Might have some ideas for people thinking of setting up a home office.
When I moved house I renovated an old summer house in the garden now and use that as my office. It is great. I just wish that I had put in an air source heat pump, rather than an electric radiator.
My 4th grade teacher in the early 90s, she called improper fractions "Dolly Parton Fractions," because they are bigger on top. Nearly 20 years later, my kid had the same teacher. The teacher was embarrassed to be reminded of the technique, haha.
Within her family friendly choice of language, she wasn't shy of making jokes about her own appearance:
“I make jokes about it, but it's the truth that I kind of patterned my look after the town tramp. I didn't know what she was, just this woman who was blond and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. Momma used to say, "Aw, she's just trash," and I thought, That's what I want to be when I grow up. Trash.”
It was part of her fame, for decades, as she intended. She was not shy or ashamed about it.
Nowadays we may be extremely sensitive about that sort of thing (increasingly on behalf of others, unsolicited), but at the time it was not mean spirited or wildly offensive.
In the 80's there was a relatively famous Canadian comedy duo that did a song called Dolly Parton's T*ts. Definitely there was an obsession with them. I still remember David Letterman joking with her about them, too.
Stars who were born into poverty sometimes struggle with being generous (Charlie Chaplin for example). But that certainly didn't seem to be an issue for Dolly. What a life.
eating any meat is morally questionable. (I say this as a person who does eat a lot of meat).
octopus passing a intelligence test does not keep it above the fold, neither does cattle go below the fold because they don't clear the bar (surprise, cattle are equally emotional, smart, curious etc.).
sounds wrong when I type it out but that is just the truth. milk is actually more ethically wrong when you think about it (isolating a calf from its mom to steal its food.)
doing one or the other does not absolve us. because one is more commonly accepted than the other
Is the isolation necessary or just an implementation detail? When my family had a goat we didn't do anything like that, the kids grew freely sucking the mother and then she was giving milk for years after that.
From my understanding this is doable in a context like yours but if you want to run a business out of it you have to optimize it which requires this separation.
modern cow, goat etc. are selectively bred to produce more milk than their youngling needs. so separation is not a strict requirement ( you might lose 5 - 10% more if you just let them be.)
But when we used to own cows & goats, it was very common practice to keep the youngling tied away a few hours before milking. you can feel the pain of separation the parent goes through. ( goat and cow crying, while looking at their offspring is indeed quite sad https://www.flickr.com/photos/murfalizer/4429214117). to add insult to injury it is also common practice to tie the youngling in the line sight of the parent to milk more freely.
Yes I don't get it why milk is considered more ethically sound than eggs in my country. Milk is stolen baby food extracted industrially under not so nice conditions.
Precision-Fermented (animal-Free) milk does exist but it is not easily available.
Unfertilized eggs are products that come out anyway and cannot become a chick till it is successfully fertilized outside of the hen. Granted that these two are extracted industrially under not so nice conditions.
Just to note, eggs are not as ethical as you may assume... We have bred chickens so that they lay an unhealthy amount of eggs, which is likely a pretty stressful life experience. The original breed of bird (Red junglefowl) laid roughly a dozen eggs a year, where as modern layer hens will lay 300+. So it's not really "comes out anyway".
They often get medical conditions like Keel bone fractures and reproductive tract disease and they're also culled at around 18 months when output drops (tiny fraction of their lifespan). Oh and the male chicks don't lay, so roughly one per hen gets killed on day one.
I still think overall milk is probably worse, but plant-based is biggest win to reduce suffering overall!
Your italicised text is /exactly/ wrong. Hen eggs are fertilised inside the hen’s oviduct. I mean, eggs are somewhat porous after laying, but they’re not that porous.
(I don’t know about you. I’m just a programmer holding strong opinions about avian physiology. Maybe there’s an actual biologist on the plane who can correct me)
Oh! Thanks for correcting me. Now I learned that the egg is fertilized (if at all) before the shell is formed. The hen would lay the egg anyway fertilization or no fertilization.
