It’s not really individual approaches that my comment is about. I was a cashier in a state where they had banned single use bags, and that seemed to make things worse. Instead of thin single-use plastic bags getting everywhere, there are now nearly as many thicker multi-use usually plastic bags being treated like single-use ones and also getting everywhere. My point was that it’s a system that needs more circularity.
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Cake day: April 1st, 2025
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Even in spite of best efforts for good systems to remember mine, I still forget them often. The problem in the US is that the system is not complete. The bags need to be made of biodegradable and/or recyclable materials, and every store needs a convenient way to turn in old bags so they can go into a recycling system. There probably shouldn’t be a charge for them either.
That’s generally even worse, cause the shop-at-home people will automatically buy the cheapest bags at cost to you and they will add up with every grocery delivery.
7·10 days agoThis must be a sign from God that I need to pursue the American dream of monetized game streaming.
1·10 days agoBecause even if vegan shoes are made of synthetic materials, leather is still arguably worse. Anyway, having more plant-based materials to work with hypothetically means anything made of those materials should be more biodegradable. But you have a point, biodegradability almost kind of by definition means the product in question is one that’s not designed to last. There’s probably a middle ground that can be found, like shoes that break down into soil-enriching materials after 50-100 years.
Did you watch the video?
It’s possible, and if finances are a struggle you just kind of have to make your best guess in some cases, or buy used. Most of the time when shoes have leather, they advertise it pretty boldly, so that helps. Still, you never know - for example, what are the adhesives made out of? That’s why vegan certifications are important, a lot of things can be easily hidden, and a lot of companies aren’t particularly clear on their use of animal products even when reached out to directly.
Going vegan means learning to have to put everything under a microscope. The word ‘vystopia’ exists for good reason.
It depends. For example I just made one quick search, “biodegradable vegan shoes”, and this was one of the first results:
Also see here, leather at least as bad environmentally, in addition to being ethically awful.
They’re usually not, at least at this time. More R&D needs to go into plant-based materials for more options. Even so, leather itself is also anything but “organic.”
1·17 days agoAnybody can cherry pick isolated studies to support any argument they want. I’m not giving you the time of day on this because it never ends. That’s the point. It’s the same playbook as the tobacco industry, same as the oil companies. Corporate-backed pseudoscience that appears just about legitimate-enough to create distractions and confusions.
You already admitted to being anti-epidemiology and “respecting” people like Taubes, as well as name-dropping the carnivore diet. That’s all I need to know, to know that you’re full of nonsense.
Called it. Get your pseudoscience crackpot cheesehands diet nonsense out of here.
Is “associative studies and relative risk” another way of saying, “correlation can’t establish causation”? Does that mean we actually don’t know if smoking is bad for us? Sorry, but if you’re going to read from the same playbooks as idiots like Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz then you’re not going to have any credibility. Nutritional epidemiology is rock solid and the cornerstone of sound nutritional science. If your views depend on undermining an entire field of science, you’re already cut from the same cloth as climate deniers.
I’m sorry, but while it might feel good to adopt a “different things work for different people,” view, elimination diet is only a necessary tool for rare edge cases at most. There is plenty of foundational research at this point, and for the real nutritional scientists who do the real science, there is a consensus that the Mediterranean dietary pattern is the preferred choice for the general population. That is why this diet is pretty much always the backbone of government dietary recommendations (with deviations in those recommendations usually being the result of capitulation to corporations).
And the more plant-centric your diet gets, the better your outcomes.
And when the Cathars, or the Templars were eradicated, or when Protestants and Catholics went to war, do you really think it’s because of sincerely held beliefs regarding their God, or because one group threatened the hegemony and material wealth of the other? In the case of the Protestants, the single most critical doctrine they went after was the Catholic belief that doctrinal authority came in part from the Bible, and in part from the Church; whereas Protestants argued for Sola Scriptura - the belief that doctrinal authority came from the Bible alone. And even the 95 theses clearly had the goal of ending a system of exploitation and financial parasitism by the Catholic church. Welcome to real politics.
None of this does anything to change that cases of church authority are still functionally the same as those of state atheism and anti-theism. In the case of Christian churches, you have the view that only Christianity is the truth and everything else is both the result of the devil, and leads to evil, and therefore all other beliefs are invalid and ultimately must be eradicated.
In the case of these varying state atheist groups you have governments expressing that atheism is the only valid belief system, and again, all others must cease. And anti-theists are explicit about their view of all other religious beliefs being invalid and needing to be eradicated.
If persecutions and executions against religious people by governments that are saying everyone has to be atheist isn’t killing in the name of atheism, then what the fuck is?
“The Soviet Union (1922–1991) had a long history of state atheism, whereby those who were seeking social success generally had to profess atheism and stay away from places of worship; this trend became especially militant during the middle of the Stalinist era, which lasted from 1929 to 1953.”
“The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated “scientific atheism”.[55][56] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[57][58] Thus, the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion, and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism (gosateizm).”
Yes, allergies and rare conditions are a thing sometimes. In your own example that doesn’t change the principle that whole grains are still the cornerstone of even this hypothetical person’s diet - they just have to avoid gluten.
The good time vs long time idea is a false dichotomy. Unhealthy lifestyles fuel depression and other cognitive disorders. The long life is the happiest life.
You sure you’re not just eating poorly and thinking you’re eating healthy? There’s a significant amount of misinformation in nutrition, on par with climate denialism.
I can think of some things. The first is that there’s a real chance that, if you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, it is likely actively fueling the depressed-sounding state of mind you seem to be in. I know when things seem hopeless it’s hard to want to try, but it’s the successes in small decisions like that which can help us claw our way out of these pits.
The next is that relying on the “next incarnation” is wishful thinking that, I think there is a stronger case to be made that it’s more likely to be disappointing than it is an improvement. We don’t know how many realities there are, we don’t know how many of them we would ever see (or if we could ever see others) after death, or whether or not there is anything of “us” after death to experience anything in the future. But if we’re seeing the one world we do know is there, getting worse, then whatever else there is or what we can experience, we now know the total amount of them has gotten worse by this much. Put into more simple terms, we lay in the bed we make. What if you reincarnate/rebirth into a factory-farmed cow for example? There’s only one sure-fire way to reduce the odds of that happening - making the choices that lead to fewer factory farmed cows coming into existence.
Death is not an escape. There is no escape. The only way out is through.
Then the other thing that has fueled some of my own decisions, is that we promote what we do, to others. If I were to smoke cigarettes for example, I would be making it more likely that those in my life, the people I care about, would be more likely to also start smoking. From that point of view, literally every choice we make has consequences that probably shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Not a single comment with an ideal alternative, despite best efforts. We need a fediverse Amazon alternative. 😞