Compulsory Voting

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, it depends on what definition of "edible" we are using. Is wild maize edible? I think wild maize is usually considered edible. And it's even more cellulose-rich than the old varieties of maize that farmed animals eat. You do realize that, back in 18th century, humans were eating those old varieties of maize, just like farmed animals, right? And even if we consider those old varieties of maize to be inedible by humans, that maize still has to be grown somewhere... on a land on which new varieties of maize, which contain little cellulose and which people today usually eat, can be grown.

Good god, if you' want to argue the merits of eating animal feed, knock yourself out.  You can have it all.  

Well, grass-fed cows are less of the two evils, but they are still an evil. They emit a lot of methane, and they really require a lot of grass. So much so that grass-fed cows are the biggest reason for deforestation today. And one of the reasons why there is less deforestation now when there are fewer grass-fed cows than a century ago. There are more trees now that we switched from grass-fed to grain-fed cows.

Two more instances of misattributed causation.  Though it is a good use of land from an extraction perspective.  Cattle are a value add (or the lease income for the new "pasture" is - don't even get me started on how deeply interwoven ag and ag speculation is with the global laundromat).  Right behind that, are soy and palm oil.  Behind them, biomass production.  At least with respect to deforestation.  We make all sorts of compromises.  No such thing as a free lunch.  OFC, I personally wouldn't advocate for any extraction model.  Kind of defeats the point of regenerative agriculture, eh?

How exactly? That seems to contradict basic biology. How could trace amounts of antibiotics in food lead to antibiotic resistance? Antibiotics do nothing if they are in trace amounts. You need large amounts of antibiotics to kill non-resistant bacteria and to trigger natural selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It would seem to contradict basic biology because you don't have a working grasp of basic biology.  That's how..exactly.  Sufficeth to say, trace amounts of antibiotics in billions of tons of product would do very little to help you with your infection - but it could harbor a great deal of antibiotic resistance. Google it, let wonder lead you to knowledge. This is why those strong regulations, which to you seemed not to exist, do exist.

I want to make sure I put a fine underline on something. It doesn't actually matter whether or not you know a goddamned thing about ag, with respect to whether or not compelling you to vote for something you think is abhorrent might be a bad idea. You could have the most ignorant and uninformed position on the face of this planet, and you're probably at least in the running for that - and it could be just as bad and for all the same reasons to compel you to support something as it would be for a person with even the slightest amount of interest and information on a subject.

[FlatAssembler]

Well, it depends on what definition of "edible" we are using. Is wild maize edible? I think wild maize is usually considered edible. And it's even more cellulose-rich than the old varieties of maize that farmed animals eat. You do realize that, back in 18th century, humans were eating those old varieties of maize, just like farmed animals, right? And even if we consider those old varieties of maize to be inedible by humans, that maize still has to be grown somewhere... on a land on which new varieties of maize, which contain little cellulose and which people today usually eat, can be grown.

Good god, if you' want to argue the merits of eating animal feed, knock yourself out.  You can have it all.  

Well, grass-fed cows are less of the two evils, but they are still an evil. They emit a lot of methane, and they really require a lot of grass. So much so that grass-fed cows are the biggest reason for deforestation today. And one of the reasons why there is less deforestation now when there are fewer grass-fed cows than a century ago. There are more trees now that we switched from grass-fed to grain-fed cows.

Two more instances of misattributed causation.  Though it is a good use of land from an extraction perspective.  Cattle are a value add (or the lease income for the new "pasture" is - don't even get me started on how deeply interwoven ag and ag speculation is with the global laundromat).  Right behind that, are soy and palm oil.  Behind them, biomass production.  At least with respect to deforestation.  We make all sorts of compromises.  No such thing as a free lunch.  OFC, I personally wouldn't advocate for any extraction model.  Kind of defeats the point of regenerative agriculture, eh?

How exactly? That seems to contradict basic biology. How could trace amounts of antibiotics in food lead to antibiotic resistance? Antibiotics do nothing if they are in trace amounts. You need large amounts of antibiotics to kill non-resistant bacteria and to trigger natural selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It would seem to contradict basic biology because you don't have a working grasp of basic biology.  That's how..exactly.  Sufficeth to say, trace amounts of antibiotics in billions of tons of product would do very little to help you with your infection - but it could harbor a great deal of antibiotic resistance.  Google it, let wonder lead you to knowledge.  This is why those strong regulations, which to you seemed not to exist, do exist.

I want to make sure I put a fine underline on something.  It doesn't actually matter whether or not you know a goddamned thing about ag, with respect to whether or not compelling you to vote for something you think is abhorrent might be a bad idea.  You could have the most ignorant and uninformed position on the face of this planet, and you're probably at least in the running for that - and it could be just as bad and for all the same reasons to compel you to support something as it would be for a person with even the slightest amount of interest and information on a subject.

