guangming

Had a book assigned for history class that totally and forever changed my understanding of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World I think it's called.

Dude and his empire basically singlehandedly spread the written word, religious freedom, and lots of other ideas we generally consider good today. Not saying he didn't kill a lot, because he did, but his historical impact is much more complex than "barbarian invader kills a bunch of people"

Look into housing co-ops! They're basically this and there are already (kind of) a ton of them around!

I've been in one for a couple years now and it's going pretty well.

Capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth ever created

I feel like when making that "calculation", you've forgotten to figure in the complete and utter destruction of the biosphere, the impending losses due to climate change, the cost in human lives and well-being and dignity of enslavement, exploitation, and so on.

the cognitive dissonance is astounding

this had me actually cackling for a minute, thanks for sharing

There are 1.9 BILLION Muslims globally.

You think the vast majority of them are fundamentalists?

For interesting, well-written, and in-depth articles I recommend:

The New Yorker Harper's (not Harper's Bazaar) The Atlantic New York Times Magazine

I've been using Notally for a while and I think it checks all your boxes.

I don't get why you'd think it would be censored? If anything the movie skewers US capitalism, so the CCP would probably be happy for folks to see it.

I believe both of these questions have been thoroughly answered by the scientific community.

You're right that meat is more nutrient dense than plants. But if we were to replace meat production with crop production for human consumption at scale, we would be averaging far more (I think on the order of 10x) human calories per acre.

When you replace a beef farm with vegan food production, you're not just planting crops on the beef farm. Each of those cows eats for years--crops that humans generally wouldn't eat grown on other farms specifically as livestock feed. You need much, much more land and resources to produce 100 calories of meat than you do to produce 100 calories of vegetables.

I'm a gig worker who delivers food to people.

I almost went into CS and consider myself fairly well-educated, so I think although I'm not in tech I share a slightly similar background and sensibilities with Lemmy folks. I just got on here a couple days ago and it kinda reminds me of reddit back when I joined (hopefully minus the racism and spez's favorite subreddit)

Factory farming IS killing for pleasure.

Livestock animals are killed for their meat. Something close to 80 billion mostly chickens, pigs, and cows, all of whom have been shown in lab experiments to be surprisingly aware, intelligent, and social. The vast majority of these animals also spend most of their lives in a living hell.

Why are they killed? It is not because it is nutritionally necessary to do so. It would be vastly more efficient to use land and resources to grow crops for human consumption than for livestock and their feed. Doing so would vastly increase the amount of available food supply, drastically reduce emissions, and reduce the suffering of hundreds of billions of living, feeling creatures (trillions over just the next 15-20 years).

They are killed because humans have a gustatory and cultural preference to eat meat. Although meat is often healthy, western diets especially often over-include it, and meat is not nutritionally essential for health.

I am not advocating for literally all human beings to become vegetarian or vegan with no exceptions ever. In fact, the use of some amount of livestock is necessary for maximally sustainable food systems. However, we could drastically (something around 95% globally, maybe more) reduce the amount of meat we consume and ensure that livestock are treated humanely, and it would be objectively better in the long run for humanity and for the planet.