Ignore commenters trashing you. It is very ok to have conflicted feelings about something like this. I think this is a good thing but understand where you're coming from. Let me tell you my family's story.
I have a brother with developmental disabilities. Not Down Syndrome, but something similar. He (and I) were lucky enough to be born into an upper-middle class family where my brother went to a school where people were kind to him and where services were available. Despite everything going about as well as it could, it still is a major tax on my family. Constant fund-raising for the home he's living in. Major medical problems through out his life. Things like that. When I agreed to kids with my wife it was on the condition that we do genetic testing and abort the fetus if there was an issue.
My mother has invested her life into this child and loves him more than anything. One day we were talking about death and I casually said something along the lines of "as long as I don't see you at <brother's name> funeral" I'll be ok. Implying she should die first so she doesn't have to deal with the sadness of seeing him die. She then said that she wanted my brother to die first. I was stunned. I asked why. She said she wanted to know he was taken care of. It completely floored me. People with Down's (and similar disabilities) can bring so much joy into this world. They can live very happy lives. I understand how it can be hard for people who don't have my experience to feel like you're feeling. However, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. And I think it's a good thing for society to stop babies being born that are so disabled they'll never be able to take care of themselves.
This is one of those times evolution doesn't make sense to me. It's clear how a giraffe's neck evolves, the ones that could reach higher leaves in trees had an advantage. In examples like this, how does this evolve when there is no gradual change? An animal had to exist that had an offspring that somehow both absorbed the chloroplasts of the food it ate in a way that it could use (not just simple digestion), then have a place to store them, then have a mechanism to move the chloroplasts to the storage space, then have the mechanisms in their body to use the energy the stored chloroplasts create. How does that happen gradually when each step is totally useless without the others?
(please note I am not challenging the scientific truth of evolution, I simply do not understand how something like this happens)
They look kind of translucent to me, maybe the first of this kind of slug just had a digestive problem that didn't break down the chloroplasts, and the minimal energy through their bodies made those individuals more successful because they didn't need to eat as often as those who digested theirs. Yada yada other errors among the indegestible-chloroplast population showed further advantages when it's closer to the skin, they outcompeted their peers, etc.
The article notes that the chloroplasts are like a larder that the slug can digest when needs be, so storage could have come well before photosynthesis was actually utilized.
Or maybe it was photosynthesis first. The chloroplasts just did their thing for a while, and slugs that digested them slower (and eventually ones that stored them) got more benefit than ones that didn't.
While true, the predominance of evidence for evolution has reached the point that anybody attempting to argue against it would have to produce absolutely enormous amounts of self-consistent evidence that explains our observations better than modern theories of evolution. It's sort of like the laws of thermodynamics, or relativity, or quantum physics- if you found convincing evidence that any one of those was not accurate, and came up with a better explanation, it would both completely transform science, and open up new avenues for discovery.
And if you want to do that, you should probably get a deep set of experience; otherwise, it's not much different from a flat earther.
theres nothing stopping the entirety of existence as being experienced via wires connected to some brain matter suspended in a jar, one would have to disprove this issue at a meta level to conclusively state any given existential theory as true. therefore all existential theories including atheism are faith based, so to state any one particular theory as true is dogmatic and unscientific
Oh no! Struggling Americans will be able to buy food cheaper! What will we do?
Also, if anyone has any reservations about a government run grocery store, go ask your representatives to come out against military commissaries. I bet you will not be able to find one active politician who will try to remove that. You know why? Because government run grocery stores work. End of story. Period. There is no discussion. You are wrong if you disagree. We do this. It exists. It works. And people love it. Try to find one politician that will end that service.
Yes. They will be subsidized, just like other food-based welfare programs.
As for the rich, is this really your concern? A few rich people getting some cheaper groceries is so bad that we have to deny poor people from getting affordable food? Why do so many Americans hate poor people? You know there's literally trillions of waste in agriculture, military, pharmaceutical, oil, etc... subsidies and that's just the tip of the ice berg if you examine the tax code. If you're deeply concerned about rich people gaming the system, why don't you start in those places and then when we figure that out, we can worry about rich people shopping in one of five total grocery stores.
Rich people hate being seen with us poors. Just look at Coachella, they can't even do it for a weekend. Really, that's enough to keep them out. You seriously think they're going to give up Trader Joes and Wholefoods to save 50 cents on their beef?
Mike Patton loves pop music. Those covers were most likely not mocking anything. I love me some Faith No More but haven't heard them cover Nothing Compares 2 U (which is actually a Prince tune). I'll have to check it out.
EDIT: You weren't kidding. I can't find a cover of it. Please! Share it!
FNM’s cover of the Commodore’s Easy is both ridiculous and sublime. Man they can play.
There was a good bbc show of theirs floating around on YouTube. The music is so intense that I feel these quieter pieces give one a chance to catch one’s breath.
The EP's title was "Songs To Make Love To." My older brother had just taken me to my first concert when I spotted it in a music shop the next day. Patton would later go on to participate in a collaboration (Nathaniel Merriweather) titled "Lovage: Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By." Absolute awesome.
Midnight Cowboy was on both StMLt and Angel Dust (which I wasn't allowed to own because of the Explicit Lyrics sticker at first. My father and mother argued about that. Thanks Dad!) What a great track for slowing down. The band wasn't just about heavy and dark tones, they also appreciated and could produce beautiful music. The fulness of the song really overwhelms me when the whole band kicks in.
