I encourage everyone to check the mod logs. On one hand a carnist stating nonsense. On the other someone calmly explaining how synthetic taurine is widely used and modern evidence suggests cats can transition to properly formulated vegan food, while acknowledging that many bad formulations exist and that a whole food diet would kill them.

Unfortunately for the toxo brained admin who is definitely on the side of animals while claiming you can own them. This is unacceptable!

And just like that I became a racist.

Hmmm lets examine this statement.

Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

She makes a handful of digital toys free. Slurs hurt real people. Keep this in context

You should probably know that historically societies collapsing has typically resulted in improved health of the lower classes as judged by skeletons in the archeological record.

We should not really understand societies collapsing as a violent or spectacular thing. It’s usually just growth slowing, people move away, the ability of states to enforce taxes and provide services weakens and people work out their own stuff.

I’m not saying society is collapsing, just that if it does it’ll probably look more like declining birthrates and movement away from cities and advanced manufacturing to more agrarian lifestyle. Also that for the poor and downtrodden this will probably, on average, be an improvement.

Yep, everyone that disagrees with you is a Russian psyop. That’s why I’m opposed to nation states and empire, and want a rules based international order with common heritage of humankind treaties. Exactly what they want in the Kremlin or wherever.

Someone not from the usa defending them is even more baffling. Grow up in a house with lead painted walls?

If you were less ignorant of global politics it would actually be trivial for you to work out where I live from what I’ve said.

I’m really sorry about what passes for an education in the usa. Like seriously I am. You’ve been very heavily indoctrinated and so any criticism of your homeland feels like it’s an irrational attack. You don’t need to feel this way, it’s like those old fools who think that learning about past national wrongs means they need to live in shame or react by teaching so called ‘white pride’.

You are not responsible for the evil done by the elites that claim dominion over you, you don’t need to identify with them or defend their actions. Many were done by people no longer alive anyway.

… Um ok? And the usa doesn’t? Isn’t it like number 1 for imprisoned population on the planet? Ultimately though I can’t judge countries by their domestic situation, because that’s not something I can do anything about.

What I can judge countries by is how they destabilise the world and the ideology they export. The USA enforced, often extremely violently, a deeply exploitative world order which has effects locally for everyone. If Putin executes some dissidents then that is tragic, it is not however a globally significant issue. Something like the usa starting the war on drugs, strong arming nations into imprisoning or executing significant portions of disadvantaged populations is.

Or the usa couping governments left, right, and centre to maintain an exploitative resource extraction international order. Which destabilised the globe and oppresses millions is.

You might say “Iran would do that too!” but a) they haven’t and b) you’re guessing. Very few nations have ever behaved as badly as the usa/britain/france/spain. The others have chilled out, the usa hasn’t.

Iran has never hurt me, China has never hurt me, never roped the country into an illegal war that left half my highschool mates broken meth addicts, Russia has never hurt me. Idk what to tell you. Empires are evil, necessarily. The usa is the inheritor of the British legacy, they export war and exploitation. I’m sure if Putin led such an empire it would also be ugly, I’d prefer a more balanced world.

Tbh China seems like a sort of bad neighbour (are there states which are good neighbours?) but they seem to generally be in favour of institutions like UN and they don’t militarise the shit out of the world. They’re a better trade partner than the usa.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive

The usa is a giant military empire that literally indoctrinates children with flag swearing cultism stuff. Living in a world dominated by those fucks, who actively undermine the rules based order and refuse to rattify critical treaties/sabotage other treaties (e.g. sea floor resource stuff) is extremely stressful.

In my country, allegedly a democracy, the usa forced our government to secretly sign a trade deal that lets US companies sue our government… directly undermining sovereignty.

It sucks dude, we all fucking hate the usa because they ruin everything. I wouldn’t want to live next to Russia but they’re not fucking shit up over here so forgive me if I bitch about the dominant military empire that literally owns parts of where I live and makes us a target in war.

That research never went ahead you moron. Look I’m done, go huf petrol somewhere else

Idk how to explain epistemology to you. This whole yeah yeah cleavage sites spike protein blah blah you gotta ask. Why were people proposing investigating that? Oh because they were anticipating viruses like that would be highly infectious and could emerge.

Coincidences actually do happen, how many proposed researches into coronaviruses don’t match sars 2? Why don’t initial cases line up with what we know of where lab workers lived and travelled? why is there no testimony relating to the lab work? scientists have souls you know.

Viruses jump species, novel mutations happen. Everyone was expecting a Coronavirus pandemic and guess what? In a completely predictable fashion we got one.

You can’t just put red string between every vaguely cooincidental thing and conclude something. That’ll have you going bonkers.

Yeah nobody who wrote that article or edited it understands virology and neither do you. This is not evidence.

What government? what are you fucking on about? I don’t give a shit about political games in some hick filled military cult if you’re talking about the evil empire.

There is zero evidence sars2 came from a lab, zero. Something being technically possible is not the same as it being likely.

This is so dumb. We’ll never know exactly but from what we do the initial infections don’t convincingly point to workers from the lab, genetic evidence suggests zoonautic origins are probable, there is no proof either way. The Chinese government isn’t allowing an audit, and by this point it’s too late anyway.

There is no reason to believe it’s likely. Let alone certain. It’s literally just “China, who the usaians call red china, is uncooperative” and “there’s a lab studying Coronavirus’s in a region with lots of them”

wtf is a fauci and what kind of source is a youtube video.

I’m in that bin and I’d say that a significant portion of my symptoms could be alleviated by making the world less of a horror show.

We’ve made society inequitable to the extent that if you go outside you will see heartbreaking tragedy, you have to pay to exist basically anywhere and consequently you have zero freedom, basically all of life is dictatorial, your mind is constantly under assault by ads/propaganda, family and friends are destroyed by forcing everyone to move around to find work/shelter, and you’re constantly like 3 bad months from losing it all.

TBH I’m shocked at how few people are depressed.

The lab-leak theory for the origins of the 2020 pandemic was racist disinformation; now, commentators and experts acknowledge it’s a genuine possibility.

just gonna open with that with zero supportive evidence huh? Jesus Christ.

fair fair. I assume the group is probably planning to run a more interventionist study to see if the results hold when you run time forward.

It’ll be good news if it works (maybe, I do worry we’re going towards a brave new world style future where disquiet with the status quo is pathologised and medicated away. stunting criticism) but I won’t go bat for it yet.