique "Is this all there is?" challenge is less than impressive.
Africa I think is especially illustrative of this. If you were a radical in the 60s you were no doubt psyched that colonialism was finally ending in Africa. And then, constant disappointment and at times utter hell. When you look at the capstone failure of South Africa post apartheid some people no doubt have the thought worm into their head "do black people just suck? Were they really the white man's burden?" And I suspect thoughts such of these has engendered a more anti-rational, authoritarian, purity obsessed, and debilitated but highly performative defensive ethos. To shake off such intrusive thoughts.
It's not all that. I'm sure. But this turned out way too long.
P.S. I guess I kind of wanted to comment in general but used one post. Apologies if this wall of text in an inbox shocks you and seems inappropriate.
Armin
1hr ago
Much of Europe? I think is something that is common only in the most lib part of Berlin where all the americanized women and foreign expats gathers. Here vegetarianism is almost unknown, and also in big cities like Bruxelles I have seen meat everywhere, also in èlites institutions canteens.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
2hr ago
Always remember, dating for long-term relationships is one of the things where rates mean nothing, a single true success is enough. I also was struggling badly to get any positive attention whatsoever from women until I met my wife.
I absolutely agree. I am a hiker and there is unsaid camaraderie among hikers everywhere I go. It is something automatic that kicks in if we are in nature and shit can go down the drain very quickly, we have to help each other out. I personally helped administering first aid to a young girl who fell from her bike when she was on a trip with her mother, while her father was away to catch a signal so he could call for help. I cannot imagine myself saying to my daughter or any female relative not to go hiking - they can encounter a man for Christ sake! While I would certainly be against them - or anybody - going to a spot with known lair of brown bear, you can bet on it.
Young daughter has incredibly high chance of any man to help her if she is stuck in a forest, while if there is only a bear then she will die either to the bear or the wilderness. Any rationally thinking man has to know it.
Crowstep
2hr ago
can.
Food has been getting cheaper, we're growing more of it on less farmland since the 1990s, and malnutrition is declining rapidly. There's no reason to expect that all of the trends that have been occurring since the industrial revolution will suddenly reverse, especially since global birth rates (gross) peaked in 2016 and global TFR is about to fall below replacement (if it hasn't already).
HalloweenSnarry
2hr ago
I suppose this is the same logic as smart-gun legislation in places like New Jersey?
I am going to die when leftist looters burn my family alive FC.
I have come across pictures like this, and contemplate that some day in the not-to-distant future, they could very well be my wife and children. But you are claiming certainty. Okay. What are the intermediate steps? What happens, specifically, between here and there? Make your predictions, and we can see how it goes step by step. If it doesn't go the way you're thinking, you can hopefully recognize that you are being irrational. And if it doesn't go the way I'm thinking, I can recognize that I've underestimated the threat. Either would be a positive result, no?
In the meantime... Do you live in a Blue area? If so, you should move. Do you own guns? If not, you should get them, not because they're particularly useful in a fighting-the-blues sense, but because you should have the means to protect your family. More than that you should be building skills and cultivating social networks. I worry about my family being burned alive, but not by looters, because I don't live near potential looter populations, the local authorities look favorably on armed self-defense, I have a strong social network, and my wife and I have plans to improve our position over the next few years.
Any opportunity to win and then mulch them first is worth taking, no matter how bad the odds are (I'm assuming "ceases to exist as a sociopolitical force" means no effective resistance to mop-up mulching after victory, since a random 5% is far too low to include that part)
Why? I hate Blues so much it often keeps me awake at night. But you are claiming you think they're going to kill a significant portion of the US population, and so you need to do it to them "first". Okay, how are they going to do that? What's the sequence of steps? Because we're talking about the power and water going out and the trains stopping, and also incidentally dozens of millions of your friends and neighbors dead. That means you get real poor real fast. that means crime goes through the roof and probably stays there. That means everyone's life gets fucked for the foreseeable future. If you're certain something bad enough to be worth all that is coming, you should necessarily be certain about how we get from here to there. So, how?
If I, as a male, want to be a bit cheeky, I can actually agree that a random bear is less dangerous to an American woman than a random male.
I call it as absolute bullshit theorizing. And I as an avid hiker I have a proof living in Slovakia, a country full of Brown bears and where we have huge problems with them - including severe injuries and fatal attack in last few months. It actually created quite a controversy, maybe I will make a top level post about that. Just for context, here is a footage of brown bear strolling in a mountain town in broad daylight last month and how such encounter looks like - including encounter with women with strollers. And notice a considerable difference compared to encountering a random male.
