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SlowBoy
4m ago
There has to be at least one exotic meat that hits a sweet spot for: relatively tasty; more expensive in real life than the lab; nobody is familiar with the real thing. If I were in charge of a lab-grown meat company I'd throw money at this question until one suitable species could be identified. Ideally several. Find a few celebrity chefs willing to experiment with and serve the product. You might not want to go to the grocery and buy lab-grown meat for the grill, but your girlfriend will want to post nice Instagram selfies of herself enjoying the lab-grown whale meatballs at a fancy restaurant. Politicians are not going to ban your product if they enjoy it. If you could get lab-grown steaks served regularly at the French Laundry, it's over.
Artisinal meats are the perfect test-case for lab-grown. Everything is small-scale and gives the tech a chance to develop. Lab-grown will not win a head-to-head competition with real meat without significant R&D. Developing beef steak first seems to me like the worst proposition, driven by (well-meaning) idealists who want to replace meat consumption. Surely it'd be easier to pass off a fake chicken nugget than a steak. Steak is something everyone is familiar with, is a food cooked to be eaten as itself with minimal coverings or dress. People will not accept lab-grown steak as viable until the technology is fully mature. Why would you pay 5x for a substitute that's worse? Because it's moral? That's a terrible proposition for most consumers. If the lab-grown meat industry wasn't run by idealists with a chip-on-their-shoulder about the morality of meat, they could easily see the business model I'm describing.
Tollund_Man4
7m ago
Maybe I’m just squeamish but I didn’t find my visit to a slaughterhouse to be very pleasant (though the actual farmers I was with thought it was nasty business too).
The suffering of the worker in doing an extremely bloody and dirty job is something I don’t think we’d lose much in getting rid of, there’s no self-reliance or virtue of the hunt in a series of bolt gun shots.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7m ago
This is going to sound like edgy contrarianism for the sake of edgy contrarianism, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that it's not:
I really don't care. And if you told me that counter-protesters were being funded by Israel, I wouldn't care about that either. In a conflict where moral fervor runs high, I am an advocate for the freedom to simply not care.
I'm just tired of the moral guilt tripping from both sides. If you want to criticize the protesters, criticize their tactics. There's plenty to criticize there. But their alleged ties to Hamas add nothing to the story for me. In general I have always felt that concerns over "foreign manipulation of political sentiment" were paranoia of the worst kind. If the governments of Russia or China or the US (organizations that have engaged in plenty of nasty unethical behavior in the past that could plausibly be classified as "terrorism") want to pay for a Times Square billboard and fund some student organizations to get their message out then I say let them. Free speech doesn't stop at our borders; I am for open trade in a global free market of ideas.
I can't reasonably bring myself to be invested in every ethnic and sectarian conflict that happens around the world, particularly when its direct impact on me seems rather limited. If the Sudanese Masalit want to organize protests in the US against the RSF then bully for them; whether they win or lose in their struggles, I'm not going to lose sleep either way. I view Israel-Palestine similarly: just another in a long series of ethnic conflicts in a region of the world that is known for being prone to violent ethnic conflicts.
In some sense I am forced to care, due to the generous financial aid that the US supplies to Israel. But my investment doesn't extend beyond that.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
9m ago
Energetics are less of a problem with cattle than vehicles though - they're not particularly efficient, but they're capable of growing literal tons of high-quality nutrition by simply eating grasses that grow naturally. While this is apparently not as cheap as CAFOs currently (although I'm not clear on how much of that is a product of corn subsidies), there's something to be said for the ability of someone without expensive equipment and sterile lab conditions to produce excellent meat via naturally occurring inputs and a herd of cattle or bison grazing. You can afford to waste a lot of energy when the energy is being produced by the sun, processed by plants in a field, and reprocessed by ruminants.
We'll see. Cell culture media isn't cheap though. For the time being, I suggest exercising a lot of skepticism about what the financial inputs for lab-grown tissue are if someone claims that it's actually quite cheap.
2rafa
9m ago
Grain fed tastes better. I’ve heard a lot of English people say that steaks in America are so much better even than the high end (grass fed) stuff we get in the UK. Grain fed has more marbling which is in part what makes beef taste good. Many high end London steakhouses import US grain fed beef for customers and it’s usually (other than real Kobe etc) the most expensive thing on the menu.
Is that actually true? The cows in the fields by the side of the highways of middle America, yes. sure. But what percentage of our meat comes from them and what percentage comes from the shoulder to shoulder cows in factory farms?