Do you have any remotely-reliable source that is claiming that use of antibiotics in plant agriculture is the biggest driver of antibiotic resistance in humans? As far as I understand it, it should have no effect, as no bacteria attack both plants and humans. Even if it does have some effect (by some mechanism that escapes me), it is very little, as only around 0.5% of antibiotics go to plants. To me it seems like you are bombarding me with controversial-at-best claims I cannot evaluate. Present your claims in a form that can be evaluated!

[FlatAssembler]

I used to be a Flat-Earther once, because I was bombarded with controversial statements I did not know how to evaluate ("Horizon is always at your eye-level, it does not fall as you climb."...). I am not falling into the same trap again.
The mechanism by which egg industry could lead to antibiotic resistance is obvious: that's where most of the antibiotics today go, and quite a few bacteria attack both chickens and humans. It's not at all obvious how could trace amounts of antibiotics in milk or plant food lead to antibiotic resistance. Especially plant food, since no bacteria attacks both plants and humans.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Well, it depends on what definition of "edible" we are using. Is wild maize edible? I think wild maize is usually considered edible. And it's even more cellulose-rich than the old varieties of maize that farmed animals eat. You do realize that, back in 18th century, humans were eating those old varieties of maize, just like farmed animals, right? And even if we consider those old varieties of maize to be inedible by humans, that maize still has to be grown somewhere... on a land on which new varieties of maize, which contain little cellulose and which people today usually eat, can be grown.

Good god, if you' want to argue the merits of eating animal feed, knock yourself out.  You can have it all.  

Well, grass-fed cows are less of the two evils, but they are still an evil. They emit a lot of methane, and they really require a lot of grass. So much so that grass-fed cows are the biggest reason for deforestation today. And one of the reasons why there is less deforestation now when there are fewer grass-fed cows than a century ago. There are more trees now that we switched from grass-fed to grain-fed cows.

Two more instances of misattributed causation.  Though it is a good use of land from an extraction perspective.  Cattle are a value add (or the lease income for the new "pasture" is - don't even get me started on how deeply interwoven ag and ag speculation is with the global laundromat).  Right behind that, are soy and palm oil.  Behind them, biomass production.  At least with respect to deforestation.  We make all sorts of compromises.  No such thing as a free lunch.  OFC, I personally wouldn't advocate for any extraction model.  Kind of defeats the point of regenerative agriculture, eh?

How exactly? That seems to contradict basic biology. How could trace amounts of antibiotics in food lead to antibiotic resistance? Antibiotics do nothing if they are in trace amounts. You need large amounts of antibiotics to kill non-resistant bacteria and to trigger natural selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It would seem to contradict basic biology because you don't have a working grasp of basic biology.  That's how..exactly.  Sufficeth to say, trace amounts of antibiotics in billions of tons of product would do very little to help you with your infection - but it could harbor a great deal of antibiotic resistance.  Google it, let wonder lead you to knowledge.  This is why those strong regulations, which to you seemed not to exist, do exist.

I want to make sure I put a fine underline on something.  It doesn't actually matter whether or not you know a goddamned thing about ag, with respect to whether or not compelling you to vote for something you think is abhorrent might be a bad idea.  You could have the most ignorant and uninformed position on the face of this planet, and you're probably at least in the running for that - and it could be just as bad and for all the same reasons to compel you to support something as it would be for a person with even the slightest amount of interest and information on a subject.

Your patience in dealing with this ignorant clown is praiseworthy 

[FlatAssembler]

Good god, if you' want to argue the merits of eating animal feed, knock yourself out.  You can have it all.  

Two more instances of misattributed causation.  Though it is a good use of land from an extraction perspective.  Cattle are a value add (or the lease income for the new "pasture" is - don't even get me started on how deeply interwoven ag and ag speculation is with the global laundromat).  Right behind that, are soy and palm oil.  Behind them, biomass production.  At least with respect to deforestation.  We make all sorts of compromises.  No such thing as a free lunch.  OFC, I personally wouldn't advocate for any extraction model.  Kind of defeats the point of regenerative agriculture, eh?
It would seem to contradict basic biology because you don't have a working grasp of basic biology.  That's how..exactly.  Sufficeth to say, trace amounts of antibiotics in billions of tons of product would do very little to help you with your infection - but it could harbor a great deal of antibiotic resistance.  Google it, let wonder lead you to knowledge.  This is why those strong regulations, which to you seemed not to exist, do exist.

