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.

You see, comrade, terrorist attack is when Nazis attack bridge we stole, not when comrade bomb Nazi apartment building.

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?

…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?

I will definitely check it out. I’d love to see an open world game made now with the same kind of scale, but I don’t think you could. IIRC, it would ahve taken something like a year in real time to have your character walk across Tamriel.

…Or Oblivion. Or Daggerfall. Probably not Battlespire or Redguard though, and I don’t know if you could get Arena to run on a modern computer. Daggerfall was a bit tricky; I think it bugged out for me before I got out of the first dungeon.

I would say either set up traffic for I2P

Any ideas on how to do this? I’ve tried using i2p–in Firefox–and can’t seem to make it work. Sites that are supposedly up won’t load. I’ve followed all the tutorials that I’ve found, and it doesn’t seem to be doing what’s expected. And no, I can’t give any details at this second, because I’m away from my home computer, and it’s been a few months since I tried.

I’d need a Real Attorney to chime in, but I think that, once you’re actually in a trial, you can’t dump your client without the permission from the judge. (You also can’t intentionally stop providing your best service for any reason at all, not unless you want to be sanctioned or disbarred.) So while an attorney could insist on money up front, if the money they were paid didn’t cover the real expenses, they could still end up getting stiffed. I suppose the ‘smart’ thing to do would be to have $100M put in an escrow account, and the money can only be released from the account if both parties agree. So if Trump tries to stiff you for the bill, he’s still out the money since you don’t have to release it back to him. Kinda like what The Silk Road used to do, only even shadier, since you’d be working for Trump.

Lawyers can potentially get sanctioned for client conduct. I can see a potential problem if attorney are given access to classified information for defense prep, then Trump accesses the information, and then disseminates that information. It’s a bit of a stretch, but given how bad Trump’s behaviour has been, that’s not a stretch I would ignore if I was an attorney.

THIS is what’s going to bite him in the ass.

This is a huge case. It’s going to take hundreds, if not thousands of billable hours. Any attorney that’s competent that takes this case has to know that they’re probably not going to see even a fraction of that money, meaning that they’ll be without income for a long period of time. A competent attorney that’s not ideologically motivated and independently wealthy is unlikely to be able to take the case. (An _in_competent attorney that doesn’t realize this fact might take the case, and then not be allowed to withdraw from the case by the judge.)

Second, Trump has a history of running his mouth in public. The attorneys that are going to be defending him need to have national security clearances in order to be effective counsel. If Trump talks about the cases in public, he could cost his attorneys their security clearances, which would not only impede their ability to defend him, but could also prevent them from being able to defend similar clients in the future. If I was an attorney, that would be a really big fucking deal. Not only would I be unlikely to be get paid, but there would be a real risk that Trump could harm my ability to earn income in the future.

If I was a competent attorney with a track record of defending this kind of case, this case would be radioactive.

That reminds me - I need to donate to Wikimedia.

I suspect that it’s not quite that simple. AFAIK, Reddit simply isn’t profitable, and they need to make it profitable. Or at least break even. Reverting to mean isn’t the answer, because they’d just keep losing money. But I don’t know what the real solution is. Obviously they advertise, but people using the non-official apps don’t see those, and people that use the old.reddit.com with layered ad blocking scripts also don’t see ads; that means those users are costing them money, and not earning them any money.

I don’t know what the solution is. Pissing off and losing a massive segment of your user base cuts costs, but also cuts your potential ad revenue.