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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Curing (removing moisture from food by means of salt) is a distinct process from smoking (adding smoke to food as well as removing moisture via heat). Curing with nitrite and nitrate based salts (sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite) is what’s been implicated in cancer.

    Smoking meat is much more complicated from a chemistry perspective. Different types of wood, different temperatures, moisture content, salt content, and cooking durations can all affect the concentrations of carcinogenic compounds in the food. For example, softwoods (such as pine) tend to produce a lot of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known class of carcinogens, but thankfully softwood is undesirable as a smoke wood anyway so is rarely used.

    Smoking technique can also dramatically affect the result. Poor smoking technique allows the wood to smoulder at a lower temperature, producing a harsher smoke with more carcinogenic, toxic, and bitter compounds. Expert smoking technique uses a smaller, hotter fire which produces a much cleaner smoke that also results in better flavour.





  • Yes, it is a choice. However one of the biggest problems is that so many of the good choices are gone. I’m talking about the positive social institutions and community organizations people used to belong to. The third spaces.

    Communities have fragmented. Neighbours hate each other. Both of my neighbours hate our family. One is a childless, alcoholic husband and wife who also hate each other (they used to be nice years ago) who also hate us and give us creepy looks all the time. The other is green lawn-obsessed neighbour who hates us for the pine trees we have growing on our property and refuse to cut down (at our own expense) to suit their tastes.

    We’re a society of severely mentally ill, isolated, confused, and angry people. Our villages and communities are all gone. We’re all a bunch of islands unto ourselves.



  • I wouldn’t even go as far as to group people into tolerant vs intolerant binaries. Everyone is intolerant about something. Everyone has boundaries. You wouldn’t just let someone walk into your house and start using your toothbrush. But that’s not very controversial!

    One of the biggest issues with tolerance vs intolerance debates is the unequal burden of tolerance. When it comes to housing, this is reflected in the classic NIMBY vs YIMBY debates. Many many people complain about NIMBYs but are actually NIMBYs themselves: they just want someone else to bear the burden. For example, they may be pro-early-release for a sex offender while not wanting that sex offender to live in their neighbourhood.

    This applies to all kinds of issues. People may be pro-immigration but are they pro-giving-up-their-job to a (lower paid) immigrant? Probably not.

    We as a society were much more tolerant and welcoming towards immigrants before we put all of our social welfare programs in place. In a society with no minimum wage, no social programs, and few/no regulations to limit housing development, there is no cost to immigration because immigrants have to claw their way up from the very bottom. That was how the big cities in Canada and the U.S. were built: by immigrants who choose to come here (fleeing brutal oppression and lack of opportunity) and make their own fortunes.





  • Nothing like Prince of Persia. Has that overwrought modern platformer control scheme (with a zillion different things you can do in the air) that every single other modern platformer has. No thanks!

    Anyone know of any modern platformer games without all that nonsense? The idea is to feel more like a human who actually needs to think before jumping. I want to feel the weight of my character, feel a strong sense of momentum, and be fully committed to jumps. Air jumps and mid-air momentum control are not my style.







  • The original comment was “insects are not meat.” That’s it! That’s the whole claim you’re trying to defend. It’s like saying “chickens are not meat.” So they’re vegetables then?! It’s a ridiculous claim!

    There are different senses (or uses) of the word meat. One sense, the narrowest one which butchers use when they talk about separating whole muscle from skin, bones, and other tissues, is the one which you are insisting is the only true definition. Another sense, the broader dietary one, classifies any product or byproduct from an animal as meat, including the whole unprocessed carcass.

    Since the original claim was simply the unqualified statement “insects are not meat”, I am claiming the freedom to use the broader dietary sense of the word to show how ridiculous that statement is. You, by your insistence on the narrower sense of the word, are the one being pedantic.


  • If I buy a whole chicken at the grocery store, I buy it in the meat section. No one would say “you’re buying a whole chicken, therefore you’re not buying meat.”

    With lobster you can extract the meat and eat it. You can also boil the empty shell to make a lobster stock as a base for a seafood soup or a pan sauce. Just as with chicken you don’t eat the bones but you can boil them to make stocks for soup or pan sauces. They’re still classified as meat and the products you make from them are considered meat products.