abraxas @ abraxas @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

Most of the comments I'm seeing downvoted are about pushing towards veganism with factually incorrect reasoning or statements.

Nobody is saying they want animals to be treated worse than they already are when they downvote "veganism is better for the environment because false reason here", and especially not when they downvote the people getting rude to them.

I have yet to see one downvoted comment that is simply saying they oppose Republicans on this disgusting political ploy of theirs. Totally different things, my man (or woman).

Bingo, heartstrings of an unsubstantiated argument. Thank you for quoting him.

is a statement looking at contradictions

No, it's a statement accusing contradictions without substantiating them. It's no different than if I said "we don't eat cats and dogs, so why is it ok to eat other things in nature like tomatoes?" Except that is OBVIOUSLY the nonsense to who anyone who wants to not die of starvation where his statement merely secretly is. Creating a special category/line of "the animal kingdom" in a flippant unfounded way creates a false likeness between cats&dogs and pork. Add lobsters and other insect-like animals, then add insects, then add bacteria, and then plants. Every one of those steps can be justified if no additional argument is provided. It's all about making someone feel bad for a poor cute fluffy puppy, even if not intended that way. There is a difference between emotions and ethics.

I don’t see much point in continuing this conversation if we’re going to be arguing over semantics/sentence meaning here

With all due respect, that's on you. I'm not sure if you followed me from our other discussions or simply found my calling the bad argument what it was. I have very strong opinoins about people, especially zealots, trying to push their pseudoreligious views on others using bad-but-convincing arguments. It's my thing. It's not everyone's thing, especially if they personally support the belief that's being defended badly.

(I think lemmy.ml is having some issues again)

Probably yes :(. Lemmy.ml was not prepared. But it's home.

Totally. They successfully gave us an on-screen Pyramid Head without going too campy. That's a crazy success on its own.

I know chicken farmers and breakfast restaurant owners on a first name basis. It was absolutely, positively the free-range law. I'm not saying no other price influencers could exist, but the market, retail, and wholesale I've seen is all about the free range law.

And most of the ones I Know are torn because "business is business" but they know deep down inside that free-range requirements are reasonable and humane.

OMG really? I loved that and Devil's Rejects. They were so campy and funny with just the right level of horror.

And... tiny fucked a stump.

Different person and I keep saying it, but Silent Hill was a really good movie that got horrible reviews (even among Horror fans).

I've been meaning to watch it. Didn't know RT hates it. I've sorta cooled on RT ratings, though. I swear they don't match reality.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Looks like it's in the 80's. Not a low rated movie at all.

I was shocked to find it in the <50 list. I thought it was well-received. The writing was awesome IMO

That was sub-50? Damn. I always thought it was an oscarbate, and a reasonably-well-done one at that. I still half-remember the funerary chant they use.

Hold My Beer.

Silent Hill sits at 32%. I've watched it tons of times. I understand why it's not popular, in terms of its mediocre raw quality. But I love it unironically and not in an Evil Dead 2 kind of way.

Half the issue with finding movies <50% that I liked is how hard it is to just get a list of movies by year... and yeah, the year range. The Toy is only 3% and I LOVED it growing up, but yeah it breaks the post-2000 rule.

Actually, hell. I apparently only have to jump into superhero movies. I thought Black Adam was the best DC movie we've had... sub-50. I liked Quantumania...sub-50. I enjoyed Shazam 2... sub-50. I REALLY liked Eternals... sub-50. Venom is sub-50 and has an honorary place in my family's marvel marathons... Boy, this is easier than I thought! I must have a terrible sense of taste!

Still going just on recent "rotten". I liked Gray Man... Sub-50. Suicide Squad...they gave it 26%???

Yeah, I'm out :)... And I think ya'll drank my beer.

While that's true, some things are definitely worse than others.

You can ignore them and smoke if you want. And if you're lucky, you'll still die of something that isn't caused by your smoking.

Cropland usage is still lower when looking at the nutrition of it all

I disagree with you and that paper's abstract. They're comparing worst-case current aggriculture with a hypothetical improved horticulture.

Also, I extended my previous post; you might have missed it.

Further, we can plant other crops on that land growing feed crops

How do you intend to kill off the demand for those crops? Or do you intend to forbid people and businesses from consuming crops with a lot of feed-waste like corn or soy?

Actually, their original point was "We don't eat cats and dogs". You seem to be drawing a lot of foundation they did not lay. We cannot presume that foundation, or its solidity, because they are controversial and MIGHT have been rebuttable.

Ultimately, it was a meme-worthy throw out of one sentence trying to pull at heartstrings. If he intended more or something defensible, he failed to prove it.

At this point, I'm pretty sure you're a vegan from your replies to me. Even if you were on the right side of ethics by some agreeable system, that doesn't make his original point more than it actually was. You can argue for the right thing with a bad or lacking argument, and you can (and should) be called on that.

