passiveincomelg

Thank you, that's very interesting. The spread seems to be so much larger than in Europe.

Thank you for responding and putting up with me. :)

You are right, visiting India and having a look would not provide data to base policy decisions on or anything like that. I didn't mean to imply that. It would be enough for me to form an opinion based on experience, is all.

As I said, I don't know how milk is obtained by Indian dairy farmers. I believe you straight away that it is way better than in "efficient" factories. I assume they leave the babies with the mothers and let them have the milk and take whatever is left over. That'd be dope.

However don't you need even more cows then with the "efficient" method? And do those cows not emit the same amount of greenhouse gases as the poor creatures in factories? Not if they eat seaweed, apparently (https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane...). Do they? Is that their natural diet? If not, is it fine anyway?

If they are treated properly, they won't eat food that humans could use, so that's good.

How much water do they need? Is water scarce around Indian dairy farms?

It's all so complicated. Just eating a plant-based diet is so much simpler. It would also be much easier if all sufficiently wealthy and developed parts of the world finally got the memo that some people want this. Where are you capitalism? Serve the market. Shut up and take my money. Pretty please.

I have no doubt that most of India is not sufficiently wealthy and developed. Obviously I undestand that consuming dairy is better than starving and I would never ever tell someone in that situation what to do. That would be absolutely insane and devoid of any compassion. However, "better than starving" is also a very low bar and not quite the same as "healthy food for adult humans".

It is not just about nutrients. If I mix vitamin C and rat poison, is the result healthy?

Yes. Any centralization/single point of failure developing on the internet is a bug.

This is hilarious. I love the humor of our neighbors to the east. :)

Thank you for that link, very interesting! For some reason it hasn't occurred to me to Google the guy who Pollan admires so much in the book.

Interesting. I think it would be even easier to see whether the article is lying or not. Just go to India, visit many different regions and have a look what the shops and restaurants frequented by locals sell.

In my opinion, there is no point in avoiding meat without giving up dairy. With "the whole holy cow thing" I meant that, as far as I know, in one (?) religion that is common in India (Hinduism?), cows are considered sacred animals. Because of that, followers of that religion don't eat them. And in some branches of Buddhism, harming any living being is a no go. I could have gotten all this totally wrong. I didn't even take the time to read up on it right now. I'm not all that interested in religion, barely know anything about Catholicism even though that's the crazy I've been baptized in/on/with/whatever. I exited that club way too late, regrettably, but at least I'm not giving money to child molesters any more.

Sorry, rambling. Back to cows: So eating them is bad, but somehow, perma-raping cows and making them sad by taking their babies away is totally cool. Maybe that not-as-bad-as-in-'murica milk production method avoids this bad karma. That would be great. Regardless of that though, I believe dairy is not healthy at all for adult humans. Cow milk is for cow babies. If you are reading this, you are not a cow baby.

Damn auto complete. That should be "you can find a ton of videos".

I read The Omnivores Dilemma and share your believe that this kind of farming seems fine. I don't know whether this would work for feeding the entire planet. Right now, farms like this are an exception anyway.

In my experience, only consuming animal products from these farms is a bigger hassle than finding vegan food.

Is it really? So this article is wrong? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122

And when you say vegetarian, do you mean vegan? I don't know what real Indian food is, but the Indian food I have seen (and enjoyed tremendously) always had dairy/butter/ghee in it (maybe with the exception of dal(sp?)). Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.

Sorry. It didn't seem so bad to me, just a bit too much pathos maybe, as I wrote. I didn't want to spend more time rewording my comment. Of course the second paragraph is only my opinion. Just ignore it if it bothers you.

I learned how bad the conditions are in animal factories and I don't want anything to do with it. If you look at these conditions and feel no compassion for the animals, then I won't try to change your mind. I also don't consider myself somehow a better person or something like that.

Some people believe in God, others don't. Some are tall, some are short. Some feel attracted to the same gender, some to a different one. I don't think we have influence on these things. However, if you are like I was simply ignorant of what is going on, I encourage you to look into it.

