abraxas @ abraxas @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

Exactly this.

And then there's some other contexts with the meat production to help realize that those billions might be better spent on something totally different. The US only produces about 30% more methane total than it did in the colonial days. Back then it was largely buffalo. SO long as there's a balance of things, we have a cycle of cows producing methane, breaking down to CO2, the CO2 being absorbed by crops, and the crops eaten by cows. Honestly, research in carbon seems to be the best focus if we want to make any improvements without just cutting down the major contributors. And the real biggest are fossil fuel emissions, mining, and deforestation.

I'm hating how lemmy.ml is losing my context parent, but I think I posted a video to you prior.

The problem with lab grown meat is that the process is inherently VERY complex and touchy. They like to compare it to making beer or wine, but it's an exacting process. IF we could figure out lab grown meat, that advance would likely involve a far bigger advance in nuclear medicine, changing the world of medication to a "this is YOUR cure for cancer, created for pennies based upon your DNA" type of utopia.

Maybe there's someone close to this who can suggest to me what I'm missing there, but the obstacles for lab grown meat are simply those same golden obstacles we've had to far more important problems, that we've thrown far more money at.

From the video, the biggest pain point for the next 20 years is this. You cannot scale the process. The bigger your bioreactor, the lower the efficiency. "Scale" involves building hundreds or thousands of resource-expensive bioreactors, filling them all with chemicals, and running the bioreaction over a long period of time, in highly a sensitive lab environment. Unfortunately, it feels like this is a "down to go up". While possible, it seems as likely to be a success as some sort of New coal tech wiping Solar out and being the real solution for dirty power. If you put THAT kind of money into the already well-understood meat industries that already have some good best practices (that aren't necessarily followed like they should be), you'll end up with agriculture that's good for the environment AND billions of dollars to spare to use on some other green initiative.

Of course, the real issue is that the countries whose people care the most aren't the problem at all. The US is a great example. Our meat industry is an insignificant part of the problem, at <2% of the GHG emissions. The US meat industry is actually statistically INCREDIBLY effective... but the meat industry in other countries, not so much.

I would say you should change "not hardly any healthier" to "much less healthy". There are definite gotchas for eating anything in excess, but real meat (let's say beef, since that's the popular discussion point) is one of the most nutrition-rich foods you can possibly eat, with the most important nutrients that are hard to get elsewhere effectively. The Impossible Burger (probably the least unhealthy plant burger) might compete with an 80/20 burger (depending on what metrics you use for health), but a 90/10 burger SORTA blows it out of the water except a few random added minerals you just get in your morning multivitamin.

The only benefit of plant based meat is that it’s more environmentally friendly than traditional meat.

I'm going to use OP's tact and suggest that this is not strictly true either. It took me years of not understanding how the meat industry worked differently from the farms I grew up near, only to realize it DOESN'T work that much differently from the farms I grew up near at all. This video is a great resource by a neutral person (no bias towards or against meat or veganism) who did the research himself. There are still arguments that stand about meat being environmentally unfriendly, but just as many arguments to the contrary.

I would disagree here. SOME of the backlash may be from the meat industry, but some is also from independent experts in fields of nutrition and the environment.

It's the same way I constantly catch vegans making false claims about health or the environment. That doesn't mean there aren't TRUE claims about the health or environment. You gotta see the forest for the trees on both sides.

I will say, at least the Impossible Burger has a much better environment footprint than lab-grown meat ever will.

It won't. At least, it probably won't. Here's a good high level explanation as to why. I've worked on software used by some of these pharm industries and have some understanding of the scale of these types of operations. Everyone who talks about carbon footprints of animal farms will have to accept the carbon footprint of a synethic meat calorie is going to be a LOT higher due to dozens of factors. If you care about the environment, even 50 years from now it's probably cheaper to have cows AND spend margins to become carbon neutral than it would be to do lab meats.

If it's about saving animal lives, that's an ethical issue and where I'm learning to stop getting involved. I have enough knowledge in ethics to stand my own on that topic, and enough experience arguing ethics with vegans to know it's time to stop trying to discuss that with them.

For sure. If I didn't burn myself every day programming, I would totally have blown a few weeks on Minecraft mods that would either have been really popular or utterly forgotten.

Ultimately, gamedev scared me off, perhaps fortunately since if I'd jumped to that as a career I'd be broke ;)

I agree, I love the idea of a brain chip, but not if someone can change licensing terms on something that's INSTALLED in me.

Really hating lemmy.ml here because direct-links are broken. I can't see what you replied to, but I'm guessing it's the dinky little BYOND game I took part in making.

I'm guessing more people used your dfhack mod than played the game I worked on :)

...and ends with a very quick sentence, even in countries where very quick sentences are otherwise frowned upon. Treason just seems to usually be an exception to the rule.

And let's not forget the polling. Over 94% voter turnout (or an illicit vote) and 98% voting for annexation? You can't even get 80% of people to vote for "don't shoot yourself in the face" and we're supposed to believe the annexation vote was near-unanimous?