I want to make sure I put a fine underline on something.  It doesn't actually matter whether or not you know a goddamned thing about ag, with respect to whether or not compelling you to vote for something you think is abhorrent might be a bad idea.  You could have the most ignorant and uninformed position on the face of this planet, and you're probably at least in the running for that - and it could be just as bad and for all the same reasons to compel you to support something as it would be for a person with even the slightest amount of interest and information on a subject.

Your patience in dealing with this ignorant clown is praiseworthy 

And what have you accomplished in life so that you have a right to call me an "ignorant clown"? I have accomplished quite a few things I am proud of. Like the 5'500-lines-of-code compiler for my programming language or my 3'500-lines-of-code PicoBlaze simulator. Or my papers in social sciences, like my most recent paper combining informatics and linguistics, applying informatics to the names of places in Croatia, which may be the only paper in the field that is using the scientific method.

[The Architect Of Fate]

[FlatAssembler]

In other words, you have accomplished nothing important in your life, yet you dare calling others "ignorant clowns". I think that one who hasn't published any papers in social sciences should not have the right to talk about politics.

[Angrboda]

In other words, you have accomplished nothing important in your life, yet you dare calling others "ignorant clowns". I think that one who hasn't published any papers in social sciences should not have the right to talk about politics.

Your opinion is noted.

[The Architect Of Fate]

In other words, you have accomplished nothing important in your life, yet you dare calling others "ignorant clowns".

 You clearly didn't read the quote or were too dense to understand it further proving you are an ignorant clown... 

I think that one who hasn't published any papers in social sciences should not have the right to talk about politics.

Actually, they have as much right as anyone and this opinion further proves you are an ignorant clown...



Now, any other incredibly ignorant things you want to say, or has my quote penetrated your dense skull ?...

[The Grand Nudger]

Good god, if you' want to argue the merits of eating animal feed, knock yourself out.  You can have it all.  

Two more instances of misattributed causation.  Though it is a good use of land from an extraction perspective.  Cattle are a value add (or the lease income for the new "pasture" is - don't even get me started on how deeply interwoven ag and ag speculation is with the global laundromat).  Right behind that, are soy and palm oil.  Behind them, biomass production.  At least with respect to deforestation.  We make all sorts of compromises.  No such thing as a free lunch.  OFC, I personally wouldn't advocate for any extraction model.  Kind of defeats the point of regenerative agriculture, eh?
It would seem to contradict basic biology because you don't have a working grasp of basic biology.  That's how..exactly.  Sufficeth to say, trace amounts of antibiotics in billions of tons of product would do very little to help you with your infection - but it could harbor a great deal of antibiotic resistance.  Google it, let wonder lead you to knowledge.  This is why those strong regulations, which to you seemed not to exist, do exist.

I want to make sure I put a fine underline on something.  It doesn't actually matter whether or not you know a goddamned thing about ag, with respect to whether or not compelling you to vote for something you think is abhorrent might be a bad idea.  You could have the most ignorant and uninformed position on the face of this planet, and you're probably at least in the running for that - and it could be just as bad and for all the same reasons to compel you to support something as it would be for a person with even the slightest amount of interest and information on a subject.

Do you have any remotely-reliable source that is claiming that use of antibiotics in plant agriculture is the biggest driver of antibiotic resistance in humans? As far as I understand it, it should have no effect, as no bacteria attack both plants and humans. Even if it does have some effect (by some mechanism that escapes me), it is very little, as only around 0.5% of antibiotics go to plants. To me it seems like you are bombarding me with controversial-at-best claims I cannot evaluate. Present your claims in a form that can be evaluated!

Any of this information is readily accessible.  Just shamble on over to the USDA my dude.  In the meantime, just as a single example, salmonella is the most prevalent bacterial issue in us food production specifically with respect to human beings.  It can infect plants or animals, or be carried on them, or be present in the soil, or be present in plant and animal products, and also in processed products, or be transferred by improper handling or incidental contact between products of any kind.  It cycles and re-cycles through our food system, as can trace levels of antibiotics.  

We apply antibiotics to the soil (same reason as livestock - increased growth rates), and antibiotics naturaly exist in all soils regardless of whether animals are grazed on them.  Some of whatever is grown goes to store shelves fresh some processed, some of it goes to animal feed.  The animals are also fed antibiotics.  Then some of that goes to store shelves, some of it goes back into the soil, and some of it is made into yet more animal feed.  Human waste is also recycled, and often enough, it ends up in a recovered water system which is then (supposed) to be used for things like lawns and industrial apps - but just as often ends up on home gardens or grazing pastures.  All of this creates what we call potential amr reservoirs.  Not just at point of sale, but environmentally.  It's much more difficult to track environmental reservoirs, and the potential buildup is orders of magnitude greater because of this and their comparative size.  To put it simply, there is more undeveloped land, and farmland, and agricultural product than there are human beings - and so, as a reservoir, we're relatively small.  

