HelixDab

I have a pair of Bellville MiniMils that I wear every single day; I had the last pair for about three years, and I’m at about a year and a half on this pair. I work and hike in them (although I want to get nicer hiking boots, something like the VivoBarefoot Tracker). They are minimalist boots though, so if you don’t already like and wear minimalist shoes, you’re not going to like these.

First: How do you reconcile that view with the idea that animals also experience the world as people do with the idea that animals kill and eat other animals? Bears, for instance, are roughly as intelligent as a kindergartener, and yet happily kill and eat any other animals that they can. Pigs and crows are also omnivorous, and will eat any source of meat that they come across. They can all likewise avoid killing if they choose, yet they don’t. Are they immoral? Or does morality only apply to humans? (Even animals that we traditionally think of as herbivorous are opportunistic meat eaters.)

Second: What would you propose replacing animal products with, when there are no alternatives that function as well? What about when the alternative products also cause greater environmental harms?

Third: So you would not have a problem with, for instance, hunting and eating invasive species, since those species cause more harm to existing ecosystems than not eradicating them would? What about when those invasive species are also highly intelligent, e.g. feral pigs? Or is it better to let them wreck existing ecosystems so that humans aren’t causing harm? To drill down on that further, should humans allow harm to happen by failing to act, or should we cause harm to prevent greater harm?

Fourth: “Exploiting” is such an interesting claim. Vegans are typically opposed to honey, since they view it as an exploitative product. Are you aware that without commercial apiaries, agriculture would collapse? That is, without exploiting honey bees, we are not capable of pollinating crops?

Would you agree, given that all food production for humans causes environmental harm, that the only rational approach to eliminate that harm is the eradication of humanity?

…And how exactly do you think people are going to be able to eat meat otherwise? Or have dairy, eggs, wool, etc.? Do you think that people should e.g., raise chickens in the city?

And that’s ignoring the small obligate carnivores that make up most of the pets in the world.

Hey, I’d rather hunt my own food too, but we no longer live in tribal or feudal societies where you can reasonably expect to engage in animal husbandry yourself.

“Truth” is a matter of conclusions and meaning, not of facts. Factual information would be something like–and this is an intentionally racist argument–53% of the murder arrests in the US come from a racial group that makes up 14% of the population. This is a fact, and it can be clearly seen in FBI statistics. But your conclusions from that fact–what that fact means–that’s the point of rhetoric and logic. Faulty logic would make multiple leaps and say, well, obvs. this means that black people are more prone to commit murder. A more logically sound approach would look at things like whether there where different patterns in law enforcement based on racial groups, what factors were leading to murder rates in racial groups and whether those factors were present across all demographics, and so on.

That seems like a dangerous approach to not care if you disagree with people. Shouldn’t you know if your disagreement with them is based on sound reasoning?

‘Cities should be better designed so that we don’t have to use cars’

…Which I agree with. And it’s incredibly frustrating to me that, on the one hand, Republicans actively don’t give a shit about sprawl, and on the other hand, Democrats don’t want to ruin the charm and character of their lovely urban single-family neighborhoods with half acre plots of lawn in order to build dense housing that can make light rail economically viable. E.g., the people that should be on board with this shit talk a good game until it’s their own neighborhood.

I recognize my own hypocrisy here, because I moved to a rural area to get away from a city, and I am now finding that it isn’t rural enough because I can sometimes hear my closest neighbors. I just want to live in a shack like Ted… :(

Well. Yes. This is true though. And that’s a ‘problem’ with a lot of things; they can be ‘true’ when looked at from a certain perspective, but not necessarily useful in any meaningful way. For instance, pain is a sensation, and that sensation is not, by itself a ‘bad’ thing. It’s just sensory information. Pain in the context of BDSM can evoke positive judgements in the person experiencing the sensation. An identical sensation experienced in the context of being physically abused by an intimate partner will likely evoke a negative judgement. Your judgement about those sensations is based on your context and past experiences.

But at the same time, looking at a larger picture here, if times are getting tougher, then rather than looking inward to the self and your own perception, it makes more sense to look outward to community, to try and change circumstances in a way that is positive for the entire greater community.

