domain:kvetch.substack.com
zeke5123a
3m ago
I guess it depends what an encounter is (eg how close, how many people were around, what defensive options undertaken by the humans). But again women probably see 100 men a day and don’t get attacked. Obviously being alone increases the odds of a male attack but being alone would likely need to massively increase the risk rate to get close to 1% (and that 1% itself may need to be adjusted).
Lewis2
16m ago
I think they’d be equally ravenous to seize the reins of power regardless. They’re just authoritarians. It’s like asking if the early Nazis would have been more zealous if they were up against a strict communist government instead of the relatively liberal Weimar one. I think their zeal would have been undiminished either way. Same goes for the fervent anti-meat crowd.
2rafa
20m ago
Seems like a largely bullshit claim; it’s well established that aesthetically supporting a designated terrorist organization or even bragging about doing so doesn’t actually make you a ‘member’ of that organization.
If it did then half the Irish in Boston would have been arrested in the 80s.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
22m ago
In the same spirit, many of us can afford humanely raised, fully pastured animals and should elect to do so whenever possible. I'm not as good about this as I should be, but I've moved strongly in this direction and the food is just better anyway.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
22m ago
What self_made_human said.
But also. Arbitrary religious dietary restrictions do serve a purpose, and that is incentivizing/enabling purity norms in the food industry.
If you're lactose intolerant and want to be 100% sure you're not getting traces of milk in your meat dish, you can generally trust the kosher label to mean that a Mashgichim from the Kosher certification agency has treated this with a religious tier of seriousness.
Religious food restrictions taken seriously serve as a third party quality check. Third party quality checks are good to have available, even if the underlying religious justifications for them are stupid.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
24m ago
Lab grown meat, if it can be made cheaply and to taste indistinguishable from the real thing, would be an immense scientific achievement that would improve billions of people’s lives.
I accept the premise here, but those two if clauses are doing a ton of work. I'm skeptical that either is plausible, but concerned that in the name of going green, governments will push them anyway. My preference would be for government to stay away from it altogether (aside from normal basic research that NIH and others fund), but if we're going to wind up with governments feeling the need to get involved, I'd rather they ban the slop than subsidize it. Note that scientists generally benefit from the same public optics issue - it's a "good" job, so pouring money into questionable endeavors is pretty common.
If Smith had followed the British strategy also used in Botswana, Zambia and to some extent Namibia then the white population of Zim would be better off. That’s not to say he could have anticipated how Mugabe’s rule would go but if you look at all three of those countries they still have white farmers owning and running most of the most valuable/productive farmland and relatively little ethnic hostility toward them. A white farmer almost became president of Zambia pretty recently even. Rhodesia abolished strict racial segregation (where Salisbury etc was reserved for whites only) in the mid-1950s. By the early 60s it could have gone either way, but each side was slowly radicalized until the whites panicked at the plan to slowly allow educated blacks to become the majority of the electorate and then the UDI was inevitable.
t3tsubo
29m ago
The campus protests are run directly by the propaganda arm of Hamas?
Spicy lawsuit just dropped: https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/05/National-Jewish-Advocacy-Center-the-Schoen-Law-Firm-and-the-Holtzman-Vogel-law-firm-vs-1.pdf
The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) are accused of providing substantial assistance to Hamas. The plaintiffs, who are survivors and victims of Hamas's October 7, 2023 terrorist attack, are alleging that AMP and NSJP are Hamas's propaganda wing in the United States
Summary:
- AMP and NSJP are successor organizations to groups that were previously shut down or held liable for providing material support to Hamas.
- Within hours of the October 7 attack, AMP and NSJP allegedly disseminated a "toolkit" that identified them as "part of" Hamas's "Unity Intifada" and called for "confrontation by any means necessary," including "armed struggle."
- The groups allegedly instigated riots, violence, and chaos on American college campuses, recruiting students as "foot soldiers" to support Hamas through intimidation and fear tactics.