Simplified egg laying are the chicken analogue to human female menstruation. It is technically quite different (chickens don’t have a uterus, for one), but it is still analogous.
For sure I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but I don't know anything screaming more "processed food" than the meat alternatives. The component list is longer than this thread, sorry I wouldn't touch that with a hundred feet pole (hyperbole mine).
This just proves you don't have a lot of knowledge about food.
First of all, there are many studies that show that plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than their meat counterparts. Just because a food is processed doesn't mean it's unhealthy. Or are you under the impresssion your sausage and burger patty are health foods?
Second, just like with non-vegan foods, there is a variety of plant-based meat alternatives: Some companies include much healthier ingredients than others.
Finally, even if it weren't for my two first points, the main goal of replacing animal meat with plant-based meat is not health, but ethics and environmental concerns (but again, it's not unhealthier).
> First of all, there are many studies that show that plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than their meat counterparts
Define healthier, and link the studies.
I eat vegetarian more often than not these days (although I don't usually use plant-based meat), and I'm not disagreeing with you. But cite your sources rather than making vague health claims.
Well, why are people who are afraid of a long ingredient lists (without understanding what the ingredients actually are) and just blurt out that vegan meats are unhealthier not asked the same?
In any case, the sister comment linked to some studies. Have a look.
Also, a simple web search will show you that many animal-based meats (such as red meat) are linked to many cancers, this is not even disputed.
Fair point, there's a lot of nutritional bunk going about. I'm not an expert either, but the Wikipedia article seems to cover the big studies that I've heard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_alternative#Health
I'm only familar with the brands in Germany unfortunately. You might have Beyond Burger available in India — not my favorite vegan burger patty, but I think it's good enough.
Is 100% taste match more important than not supporting an industry that kills Billions of animals a year and on top of that causing a huge amount of greenhouse gases and biosphere destruction?
What if it's 85% taste match, wouldn't that be enough to make the jump to plant based alternatives?
Male chicks for example get thrown in a wood chipper.
Hmm not sure. Depends on how well it is prepared. But yes, I said, there are much better brands. But the question was specifically about what's availabe in India, which I have no cllue about.
I think, in a cthullian universe, its actually very acceptable- as long as you accept the burden of upholding the habitat of the hunted. The predator is responsible for the continued existence and the thriving of the prey. So, one should sink concrete pylons with sawblades to destroy the dragnet fishing fleet.
Purity spirals are madness and a brittle luxury, edangering nature and the world, the moment the surplus financing that luxury snaps.
Stop doing it then. Often we see the logical conclusion to something, but then our brains just shrug it off and chooses ignorance. I think it is necessary at this point to find emotionally stimulating content such as videos of slaughterhouses not following regulation, this can help us come to terms with what we already know.
but I find meat and the associated horrors that come with it, to be no more or less repugnant than the broader society and industrial complex that I'm forced to be a part of.
I suppose, I personally could contribute to be one less living being suffering. but in the broader scheme of things (new wars, poverty, deaths etc.).
in a very nihilistic way, I don't see how it changes anything.
> surprise, cattle are equally emotional, smart, curious etc.
Measured how?
It would indeed be a surprise if cows were equally emotional, smart, and curious as any other species. Equality on three different dimensions should essentially never happen.
cows might be more in some dimensions like emotion because cattle raise their young unlike octopus which doesn't . does that make the equation any easier to accept?
why is this a controversial idea? mammals indeed are smarter than mollusks (of which octopus is one).
> Compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians were more likely to have a higher educational level, whereas vegans had a lower education level
I think it’s good to question these things but the people who go full black/white on everything is where that whole movement died. Saying something strong like “eating any meat” will generally not win over hackers. But “we won’t bring cows to Mars” might work better.
I wonder how many of these "self-reported" vegans were true ethical vegans vs instgram influencer, "I eat chicken once a week" vegans.
Also, what's your point? Is there a proven direct correlation between ethics/morals and educational level? And even if there were, does that imply that this less educated group is as a whole completely wrong? And are you implying that ethics and morals were even objective and measureable? I mean, completely no idea what you are getting at here.
