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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • There are additional details from ammoland.com (emphasis from source article):

    Mr. Soukaneh claims that Officer Andrzejewski demanded that he tell the officer where the prostitute and drugs were located. The officer searched Soukaneh pulled out pills from the man’s pocket. The officer thought he found illicit drugs. In reality, what the officer discovered was Soukaneh’s nitroglycerin pills for his heart condition. In addition to the heart medication, the officer seized the $320 in cash plus a flash drive that contained pictures and videos of Soukaneh’s deceased father. Neither the flash drive nor the money was returned to Soukaneh.

    They also mention that the cops DID run a check on the gun permit before figuring out how to write Soukaneh up.

    Officer Andrzejewski ran Soukaneh’s gun permit and found it to be valid. Shortly after, another officer and a sergeant arrived on the scene. Andrzejewski asked the two what he should “write him up for.” The sergeant told Andrzejewski what to write into the computer system.

    Note, however, that the PDF of the ruling linked by techdirt has a footnote on page 6 saying, "It is unclear from the record when Andrzejewski determined that Soukaneh held a valid firearms license, and whether that determination occurred before, after, or during Andrzejewski’s search of Soukaneh’s car. Andrzejewski does not specify whether he ran the check on the firearm license before or after he searched Soukaneh’s vehicle. "

    Of course, the medication, cash and flash drive were all found through an illegal search of the car, so that whole chunk is somewhat irrelevant, and thankfully, it looks like the lawyers all knew that because the PDF suggests it was only the cop who suggested a legal gun was probable cause to search the car.

    So Soukaneh is suing the cop. It has now gone through two courts. Per the Techdirt piece:

    Unsurprisingly, the lower court rejected the officer’s request for immunity, pointing out that while the initial encounter may have been justified, nothing that followed that (pulling Soukaneh from the car, handcuffing him, searching his vehicle, detaining him for another half-hour while trying to figure out what to cite him with) was supported by probable cause.

    The Second Circuit comes to the same conclusion. Simply being made aware Soukaneh possessed an item millions of Americans also own legally is not probable cause for anything the officer did past that point.


  • As I recall, it wasn’t just hot food, but any food meant to be consumed on the premises, such as fountain sodas instead of canned ones. I remember a talking point about that being would get more nutritious and cheaper food buying a bag of rice and dried beans than it would for them to buy pre-made burritos, chili or whatever.






  • Wow, that’s a long read, and IMO, it misses a key point. Namely: similar to plastic industries spending tons of money to convince us that recycling is an individual problem and responsibility (despite the fact that most plastic can’t be effectively recycled), this article mostly frames Climate Change as an individual responsibility to stop eating meat and dairy. Thankfully, at the very end, it gets to a better solution, which is to stop spending our tax dollars on subsidies to harmful agro-businesses.

    The start-point, however, is that Big Farming has co-opted natural conservation groups by giving them cash to join ‘mitigation’ groups that are “Greenwashing” the subject such that no one talks about real solutions (such as making meat more expensive). Have a bunch of quotes:

    So the meat industry did what other industries have done under similar pressure in the past: demonstrate that it could change just enough to avoid being forced to change even more by the government.

    In fact, that inaugural conference in 2010 was officially titled the World Wildlife Fund Global Conference on Sustainable Beef. (WWF has helped to found similar industry roundtables for poultry and soy — most of which is fed to farmed animals — and a certification program for seafood.)

    For its collaboration, McDonald’s makes sure WWF is well compensated; from 2015 to 2022, the company donated $4.5 to $9 million to WWF-US.

    WWF is hardly alone. Two of the other largest US environmental organizations — the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) — also closely collaborate with large meat and dairy companies, ranchers, and trade groups on a range of initiatives. But outside observers, along with some former and current employees at EDF and WWF, argue that those initiatives often do more to improve the companies’ image than the environment.