It really depends on where you are though. Much like other public policy debates, a lot of this comes down to where someone lives. People that live in dense urban areas can very reasonably go without cars, and trains (specifically light rail) make a lot of sense. Once you get out of urban areas, suddenly trains don’t make any sense at all, and the ability to realistically take public transportation evaporates.

This is compounded by urban planning that doesn’t prioritize dense housing. Everyone says that we need more and better housing, but no one wants high rise apartments and condos in their neighborhood of single-family homes. That ends up leading to the kind of urban sprawl that makes public transportation impossible to work. Until zoning is taken out of local hands–so that wealthy communities can’t prevent high-density housing–you aren’t ever going to see this kind of thing change. (BTW - this is overwhelmingly happening in the US in communities that have a Democratic supermajority; that’s why housing is so expensive in California, because new housing isn’t being built.)

Mutually assured destruction.

There’s no path for Putin to use nuclear weapons that doesn’t involve the utter annihilation of Russia. I would be willing to be that that will be a bright line for NATO, because once it’s clear that Putin will use nuclear weapons when he’s not getting what he wants, it’s clear that there’s no other choice that preserves independence other than retaliating with nuclear weapons.

…Why should we be concerned about Putin saving face? This is his fuck up, and he was given ample opportunities to put the brakes on before he ever invaded.

RIP Vicki and Sammy Weaver.

Huh. I got 1312 confused with 1349, and was wondering why left libertarians would care when the black plague arrived in Norway, or why they’d all be super into a black metal band.

But yeah. 1312.

…Ah. That’s super shitty. I’m in a pretty small town–about 5000 people–but we still have three large grocery stores (if you count the WalMart as a grocery store), and a small, higher-end health food store. There’s heavy competition, which keeps prices down, but also leads to wage stagnation for workers, and means that poor people get fucked by rising food prices.

All grocery store margins are tight. Historically, grocery stores are not enormously profitable. Most of the price gouging that you’ve seen in food lately has been at the manufacturer level, not the retailer level. That’s why you don’t see a lot of price difference between substantially identical items at different stores in the same region; the same size box of Cheerios is going to have roughly identical pricing at both Piggly Wiggly and Kroger. You start seeing price differences when you go to an upscale store like Amazon’s Whole Foods (prices go up sharply), or when you’re buying in bulk at Costco or restaurant supply stores (such as Gordon Food Service). That’s also why you see self-checkouts everywhere now; once one company cuts their labor costs by introducing them, everyone has to, because otherwise they can’t remain competitive. …And then prices stabilize across the industry at roughly the same very slim margins. The company that cuts costs first sees a slight initial uptick in profit, and then competition forces them to cut their margins back again.

At the store level, there’s not a helluva lot that can be done. The obscene profits are farther upstream.

See this as an example. Grocery stores are making profit in volume, but not a lot of profit per item. Typical margins are 1-3% per item. That means that, if you cut off every single bit of profit that a grocery store makes, your $200 worth of groceries would cost you… $198. Maybe as little as $194. Saving you a whopping $2-6. But when you have hundreds of transactions each day, that 1-3% per transaction adds up to profitability for the store.

That last one is more of a problem. Grocery margins are usually very slim. In most cases, a grocery store can’t reduce their prices by any significant amount and still remain profitable.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a dissent to the ruling joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that the decision “unjustifiably grants true threats preferential treatment.”

…What the fuck? Am I taking crazy pills? In what fucking world do Thomas and Barrett advocate for a sane and rational approach to anything?

Economics is political. Always has been.

That’s closer to anarchism then communism. Communism, as it’s generally developed, has a central state authority.

Personally, I see the existence of a state and individual liberties as always under tension. You can’t have a state without some infringement on individual expressions. But some restriction on individual expression is necessary for a functioning society. The question is what infringements and under what circumstances are acceptable.

…But that’s not what Christian nationalists are working towards. They want to teach their religion, not teach about all religion.

Most of the people I’ve known with anxiety did have bad parents.