TheVat

Depends on what is planned. Our government made few plans or regulations for affordable housing. The free market failed to supply them. So we are about 3.5 to 6 million homes short, depending on metrics used, resulting in massive problems including homelessness, people unable to move to economic opportunity centers due to housing costs (so they move to affordable backwaters with dead end jobs), people who are rent-poor/house-poor (bulk of income goes to shelter, causing hardship in affording other basic amenities), people living in substandard and sometimes health-damaging units where no other option is available, NIMBY political pressure from the spoiled affluent (further worsening the problem and fostering enclave mentality), and developers struggling with haphazard and antiquated zoning laws. So, yes, planning has its place.

Dear Mr Not an Actual President, Please follow all the health advice of your newly-appointed Secretary of HHS. Sincerely, Paul Brainin Thevat

The bobbles? I read the one (Marooned) that was serialized in Analog. Good stuff. He died of Parkinson's last Spring, RIP. I also liked A Fire Upon the Deep, in his Zones of Thought series. A former GF met him at a sci-fi conference, apparently by means of squeezing through a crowd and under David Brin's armpit en route. I cannot vouch for the veracity of this account.

Yes, so hath spoken the High Blargleptarch who announced that this world's end would fall on a Tuesday, in late 2025. Anyone who thought conceptually about the message framework will understand how relaxing each Wednesday through Monday will be, given over to enjoying all manner of earthly delights while they are still there.

What's the difference between Elon Musk and a lemur? Elon made an electric car. The lemur Madagascar. (sorry) But not sorry enough to stop from trying another one: Why does Musk want to make Europe great again? Because he's a MEGA lomaniac.

Washington Post, tracking data from government websites: https://wapo.st/3X0HcEc Within a matter of days, the worst-case scenario seemed to have been averted. Officials told data users the files had been taken down to comply with an executive order and would be restored after they were reviewed and approved. Soon, the entire ACS seemed to be available. Amid the whirlwind of uncertainty, David Van Riper at IPUMS, the Minnesota heroes who collect, harmonize and distribute flagship federal datasets, told us the organization has been working with its peers to “figure out who has what so that we can patch together a backup of the federal statistical system” — especially its more obscure datasets and priceless bits of documentation. Speaking of which, when our friend Federica Cocco, The Washington Post’s econ and business data reporter, asked whether we were backing anything up, we thought of a lesser-known Census Bureau effort: the Household Pulse.

There could be a different issue of degree, however, from homicide. If so, your example might not work as an ethical modeling of, say, using ground up salmon heads to make cat food. I don't find any evidence that fish are developmentally advanced enough to be self-aware and cognizant of mortality, so a sustainable harvest of them used for feeding my furry companions does not seem to be equivalent to a person committing murder. (though I would object to asphyxiation of the salmon as a method of killing them, as I object to any inhumane treatment of an animal) Questioning equivalences is part of what I see as nuance in an ethical discussion, and very much part of the focus of a thread on the ethics of vegan v nonvegan. I hope this clarifies my position a bit.

Pathogenesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathogenesis:_A_history_of_the_world_in_eight_plagues

So degree and nuance aren't relevant to ethics? It only deals in absolutes and binary choices? I don't think that's the case.

You posted no examples. Still waiting. I have only seen vague rumors. No evidence, no social science surveys of voters, no documented cases of whatever the hell it is you're claiming LGBTQ people are doing. And "a tribe member" is a weak ad hominem, not an argument. I'm an Independent, conservative on some fiscal issues, left-leaning on many social issues, libertarian on others, with a pinch of pre-Lenin Marx on some labor issues. On having public discourse open to all ideological perspectives, I'm a classic liberal. Like a lot of people, I have no tribe or specific location on a political map, and so I find your comment offensive and ignorant. Instead of listening to people here, you are soapboxing one idea and dismissing any critique as "tribal." Litter boxes? Clearly I've missed that one. Do they not like getting their dainty little hands dirty?

My post made no comment on what offends voters - I asked you to, in accordance with our posting rules here, to support your assettion that LGBTQ persons are proselytizing their lifestyle to others. I notice you did not do this, and deflected other questions about your assertions with more vague complaints about "insensitivity" to the POV of others and tribalism. But it appears to me that you are equating a respect for facts and evidence with pejoratives like tribalism and insensitivity - this is specious. No one is suggesting any political group has a monopoly on facts - only that respect for facts is essential to solving society's problems. Your marching out tired old RW bogeymen like people performing sex acts on parade floats does not signal to me a respect for facts.

The Naked Scientists site has a fair amount of biology articles, podcasts, answer forums, etc. Haven't logged in there for a couple years, due to forgetting my login. Apparently my password is NOT naugahyderodentfilibuster.

AFAIK the only protestors being locked up were those breaking the law, e.g. trespass, vandalism, abusing clients of the clinic - do you have a citation to back up your claim that the laws are not being enforced equally at abortion clinics? Sounds like blaming the victim. Do you have evidence to support your claim that LGBTQ people are "proselytizing a lifestyle"? Or that actual such conduct is what generates this conservative ire you speak of? Frankly, this sounds like a RW talking point from those who want to justify their bigotry and fear mongering. I generally am having trouble with your posts tossing off a plethora of unsupported opinions.

Somewhat like the childish thinking that, a couple decades ago, brought us "freedom fries." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries Since the linguistic attack was on France, I guess one could call it a tour de farce? Har! Can't have an extinction joke with the "stink."

