I don't buy this - there are third spaces where you don't need to spend money and they've been here forever and are usually accessible. Churches, libraries, parks, certain community recreational facilities, gyms ,etc. It's not a lack of spaces, it's an issue of getting to those spaces.
I'm spending the summer in Canada, where they invest a lot in third spaces, and the difference between Canada and the US in this regard is night and day.
- Parks: A lot of them, every few blocks there's a large, well maintained park. Trash cans everywhere.
- Many community centers, huge, filled with extremely inexpensive or free activities. Community centers all have gyms in them.
- Beautiful, modern feeling libraries
It's hard to describe the difference, but it is non trivial.
I'm in the US. I've spent time visiting in Canada recently as well.
Everything in your list is stuff I experienced in most of the parts of Canada I visited. Not all though, for instance it wasn't like that in the parts of Mississauga I visited. And everything in your list is stuff I experience regularly in the US, in the parts I've lived in.
- churches: not really for the non religious
- libraries: not if you want to actually talk to people
- parks: only if the weather cooperates
- certain community recreational facilities: spend money? too activity oriented
- gyms: same as above
The original poster said "spend a ton of money" (those places you spend money but not a "ton") and I've included churches as an example. This short list isn't comprehensive. Also, have you been to a library recently? There are now spaces where you can socialize and meet.
>The original poster said "spend a ton of money" (those places you spend money but not a "ton")
Then why'd you put gyms in your list? You DO have to spend a ton of money to get a gym membership. And you can't cancel it because you have to sign a ridiculous contract and basically file a lawsuit to end the membership (not really, but it seems almost this bad).
> You DO have to spend a ton of money to get a gym membership.
I've been off and on user of several different gyms over the years. I don't recall actually paying for a gym membership myself. It's usually been a gym at my apartment complex, or a gym at the office park where I work, or my employer covered a gym membership, or I got it through health insurance.
We could agree that libraries don't have to be quiet anymore. It's not perfect but it's easy, and then a bunch of towns would suddenly have really nice public community centers.
Same - I kicked the tired with "Image Scan OCR" from the windows app store I think.. it can do a whole folder (batch process) of pics and extract the text into the sidebar, which is nice.. but it would be nice if the text was exported into a searchable thing and the text was linked to the pic/filename it came from..
Of course I want to search for data in my photo downloads / screenshots folders and be able to pull / easily grab / copy the pic(s) to another folder or upload to a site and then paste the text..
I guess chaining this into notion / obsidian or similar would be beneficial as well.
Phytoestrogens have little or no effect in the human body. Animal hormones and antibiotics however do have adverse affects.
Vegans tend to have a bigger issue with the larger organizations of the animal agriculture industry, not the whole - mechanizing the production of meat means that animals are treated with cruelty for profit. Slaughterhouse workers are also affected physically and mentally. Factory farming is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. It is a pollution problem and industrial chemical problem and we can make those changes on an individual level by making choices on what we put on our plates. We all eat after all.
I have to say, your view of advocates for vegetarianism and veganism is very misguided, your experiences on the other hand I can not comment on, but personally I have been vegan for over 8 years now and I've never felt better - I've completed many marathons ever since I started eating plant-based foods. At the beginning of my journey, I was obese/overweight.
You can use the land to grow beans and other plant protein as opposed to grain. There is another level of opportunity costs. Without the need to use land to produce animal products, we can use less land and grow a larger variety of crops.
That depends on what land you're talking about. Beans can only grow well in certain places. Ungulates such as cattle have a particular ability to convert low quality plant matter into high quality protein which almost exactly matches human needs.
Beans are great, but the amino acid ratios aren't ideal for humans and they are deficient in certain essential amino acids which we can't synthesize. It's certainly possible to get near optimal ratios and quantities with a mix of plants but this takes a bit of planning.
>It's certainly possible to get near optimal ratios and quantities with a mix of plants but this takes a bit of planning
This is true for any processed food. And I’m using “processed” liberally here. Meat must generally be butchered, and salted/smoked/cooked before consuming, but we’re just so used to it we don’t consider it “processing” or “planning” to do it.
I said beans and other plant proteins which includes soy, hemp, legumes, oats, nuts, amaranth, etc. which are already grown in the US regions where land is used to graze cattle. Not sure why you're singling out beans.
So much planning! You have to eat beans AND rice to get all of your essential amino acids. That's two whole foods! Ah well, too complicated. Instead I'll grow alfalfa in the desert to raise and slaughter cattle. I'll eat just the meat by itself, and now I've got zero fiber but I don't have to think about all those complex amino acids with my feeble, plant-based mind.
"Can" for sure. However, I doubt the land use would change much without other systemic modifications, like changing farm subsidies (which tend to be very resistant to change).
It's not a 'lie', it's a discrepancy between whether an animal (non-human) life equates a human life. I know you don't think so, but to call it a 'lie' is false.
There is a better term than murder sure, but you're still "killing" a plant or animal therefore ending it's life. People who use the term raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human. Whether you agree or disagree that's entirely up to you.
I disagree with your assertion that "People who use the term raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human." Doing that with wildlife or livestock is a much much larger thing than just extending the right to protection from killing by way of murder laws. Perhaps people say they "raise the plant or animal's importance of life to that of a human" but I haven't seen anyone earnestly make that case.
Instead, I often think people who use that line of argumentation are trying to launder the feelings that listeners have towards murder into concern about their dietary choices at best, at worst they are working a rhetorical script in which they get to condemn those who disagree with them as murderers and therefore "win". In my own history, the people who don't fit that mold are willing to have a more nuanced discussion about what types of killing happen throughout the course of our lives, what makes a killing justified or not, how your stances change in a "survival situation" vs. the industrial killing that happens for most meat production, etc.
How morally bad a murder is depends on how close to human’s mind we’re talking about; i.e. whether we are able to assume that entity has a consciousness similar enough for us to empathise with.
Saying humans have to die of hunger simply because humans cannot torture and then kill beings substantially like them in an industrialised manner is a disingenuous argument, and the reverse side of the same coin is basically cannibalism.
Murdering a mind that is substantially close to human’s (e.g., a dog) has been considered bad or even off-limits in many cultures for quite a while. Murdering human’s mind for whatever inessential purposes has been considered off-limits for longer (probably after we stopped with sacrificial murder). Morality progresses, news at 11.
For the most part, I don't follow your response, but I just want to follow up with a simple disagreement that I've pondered for a bit.
"How morally bad a murder is depends on how close to human’s mind we’re talking about;"
Let's set aside that I don't think animals can be murdered -- My main disagreement with your point is that you don't speak to the mapping between "how morally bad" and "how close to human's mind"; IMO Reality has higher dimensionality and there is no linear ramp between the two. As one example, the morality of killing is weighted more heavily around whether or not I am in "community" -- for lack of a better term -- with the organism and the specifics of the killing rather than mind similarity. Killing spiders when it can be avoided is bad, but killing every last mosquito you get the chance to is good. For the most part, spiders make an area better for people, provided you don't fuck with them too much. Mosquitos always make things worse.
To further illustrate how I disagree with your response, let's consider something topical: Recently some dipshit got convicted for running an online community that bought and sold videos of the torture and killing of monkeys. Whether monkeys, cats, mice, octopi, fish, etc., soliciting the suffering and death of an organism for entertainment is pure evil, and likewise producing and profiting from such entertainment is pure evil. Hell, I still get a little uncomfortable when those cockroaches get bugstomped when watching starship troopers. I'm not saying the complexity of the mind doesn't factor, just that it ain't that simple by a long shot.
