Some nerd shit

Chimps are much admired for their tool use and for their problem-solving relationship with things as they find them...the orang is, let us say, not so replete with enterprise. Give an orangutan the hexagonal peg and the several shapes of hole, and then hide behind the two-way mirror and watch how he engages with the problem.

And watch and watch and watch--because he does not engage with the problem. He uses the peg to scratch his back, has a look-see at his right wrist, makes a half-hearted and soon abandoned attempt to use his fur as a macramé project, stares dreamily out the window if there is one and at nothing in particular if not, and the sun begins to set. (The sun will also set if you are observing a chimp, but the chimp is more amusing, so you are less likely to mark the moment in your notes. An orang observer has plenty of time to be a student of the vanities of sunset.)

You watch, and the orang dreams...when casually and as if thinking of something else, the orang slips the hexagonal peg into the hexagonal hole. And continues staring off dreamily."

The rickroll in several different shirts

friend whos always available: i can do whenever

friend whos constantly busy: im sorry i have work and then school and then the labyrinth and then more work :( i can do tuesday at 3:00 am for five minutes tho

friend with the randomly generated sleep schedule: (no response)

friend who went missing in the woods behind their house 12 years ago and hasn't been heard from since: (no response)

"The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.

In particular, it would like you not to be especially concerned about how meat consumption needs to be reduced if we are to avoid the most violently disruptive forms of planetary heating (even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow).

It definitely does not want you to read scientific papers showing wealthy nations must reduce meat consumption to keep below the average global temperature rise of 2C, a threshold to stop systems collapse, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and famine, water shortages and flooded cities.

I know about these industry priorities as I am one of more than 21,000 graduates of a free, by-admission-only, online training course created by the US beef industry called the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA) program."

"In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published Livestock’s Long Shadow, a report that revealed animal agriculture’s significant role in the climate crisis.

By showing that livestock production makes up a significant proportion of global emissions – around 18%, though it would later revise that number downward slightly – as well as contributing to other environmental issues including land degradation and water pollution, the report generated headlines and started conversations, helping to make the toll of meat-overconsumption front-page news.

It was also a moment that terrified the meat industry. According to Jennifer Jacquet, associate professor in the department of environmental studies at New York University, Livestock’s Long Shadow helped to inspire meat multinationals and their allies to launch a counteroffensive, working overtime to defend the environmental reputation of meat, especially beef."

"[...] two high-profile culinary institutions dropped meat to protest livestock’s outsized role in the climate crisis: food media outlet Epicurious decided to stop featuring new recipes with beef, and Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park took meat off its menu entirely. The news made headlines.

And when NCBA noted the trend in its monitoring tool, it sprang into action. NCBA started by defending beef’s sustainability in a slate of paid ad buys – which ran in outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post – but it didn’t stop there.

In the private video for Masters of Beef Advocacy students, Pooley described how NCBA worked with celebrity chef Lamar Moore to write a piece insisting on a central place for beef on the plate. That story – which ran with the subhead “Why cutting meat from the menu (or magazine) is misguided”, ran in LA Weekly – and was plugged repeatedly on Twitter by NCBA (and other industry accounts) as if it had no connection to the story.

In fact, none of the pieces NCBA privately admits it played a role in – in LA Weekly, Westword and the Denver Post – disclosed the trade group’s participation.

The industry sees these messaging efforts as part of an existential battle for survival. In the training video, NCBA leaders cited data that found 47% of Americans aren’t sure about the sustainability of beef.

That persuadable middle is a top priority for the industry, they said, as whoever reaches them best has the power to sway the balance of public opinion.

are you not also concerned with the mass destruction of wild habitat? about the decline of insects and birds? about the genocide of the buffalo? about zoonotic diseases causing the next covid? about antibiotic abuse and fecal contamination? about the beautiful ocean being plundered?

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

From the article:

“If you look only at the trend of species declines, it would be easy to think that we’re failing to protect biodiversity, but you would not be looking at the full picture,” said Penny Langhammer, lead author of the study and Executive Vice President of Re:wild. “What we show with this paper is that conservation is, in fact, working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. It is clear that conservation must be prioritized and receive significant additional resources and political support globally, while we simultaneously address the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, such as unsustainable consumption and production.”

This massive meta analysis (for those not familiar, a study analyzing the results of many studies on similar topics) found that the vast majority of conservation efforts show much much better results than doing nothing. In many cases, biodiversity loss was not only stopped but reversed.