The linked study does show that correlation. But I personally believe it’s more of a second-order effect.
Vegetarianism selects for openness and analytical/reflective thinking but the extra step to veganism selects for absolutism/purity and rigid category-based thinking. Reflective thinking and openness are definitely correlated to IQ so I believe the result in the article.
The point here is to know your audience. The people on this site are perfectly primed to respond well to a vegetarian/environmental point of view.
Vegetarianism, in Europe at least, requires one to be open to a different diet than what one is used to, usually going against social and cultural norms due to a personal conviction that is reached by analysis and reflection, while veganism brings that to the extreme
Everyone has different ethical frameworks. The label of "extreme" is arbitrary, not objective. I'm sure you would never rape or murder someone. Does that make you an extremist? You don't think it's OK to occasionally rape and murder people right? Vegans' ethical framework is that the murder of animals is unacceptable, and so there is no middle ground. That's not extremism, it's a different framework. To frame it as a spectrum is a misunderstanding.
Pretty sure vegetarians and vegans both are against the killing of animals, so don't know what you are trying to argue. And yes it is very much a spectrum that (very roughly, and not exclusively) goes from: cannibalism -> eating animals -> eating animal derived products -> eating only vegetables and fruit -> eating only vegetable and fruit that fell to the ground without being picked.
And I find it ironic in that you are kind of proving the point, by painting it as a black and white issue. This is what the "extremism" means to me. Another form of that spectrum could be: Endangered species -> wild animals -> farmed animals. Do you think it would be as wrong to kill the last specimens of an animal that is about to go extinct as it would be to kill an animal that has been bred over thousands of years and could probably not survive in the wild on its own? While i am against all killing, when presented with this choice the answer is pretty clear to me.
And you even made a similar distinction yourself in another comment here:
>I hope people say the same about all animals, but especially mammals.
You have a conclusion that you want to defend and some biases you're unaware of, so you're also not aware how tortured this argument sounds.
Pick some other topic. For example: are people who thinkthat slavery is inherently and always wrong just stupid extremists, compared to people who accept that 'some' slavery is fine?
I feel like you're the type to walk around with calipers.
> Compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians were more likely to have a higher educational level, whereas vegans had a lower education level
this is such a... wrong conclusion to make from the study. the study has found a correlation and by no means is it a causation. there are so many cultural, societal reasons for this to be the case. (eg. in india, upper caste people are usually vegetarians who generally have more access to education.)
Dude, most of India are vegetarians. If you have seen the sanitary conditions for storing meat (or at least in 2008/2010 when I backpacked around the country), you would also become one. I certainly did.
Curries with meat were more expensive than vegetable ones in every dhaba. The bonus of not having to pick tiny pieces of meat from heap of chicken bones was a nice bonus (since touching food with hands was generally a very bad idea, sanitizer or not).
>eating any meat is morally questionable. (I say this as a person who does eat a lot of meat).
I think this is very wrong. Doesn't account for when you don't have a choice, to be healthy. You need to eat more, you need to consider all possible situations, construction work people need to sustain all that physical labor somehow. It's a more serious chore to even attempt to build a non meat based diet, let alone sourcing everything.
If we could have a healthy alternative that accounts for everything (taste included) then maybe you can make that argument. Until then it's quite shortsighted and ignorant.
Verfiably false statement that you need meat to do physical labor.
Lazy statement that “sourcing” a vegetarian meal is difficult.
Eating less meat is better for your health and better for the planet.
The few exceptions I think worth noting are if you were born into and continue to live in largely/culturally hunter culture (Inuit, bushmen) or where you live is not sustainable for agriculture (Tibet.)
Most folks could just cook more rice, beans, greens and be fine.
>Verfiably false statement that you need meat to do physical labor.
I don't think a lot of people like you understand the real state of things, how a lot of stuff gets done, costs and what's needed for it. One is the quick maffs you do in your head and it's a different thing how real people in real situations behave at scale. You cannot shame billions of people into not eating meat, they'll just come for you and anyone deciding it for them. You need to have a realistic alternative for it, this shaming nonsense is puerile and gets us nowhere, just allows you to finger wag from your high horse is all. I find this perspective and way to go about it extremely shallow and childish.
