agegamon @ agegamon @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

For those like me who automatically pictured an industrial fruit/vegetable farm (i.e. only plants) when reading the title "factory farming," don't worry. I believe they are concerned about industrial animal farming.

I just skimmed the article and agree that it's misleading without context or data. I didn't look hard to see if it actually gave any.

That said my personal experience is that I get far more exercise with my ebike because I'm in the saddle more often. I rode my normal bike maybe once or twice per summer. I'm not into it as a sport or hobby, and there are too many hills and stop signs/lights that you actually have to stop at, which means struggling to get going when you have to jet out between cars. I don't have billions of hours training my thighs into galactus legs so I can take off uphill in 6th gear. And let's just be honest: I'm never going to.

My ebike solve those problems. As a result I've packed in a couple hundred miles in just the first year I've had it. So for me it very much is a case of fewer calories per mile but more miles overall exercised.

Yeah, I agree that there aren't many budget cargo-in-front options yet (none that I could find in 5 sec of googling).

100%. Honestly after growing up borderline right-wing, self-reflection was one of my main tools for personal and political deconstruction. That and good parents. Anyway, very little stood the test of "why am I doing this, and is it what I really want" when I stopped and looked more than 3 feet in front of my own dumb face. That and realizing I'm hopelessly queer lol.

Of course, self-reflection opens the door to a whole lot more than just politics. I get the sense that, if they started self-reflecting without guidance, the first thing they'd be scrambling for answers about would be why they believe in whatever random religion they were born into. There's a whole lot of fervent people that are one solid reflection away from crying over a toilet on a Monday at 3AM because they'd accidentally deconstructed their faith and can't ctrl-z the issue (not a joke, just an observation/personal experience).

For all of our sakes I hope you're right.

Then again, underestimating regressive politicians leaves us with a massive blind spot. You can bet they're counting on that while they lie to literally anyone who will listen about how "evil" progressives are.

Holy shit, I didn't draw up the situation of travelling while married as a problem but you're absolutely right. It's already getting extremely tricky to figure out what places are OK or no-go for trans and NB people, this is just going to make things so much more fucking worse.

Atlanta for example is a massive air travel hub. What if Georgia doesn't uphold same-sex marriage? What about international travellers who are married abroad?

JFC. These idiots.

Personally I am increasingly uncomfortable feeling the "need" to apologize to regressive people about feeling hurt or insulted. They are entirely responsible for their actions.

They are also not sorry that they are pushing the majority of people (women, LGBTQ+, basically anything non-cis-white-men) into a second class or even subhuman status.

I realize that most people are only open to changing themselves when their feelings are not threatened and when they're feeling understood. But what we're talking about here, I don't know the right word, but "accidental" or "unintentional" are not part of it. If regressive leaders like trump or desantis or whoever get elected then we're talking about borderline genocide done on purpose. I don't see how we can come back to acknowledging the feelings of bigots at that point.

Smith said he purchased the Sun with his own funding, independent of Sinclair. The Sun (1/15/24) advertised the purchase as “the first time in nearly four decades that the Sun will be in the hands of a local owner.”

Let's see how many days his alleged "private ownership" of the Sun takes to turn them into another regressive media turdfactory.

Remember in 2018 when sinclair forced hundreds of TV broadcasters to air pro-trump fake news bullshit? The same incident mentioned in Fair's article above? Yeah. YEAH. That feels like just a little flex in hindsight.

I'm guessing less than 60 days personally.

I didn't know chatGPT could spit out sources, that's neat. I'll have to give it a shot some time. Did you specifically ask for that or did it do that on its own?

The PET vs Glass study is fascinating, especially since the result favors PET by a significant margin. That's a massive disconnect from the findings of the OP study. It basically makes PET out to be a fantastic option, but assuming it can be so clean, it's even more infuriating that so little plastic gets recycled. I also wonder what the breakdown of PET recycling is, vs plastics in general? Is it just a tiny portion of plastic waste overall, or does it fail to reach the recycling stream? Something about that situation stinks, and not just of uncleaned bottles.

Considering that we have to reduce virgin material use in every sector, the more recyclable option should be the clear winner. Its frustrating to see this level of waste.

Crushed recycled glass (aka cullet) actually decreases the amount of energy required to create new glass products, as well as demonstrably lowering their CO2 impact. While it's easy to assume that there's a lot of waste because there's a lot of heat involved, keep in mind that virgin material requires far more processing and even more heat and energy to result in a final product.

Unlike plastics, the problems with achieving a profitable (remember, capitalism) glass recycling stream are much more cultural and intrinsic to the subject nation. Here's some further info on why the US, where I live, is dragging so far behind in this area: https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6

Putin might as well just say the quiet part out loud at this point. Classic sociopath dictator, gotta pretend blood isn't on his hands.

Rest in peace Navalny. You and your people deserve better than this.

Yes, they all have progressive backgrounds. Unfortunately not a lot of swing states or regressive states are going to be able to pass bills like this soon - if at all.