    Last year, Tyson Foods — America’s largest meat processor — began selling beef marketed as “climate-friendly.” The company claims that by getting some of its suppliers to graze their cattle and grow the animals’ feed crops in a more sustainable manner, it’s reduced the carbon footprint of some of its beef by 10 percent.

    But Tyson has repeatedly declined to share data with Vox and other news outlets that could prove its claim.

    Beef is the worst food for the climate. Got it. Sadly, plant-based meat substitutes are losing market share (see graph p. 36 of Good Food Institute PDF). Personally, I like fake meat and it happens that tonight we’re having Beyond Burgers for dinner (sorry for the product plug, but they work for me – though I know some people prefer Impossible or other brands, and some people don’t like any of them).

    Using global averages, beef’s carbon footprint per 100 grams of protein is about 7 times that of pork, 9 times that of poultry, 25 times that of tofu and plant-based meat, and more than 60 times that of beans and lentils.

    I was interested in the benefits of regenerative farming being very questionable, and any stats should be viewed suspiciously unless/until we have a verifiable measuring standard AND see data over the span of years per given acreage – because any increase in carbon capture is likely to fall off over time.

    The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that the world needs negative emissions technologies — approaches that can pull carbon out of the atmosphere, as regenerative agriculture supposedly does — to avoid catastrophic global warming. But the research doesn’t bear out the claims many of regenerative agriculture’s proponents make, as there’s still significant doubt and uncertainty around the potential for farmland to store a lot of carbon.

    “The science is clear that, while some mitigation can be achieved by improving meat and dairy production, climate-neutral or zero-emissions meat and dairy is not a possibility in the foreseeable future,” said Hayek, the New York University environmental studies professor, speaking about net-zero claims in animal agriculture broadly, not the WWF report specifically.

    EDF and the Nature Conservancy are also founding members of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, a coalition of meat, dairy, and agricultural trade groups, many of which lobby aggressively to block environmental policy. But the alliance is a vehicle for their other goal on Capitol Hill: ramping up subsidies for regenerative agriculture and technological solutions. It’s similar to how the fossil fuel industry lobbies to both block climate regulations and subsidize carbon capture.

    Money shuts up the World Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club, and so on.

    “If you can’t get the Sierra Club to [support a methane tax], how the fuck are you going to get anyone else in society to do that?”

    Some politicians paint calls to stop pollution from factory farms and eat more plant-based meals as anti-farmer, a potent charge given both farming’s close association with America’s national mythos and the disproportionate political power that rural states hold.

    If we can’t change ourselves in the environmental community, then how would we expect to change the general population?”

    Many environmentalists have come to criticize individual action as ineffectual and naive. The burden to mitigate climate change and pollution falls on politicians and corporations, they argue, not the average person.

    I agree with the last bit, but realize that at least a third of the U.S. will remove any politician painted as ‘anti-meat’. That is, a politician might try to argue that our tax dollars shouldn’t give hand-outs to Tyson or the like, but the attack ads against will say, “He wants you to stop eating meat, so he’s working to bankrupt our ranchers.”

    The idea that environmentalists shouldn’t try to influence how people eat “is a win for industry … It’s their script,” said Jacquet, the University of Miami professor. Environmentalists who repeat this, she added, have “become sock puppets for industry, and they don’t even mean to be.”

    Well, the public IS hearing that message from various places despite the fact that it’s a message too many people are unwilling to hear. I don’t require Environmental groups to be in-your-face about it. Let the data speak for itself.

    A 2023 analysis published in the journal One Earth found that, from 2014 to 2020, the US meat industry received about 800 times more government funding than did meat and dairy alternatives.

    A lot can be done to tip the scale in the other direction, and in ways unlikely to spur political backlash.

    I didn’t find the examples they list to be very encouraging, but they do exist. They describe how Denmark is doing some neat stuff.

    “It needs to be a political liability to choose false solutions over effective climate policies,” said Jennifer Molidor, a senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

    That’s the hard part! :-) Near the end there are some examples of where stuff is working and suggests a public awareness campaign would help. No more pictures of happy cows on green grass, but instead images of the barren land of holding pens stretching out in all directions. Show people the reality instead of the mythos and ask them to make it an issue with their local politicians.