- AMP and NSJP are accused of providing crucial communication services to Hamas, which cannot legally hire American PR firms due to its terrorist designation.
- Hamas and other terrorist groups have publicly recognized and expressed appreciation for the support provided by AMP, NSJP, and their campus allies.
I can't exactly tell how much of this is BS and how much of it is real just from the claim but it is definitely going to be an interesting argument. I cannot wait for discoveries.
Even if the lawsuit is successful though, I can't see the US government really clamping down on campus protests. The whole situation has been an interesting case study for the rest of the world as to how to infiltrate/affect US political sentiment and public unrest though.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
32m ago
If vegans were nicer to you, would this reduce your happiness on account of feeling less spite towards vegans and therefore enjoying meat less? If I'm extra douchey to you, will this increase your happiness on net, on account of you getting more out of your next burger?
I'm 90% sure you're 50/50 [being facetious] / [saying this because it gives you that same warm spiteful feeling you describe.]
But I'm sure you'd find other culture wars to get your warm fuzzies from if this one went the way of the dodo.
...
Shame about those dodos... historical accounts imply that they would have made for excellent farm animals and/or pets.
Moofy
Chacrinha of Cold Brazil
40m ago
It depends on the individual. For me, going on long solo walks in nature is my favorite way of de-stressing and having introspective time. Hiking with others doesn't lower my stress and doesn't give me the unbroken mental space for self-reflection.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
41m ago
Impossible burgers are good. But unless I'm eating out anyway they're not worth the price hike.
For me its really a convenience thing. If the mild to moderate inconveniences were to drop below those of the traditional meat industry I would definitely go vegetarian. (we have homegrown eggs. We could be optimizing better for the well-being of our chickens but they're worlds away from factory farmed chickens. 90/10 rule applies IMO).
Until then I can't really spare the mental energy.
I consider eating factory farmed meat to be sinful in the same way that all skill issues are sinful.
But self-flagellating isn't an effective motivator for me. So what purpose would that serve other than to just cause more suffering?
2rafa
42m ago
Farmers are an extremely powerful constituency because they have money, are rural (privileged in most democratic systems, especially in the US with the Senate) and have a salt of the earth reputation (like doctors and firefighters, farmers do a ‘good’ job).
Screye had some good examples of how the farmers stymied Modi’s essential land reforms in India (which would in the medium and long term have had hugely positive impacts on Indian prosperity). In France the farmers just dump shit on the street and ruin daily life in the cities until their subsidies are restored. In almost every Western country farmers are often very wealthy with millions of dollars in land (usually pretty liquid given a robust farmland market).
A substantial proportion of the US obesity crisis is due to HFCS subsidies for farmers:
Just six commodities — corn, soy, wheat, cotton, peanuts, and rice — account for 94% of FCIP support. Many of these commodities are not used to provide affordable nutrition but are instead heavily processed into the fillers and sugars that are likely a large part of people's health problems, including obesity.
But as with doctor pay and healthcare costs (or indeed with cutting firefighter numbers because there are far fewer residential fires than there were 50 years ago), because farming is a ‘good’ job, the public can be baited into supporting these people and serving their interests indefinitely.
Lab grown meat, if it can be made cheaply and to taste indistinguishable from the real thing, would be an immense scientific achievement that would improve billions of people’s lives. And even though I don’t value farm animal wellbeing particularly highly, it would still reduce a lot of animal suffering which on some level is probably a good thing if it can be ensured without harming humans in any way.
For the strict vegans, the objection really does seem to be that it comes from the incorrect kingdom. They don't eat mussels or honey, for example. Veganism doesn't hold to some consistent morally coherent standard, it's a quasi-religious practice where the lack of high-quality human food is sort of the point. I think this is what you're getting at in the next paragraph; I guess we're going to find out how much is about not wanting to eat cute fuzzy animals and how much is about avoiding food-sin.
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