Interesting that you think having any drawbacks whatsoever to not eating meat is sufficient to justify eating it, I would've thought the drawbacks had to at least outweigh the suffering involved.
As compared to what, those animals never having experienced life ... at all? All farmed animals get to live and experience this place because of us. What you are fundamentally proposing is wiping them from existence, from possible existence. You cannot really argue for that without it being more goulish that you're trying to make it seem when they get turned into food. All of them die eventually, even if we don't eat them. And none would even exist if we didn't need to eat them.
So provided we offer decent conditions for their lived experience it can be a fair trade, since they wouldn't even exist in the first place. Who are you to judge if the cow thinks it's worth it or not? I mean the cow could very well go "moo yeah" if you present the deal "couple of years of grazing running around then get turned into a hamburger? Or no existence at all, what say you?"
It is not only totally possible to be vegan, but it can be more healthy too. The Acadamy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the largest org for nutritionist and dieticians in the world, have a position paper out saying that a well planned diet is appropriate for all stages of life, including pregnancy. The NHS says the same thing. We even have vegan top athletes nowadays such as Djokovic and Hammilton. You can be vegan, so any justification you bring for violence against animals is for taste pleasure, habbit, culture and just generally not having evolved nor being up to date with the science.
by design eating meat is morally questionable. (as do so many things with our modern society.)
all meat is fair game, because all animal dependent diet is questionable anyway.
Your excuse for participating in one of the most vile enterprises in human history, factory farming, is that it's too much effort to collectively figure out a less barbaric diet?
And literally no vegan has a problem with people who medically need to eat meet doing so. I own several cats, they are carnivores. The problem is scale: The fact that some people medically must eat meat does not give a free pass for apathetic barbarism to the rest of society.
Even collectively cutting out a single meat or dairy-based meal a week would contribute to a massive reduction in demand. You have no excuse. Use this energy to build a fairer world for all animals instead of using it to get defensive whenever someone brings up how massively inhumane modern factory farming is.
Please read this as an information instead of an advice
> cats, they are carnivores
Carnivores eat (mostly) meat in the wild but thrive on a vegetal kibbles diet, granted they includes the right nutrients. I get the "non natural" intuition, however that's also the case for others kibbles - from the cheapest to the best ones.
Your links go to pet food shops online that sell vegan food. How is that "veterinary recommendation"?
Giving vegan food to cats is animal abuse. If you can't stand the idea of feeding other animals to a cat, don't keep a cat as a pet. Dogs can handle plant-based (but not vegan) diets much better. There are many other animals you could keep as a pet, also. E.g. goats are vegetarian and they have strong, interesting and engaging personalities. If you want a vegan pet, get a goat.
Edit: And if you don't have enough space to keep a pet goat then you probably shouldn't be keeping a pet dog or a pet cat either. One reason people abuse the animals they keep as pets is they assume that an animal is just like a little, furry human and can thrive and be well in any condition a human can, e.g. like living in an apartment etc. This is so far from the truth it's crazy. Most people should really not keep pets.
Wrong wording, I updated it to "My veterinary recommendation".
> animal abuse
What makes you think so? Those kibbles allow happy and healthy cats while avoiding animal abuse to produce the non-vegetal kibbles. It sounds you can't stand the idea a cat thrive equally with mouses, beef/pork/tuna leftovers (+supplements) or soy/algae (+supplements), but you only provide recommendations without information to support your claim.
Benevo FAQ pages has responses to most interrogation one may have, including health and palatability: https://www.benevo.com/faq/
Farm animals wouldn't even have existed in the first place if it wasn't for farming them. They wouldn't have experienced their life at all. I personally think hunting is horrible, that's going after something that is alive without you having a say in it.
But say for farmed cows, living in a field for a while, that's better than not existing at all. You cannot judge if it's worth it from the cow's perspective, it got to live, enjoy the sun, eating in the field, doing cow stuff, same as us. Even with the hardships in my life I'd rather have existed, for however long I can, than not existing at all.
