piezoelectron

joined 1 year ago
 

I'm going to be camping for 4 days at a location without easy access to fire (hence no boiled water). As such, I'm going to be packing a bunch of canned stuff for my daily meals. The place is in England, where we're expecting a few hot days this week and maybe some rain over the weekend.

However, I have some free time before the trip to cook food. But I'm not sure if there's any good foods I could bring along that could keep for 3-4 days without a fridge. I guess that crosses out most meat dishes.

Some ideas I had were: falafel, fritters, bread, calzones, pasties. Have you tried taking such foods camping and if so, did they last a few days without spoiling? Are there any other foods you'd recommend? Thank you so much!

 

I'm trying to set up a Linux laptop for a friend who lives in another city. They have only ever used Windows, and likely won't have easy access to fix issues (not that I'm an expert).

First off, is it a good idea to give them a Linux PC at all? Have others had good/bad experiences giving technophobes Linux?

Secondly, if I go ahead with it, what's a good, stable, "safe" OS for a beginner? I'm shy of anything that's a rolling release (e.g. Arch, Manjaro etc) as "bleeding edge" can break things more often than not. I'm leaning towards Debian or something Debian based. But I've also heard good things about Fedora.

If I was the one using the PC, I'd have installed Fedora, as I've heard it's well-maintained. Then again there's been some good buzz about Debian 12. What would your advice be? Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Relieved to hear. I was just ticked off by a good number of people online coming to the Prince's defence.

 

I've seen a few (not many) people online fawn over how Khaled bin AlWaleed converted to veganism, and even got his dad to do the same. There's also talk that he plans to open a chain of plant-based restaurants throughout the Arab world.

I'm curious to hear what people think about such figures. This guy is directly descended from the founder of Saudi Arabia -- on both his parents' sides. He's part of a family that's brought an entire country -- Yemen -- on the brink of death, with 2+ million people at risk of dying from hunger. Not to mention he's part of one of the most brutal, draconian regimes anywhere in the world.

The same goes for places like, say, Tel Aviv, hailed as the "vegan capital of the world". Is that what we really want to talk about, and not the hideous apartheid regime erected by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza? Gaza, for example, is an open-air prison, where people are left to die, with no access to even drinking water.

And yet we find popular YouTubers celebrating both AlWaleed (who flew in Dr Michael Greger to Saudi Arabia just for a consult) and Tel Aviv as bastions of veganism.

I've heard the argument that neither the restaurants in Tel Aviv nor Prince AlWaleed are personally liable for their government's crimes. I don't really buy this. I mean I somewhat understand it re-Tel Aviv, but someone like AlWaleed is literally part of the government. He has plenty of power and privilege to relinquish ties with his family and use his newfound platform to bring attention to the hideous regime in Saudi Arabia. But as far as I can tell, he hasn't said a single thing about Yemen (not to mention Khashoggi, Saudi-Israel ties etc).

In my opinion, in these contexts, veganism effectively serves as a way to whitewash serious crimes that are far worse than the animal lives these individuals/groups are potentially saving. But I'm curious to hear what people think.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My two cents: "being" vegan is overrated and subtly shifts the goalposts from reflecting and acting upon serious ethical questions to policing each others' adherence to an imaginary pure ideal. I say this as a vegan btw.

So for example, I reject the idea of veganism as "avoiding animal-derived products as far as practicable" (paraphrasing the exact definition). I.e. if I'm stuck on an island with zero plant foraging skills, and I then catch some fish out of our necessity, I'm not vegan. It's just that simple.

But I'm not going to feel bad about that fact and guilt-trip myself into inertia. Maybe the fish help me survive long enough to learn to identify edible plants, learn to climb trees to get coconuts etc. Over time, I'm able to completely eliminate my fish intake and rely on plants. So the initial fish helped keep me alive long enough...to protect scores of their fellow fish!

If I'd obsessed over being vegan everywhere and at all times, I'd ignore the ethical possibilities right before my own eyes, and possibly even conclude that the most ethical thing was to starve to death -- all in the name of being recognized as "vegan".

If you solely focus on individual acts of killing, you tend to forget that death is a part of life. It's impossible not to kill, to be honest -- just as it's impossible not to be killed. We often forget that latter part. It goes both ways.

One notorious example I've encountered is when people go vegan for the "wrong reasons". Say someone learns about the extremely morbid effects of meat & dairy, and then chooses to go vegan. I've heard people say that these people have no right to be "vegan" and should call themselves "plant-based". In either case, the ethical effects on animals are basically the same, except that maybe the "plant-based" folk have a couple of animal-based non-food products around the house.

I'll skip a few steps here to share my own broader position, which is that it's consequently possible to have relations with animals that are reciprocal and not merely exploitative. People have practiced such relations all around the world for millennia.