The US department of agriculture tends to be biased in a pro farming direction right? So this should be a reasonable source.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/
Cattle feeding operations are concentrated in the Great Plains region but are also located in parts of the Corn Belt, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest regions. Feedlots with less than 1,000-head capacity comprise most of U.S. feedlot operations, but they market a relatively small share of the fed cattle. Conversely, although feedlots with 1,000-head-or-greater capacity are less than 5 percent of total feedlots, they market 80–85 percent of fed cattle. Feedlots with a capacity of 32,000 head or more market around 40 percent of fed cattle. The industry continues to shift toward a small number of very large, specialized feedlots focused on raising high-quality cattle for a particular market, such as markets requiring cattle not treated with hormones and not fed beta agonists. USDA, NASS provides monthly Cattle on Feed reports.
Now... you may be wondering- what's a specialized feedlot? Do these cows really never graze? My searches indicate that feedlots generally aim to rapidly fatten cows on cultivated grains, but sometimes, cows are started in their youth on grazing, before being moved to concentrated feed lots for grain-finishing.
I'm not quite invested enough to do a full research essay quantifying the number of calories that come from "free" grass. But it seems safe to say that-
Most cows don't eat cultivated plants for their entire diet. They graze on "free" grasslands.
Is just false or misleading... ok yes. The grain finished ones are starting on grasslands, but then they bulk up on grains. At least in the United States. If your country's industry is a pastoral utopia then power to you.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
12m ago
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
14m ago
There is no need for a conspiracy of puppeteers - the public health people really do have some very stupid ideas about what's good for the public, they've displayed it repeatedly, and taking options away from them preemptively has value.
roystgnr
18m ago
We've already synthesized "real" meat that may not be as good as real meat. Grain-fed beef can have an omega-3:omega-6 ratio several times worse than traditional grass-fed grass-finished beef, but everyone eats grain-fed since it's half the price. Time to fix the problem with a ban?
Skulldrinker
22m ago
I should have been more specific: The above ALWAYS happens. It doesn't happen sometimes, it happens inevitably with every Hinge match.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
25m ago
Seems pretty niche. The reason people know what beef tastes like is that beef tastes very, very good. For more people than not, it's basically optimized for deliciousness already. There is just not much better than a good cheeseburger or steak. I'm fairly adventurous with food and love trying different meats, but the reality is that none of them are actually as good as just getting a classic cut ribeye and grilling it up.
cjet79
27m ago
Taste does seem very difficult, but cheapness seems inevitable.
Just from physics/energy perspective lab grown or vat grown meat is more straightforward. Animals are not 100% edible and some of the energy they consume goes to their non edible parts and to activities that provide no benefit to edibility.
I think it's comparable to the difference between cars and horses. Cars have more uniform energy requirements, and far less wasted energy. But horses have numerous aesthetic benefits that are hard to imitate (like auto navigation).
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
29m ago
I have no idea how things will shake out in other parts of the world, but North America has no trouble sustaining tens of millions of ruminants indefinitely.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
32m ago
What's there left to object to, on primary moral grounds?
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.
zeke5123a
34m 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
48m 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
52m 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
54m 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
54m 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
56m 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
1hr 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
1hr 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.
If you mean that Koreans have nutters who claim Chinese things — and other things too, for that matter — are actually Korean, no, that's real. The Chinese do grossly exaggerate the extent of belief, of course.
The festivals thing I was thinking of was related to Lunar New Year. I'm going off this by memory, so couldn't find a source in time.
The Chinese character thing was something found originally here, where some Korean novelist and former(?)-professor expounds on the idea that actually proto-Koreans created Chinese civilisation before migrating to Korea (by equating proto-Koreans simultaneously with the Shang and the Dongyi). (Apparently the same person was also featured in a video here earlier this year where he more explicitly claims that Chinese characters are Korean. That video has been private'd, but some vengeful Chinese netizen has re-uploaded it)
(I also somehow found this looney tunes Korean guy claiming that English is descended from Korean?)
Again, these things aren't taken seriously by the (vast?) majority of Koreans, but they do exist (as do more mainstream but still silly nationalistic punchups). This is also not to elide that you see loony shit from the Chinese (and Japanese, and every ethnicity really) as well -- sometimes even from the state organs!
My conjecture is that some part of this historical revisionism has to do not only with modern nationalism and geopolitcal rivalry, but also a longer-rooted hostility that has fomented since the Qing conquest.
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