So you see it's not as simple to look at and judge farming. If it was for you those animals wouldn't even have experienced this reality. It some cases you may be right, depending on their conditions obviously.
This is an interesting thought experiment, though I generally come to opposite conclusions. I personally think that hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same.
Conversely, farmed animals owe their existence as you say to our cultivating them. But where you see a moral release in that connection, I see a corruption of life into industrial inputs. A hunted animal many times will catch scent or sound and take flight, winning their life for another day. Livestock can't change their destiny by wit or will. Their entire existence is within the technological apparatus of our species.
The corruption becomes evident in evolution cleaved from the organism's interest and placed in service of our appetites. In turkeys with breasts too large to be able to balance standing up, let alone walk. Such animals can only reproduce by artificial insemination and only eat when food is placed directly in front of them.
Power dynamics such as these tempt us to tell just-so stories about lives well lived. Can we say for them that their lives are preferable to not existing at all? We're surely not neutral.
> hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same.
It's not exactly a fair fight though. In modern hunting the hunter might not always win, but he never loses.
> Can we say for them that their lives are preferable to not existing at all?
I doubt it. But we don't have to breed animals for maximum meat production at lowest cost in the shortest time. For instance the largest chicken producer in Norway [1] has declared that in future it will only produce slow growing chicken.
Hunting a wild animal is not necessary in most cases. Especially if we have farming. You had no say in the existence of that wild animal, you have no claim on it unless you need it to survive. Say you get lost in the woods and need sustenance to survive, that is excusable sure.
Farmed animals exist purely because of their use to us. We enable their lived experience. Without us they wouldn't exist, they wouldn't experience sitting in the grass looking at a sunset, running around in the field or whatever.
And I did mention it depends on their lived experience. I was not talking about the bleak industrial warehouses animals that never see the light of day and sit in bleak conditions. They don't get much out of it. I am sure we can figure out a fair exchange without getting locked in philosophical conundrums about it.
Peter Singer, father of the animal liberation movement, also now says that farming animals for food but giving them a good life "may be permissible":
More radically, Singer suggested that meat-eating may be permissible if “farms really give the animals good lives, and then humanely kill them, preferably without transporting them to slaughterhouses or disturbing them. In Animal Liberation, I don’t really say that it’s the killing that makes [meat-eating] wrong, it’s the suffering.”
You cannot experience non-existence. I don't even think you understand what you mean by non-existence the way you used it in that phrase. At most you can use it as contrast to existence, which can be enjoyable or not. If your existence is the least bit enjoyable it beats not existing. at least for me, and plenty others if you ask them.
We also know not existing is desired by others with worse lived experience. Which they think that whatever it even is, not existing, must be better than their lived experience. It's basically a way to stop existing, moving into non-existence. So we can only discuss about existing.
If you have any ideas about non-existence that's cute and interesting and you should maybe write a book about it or something.
>experience of non-existing rocks.
This is not really a philosophical argument as it is misuse of logic and words. I'll let you figure out why.
Yes, we operate at a different level, and don't serve the same purpose (humans are not food). Similarities are that we are engineered (psychologically, 13+ years of schooling), operate in an artificial environment not a natural one. All sorts of manipulative tricks are used in order to convince us to gift the fruits of our labour. Typically most people hand over > 45% of their effort (taxes) for over 30 years. If the best value humans offered could be provided in just two years of physical growth (like meat cows), we would be facing different terrain and expectations.
If the cow doesn't have the same living experience as we do, to some extent, then you have no argument for not farming them, since it doesn't matter, because "there's nobody in there" as it were.
you mean you don't think it's right to make a creature take an IQ test before deciding to eat them or not? "Yes, right, well, you seem sufficiently stupid enough to ingest."
There are hazards to doing it on an individual level, but on a species level sure why not? Between a talking plant and a brainless bovine I know which one I'd say is the obvious right answer to eat (assume both species occurred naturally for this thought experiment).
