Tag: stupid

Stupidity of Dignity

And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.

To understand the source of this topsy-turvy value system, one has to look more deeply at the currents that underlie the Council. Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.

“dignity” in bioethics is thinly veiled religious nonsense.

In vitro meat

Many people have an initial reaction that invitro meat would be yucky and they do not want it. However, people already eat meat slurry in fairly large quantities.

Yuck – invitro meat. But deep fry it and call them improved McNuggets and they eat billions.

2012-02-15: Mark Post at Maastricht University

It looks more like squid than steak and because it lacks the fat and protein found in real cattle, does not taste like traditional beef. So why would anyone eat meat grown in a lab? In-vitro meat may still be years away from our supermarkets, but they will be able to grow a hamburger by the end of this year.

2015-01-01: Overblown title, but still interesting:

Why turn plant proteins into burgers? Why not just eat them as peas? Culture is a lump of flesh wrapped in dough. If you want to save the world, you’d better make it convenient. Sometime in the next 10 years, Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods or another rival will perfect vegetarian beef, chicken, and pork that is tastier, healthier, and cheaper than the fast-food versions of the real thing. Overnight, meat will become the coal of 2025—dirty, uncompetitive, outcast.

2016-03-23: Limit meat. Vindication!

The Netherlands Nutrition Center is recommending people eat just 2 servings of meat a week, setting an explicit limit on meat consumption for the first time. The recommendations come 5 years after a government panel weighed the ecological impact of the average Dutch person’s diet, concluding last year that eating less meat is better for human and environmental health.

2016-12-12: Beyond Meat

Most people have a vague feeling that factory farms aren’t quite ethical. But few people are willing to give up meat so such feelings are suppressed because acknowledging them would only make one feel guilty not just. Once the costs of giving up meat fall, however, vegetarianism will spread like a prairie wildfire changing eating habits, the use of farmland, and the science and economics of climate change.

as usual, don’t read the dumb comments.
2017-09-04: Memphis Meats

Memphis Meats is announcing their Series A syndicate today, and it is a fascinating group of people coming together to help the world modernize the manufacturing of meat by removing animals from the process. It is identical to the meat we eat, down to the cellular level; it’s just the manufacturing method that radically changes. For full disclosure, DFJ led the $17M Series A, and I’ll be joining the board. It has been hard to contain my excitement as I have been looking for a meat solution for 5 years now. Since signing the term sheet, I have been wearing their t-shirt for a month now, and it is quite an evangelical conversation starter, generating keen interest the likes of which I have rarely seen before (e.g., Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Kimbal Musk joined us). We also got leading research institutions and some of the largest meat industry corporations to join the syndicate.


2018-03-08: Wired piece on Memphis Meats

By January 2016 they had grown up enough for a taste test. At a cost of $1200, it was by far the most expensive meatball either man had ever eaten. The process is now orders of magnitudes more efficient. But there’s still more work to do. Clearing the cost hurdle will be key to cultured meat catching on. Consumers aren’t going to spring for a bioreactor burger if the farm-raised or grass-grazed version is 1000s of times less expensive. Valeti is feeling the pressure. “We need to get this expansion done in a timely fashion so it can actually make an impact while we still have a window. There’s definitely a race on.”

2018-04-06: Lobbyists are being hired

The beef industry has started to quiver, and rightfully so: Flush with untold capital, Impossible Foods has apparently decided to spend some of it on a Washington lobbyist. Back in 2016, people from Memphis Meats, Just (formerly Hampton Creek), and other “clean meat” start-ups banded together to form the Good Food Institute.

2019-04-02: Available in major chain restaurants

Burger King has announced that it is introducing a vegetarian Whopper on its menu. Burger King will test the new meatless option at 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area. If it proves popular, the “Impossible Whopper” will become available in all 7200 United States Burger King branches. Burger King is the latest fast food chain to add a vegetarian burger, following in the footsteps of Carl’s Jr. restaurants that added a vegetarian burger using Beyond Meat, in January and the “Impossible Slider” added by White Castle last year.