The propagandists really should've made up a number closer to 60% with 85% turnout, enough that a majority of the population could be said to have voted for annexation, while still being believable.

I don't know what you seem to think about the billions of people who know about the Massacre and millions who know enough about it not to be convinced by you. You are taking the same tactic of other deniers, expecting me to have nothing but Tank Guy and my High School History book in my back pocket.

Further, you are now accusing ME of being broken or "sensitive" for simply knowing the Tienanmen Square Massacre happened. I'm going to apply the outsider test of faith here again (I know it won't work, I don't care). You sound exactly like a Holocaust Denier I dealt with a year ago.

After the hysterical comparison claims... are you asking me to post the grisly photo of a line of human bodies, crushed, with joints in wrong directions, or you won't believe it's true? I'm not trying to convince YOU. I know from "How to Respond to Tiananmen Trolls" (from anti-propaganda Doublethink Labs) that a video of it happening would do nothing but make you smile and say "see, no evidence". I just need to provide a voice that the world is indeed round so that flat-earthers don't get a better foothold.

As for the evidence, most people have already seen it and you're just helping them forget it was there by pointing out that I haven't bombarded YOU with articles and photos you would just deny. I would really love (hate) to hear your rebuttal to the disgusting photo of corpses crushed by tanks, but I will not be posting NSFL content in this place.

Also, for anyone reading, I'd like to remind people of one rebuttal to your Holocaust comparison response. YES, there are more pictures of the Holocaust than the Tienanmen Square massacre. The holocaust happened over TWELVE YEARS and there are dozens of photos. The Tienanmen Square Massacre happened on ONE day. And for the casual observer who might still be here, note that this wasn't just some protest-turned-riot. It was a long peaceful protest that was ended by the march-in of the military. In fact, there were upper leaders in the Chinese government who wanted to NOT kill all the protestors, and instead find a peaceful agreement with them (Zhao Ziyang comes to mind) whose career ended for not being on board. But I guess they'd just be Tienanmen Square deniers too?

I'm curious what Zhao Ziyang said publicly after the massacre. But that's a laugh. He was kept under house arrest for the rest of his life with no charges ever being levied against him, ousted from his party leadership shortly before the massacre. Oh wait, shit, yeah, in secret memoirs he released, he acknowledged the massacre and that he agreed it was a grave mistake. Leader of the Communist Party until right before the massacre.

There's literally nothing but a few obviously coerced confessions that counter the truth of the massacre. And you don't care. Ultimately, Massacre deniers will just start defending China's "necessary" action to kill those innocent protestors, as you've already started doing. What you did wrong was accidentally doing it while still pretending it didn't happen. People will notice that.

You seem to be projecting a lot of things that don’t have a firm basis in external reality

I'm not sure why you would say that.

Are the guys with machine guns there to intimidate tourists, or are they there because Tienanmen Square is right in front of the Chinese equivalent of the White House and several other important buildings that require high security?

Considering the exact placement, I would say the former. Considering their non-presence at other equally important locations? I would also say the former.

The incident (which, let us be clear, also involved armed insurrectionists with incendiaries and commandeered rifles) wasn’t even the last major violent event in the area,

Do you know what double-think is? Was the military killing armed insurrectionists, or was it all made up? Or were they standing their with tanks and watching the armed insurrectionists kill everyone? I trust Amnesty international more than you, and more than propaganda recordings from the Chinese government. Not as someone with a prejudice against China, either. The narrative makes sense, where yours does not.

when Falun Gong members set themselves and a small girl on fire in protest of the group being banned

Are you implying that the soldiers with machineguns were ther ebecause Falun Gong members set themselves on fire? And not because of the internationally known incident that, whether true or not, China is clearly censoring and jailing people for publicizing?

However you might feel intimidated in the moment, clearly once you left you understandably made a firm association between the Square and machine guns!

You're absolutely right. I did not think China were death dealers before Tianenmen Square, but now I do. They succeeded in terrifying me, and I think that was their intention. I was sure as hell afraid to speak truth aloud in China.

Furthermore, you’re making silly excuses for liars

Why should I believe you over pretty much every unbiased body in the world?

There were people who weren’t even there for the supposed massacre (see the video) who were accounting very peculiar events in lurid detail, like tanks running over inhabited tents and then mulching them and such

Are you referring to the on-site live announcers saying they were witnessing it in real time, and the grisly follow-up photos that China was unable to suppress of a line of corpses with tank-tread sized crush marks destoying their bodies? Are those the lie? All the photos that show half naked and unarmed people killed by large military vehicles were fabricated? Or did "armed insurrectionists" bring tanks?

Do you think some scared college student is going to have an anxiety-based hallucination that causes them to think they were places they weren’t and saw things that have probably never happened anywhere?

No you're right. People can have panic-based hallucinations when tanks open fire. And the first thing they'll do is try to take photos of it. And no matter how hard you try, the photos come out eventually. Let me reiterate, photos of bodies crushed by tanks.