You can imagine the consequences of interplay between salmonella and amr reservoirs, I'm sure.  It would be myopic to stop there, though.  Microbes don't have to harm humans directly to harm humans effectively.  They can do so by harming our ability to produce.  Starving and impoverishing us by proxy - by decimating those things we rely on.  Most of the things the USDA tracks don't have anything to do with antibiotic resistance in humans.  That would be an issue for another US agency - particularly one that determines the prudence of antibiotic delivery to humans...and, frankly, the USDA has it's hands full with the control and testing regime on specific products and broader environmental amr.  

...but, again, the fact that you're an ignorant clown when it comes to ag, doesn't mean that you wouldn't have a point when it came to compulsory voting and any of the many ways that a person would be (or would need to be) compelled to vote for any itme on a list of exclusively unacceptible options.  It doesn't matter, to the question of speech and agency, whether your opinion is well informed or not - only that it is yours, and you are ostensibly free to hold it, and ostensibly free to act on it as in a vote-for or a refusal to vote-for.  I'd suggest..strongly suggest, you take it back to that place, as you're stuck on some anchored bias from whatever nutballs told you meat was murder - insisting that an ag researcher giving you the official line on items x is making controversial claims, that you suspect may be untrue.

: shrug :

To be completely honest, I'm used to it. There's alot of the same behavior in rural ag (which is part of the problem, ironically). We get guys who argue against a uv water treatment column or an open source REI app for their smartphones, for example, even though it's courtesy of the land grant program and installed by and maintained by us. They don't see why they need it and it feels like an accusation and they're sure somebody else is a bigger part of the problem.....and just maybe, there's a little bit of fear in the idea of us using this access, catching them doing something even they know they shouldn't be doing - so I get it (even though we're not the fucking plant cops, sigh). Similar to your reaction, after accusing others vis-a-vis their dietary or career decisions of x, to learning that it is in fact plant production that yields the most actual x and potential x. The long and short of it is that government (or..at least some governments, who knows what they do or don't do where you are) are keenly aware of the issue and there are laws, and we do have programs, and there are facilities... all over the us.... dedicated to it. They've identified the biggest contributors in our system, and they monitor them aggressively - but even so, much of it is actually or practically unregulatable...so life slips through the cracks. As with so many other things, when you really get into the nuts and bolts of studying them - it's not what you think it is. It's not what would be intuitive to you, particularly in light of the contents of your own specific mind. Certainly wasn't to me - I came into it with alot of misconceptions myself. This a correctable problem, and a you problem. Not other peoples problem, or a problem with production models or regulations schemes. You've been misinformed for effect - and it's those peoples right to do that to you, as well, and I could not elect to vote for any scheme that would deprive them of their ability to persuade you by hook or by crook. Underneath it all, I'm actually pretty happy you've given any thought to what you eat in the first place.

I think..when it comes to ag, when it comes to food, there are competing aspects of reality involved in whatever position we eventually arrive at. That in these cases, strong ideological positions (not necessarily factual positions, mind you) can tip the balance towards one outcome or another - but there is a practical aspect of food production that cannot be zeroed out in mere reality as it might be in a thought experiment..and these latter concerns are what drives competent and prudent policy. If we're not invested in those latter concerns, then their factuality (nor realizing that we have been misinformed) is likely to affect our opinion of the matter, because arguments over facts were irrelevant in the first place. For example, when a person says that they became a vegetarian or vegan because they thought it killed fewer animals, and killing animals is bad. It's the whole "killing animals is bad" thing that motivates. You can explain to them that on farm death is the tip of the iceberg, and that absent livestock on and off farm death must increase as a necessity of sourcing fertility, and even that armed conflict between human beings is a consequence of pulling animals out of the loop. This will fall off of them like so much (contaminated)water, because it's just a misunderstanding about what killed the most animals (humans not considered, lol) - not an argument against or a rejection of the notion that killing animals is bad - and they know they can prevent personal or private culpability for at least one animal by not eating the damned thing. No other concern, no matter how well demonstrated or how (seemingly) pressing, need apply. Ultimately, I think you should be the one in charge of what you put into your body - and as above, I would not elect to vote for any scheme to the contrary, nor would I feel that your rights were being respected if you were made to cast a compulsory vote between one or more policies that amounted to the abuse or exploitation of livestock. In fact, on a practical note, I think you should do a deep dive on how the things you do eat are produced, and whether or not they meet whatever standards your position entails or implies, in reality..as opposed to what you might intuitively believe. You may be surprised and/or appalled, and the information could be useful to you in aligning your purchasing habits to your principles, which is a far better use of said principles than trying to argue about ag, with me.