2019-06-27: Satanic Meatless burgers

Rick Wiles, host of TruNews, reveals that meatless burgers are “plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products, is part of a satanic plot to alter human DNA so that people can no longer worship God.”

2019-09-30: Longer term, much more will be replaced:

Precision biology will displace, replace or transform agriculture by using designed microorganisms and adapting beer industry fermentation processes to produce food that is identical to milk and meat but without using animals. The first product we are seeing with mass impact is the Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat products that are impacting ground meat.


2019-12-11: Is Eating Meat A Net Harm?

Overall, the case for reduced meat consumption is strong. Vegetarianism is cheaper, better for your health (if you can afford a diverse diet and are not an infant), and is less impactful for the environment. It also has a significant moral cost in terms of animal suffering.

2020-01-07: Impossible Pork targeting the chinese market.

that tester agreed that the texture was off but the flavor was there. Lopatto tried a bánh mi sandwich, char siu buns, dan dan noodles, katsu, and sweet, sour, and numbing meatballs all made with Impossible Pork.

2020-03-13: Post-Zoonotic Food

There’s no time to waste in pushing forward solutions for what is likely the underlying cause of this pandemic, and what has been at the root of dozens of prior zoonotic events. We can’t afford not to have the same level of urgency in directing funding, effort, and talent into accelerating the development and deployment of safer, modern meat production methods. It is past time to move away from animal-derived meat altogether.

2020-08-07: CO2 and Methane impact

if every burger eaten in the USA were replaced with an Impossible burger, that would require 90% less land and water while reducing GHG emissions by 90%.

2021-05-14: Artificial Duck

My first taste of their cultivated meat, duck in this case. It was delicious and indistinguishable from duck, because it was duck. It just did not quack like a duck. Future generations will marvel that we thought we had to grow and slaughter a whole animal to get all the yummy meat that we might like to eat.

2021-07-15: Beyond Chicken

Some people do care about eating something that tastes exactly like chicken, so I took Beyond Chicken tenders to the toughest food critic I know: my 87-year-old grandmother. She’s been cooking incredible chicken dishes for decades, and I wanted to see if she’d sniff out the difference if I didn’t tell her that what she was being served was not real chicken. After taking a few bites, she said it tasted “very good.” Then I revealed to her that this was not real chicken; it was made from plants. She stared at me for 1 second. Then she said, “I don’t mind, as long as it tastes like chicken. And it does! It’s a bit heavier, but if you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

But plant-based companies are not yet able to mimic chicken in all its forms. Making a breaded tender is one thing — the breading can act as camouflage. Creating a convincing chicken breast is a whole other dream, and Brown suggested we shouldn’t expect it to come true anytime soon.

2023-03-23: In vitro meat has tons of challenges, the plant alternatives are doing much better.

But while the industry releases increasingly optimistic projections, well-informed commentators remain skeptical. It’s still unclear if cultivated meat can be made affordable or at large-enough scale to compete with conventional animal products. As we approach the decade anniversary of Mark Post’s first burger, many are confused as to when, if ever, cultivated meat will be on their plates.

After spending a few years inside the industry, I’ve come to believe that the true prognosis for cultivated meat is somewhere in the middle, between that exuberant initial hopefulness and more recent cynicism. I agree with the pessimistic commentators that “The Dream” of cultivated meat — full bio-replicas, cost competitive, at scale — is not feasible in the short term. However, comparison to other technologies like solar energy suggests that cultivated meat may take decades and 100s of billions of dollars in investment — but is ultimately possible. If we accept longer time scales, many of the seemingly intractable problems become tractable. In the meantime, companies can justify large venture capital investments by pursuing cheaper products that combine cultivated and plant-based components.

J.K. Rowling is a Fraud

Rowling “feels like her words were stolen”. Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling. A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.

Heh. The whole Potter nonsense is basically a ripoff of ender’s game. Always a good thing to check for on friend’s bookshelves: If you see potter, adjust for dumb.

