Science & Technology News

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by geoleo

Seems like when I was in Denmark in summer of 1972 working on the old schooner there was a huge factory farming pork industry going on there. Have those folks stopped it in the name of Global warming??

I read one of the main ingredients of fake meat is palm oil mixed with sawdust! McDonalds?? I stopped going there after discovering while cruising down to Guatamela that McDonalds was buying up all their steers who couldnt walk and grinding them up for export as big macs. lol lol

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

You are DEFINITELY thinking of someone else. Starts with a K... And i think they were psychiatric nurses.

Thanks its been a long year

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by geoleo

I read one of the main ingredients of fake meat is palm oil mixed with sawdust! . . . .

I would be interested to know where you read that nonsense.


There are different kinds of fake meat, and none of them involve sawdust.


Here's a good primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meat_substitutes


"Impossible Meat" is astonishingly close to the real thing. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Foods. It's not used only in McDonald's burgers.

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

It's pretty easy. Most people are opportunistic, they arrange with the system they live in, learn to play it, are fed by it. They had a miserable life, can't buy stuff they need, can't travel, but have enough Vodka, can be lazy - cannot get fired and know how they lives will be the next decades until they die. The neighbors have the same miserable lives, no matter what profession or education they have. Everybody suffers equally - except the party members and deep state. They are miserable too, but have some privileges, like a car or a datscha, and a little more money for booze and woman.

There are people who expect more from life, than just craving in the hamster wheel without any improvement, they tend to leave the system for a better life, are more ambitioned.

When the system changes the ambitioned ones run businesses and use the opportunities - the lazy ones get fired, stay miserable, wait for help instead of starting something new, booze is more expensive and worst thing ewa - the neighbor is better off and more fortunate, has a better car, a younger wife, a nicer home. The state does not longer provide and cover them like in the good old days, many jobs simply no longer exist. Life becomes uncertain and that sucks.

Thanks

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

That's mostly true, especially the underlined part.

But people got along under Communism not just because they had vodka to drink their way through miserable lives (there was prohibition in the USSR in the 80's, so for some time they didn't even have that).

They couldn't buy a lot of consumer stuff, but must people didn't care all that much about that. It's our mistake based on our own intensely consumerist mentality, to think that this was the main problem with Communism. After horrible times in the 30's and 40's things got better by the late 50's so people were not nearly as unsatisfied, as we think.

They had no freedom of speech or freedom of the press, but they could read mostly what they wanted through samizdat, and after the death of Stalin there was not all that much repression of people just because of their opinions.

The economy was relatively good in the 60's and 70's, at least, it was growing every year and people felt optimistic. People had much more security in those days than they have now. This period, during Brezhnev's rule, referred to as the "time of stagnation" (for some reason), is considered the golden age, and there is a lot of nostalgia for it, a lot of movies and tv set in that time, lot of music from that time still popular.

The main freedom by far, the lack of which galled people, was the lack of freedom to travel abroad. Poll after poll confirm that this is the new freedom which people got after the fall of Communism, which people value the most, and by far.

Among intellectuals the best thing was that knowledge-based jobs were mostly undemanding, leaving huge amounts of time and energy for private interests, sports, hobbies, projects.

Most people lived in fairly crowded but still fairly decent city apartments, but almost everyone also had a place in the country where people spent much of their leisure time.

Reading Tom Clancy and so forth we grow up imagining that there was a lot of ethnic hatred in the USSR of that time, but that is not quite true -- there was some of that like everywhere but mostly there was a strong shared identity as Soviet people and feeling of solidarity. This is something people in that part of the world really miss today.

Despite different conflicts in the former USSR, and especially the ghastly conflict in Eastern Ukraine initiated by Russia, attitudes between peoples of the former USSR are mostly warm. Even now in Ukraine people with favorable attitudes about Russia outnumber those with negative attitudes, by nearly 2:1. See: https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=795 -- study by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology. Prior to 2014, attitudes were overwhelmingly favorable, much more favorable than towards Americans.

" The main freedom was lack of freedom"?? better check your syntax.

[geoleo]

It seems that the main proponents and advocates of leftism/socialism are the offspring of wealthy folks. This virtue signalying has been going on way before Lenin (who was from a wealthy family). Jerry Rubin was investing in GM stock as he was leading leftist riots in the 60s. lol

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by geoleo

" The main freedom was lack of freedom"?? better check your syntax.