It seems to me that you are reaching for excuses, especially since you are disregarding the numerous witness, both domestic and foreign visitors, who all saw that there was no massacre in the Square

I've seen photos of the massacre. I have heard witness testimonies that corroborate those photos, and witness testimonies that do not. I am aware of several governments (including my own) that have used false or intimidated witnesses to try to hide an atrocity. Why EXACTLY do you see me as "reaching for excuses"? Do you think I WANT any government to mass-murder its protestors?

At what point should I throw out every piece of evidence I've ever seen in my life and believe this? How would you prove to an outside observer that Tienanmen Denial is different from Holocaust Denial?

Still a black market. In my state, recreational marijuana black market skyrocketed when they decriminalized. Very, very few people started growing or prepping their own. But boy did they find for sale it whenever they wanted it.

So you're ok with guys with machineguns keeping people to afraid to ask about the Tianenmen Square Massacre because you think it's "misrepresented"? As an American in China who thoughts things were overblown, I left China 100% sure the Massacre is as bad as I was taught, because of the way the Chinese government behaved in Tienanmen Square when I was there.

And you really feel that it's ok that there's human rights advocates serving time for the crime of "inciting others to knowingly participate in unauthorised assemblies" about the Tianenmen Square Massacre, like Chow Hang-tung? Do you approve of jailing for speech where most countries will, at worst, have civil libel charges?

What's the most severe penalty you would approve of for people who witnessed and survived the massacre recounting stories that are absolutely true to them? Maybe execute them all?

In my world, EVEN if the victim witnessed the event incorrectly, this is at best Witness Intimidation, and at worst its own human rights violation.

As in "could hire another".

The best place for unions is commoditizable skilled-labor jobs. You CAN be devalued, but you have inherent value that should be maintained by not letting yourself get dragged into a race-to-the-bottom with powerful companies.

I can't count how many times I have to explain to people that etymological roots of words are not a foundation for an argument. The term "Piracy" was adopted by movie studios back when it wasn't really illegal... the same ones who also tried to make used media illegal (and eventually succeeded in a way).

Your Shakespearian example is very clearly theft

Except it's not, nor was it ever. Here's my metric. Anyone more property-focused than Adam Smith is wrong by default. If you're more capitalist than the founder of capitalism, maybe you have a problem. It's like Marx looking at someone and going "OMG is he too communist for me".

It’s hard to claim the nuclear bombs were a major contributor to their surrender when Japan was trying to surrender before the first bomb dropped

They had a minority interest in surrendering before the first bomb dropped. The Fire Bombing of Tokyo civilan centers (arguably a worse atrocity than the bombs) had their morale and their communications broken, but every source I've ever read concludes that they genuinely were not ready to surrender, and it would have taken an actual mini-coup to do so, one that seemed to not be happening.

That doesn't mean the bombs were necessary. They were, however, contributors to the surrender. The Japan preparing to rally from having their capital razed, civilian targeting worse than they had seen either side commit in the war, was suddenly struck with Hiroshima being vaporized.

I DO believe they were in the process of surrendering when the bomb hit Nagisaki.

Taking a step back, the bigger question is whether there are wrong ways to win a war. The US took Japan to surrender using 4(or more?) of the biggest civilian-targetting mass-death events in human history. We destroyed their civilian economy with lethal force in preference to destroying their military infrastructure. I think that was unacceptable.

But it DID contribute to the surrender.

You probably never heard of game I worked on (House of Morte). It only spiked to 50 players at its peak. I've heard so much about Space Station 13, but ironically never tried it. I actually got sick of BYOND really fast but had ironically fallen for that one game before that happened.

I'm pretty far left and in my entire life I've never experienced "only girls can have issues" as more than an extreme fringe statement.

What I tend to see regarding men is how they, too, are victims of toxic masculinity, taught to internalize their emotions until they have literal breakdowns. The Left gives a fuck about that, and it's one of the cited reasons they have problems with toxic masculinity.

The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall

You're right. Nothing that's truly valuable in legislation is simple. It's hard to turn something complicated into a sound byte without making shit up, and the Left in most countries have to be careful alienating the intellectuals if they start making shit up. We don't vote for bullshit.

The Right has no problem making shit up and those who vote for them are not really affected by it. When the Notch Baby bullshit was going on (a US thing... there was basically a big hoax about a generation being owed money, and a lot of politicians ran with it), I didn't know a single right-leaning voter who would give the least bit of a shit that they were voting for people who were willfully taking advantage of the elderly. I guarantee a left-party candidate who pulled that shit would lose by a landslide.

So the Right can bad-faith point out a concern that "toxic masculinity" is just "masculinity" and a good thing. They know the Left can't soundbyte their way out of it because it's not a one-liner to say "it's not about masculinity or feminity, it's about not being a dick and all of us helping the underdog". It's VERY easy to sell people who aren't the underdog on victim complexes.