Based on not having a realistic choice. The only person I personally know to successfully pull it off is an acquaintance that's rich by local standards, doesn't work, spends a lot of time sourcing and cooking it, and also eating it. He needs to eat more for same energy. It's so involved that most of his life revolves around it. It takes a good bit out of his time. The rest of the people from that friend group couldn't afford it, couldn't afford spending the money, couldn't afford spending the extra time on it.
I personally wouldn't eat meat if I had a good alternative. I rarely do, I eat it for health related reasons, considering my setup.
Yes, and if you have such a care-free attitude towards a vegan diet you should expect to become deficient in all sorts of necessary nutrients.
Everyone who treats plant-based diets with any degree of responsibility will stress the need to plan them carefully, considering the needs of the individual and their stage of life, and to accompany them with supplements to make up for the nutrients that not even well-planned diets cannot provide.
For example, "Top Tips" from the British Dietary Association:
* Carefully planned plant-based diets can support healthy living at every age and life stage
* Plant-based diets can help to manage weight and may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases
* You can get all essential nutrients from plant foods but vegans need to ensure a reliable source of vitamin B12
* If excluding dairy, make sure you consume other calcium-rich foods
* Include a wide variety of plant-derived foods to ensure your diet is balanced and sustainable
My wife stopped eating octopus after seeing the giant Pacific octopus in the Monterey aquarium. The way it stares at you hints at a real intelligence. Maybe the smaller species aren't that smart, but why take the chance?
I cannot judge too harshly, since I still eat many kinds of animal. However, I never ate octopus growing up, and I learned of their intelligence before I tried it more than a few times. It was easier to "never start" than to quit. And besides, octopus is not that great and if you insist on eating seafood I find pretty much any other item to have more enjoyable texture.
Octopus is the only animal I've ever stopped eating due to ethical concerns (not that I'm against examining my relationship with other animals). That being said, it's really delicious if you get it fresh. It just so happens that it's very rare (in the US) to get fresh octopus. I liked tako nigiri and grilled octopus, Mediterranean style. The taste and texture difference between fresh and not fresh is huge though. Probably another great reason not to eat them!
I wanna say that despite being extremely intelligent for a mollusk, they are not intelligent at all compared with other animals like dophins, whales, etc, that not only can communicate with each other, but also develop a culture in their groups.
Octopus are smart for what they are, but not smart enough to think of them as being superior to pigs or cows intelligence-wise.
Some people enjoy eating live baby octopuses. To me that is an odd delicacy -but then some Americans like shucking Oysters too, so I can't be critical.
On the context of ethics, oysters are probably the safest thing from the animal kingdom to eat. They’re really the closest thing we have to a meat based plant.
Many who consider themselves vegan have no issues wasting them.
I think you are ignoring the situation of a WIN-win relationship where one party is winning much more at the other party's expense. Just because it may be net positive for both countries that doesn't mean that it's a fair arrangement. The excuse that the smaller winner is still technically winning is not a good excuse against pushing for a more fair deal.
In what way was the US not the big winner already? Canada bought all sorts of military equipment from the US, followed 99.9% of US foreign policy, produced tons of raw materials for the US economy and freely traded it for finished goods and consumables, contributed to many US wars. Canada gave US priority in pretty much every international trade and political matter and even bandwagoned onto many US laws.
Literally the only losing move was to mess with our relations to them.
Be careful repeating slogans, in the long term they tend to blind the people that devised them to blind the mass. Self-delusion often ends in self-humiliation. The US is nothing without its partners, as the Iran fiasco has showed.
The Heritage Foundation's agenda is to isolate the USA and bring it back to the Gilded Age, which runs counter to the narrative of 'the greatest country on earth'. So far, the Heritage Foundation is making great progress with putting processes in motion that makes the downfall almost irreversible.
How is America going to project its power without the ability to use overseas air bases? Is it going to do Falklands-style bombing runs to the Middle East, with 15 tankers to get a single small bomber to its target?
Is it going to accept an even higher defense budget, without the NATO's near-compulsory purchases from American weapons manufacturers?
