To pursue my point, something is definitely happening on the disgust front. A few decades ago, it was normal in the West to eat offal. Now plenty of Westerners are grossed out when they find bits of bone in their chicken broth at an Asian restaurant. For meat to be widely palatable these days, it has be only the best cuts, if possible in a sealed packet with no indication that it comes from an animal. Part of the explanation is surely a subconscious awareness of the horrors of factory farming. But I think something more fundamental’s going on. Something about disconnection from nature, ironically.

Absolutely agree that legislation must bring transparency to factory farming.

telling them that their culture and way of life is “gross”.

Hard to deny that in most cases. But not all, because people’s minds work differently. Personally I rind risible the idea that somebody is attacking my “culture and way of life” when they question my diet. Am I really so rare in my individualism and openness to new ideas?

Because here’s the thing: I personally have stopped eating certain foods simply after thinking about what they are. Cheese is literally the congealed secretions of the mammalian reproductive apparatus. Pretty yucky when you think about it like that, right? No rational arguments or statistics required. That’s a pretty cheap conversion to veganism. Yes, I know that most people will not be open to this kind of novelty thinking. But presumably some will, especially if it can be done with humor.

Also, some of the best plant based food is totally gross. Fermentation is life.

True. I’ve always found mushrooms a bit icky too, but I soldier on and eat them anyway because they’re so healthy.

Of course I don’t, although in my case it is. The deeper point is that if people were to reflect more closely on the origin of their food, this would certainly be a win for veganism. After all, plants are seen as many things but “gross” is not usually one of them.

Disappointed you had to jump straight into censorious mode and tell others literally to shut up.

The main reason for not eating cheese is that it’s gross! Just think for a second what it is. Think harder. Gross. Admittedly pizza is kind of tasty - IF you can stop yourself imagining what it’s made of.

Unlike meat, even the best fake cheese is not very realistic IME. But if someone else enjoys it, all the better.

Enlightening if unsurprising. I have certainly found that eliminating meat from my diet has been an order of magnitude easier than eliminating dairy. Very frustrating.

Dairy really is the triple whammy of harms: terrible for the environment and animal welfare, and probably unhealthy too. This last claim is controversial but it shouldn’t be: humans do not have much evolutionary preparation for imbibing milk as adults, let alone the milk of another species. This is a weird modern habit unique to humans.

Interesting read, somewhat enlightening.

But IMO, from the point of view of interoperability, it was bad enough having competing corporate social networks. We don’t want to replace that with competing open meta-networks. And yet ActivityPub and ATProto seem to use completely different paradigms, which would make bridging them pretty hard. Frustrating.

Interesting. Possibly useful to some. I have also discovered that the simplest, most privacy-friendly way to update location is just to do it manually when you change location.

I have a simple script that does this by querying OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim server with the city name. It feeds the resulting coordinates thru a Python library that deduces the timezone, and sets the system time to this.

oats are commonly used for feed too

Did not know that, but it stands to reason.

Yes I knew all that (except the bit about corn rotation). But presumably nobody is feeding oats to cattle, so there’s less risk that you’ll be inadvertently funding deforestation when you buy them.

So, how to know for sure that your culinary soybean didn’t come from the Amazon, given that soy seems to be a tropical crop?

But a very, very credible voice on this subject. Let’s not fall into the easy trap of tribalism.

Good to know.

And so what? Why are you so bothered by it? I’m a Linux user of 20 years and I couldn’t give a fig that someone is running a forum called LinuxSucks which, unsurprisingly, contains little “positivity or praise” for Linux.

So: you posted a serious contribution in an unserious community, and got treated unseriously. It’s not very newsworthy.

As for that community’s existence, why is that even up for discussion? As a Linux user I’m happy for people to say what they like about Linux. If the jokes are funny, all the better.

I use Ubuntu btw and it doesn’t suck. Well, not that much.

This is the best answer. Most of the others jump straight in at the deep end. The entirely predictable outcome of asking this question to a bunch of earnest geeks.

Well done for taking a stand. The problem, as ever, is that most people prefer to comply obediently even if it feels wrong. And then next thing we know, it becomes standard practice.

BTW I have been in your situation and responded similarly. Usually it ends in the clerk inputting dummy info, sometimes after I irritably tell them to do so.

By no reasonable definition of the word “liberalism” has it caused those things on a scale remotely approaching that of communism. This is not controversial.

Arguing is tiring, and here the payoff will be small since the conversation has moved on, few others are reading. I’ve made my point.

Look on the positive side. Humans being what they are, it’s not usually reason that wins debates, but rather the agreeableness of the participants. So you’ve probably won this one by default.

This feels like arguing with a Jehovah’s witness. To your credit, you’re not getting annoyed or abusive in the face of my contradiction. But then that’s also a hallmark of religious people: absolute certitude, which provides a certain peace of mind.

I’ll admit that I had to look up “AES”, which appears to refer to countries that pass the magical litmus test of Marx-Engels Compatibility.

I will simply sum up my own analysis. The precise terminology of the PRC’s political system is unimportant. What is important is that wherever the recipes of Marx have been tried, the result has been violence, brutality, oppression, famine, economic ruin. I say that as a student of history. Literally: it was my degree. But the facts are in the public domain for all to see. And so I agree with Orwell, who saw it before so many others: there comes a point where you have to accept that the thing is irredeemable, and instead try something else.

That’s really all I have to say on the subject. Of course I respect your right to your own viewpoint.

Do you not think your remarks have a bit of a religious flavor to them? Quoting a couple of eccentric academics from 150 years ago as if transmitting their divine revelation. Defending your interpretation of their holy words as if you were a lawyer or a priest. Why not just look to first principles instead, to the values you considerate important, rather than citing a gospel like this?

I must admit that I am puzzled by people’s determination to defend the record of communism. It’s not worth defending. There are much better ideas for how to replace capitalism, though - spoiler - none of them involve a bloody revolution. This doesn’t mean that Marx had nothing interesting to say. Of course he did. His description of society was revolutionary. But the prescription was disastrous and I feel we would do well to just move on from it at last.