The whole thing about saving the planet... I don't think that'll work out even if all humans become vegan tomorrow.

You mean eating only plants is not in our nature and it might be harmful for us? That should be relatively easy to validate by observing a lot of long time vegans.

Eating soy beans is not in the nature of cows or fish but we smart cookies make them eat it in our animal factories anyway because it is convenient and cheap. To make that work, we have to give them lots of nasty stuff that we know is harmful to both them and us. But us pretending to not be herbivores on behalf of cows is fine somehow I guess.

The problem with healthy eating is that you get five opinions when you ask two experts.

However, you can't find a ton of videos on YouTube with plausible sounding explanations why a plant-based diet is healthiest. Just watch those and decide to believe them. Whatever you do, do not read "The Plant Paradox". That book will ruin eating for you if you even so much as consider to ponder the possibility that it might not be total BS.

Not all land is the same. But I don't think it's about land use. It's about water usage, soil and water contamination, deforestation, greenhouse gas emission and the inefficient conversion of plant calories to animal calories.

Oh and of course the tiny little detail that applying the efficiency optimizer that is capitalism results in atrocious treatment of sentient beings (pardon the pathos, feel free to substitute with emotionless words if you can think of any).

To me it would be ideal if plant based food was the default and animal products an expensive luxury. Not unaffordable, let's say a dish with meat costs about twice as much as a vegan dish in most restaurants.

But I would already be perfectly happy and content if all the wonderful places in the world I want to visit had vegan food at all. Of course I understand that people struggling with hunger and poverty have more important things to worry about.

I don't know what it takes to "save the planet". Everyone going vegan might not be enough. But that ship has probably sailed anyway. The planet will have plenty of time to recover and/or become something new after humans disappeared (themselves). What bugs me is seeing animals suffer, regardless of species (including humans ofc).

Are the numbers in the article assumptions?

Yes, and the browser should be enough in many cases, but the holder of that information tries to force their app on everyone.

One of the most annoying examples of that for me is accepting a new connection on LinkedIn from my phone. I want to tap on the link in the email and be done. Instead it redirects me to the store, I close it, try again. Sometimes it works, sometimes I give up and do it later.

Another example is Facebook. :)

I complain about low salaries for permanent positions all the time, but you can definitely do better than 45k. A programmer with a few years of experience should be able to get 60-75k without too much trouble.

Same in Berlin.

> Mark my words, Berlin will be Europe's Silicon Valley within a few years.

Reminds me of this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22vY4CWpEI

They always find some loophole. Often it's some kind of construction work like "improving isolation". AFAIK the rent control laws also don't apply for furnished flats.

Find a hammock in Nicaragua. Worked great for me. :)

I think we will become numb to it like we became numb to war, hunger and all the other atrocities happening in many places at the same-ish time.

"Some kind of meat", yes. I can't imagine it to be of high quality, so hesitate to call it "proper". AFAIK the main noticable difference is whether the kebab is made of ground meat or not. The latter being more expensive and supposedly of higher quality. But in the end it's mostly going to be factory meat so it makes no difference, IMHO (there are exceptions of course: https://www.meraba.de/).

Are you saying CAFO meat is more expensive than grass-fed?

It's a little further east than Ukraine et al but I absolutely love the Taiwanese dumpling chain Ba Fang Yun Ji Dumplings (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g13808671-d101...).

From the article: "But it’s not just the taste, large portions or affordability – costing anywhere between €4.50 to €14."

I haven't seen a 14 Euro Doener anywhere, but I'm sure they exist. But 4.50 is definitely not the cheapest. 2.50-3.50 is actually the most common price I see around Berlin.

Agreed, nobody reads code. Also nobody considers "debuggability" when picking languages/libraries/frameworks/etc.

How is that "parasitic"? Participating in investment banking, surveillance capitalism, weapons manufacturing and lots of other fields where these salaries are payed are much worse for society than sitting on the beach (IMHO obv).

Hopefully using this eventually, instead of the real thing: https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...