If America can barely keep a single aircraft carrier functioning in the Middle East, how is it going to wage a proper overseas war?
America's might comes from its giant network of overseas forward bases. Take those away, and you're left with a smaller variant of China.
america attracts the best talent, but that's also dependent in partners training experts and sending them to the US to make the largest best impact
china is already attracting its best talent back home, and nothing forces even american talent to stay in the US, when americans hate the smart and talented
Indeed. But you have to project power to enforce a rule-based order, free trade and all that. This made America wealthy while its allies financed (practically forced to) huge chunks of the military industrial complex.
With America isolated, the world becomes a 'might makes right' order. State level maffia. In that model, it is eating the other or getting eaten, zero sum. Now the extremist ideologists believe that in that order America will shine and will dominate everything in its sphere of influence, as will China do. That's why you keep hearing the claims on Greenland, Canada and South American countries. These aren't jokes, but when people cannot fit information in their frame of reference, they will put that information aside. A very human trait, but also a tragic weakness.
The conservative ideologues' thinking is that the USA will have local clashes with China over who will claim Africa's and Europe's resources. So no, it won't have to be a full out war, but lots of local wars around the world. If you want to have an idea where might makes right leads to, look at Russia which has been perpetually involved in colonial wars and wars of conquest.
You must have been living under a rock if you didn't notice how much did the US has thrived in the globalist world, and how much did it thrive more than the rest of its allies.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much. Please sit down.
It’s really great to see everybody on this beautiful, beautiful day in Washington, D.C. Some people say “the swamp,” but I will not say that today. (Laughter.) I refuse. This is too important, what we’re doing. One of the most important deals, and the most important trade deal we’ve ever made by far.
I want to thank Senator Joni Ernst for being here — Joni, thank you very much — of Iowa, and I’ll be there very soon. (Applause.) We’ll be doing something very important in Iowa. But this is maybe more important than all of it put together. Right, Joni? So I want to thank you for being here.
Congressman Holding, Congressman Roe, Congressman Newhouse, and Congressman Meadows, thank you all for being here. We very much appreciate it. You’ve been very instrumental. Thank you. (Applause.)
I am thrilled to speak to the American people to share truly historic news for our nation, and, indeed for the world. I want to thank Vice President Pence for joining us this morning. It is my great honor to announce that we have successfully completed negotiations on a brand new deal to terminate and replace NAFTA and the NAFTA trade agreements with an incredible new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, called “USMCA.” It, sort of, just works: USMCA. (Applause.)
USMCA. That’ll be the name, I guess, that, 99 percent of the time, we’ll be hearing: USMCA. It has a good ring to it.
I have long contended that NAFTA was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made. Since NAFTA’s adoption, the United States racked up trade deficits totaling more than $2 trillion — and it’s a much higher number than that — with Canada and Mexico. It lost vast amounts of money, and lost 4.1 million manufacturing jobs, and 1 in 4 auto jobs. Lost about 25 percent of our auto jobs — even more than that.
Throughout the campaign, I promised to renegotiate NAFTA, and today we have kept that promise. But, for 25 years, as a civilian, as a businessman, I used to say, “How could anybody have signed a deal like NAFTA?” And I watched New England, and so many other places where I was just — the factories were leaving, the jobs were leaving, people were being fired, and we can’t have that.
So we have negotiated this new agreement based on the principle of fairness and reciprocity. To me, it’s the most important word in trade because we’ve been treated so unfairly by so many nations all over the world. And we’re changing that.
We just signed a much better deal with South Korea. We had a horrible, horrible deal, and we just signed that at United Nations. And that’s worked out well. And they’re happy; we’re happy. It’s good for jobs. Good for a lot of things.
When that deal was signed, they said 250,000 jobs will be given be — by signing this transaction, and they were right. I’ve said it before. They were right: 250,000 jobs to South Korea, not to the United States. So that’s changed and very much for the better. And this one is a brand new deal.
The agreement will govern nearly $1.2 trillion in trade, which makes it the biggest trade deal in the United States’ history.