I think you did not parse that sentence.

Why don't you try again:

"The main freedom by far, the lack of which galled people, was the lack of freedom to travel abroad."

Try to identify subject, object, verb, and you'll get it. Hint: pay attention to the phrase "the lack of which".

[Mike OReilly]

Here's a fun one. Apparently we're all sleeping longer, and we're also having more wacky dreams:

CBC:
Having weird, vivid dreams? Sleep researchers say you're far from alone

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Here's a fun one. Apparently we're all sleeping longer, and we're also having more wacky dreams:
CBC:
Having weird, vivid dreams? Sleep researchers say you're far from alone

Reminds me ...
Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active" sleep, that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution.
During their active periods of sleep, octopuses' skin color changes, and their bodies twitch, according to a report [1] in the journal iScience, and they might even have short dreams.
It's been clear for awhile that octopuses can change color as they sleep; videos of this have even gone viral. [2] And previously, other groups [3] had suggested that cuttlefish have an active sleep state similar to the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep seen in birds, mammals and some reptiles.
[1] “Cyclic alternation of quiet and active sleep states in the octopus” ~ by Sylvia Lima de Souza Medeiros et al
➥ https://www.cell.com/iscience/fullte...042(21)00191-7

[2] “Octopus Sleeping” ➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vKCLJZbytU

[3] “Cyclic nature of the REM sleep-like state in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis” ` by Teresa L Iglesias et al
➥ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30446538/

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Man, have you got him wrong [just as you do most things]!
I'm quite certain that Dockhead is a highly accomplished, (relatively) wealthy, Conservative, Libertarian, Capitalist, if one can simply label him or [anyone].

Im "quite certain" that he inherited lots and likes leftist BS and keeps his boaty s away from Africa

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I think you did not parse that sentence.

Why don't you try again:

"The main freedom by far, the lack of which galled people, was the lack of freedom to travel abroad."

Try to identify subject, object, verb, and you'll get it. Hint: pay attention to the phrase "the lack of which".

I prefer Hemingway style English--not 'parsing' riddles. How about this. "In the former USSR people did not have the freedom to travel and were pissed off about it."

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by geoleo

Im "quite certain" that he inherited lots and likes leftist BS and keeps his boaty s away from Africa

Sorry, but Gord is right and you've got it all wrong. I have inherited nothing so far (made some though), I am against socialism, and certainly against Communism (did you get the "evil oppressive system" bit I posted above?), and love Africa. I am a lover, however, of truth, which is usually different from anyone's party line.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by geoleo

I prefer Hemingway style English--not 'parsing' riddles. How about this. "In the former USSR people did not have the freedom to travel and were pissed off about it."

That does not convey the thought. They were pissed off about all the freedoms they lacked, but most particularly they were pissed off about the lack of freedom to travel, much more than the others. Something you wouldn't expect. And it took twice as many words to say it like that, than it did the way I wrote it in the first place.

Figuring out subject-object-verb, so that you know what an English sentence actually means, is not a "riddle" -- it's English 101.

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I would be interested to know where you read that nonsense.


There are different kinds of fake meat, and none of them involve sawdust.


Here's a good primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meat_substitutes


"Impossible Meat" is astonishingly close to the real thing. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Foods. It's not used only in McDonald's burgers.

Eating fake meat is something like smoking oregano for pot or smoking parmesan cheese for crack cocaine like Hunter Biden does. lol (there is no there there ) as an old leftist said of Oakland California.

[geoleo]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Denmark is indeed an enlightened Nordic country, one of the most successful societies in the world, and has made great strides in fighting climate change and has a very good carbon footprint compared to other developed countries -- 5.9 tonnes per capita p.a. compared to 7.0 for Europe as a whole and 15.7 for the U.S.. Denmark for example has almost completely decarbonized its power grid with 80% of power coming from renewables, fully 77% wind power (note however that this is possible only because Denmark, which has no nuclear power of its own, buys a huge amount of power from Sweden produced by hydro and nuclear).

Denmark is NOT a socialist country -- where in the world did you get that kind of nonsense? Denmark is more capitalist than the U.S., ranked #10 in the world for economic freedom by the Heritage Foundation https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking (the U.S. is #20).

As to industrial meat farming -- Denmark doesn't do so well, and no one "gives them a pass", but they are working on it, and as I said, Denmark ranks high for percentage of vegans.

They "are working on it" by expanding pig farming and pork exports yearly!"