We would absolutely have a tech industry. The richest people on the planet, however, would make slightly less money. It is not an exaggeration to say this is what the entirety of American society is based on right now.
I no longer even unsubscribe when I get an unsolicited email. I intentionally stay subscribed but mark everything as spam. My hope is if people start doing this there will be more and more instances like this post, which is a good thing. Stop emailing me. Stop opting me in. And stop pretending like you're doing it for my benefit.
As an ex-employee of Flock, if he doesn't really believe it he is an amazing actor. He talks of a very Minority Report-esque future, where there is literally zero crime, and it's because of Flock.
Flock's stats are very misleading too. If there was a Flock query in the course of investigating a crime, even if it leads nowhere or isn't relevant to the arrest or conviction, still, Flock was queried, so "Flock solved a crime".
It was sad. I had significant ethical questions when I joined, but all through recruitment and week one, everything was all about controls and restraints and auditing and ethics. After that, nope, a free for all. Selling our products in states that don't allow the use of certain functionality? Not our problem. We're not disabling it. That's up to you to decide whether you're using it or not.
Everyone learns different, but there is something universal in music that is essential to mastering an instrument. You should be able to hear something in your head and then play it. The goal is there is no barrier between your thoughts and actions. Learning to play by ear like that is the best way to get there in pretty much all instances. Looking up tabs is still great, and you can learn a ton from that (huh? another song with G, C, and D, I wonder why? Is it similar to the C, F, and G songs I'm playing?) but if you want to get next level that is the best way. I am a guitar play and I was in a band with another guitar player. I had a music minor, thousands of hours of practice and knew my theory inside and out. The other guitar player barely knew any theory but was way better than me and one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. He could just play. He didn't need to know the theory, he could hear it in his head.
I agree. However, you get insane push back the second you start to mention veganism. And yes, that is a luxury and there large parts of the world where that's not an option, but if you're reading this comment you probably could survive without eating meat.
Yep. Another great example of this is any discussion where datacenter resource usage gets brought up. Mention how much water someone's ChatGPT queries takes and people will generally agree it's a problem. Mention how much water their burger takes and at best you'll get people hemming and hawing about protein or indigenous cultures or their cousin's friend who went vegan and got really sick.
Also, I personally think framing it as a binary or quasi religious decision is counterproductive.
I was vegetarian for some years, before ultimately deciding I just run better on an omnivore diet. But for environmental and ethical reasons I decided to make meat more of a side dish vs the center of the meal, and to mostly eat chicken vs more high environmental impact animal proteins like beef.
I think a lot of people that would never go full vegan can do well on this sort of less meat middle road.
Hot take: people get angry about veganism because they suspect, deep down, that vegans are right and feel guilty about eating meat. (Not taking the moral high ground here - I have put approximately zero effort into reducing meat intake at all.)
Vegas are objectively right. I eat mostly vegan but still eat other stuff from time to time. I look at those times as me being selfish. I am an imperfect person and the vegans are right.
So long as they're humanely harvested? Some argue that cows are mistreated when kept producing milk as much as they are, but I haven't looked into it because I'm selfish too.
Cows are mammals. They produce milk for their young for a period after giving birth then stop, just like a human woman. Which means that for us to take their milk we have to keep them constantly pregnant.
Ask a woman (or think about it if you are one) how they would like being forcefully impregnated then having their tits constantly milked, year after year. As a bonus, the born kids are separated into girls to be milked in the same cycle and boys to be killed and eaten.
Agree if the animals are treated well; but I have a very high bar for that. I would also accept eating animals which died of old age if it could be done safely. It's easier to just round this to "vegan."
The real problem with veganism is that you are a social outcast around normies. That was the biggest problem that I had. Also, veganism is essentially a "fundamentalist" way of thinking -- all or nothing. Now, I advocate for people to experiment with eating less meat and animal products, not zero. Even if people cut the amount of meat they ate by 20%, it would have a huge environmental impact. Also, the type of meat you eat also has a large environmental impact: Consider beef vs chicken.
Agree. Everything else is easy: taste, nutrition, cheap shopping... but if you decide to exclude animal products, prepare to face ostracism and you'll need to learn to cope with that. A simple and effective way is to ignore the blames and regards, let them flow to the ground without catching them.
Some people will get angry at you because you tried to do something good to much:
- not trying: that's ok, everybody is free to keep his life as-is
- trying 0-90%: that's ok, everybody is free to try doing some good
- trying 90-100%: you're a fundamentalist, you can't change the world
My advice: don't argue:
- "that's extremist" / "that's not natural" / [...] => That's an opinion, you won't change it. Smile and route to another subject.
- "why are you [an extremist/unnatural/priest/...]?" => Question. Don't try to rant the full manifesto, you won't change their opinion neither. But if you feel confortable you may clarify a few inches of incomprehension :
- Have you heard of vegansociety's definition[0]? I don't consider myself as an extremist.
- I find Tofu very tasty!
- I won't try to change your habits, just doing thinks the way I like them better.
Golden rule: don't get upset. You're always free to not being confortable discussing your choices.
Hard disagree. People care about animals because they have faces that trigger their empathy. Plant life is still life. The destruction of plants to feed people is no more moral than the slaughter of an animal. The cutting of a redwood to make a desk is not moral. Many people also lack any kind of principle and make stuff up as they go. They get angry at killing a butterfly, but they don't care at all about killing a wasp. Likewise, people get upset about a pig, but they don't care about carrots. The carrots lack a face, and the wasp lacks pretty wings.
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