  • ducks will focus less on your hard work and more on the bugs

    I wish someone had told my ducks that! They ate most of my garden. We had to fence it in to keep the ducks out. They even killed off the stuff they didn’t want – like strawberries – if it came up early in the spring and offered the possibility of being a tasty green.
    A tiny bit of green would emerge and they'd be all: Duck#1: (bites plant) Ew! Duck#2: (bites plant) Yuk! Duck#3: (bites plant) Bleah! Duck#4: What were you guys eating? I want some. This would repeat each day for several days until spring brought everything to life.


  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoVegan@slrpnk.netGo-To Foods?
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    3 months ago

    I, too, wondered what the spices should be and found two potential answers.

    This recipe is very like yours but instead of zaatar, the author lists “seven spices” plus extra cumin.

    This cook insists Mujadara, should be plain/unspiced, but recognizes variations may use ‘seven spices’, and has a 7-spices recipe if you don’t have a store that sells it pre-made. Note that I have not tried any recipe on this site, but it IS Vegan. I am a bit suspicious because its hummus recipes use CANNED chickpeas. That seems extremely wrong and inauthentic. On one of the the text-walls they do say that boiling dried beans is better, but then don’t list that as a recipe version. It makes me wonder what else they are leaving out and not explaining.











  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoScience Memes@mander.xyzBooper 2 Pooper
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    3 months ago

    I’m also not an expert, but that was my thought, too.

    More than that, even if a tail is undamaged, including it is not giving useful imformation because tail size can vary out of proportion to the main body and is pretty standard for other animals as well. For example, no one is measuring a horse to include the tail length, nor a dog, cat, and generally not a bird, either.

    That said, I expect an news story about alligators on the golf course or catching invasive snakes to measure the whole body for the NEWS story and let the experts worry about the booper2pooper length in their own space.


  • Honestly, I would rather she flip on this issue than have her replace Lina Khan as the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.

    Why is Harris flipping? To pick up swing voters. Senator Fetterman (D-PA) did the same thing to get elected in that important swing state. I remember seeing his debate against a carpetbagging Dr. Oz and despite being barely coherent after his stroke, Fetterman made the point repeatedly that he supported fracking. And he won.

    As of 2021, the last time a major poll was conducted, not only did a majority of Pennsylvanians want to see more regulation of the fracking industry, but a majority actually wanted to “end” fracking in the state (25 percent wanted it done “as soon as possible,” and 30 percent favored a gradual transition).

    So why is Harris reversing her position on fracking if Pennsylvanians want it gone? One reason may be that many of the voters who oppose fracking (for example: the 79 percent of Democrats who want fracking to end) will vote for her either way. The people the party is anxious about winning, on the other hand, might be the ones who’d be turned off by a proposed ban. For example, 43 percent of independents in the 2021 poll said fracking should not end or be phased out.

    I think there’s more to it than that. Republicans are going to run ads saying she’s against it so her team will want to say those ads are lies, so they can’t be trusted on anything. That is: flipping position on one issue lets her discount multi-vector attacks on many things.

    More than that, she’s better be using this as a way to get money for her campaign. It would almost be a shame if she didn’t at least get support from Big Oil for flipping.

    Why would this matter less than the FTC chair? Because Harris is getting monied pressure to replace Khan and Khan is doing an amazing job and getting actual change whereas it is unlikely that an anti-fracking stance would change anything. Given the current members of Congress, they are not going to ban or limit fracking right now, so Harris isn’t going to get that sort of law through. More importantly, the Supreme Court royally screwed us over last month by reversing the Chevron Doctrine so the EPA is hamstrung until/unless Chevron is restored OR congress writes new protection laws – and that’s not going to happen with this Congress, either. That means any Executive order on cleaning up fracking won’t work because the enforcement agencies are now toothless.

    It sucks, but I understand the decision.