If you told some random female hiker in Slovakia that you saw a random a male hiker on a trail she is about to take, she would look at you incredulously. Of course there are male hikers, she meets them all day every day. If you told her that you actually saw a brown bear chilling on the top of the hill, she (or me for that matter) would certainly change our plans. Don't fuck with bears, they are very dangerous and highly unpredictable animals.
The answer women give has nothing to do with actually assessing any kind of danger. At best they are stupid and ignorant, but more likely there is some kind of social game they play. Something along the lines of how even hideous women rate themselves as perfect 10 out of 10 if asked publicly.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
It's just as easy to repeal this law and ban real meat as it was before the ban.
No, there can be a huge amount of institutional inertia. Governments generally do not turn on a dime. And that's just looking at the legal side. Scaling up a fake-meat industry would take a huge amount of time and investment and it can't even get started if there's a ban.
To be clear I'm low-key enthusiastic about lab-grown meat (though I also don't trust food scientists farther than I can throw them). I just took issue with your statement that
if it's so much worse, there's no need to ban it.
freemcflurry
2hr ago
No, it's easier to ban meat if there is already an alternative. If there is no substitute then passing a ban is a much higher barrier. Lab grown meat is from the electric car playbook: make an inferior substitute to something people like, gaslight theme into thinking it's just as good and then ban the authentic version.
SoonToBeBanned
2hr ago
Hispanic obviously means mestizo as a race. Which should be a racial category if we're going to have them. It's just the government is piss scared to engage in official racial phrenology in the modern day, so we get old calcified classifications from when everyone knew asians, whites, and blacks were a thing. I'm surprised they had the balls to change it.
I don't think as many people know this as should, but there used to be very few mestizos/hispanics in the USA. So few no one thought to count them in census regularly. By the time the "hispanic" category was cooked up there was already millions of racially ambiguous people living in the USA.
functor
2hr ago
The issue is that we can't have 10 billion peole living a western lifestyle on a finite planet. The amount of water, artificial fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics required for 10 billion people eating meat twice a day is simply not feasible. I don't think anyone is really enthusiastic over bug meat, it is simply an adaption to over population. Personally I would go for fewer people living on less industrially produced meat.
ThenElection
3hr ago
I'm a vegetarian, and I would kill for a nice porterhouse. Although I probably know a couple of vegetarians/vegans who'd probably be upset that they'd lose the moral justification for the defining part of their personality, the large majority would absolutely start eating steak given the chance.
epohon
3hr ago
the suffering is not an integral part of the process
I beg to differ. The spite I feel towards vegans improves the pleasure from eating meat. Also the suffering is a bulwark against becoming like that girl featured here recently, who had turned her apartment into a breeding colony for pest insects.
jake
3hr ago
Farming karma has gotta be a mix of things. I hate powerusers and would pretty aggressively ban them so I never bothered to talk with them to figure out their motivations, I'm sure it's a combination of things, any, all. Seeing the number go up, seeing all the notifications from comments on a post, seeing it on the front page of /r/All, especially #1. "Being the best" (at reddit, lol, lmao). Po-mo attention seeking, at any rate.
I never cared about the karma game enough to know the tricks. I know that >150 upvotes on a new post in around 15 minutes would usually be enough to get a post on the front page of a sub in old reddit. I don't know what it takes to get an obscure sub's posts to wide visibility. I don't see a reason it couldn't be several people swapping accounts, though the botting there seems easier since presumably it'd take 1-2 people.
TD figured out, or else perfected the technique, that stickying a post would significantly boost its visibility so they constantly rotated stickies. They were absolutely gaming the system, but I think the above is how. The admins worked against them of course, with the infamous example of them screwing up and making like 25/25 /r/All being TD, and later when people figured out via reddit advertising how TD had an audience comparable to /r/politics despite an ostensible order of magnitude fewer subscribers. I don't remember the sequence, but that general time period was when /r/politics had its big changeover in mods, paid actors among them.
So when is Florida banning jelly beans? And calorie-rich sodas sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup? And sugary breakfast cereals? And cancer-inducing smoked meats? Tobacco? Alcohol?
Why should all those foods that we know are unhealthy and that consumers actually do overindulge in to the detriment of their health be allowed, but a meat substitute that is likely to be much healthier and is not even widely available needs to be banned?
I don't think “probably” is right; which nutrients and vitamins are essential is pretty well known, so the chance that lab-grown meat is unhealthy in some unpredictable way is pretty low. Especially since nobody suggests you switch to a meat-only diet; the idea is that you eat this in moderation, along with fresh fruits, nuts, and vegetables, just like the recommendation is for real meat.
Still, if you personally don't want to take the risk, you would still be welcome to stuff your face with jellybeans, vodka and tobacco because you believe that's the healthier alternative. That's hardly an argument for a ban.
More options
Context Copy link