Katastrophenpolitik.... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/hitler-oligarchs-hugenberg-nazi/681584/ free link here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/hitler-oligarchs-hugenberg-nazi/681584/?gift=43H6YzEv1tnFbOn4MRsWYgtVAaRco4y6FVJIrz5a_hU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (quote) To this end, Hugenberg practiced what he called Katastrophenpolitk, “the politics of catastrophe,” by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them Fabrikationen—entirely fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage. According to one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and selling them to its allies in order to service its war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center, political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse. (end quote)

True. I was trying to access how old ideas about time came along. People wondered, if all motion ceased would time stop. Before modern era, before knowing of oscillation of quarks or atomic motion above 0 K. or cosmic inflation, people might have imagined that all motion could stop (as a thought experiment). This was an idea I was toying with, in trying to understand the mystical thinking of the past. Probably bollocks.

I like this post as it gets back to a point about ethics, that there is more than one ethical consideration (and accompanying motivation) for a certain policy. There is the personal health reason, there is planetary ecosystem health, there is pushback against corporate culture, and then there is humane concern for the lives of sentient creatures. That's four different ethical frameworks and possibly there are more. Some see a spiritual aspect as well, so that's a fifth which sort of weaves in with some of the first four. A fair point, surly rabbit. 🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕

And it's measuring a rate of change using some other rate of change. So it's really just about change as it concretely manifests to us. I guess part of what made it seem mystical is that we can't stop that rate of change the way we can (superficially) stop motion. We can put the cheese under a belljar, so the cat or mouse can't move it, but it will persist in changing and turn moldy. As Steve Perry put it, the wheel in the sky keeps on turning.

Yep. As I read this thread, I am reminded of Hanlon's Razor. A variant on that might be, Never attribute to psychopathology what can be explained by stupidity. And the current handmaidens of American stupidity seem to be inattention, civic ignorance, declining literacy, and...okay, there might be something there (especially as regards the toxic effects of social media) that could be framed as a pathology. A social pathology, perhaps. And the fundamental symptom might be shortened attention span. Understanding complex issues, and why single issue obsessions cannot reliably guide a sound choice of governance, require sustained attention and critical thought. The erosion of that is a sort of pathology in the body politic.

Shall I compare thee to a three month kitten? Thou doth scratch much less, Yet I'm in several places bitten. I now apply gentle balm and gauzey dress, And with each wound grow more smitten.

Well, I was lacto-vegetarian until I reached a point where dairy was indigestible for me. Veganism didn't work for me, apparently due to some inherited absorption issues, so I then switched to my present (mentioned up the thread, before you joined us) 5/2 regime, five days vegan, two days pescaterian with sustainable source wild-caught fish. And like pretty much everyone, I fall off the wagon occasionally. The hunter-gatherer DNA resides in all of us. And the pet food issue is, as you note, fraught - if I let our very capable hunter live off birds and bugs and baby rabbits, then I'm part of the problem of depleted urban wildlife and threatened avian species particularly. If I feed her, which almost completely suppresses her predation, then I'm faced with expensive cat foods whose provenance I'm not entirely sure about - industrial producers are known to wriggle through loopholes on certifications and such. So I just try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good - a principle which seems often relevant in ethics discussions. BTW, to whom it may, I cancelled the downvote on Peterkin's last post, because while it may express a position some disgree with, it did seem to be thoughtful, reflective of some topical knowledge, and made in good faith. The DV button is not meant to simply express disagreement - it should be reserved for disinformation, bad faith arguments, ad hominems, etc.

Yes, what Trump can break in one term may take many years to repair. Or he flies the GOP into the ground and puts them out of power in two years...and for decades. Subtle breakage that doesn't alienate the base could do the greater longterm harm. I'm hearing US pundits who are saying this: stand back and let him crash everything, and that will more effectively get progressive politics back on track all around the globe. I'm not sure - that's a terrifying gamble.

Do you think it is possible to ethically make a distinction between living with a cat, which is allowed to live as a cat, and the oppressions of industrial agriculture? I eat no factory farming products, but have a cat, or it has me. I use wild catch sources for the fish based cat food, which is expensive but cats don't eat much. Let's not share this concept with our current US president, eh?

Perhaps some musician could slip a nasty note into a record sleeve? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin On the night of 1 March 1953, Joseph Stalin calls the Radio Moscow director to demand a recording of the just-concluded live recital of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. The performance was not recorded; not wanting to anger Stalin, the director hurriedly refills the now-half-empty auditorium, fetches a new conductor to replace the original one, who has passed out, and orders the orchestra to play again. Pianist Maria Yudina initially refuses to perform for the cruel dictator, but ultimately is bribed to comply... ...When the concert recording arrives, Stalin finds a note Maria slipped in the record sleeve, admonishing Stalin and expressing hope for his death. He reads it, laughs, and suffers a cerebral haemorrhage. Despite hearing him fall, Stalin's guards, fearful of being punished for disturbing him, do not enter his office.

I've had a glimmer of hope when I discovered a genuinely tasty tofu wrap sold at my nearby grocery. Though we usually cook stuff and skip frozen preparations, they are handy sometimes and it was nice to find something with organic ingredients, not absurdly overpriced, and with visible vegetables. I'm seeing more stuff like that in stores and noticing Gen Z and younger Millennials gravitating towards it. For every Joe Rogan meathead there seems to be a counterbalancing vegan or semi vegan. And there's less stigma - e.g. eating a burger of mung beans is less viewed as New Age flakiness. That said, nothing will ever replace butter. I don't care if it's twenty dollars a tub and the cow has to receive regular back rubs and couples therapy to pass USDA regulations, I will pay.