I want to congratulate U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer who has worked — nobody understands how hard he’s worked. (Applause.) No matter when you called him, he was in the office or he was in somebody else’s office doing the same thing. Bob Lighthizer is great; I’ve heard it for years. I said, “If I ever do this, I want to get Lighthizer to represent us,” because he felt the way I did.
And the entire team at the USTR, standing behind me, and some right here in the audience: I want to thank you all. Fantastic job. (Applause.) Peter Navarro, everybody. Thank you all. Thank you. Fantastic group of people. They love our country.
I also want to thank you Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross, Secretary Nielsen, Secretary Perdue, Jared Kushner, Peter Navarro, and United States Ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you. (Applause.)
I also want to thank President Peña Nieto of Mexico, who — we had a few disagreements, but I really like him a lot. I think he may like me, I’m not sure. (Laughter.) But I think he’s a terrific person. And he’ll be leaving soon, but he’s really done a good job and — a wonderful, wonderful person. And the Mexican President-elect López Obrador, who has given his support to this agreement, and we’re developing a really good relationship which I think is very important for our country, frankly, and for Mexico.
And so they worked together on this. This was done by both. I said, “Look, I don’t want to sign an agreement, and then a new President comes in, they don’t like it, and we have difficulty.” They worked very much together on it, and I appreciate it from both.
I have to, certainly, give my highest regards to Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. A lot of stories came out about Justin and I having difficulty together, and we did over the trade deal. But I’ll tell you, it’s turned out to be a very, very good deal for both; and a very, very good deal for all three. It puts us in a position that we’ve never been in before.
It’s very good when you look at the world and what the world is doing and what — when you look at the unfair trade practices that countries are using against the United States, this is a terrific deal for all of us.
Once approved by Congress, this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country, with the most advanced protections for workers ever developed.
If you look at the reviews, people that would normally not, under any circumstances, say good things — because automatically they have to say bad. Even some Democrats say, “That’s amazing.” We had some — they haven’t been given the soundbites yet, I guess, Mike. But actually, you had some Democrats say, “This is really amazing if he really got all of that.” But by tomorrow, I would suspect they’ll change their tune. But that’s okay, because people know how good it is. It’s an amazing deal for a lot of people.
Likewise, it will be the most advanced trade deal in the world with ambitious provisions on the digital economy; patents — very important; financial services; and other areas where the United States has a strong competitive advantage.
Mexico and Canada have agreed to strong new labor protections, environmental protections, and new protections for intellectual property. So important.
This new deal is an especially great victory for our farmers. Our farmers have gone through a lot over the last 15 years. They’ve been taken advantage of by everybody. Prices have gone way down. And we’re working on some other deals that are going to make them very happy also.
But this is a very, very big deal for our farmers. Mexico and Canada will be opened up a lot more than they are now. And I think there will be a better spirit between the three countries, which is important for our farmers.
The agreement will give our farmers and ranchers far greater access to sell American-grown produce in Mexico and in Canada.
The deal includes a substantial increase in our farmers’ opportunities...
It's absolutely fair to count how much lumber and oil and cars you're importing-exporting while ignoring how much services in technology, IT, space, software, cloud, finance, etc, you're exporting. /s
>I was watching something the other night that mentioned just how obsessed Manson was with the White album
IIRC Manson thought the song "Helter Skelter" referred to some sort of apocalypse. In fact, it is just a name for a children's helical slide that used to be popular in British fairgrounds!
I'm looking for a lightweight client-server database where I can connect 3 or 4 GUI clients to a single database and concurrently edit the database. Low transaction volumes (probably a few edits per minute). Would DuckDb + Quack be suitable?
Why not MySQL/MariaDB? DuckDB and Quack might be new and flashy, but sooner or later you will need things like connection pooling, data retention, backups, replication. In a real setup there is nothing lightweight about DuckDB as it will have to answer the same issues other DB-s do.
If you want to go with something less mainstream, why not trying Firebird DB, a very solid solution.
People who try to become vegetarians because they think they should rarely last. You need to want to. (context: vegetarian for 40 years, apart from the occasional bit of white fish).
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