The % that’s edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed

Not really. Definitely not if you consider the nutritional quality of the meat. And that's beef, the worst example. (Feed to meat conversion from 6x to 25x, the higher number generally for free-range). Chickens are only x2 in ideal situations (closer to 5x when free-range since their calorie intake is not as well-managed). And from a health viewpoint, 100kcal of chicken is a better-balanced calorie than 200kcal of feed

But that is before accounting for the fact that about 165 of those feed kcals are inedible, meaning you're trading around 35 edible kcals of corn for 100 edible kcals of chicken. Would you agree from a purely health and efficiency point of view (leaving out ethics), that 35 edible calories of a "non-nutritional grain" for 100 edible calories of a protein superfood is a pretty fair trade?

Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure

Missed this one, so jumping back. It's hard for me to respond because I don't have access to the whole paper. There seem to be fairly significant issues with it, however. For one, I can't find any corroboration that isn't merely citing this paper. For another, I can't find any critical responses either (the lack of them is worse than a half-decent one IMO). Nonetheless, there's a few things I find interesting from the summary the seem to make it hard to just accept an argument using it

1. The killer, to me. This paper actively presumes that all crop farms that produce crops that have inedible components that cows will eat (like corn) will pivot to 100% vegetable. But a vast majority of that crop's output is in explicit demand and corn farms are not just going to fold up. They will start destroying their excess waste instead of reselling it as feed. That ruins his math. But he also failed to take into account what a world horticulture setup would look like that actually sustains humanity, and merely counting IFE is just not enough.
2. This paper seems to claim a 65% reduction in fertilizer usage, but doesn't account for the fact it would HAVE to primarily be synthetic fertilizer if we stopped eating cows. This is a huge problem for me because I'm an outspoken advocate of collaborative farming, to reduce the disgusting use of synthetic fertilizer by regulating and enforcing better use of manure and localization of animal farms. There's far more than 3x as many cows in the world than can be maintained if they aren't being consumed. He does not cite or comment on how much worse synthetic fertilizer is than manure fertilizer. And if I'm reading right, that's his high end. It might only be more like 30%. I would rather 100 units of manure used than 70 units of synthetic fertilizer without a second thought.

And your second link... I'm not sure why you cited it. It appears to be arguing for my side, defending the figures I used. Thank you?

Not an expert, but I've followed the growth of this word a little on-and-off.

Disambiguity can be important in a language. But it's complicated. Many times we use "he", "she", or "he/she", gender is not required. Back in the 1800's, the standard was to use "he" when gender was uncertain, unimportant, or ambiguous to a conversation. Obviously it had to do with the presumed defaultness of the male gender.

For a while, people toyed with "it" or "which". Honestly, my personal feeling is that it was the way insult could easily be taken (or given) with "it" that it died out.

"They" probably should not be used in cases a less ambiguous word is more appropriate... But that's when the bigots come out. In most cases, the most appropriate word to reference a person is that person's preferred pronoun if you know it, even if it's a genderfluid pronoun. Why? It's significantly more descriptive than "him" or "her". But these same people who consider "they" too general would break down to acknowledge any person having a gender identity different from their birth sex (and probably their genital birth sex for intersex folks, at that).

What all the offense is REALLY about is that they want to pretend some people are fiction, or subhuman. I think "it" would settle well with those folks. Which is why I'm glad that isn't a default.

Annnd on the next episode of "let's make shit up to pretend we're not really bigots"...

I'm a hardcore omnivore and bordeline anti-vegan... but there are some "faux cheese" options that are surprisingly pretty damn good.

I was tricked into trying a faux lasagna with cashew cheese. The "not-meat" was as disgusting as I expected, but the cashew cheese was surprisingly delicious. It didn't entirely want you to believe it was really cheese, but it wanted you to agree it was a delicious savory sauce that worked where cheese goes.

The best fake meat is the stuff that's at least real food, and not pretend food (like bean burgers, though those are still better than Impossible Burgers).

I hate to be "that guy", but I feel like none of your references are really properly rebutting his valid point. "We don't eat cats and dogs" is a common anti-balanced-diet dogwhistle that tries to touch on heartstrings instead of logic or even ethical behavior. You might not have meant it that way, but he was justified in pointing out the cultural bias of it.

And "cultural imperialism" is different from "literal imperialism", but that also means your rebuttal was a gishgallop, changing the topic. I'm ASSUMING you didn't mean to secretly change the topic to prevent losing on that previous point, but that's what the reply looks like anyway.

You say that, but it's not really just about grass-feeding. Cows are already fed almost 90% inedible crop materials that would be getting disposed of anyway. We could be doing better, but cattle's food source is sorta the wrong focus.

And as much methane is in manure, it's better for the environment (including GHG) than synthetic fertilizers.

The real answer is changing our meat/vegetable balance AND improve the process AND continue to improve humane regulations (and those 3 goals often synergize with each other).