Kill Sports

Big sport has come out against Google’s WiFi 2.0 plan by arguing that use of white space spectrum will cripple sporting events by interfering with wireless headphones.

big sport can fuck themselves.
2009-01-26:

“What’s been surprising is that the damage is so extensive. It’s throughout the brain, not just on the superficial aspects of the brain, but it’s deep inside.”

unsurprisingly, playing these kinds of sports makes you stupid. just like watching them does, too. There is hope that we can end the football epidemic soon, by making it too expensive to play. better uses for all that land now wasted for stadiums, time wasted in front of tvs, and schools will have to compete on actual merit, not the exploits of a bunch of guys in spandex.

the NFL conducted a 20 year campaign to deny a growing body of scientific research that showed a link between playing football and brain damage what’s worse, there is huge brain damage just from watching.

76 of 79 Deceased NFL Players Found to Have Brain Disease
96% of players and 100% of viewers suffer from brain disease.
Long overdue:

How did a sport that causes brain damage become the leading signifier of our institutions of higher learning? no idea

Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? yes

More encouraging developments:

The NFL is done for the year, but it is not pure fantasy to suggest that it may be done for good in the not-too-distant future

It is after all, worse than cigarettes:

4 years ago I wrote a column saying that football was dead in this country, as dead as the Marlboro Man, though it didn’t know it yet. Putting your kids in football would be akin to giving them cigarettes, and leave you to face the withering judgment of your friends and neighbors.

There’s also massive corruption around stadiums:

20 NFL stadiums have opened since 1997, at a cost of $5b in taxpayer funds. Taxpayers have actually spent $10b more on professional sports stadiums and arenas than is typically acknowledged after various hidden costs are taken into account. Using public funds to subsidize wealthy sports franchises makes 0 economic sense and is a giant waste of taxpayer money. Professional teams add virtually no income to local economies. Large subsidies actually have a negative effect, taking money out of the local economy. Aside from the jobs generated by actually building the stadium, most jobs inside the stadium—selling food and beer or working at team concessions—are low-paying temp jobs. It’s even worse for football stadiums, which are used for games at most 10 times a year, and maybe a few more times for concerts or large events. Public economic development dollars can be put to much better use on things besides subsidizing sports teams and their wealthy owners.

Football shares a lot of attributes with religion: Pointless rituals, homophobia, misogyny, tax exempt status, indoctrination of the young, large public subsidies, changes to the brain in practitioners, tribalism, glorification of violence, uneasy alliances with commercial interests, elaborate costumes, a long and confusing rule book, practiced on weekends, involves singing, held in big and expensive buildings and a rabid fan base that forces themselves onto uninterested parties.
This is why US universities produce garbage.

I’d be thrilled to see the insane football culture at many American universities—the culture that Spanier and Paterno epitomized—brought down entirely, and some good might yet come of the Penn State tragedy if it helps that happen. Football should be one of many fine extracurricular activities that are available to interested students, rather than a primary reason for a university’s existence.

The article makes great points about how the NFL in particular has nothing to do with sports, and is actively harmful. but then, every thinking person already knows this.

The ING New York City Marathon was cancelled, but the football game of the New York Giants against the Pittsburgh Steelers went ahead. Why? The nation places a higher value on sedentary spectators popping Advil and Viagra, than on lean and wiry runners.

2011-07-15: “news” for stupid people, aka sports news can now be generated automatically. why not replace the spandex guys with simulations too?

“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51-10 after the third quarter. Wisconsin added to its lead when Russell Wilson found Jacob Pedersen for an 8m touchdown to make the score 44-3 … . ” Those words began a news brief written within 60 seconds of the end of the third quarter of the Wisconsin-U.N.L.V. football game earlier this month. They may not seem like much — but they were written by a computer.

2012-01-23:

Many are skeptical that reining in college sports is even possible; the $ are simply too attractive, the pressures from outside too great. It is naïve “to think we will ever put the toothpaste back in the tube. There is an oversized, insatiable interest in sports, and college sports is part of that.”