Both Washington and Oregon (my home state) tend to work along the same lines with large progressive interests, but rarely at the same pace. Sometimes we'll get our version of a given policy bill passed before they do, or vice versa.

Seattle and many of the surrounding cities and counties have set aside money for rebates (I think most of them go through installers or utilities?) so it's not like they have nothing. But yeah, would love to see more statewide incentives!

I agree that pi-hole is an option here, but yeah, the reality is that most daily users don't even know what it is. At least, not yet.

Adblock Plus and it's betters became ubiquitous in large part because they were so incredibly easy to install. As easy as gramma accidentally installing yet another yahoo toolbar on accident. Like, too easy.

Pi-Hole isn't hard to install, and there are some fantastic guides to help users get it running with essentially zero prior knowledge. But in my opinion, I think until it gets closer to "push-button" easiness, pi-hole and systems like it will really be limited to the <5% of users motivated enough to go through the steps, who aren't mortified of logging into their router's admin page. I want us to get there faster, and we're a hell of a lot closer than 10 or even 5 years ago. But we're not quite there yet.

Edit-typo

Silly investors, must learn from my secret method to obtain true inner haopiness:

1. Buy house during shortage when prices are insane
2. Everything breaks and you struggle through replacing it all one by one
3. Prices go down more than offsetting your efforts with loss
4. ????
5. Profit. Emotionally. Because you're happy with the heap of wood sticks plywood and fancy paper over your head that keeps you dry and comfy and weren't planning to sell it anyway.

I appreciate 90% of your comment. *I thought it was a wall of text at first but a fantastic example of science being misapplied, and I appreciate it. Thank you for following through.

Part of what science purists need to understand is that current science can be - and sometimes is - completely incorrect.

I will also point out, however, that one anecdote does not discredit my original argument. Yes perception is important but the human condition is inherently flawed. Your perception is not perfect, no matter if it ultimately is "right" or "wrong." We must be critical and question results. I am glad in this case that losing weight is possible without a calorie deficit (and in fact am doing it myself through the same method you mentioned!). But that doesn't mean our perception is somehow better than the scientific method. It means - as you rightly pointed out - that science was not being practiced by those doctors, et al, who said it was "impossible."

You misunderstood my point about perception and the feather/bowling ball, though I see what you mean and am not upset about that. Yes, basically all people will tell you that the feather falls slower. However, does that mean that gravity affects the feather less? If a person didn't already have modern science/knowledge to tell them how gravity and air resistance, fluid mechanics, yadda yadda work, a person might come to the wrong conclusion - as many did before - which is that gravity affects heavy things more. It's completely nonsense, as you and I know. But we know that because of that objective, thoroughly reviewed science.

The jibe about science as my "god" is personally insulting but understandable for you to make, especially since I have zero patience with trolls and will immediately discredit and block them. I will not argue with you if you want to discredit me in a similar way, I simply want people to not be idiots and want them to use science rather than regurgitating the same horseshit that they "feel" is right.

"supposedly objective, scientifically peer-reviewed facts" "supposed 'objective truth'"

1. Please provide some specific examples. Anyone who paints science in such a negative light, as you have, usually has a specific personal example of where their feelings or internalized nonscientific beliefs conflicted with reality and became an issue for that person. If you are not being a troll, please follow through with the conversation sincerely.
2. Perception is inherently flawed and for all intents and purposes cannot be as correct as objective, peer-reviewed science. The scientific method exists in large part to remove hand-waving guesswork and pure fictitious nonsense that is speculated from direct perception from our understanding of everything. Being sceptical of our perception and feelings is critically important, arguably even more important than being critical of scientific work.

A great example is a feather falling slower than a bowling ball in atmosphere. Your first perception would not lead you to understand the science of gravity as we now know it thanks to rigorous scientific proof. It would lead you astray, as it has lead many people astray before and today.

The title is pure clickbait lol. It's like "who could these mysterious people be???" meanwhile hey it's just some good old regular folks.

In all seriousness I am glad more people are doing their best to be reasonable and put science first. It's heartwarming to see.

Yes that is fair and I agree. The current method of determining assigned chromosomal sex at birth is inadequate. Edit - I forgot, it also doesn't account for rare cases such as XXY (kleinfelters). Personally I think strictly for medical reasons ASAB/chromosomal should be determined accurately and then essentially not used. Gender identify further does not play any meaningful role at all and is not needed on an ID. It is just a way to discriminate as far as I can tell. Sadly we are quite a ways from that reality.

Apart from genuine medical reasons to know chromosomal makeup, gender doesn't matter. Unless a bigot is looking.

What does matter is that the US has an arcane, idiotic method of doling out IDs to it's citizens. It is fundamentally incompetent.

A federal ID or at least a unified standard state ID that is issued at birth or immediately upon immigration for no cost would reduce inequity and prevent people from being barred service due to ludicrous reasons such as "not having valid ID"

And I'll be blunt and say that while I respect an individual may not want one, the fact is that you already have one (either SS# or an equivalent) and are a know quantity with or without your consent. A fair federal or unified state standard would take bigoted tomfuckery out of the question and make things clear to individuals.