2013-03-17:

2012-06-09:
ideally the class action suit takes the NFL down. what i don’t understand is why the action wasn’t extended to viewers, as that causes brain damage too.
2013-05-14: Misplaced priorities lead to a dumb, uncompetitive nation

2013-09-24:
nonprofit status for one of the biggest timewasters ever.

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn’t apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30M a year. It’s time to stop the public giveaways to America’s richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams.

2014-01-03:

My name is Chris Kluwe, and for 8 years I was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings. In May 2013, the Vikings released me from the team. At the time, quite a few people asked me if I thought it was because of my recent activism for same-sex marriage rights, and I was very careful in how I answered the question. My answer, verbatim, was always, “I honestly don’t know, because I’m not in those meetings with the coaches and administrative people.”

you’re living in a decaying, backwards society when bigoted idiots who contribute nothing to society get both big bucks for running around, (or even worse, telling others to run around) and a huge platform to spew their nonsense.
2014-04-07:
Spending more on spandex doesn’t make the US more competitive. 25% more on athletics, combined with the student loan bubble? it seems these institutions are doing everything they can do fail as soon and as hard as possible. good riddance.
2014-06-29:

Plan to Replace American Football With Soccer On Track. The EU could take no credit for the legalization of gay marriage in the United States, but called it “a very welcome development. Once a country has socialism, national health care, and gay marriage, soccer is usually next.” The spokesman offered no timetable for eliminating baseball, but indicated that it was “in the works.”

2015-01-20:
yes please.

what would happen if we eliminated the institution of sport—from the high school level to the pros? Every league, every team. All of it. Gone. What would America look like then?

2015-04-06: step 4 is crucial.

2015-11-07:

The Department of Defense doled out as much as $6.8M in taxpayer money to professional sports teams to honor the military at games and events over the past 4 years

that’s actually pretty well targeted. a particularly dumb audience is much more likely to eat up nonsense like patriotism.

Prayer at the Pump

“God is the only one we can turn to at this point. Our leaders don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring.” To solve the problem, Twyman isn’t begging the Lord for any specific act of intervention. He is not asking God to make OPEC pump more oil. Nor is he praying for all the speculative investors to be purged from the New York Mercantile Exchange, where crude oil is traded. Instead, he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple. “God, deliver us from these high gas prices. That’s all they have to say.”

between that and “its a conspiracy!!!” acceptance comes hard. but it will come.

Paper Bugzilla

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I definitely, absolutely updated it,” a coworker insisted. “I have no idea why you’re not seeing the updates. Are you sure you’re looking in the right folder?”

Eventually, Byron asked his colleague to walk him through the process of updating an issue. “Great timing, I just did a checkin. Let’s go.” Let’s go? Byron thought.

Byron’s coworker led him to a storage room lined with file cabinets. After flipping through a few folders, he found what he was after and started writing on it. While Bugzilla has a pretty impressive feature list, sadly “reading and scanning physical sheets of paper in a file cabinet to update issues” isn’t one of them.

updating bugzilla on paper. the same jokers also keep using fax machines

Germany Clones

You haven’t arrived until your web application has a German clone, it seems. Web innovation in that country too often distills down to “copy/paste innovation.” And now, Freundfeed, which doesn’t appear to be a joke. Not only is it a ripoff of the FriendFeed name, they also use the same logo. The service hasn’t launched yet, but I’m willing to make an educated guess and say that it will likely rip off the rest of FriendFeed, too.

was ist los deutschland? kein eigener hirnschmalz? between the intellectual bankruptcy that spawns literary criticism about the “google master plan” and these copycats, what has germany ever done for the internet?

Construktiv, the company behind social bookmarking service Mister Wong and Lifestream.fm, has acquired FreundeNews, a German service blatantly modeled and designed after the example of FriendFeed (the startup was actually called FreundeFeed when it first launched in April 2008 but changed its name sometime after, most probably in fear of sparking a trademark dispute).