One of the reasons that STEM is emphasized so strongly now is because being in STEM requires for the most part zero critical thinking and little to no systems thinking (outside of the super-tiny focus area). STEM grads are no threat to anything. Funneling people into STEM neutralizes them.

It’s better to have someone running around who knows a lot about one tiny little (mostly inconsequential) thing who can build a missile at the end of all that propaganda…er, I mean education, than someone like Clarissa or me, who can tell you the entire sociocultural history of the effects of such decisions and furthermore what makes them a bad idea.

I Can’t Eat Much Meat on the Planetary Health Diet—But I’m Feeling Better When I Do.

Good for you. When I don’t eat meat, I feel like a trash bin being savaged by an angry moose. Everyone’s physiology is different I guess.

All of this crap, this propaganda, is to make sure individuals make choices, disconnected and all alone, and have no chance of changing the system at all. It’s designed to stultify you and individualize your every thought, all the better to sell you something.

Some economics, ya’ll.

Even tons of people choosing not to eat, say, beef, will have zero, absolutely nada, zero, NO EFFECT on beef availability or environmental impact because beef is in a sense a luxury product for much of the world. Meaning that when cow meat meets reduced demand in one area (say North America) and the demand curve shifts to the left, in China people are going to say “FUCK YEAH BEEF” because it’s now cheaper and they will then consume more beef since it’s now affordable. Therefore, in China the demand curve shifts to the right due to the  price elasticity of demand and bam, you are right back where you were before. This is and will definitely happen with most meat, absent enormous systemic changes that have nothing to do with individuals making disconnected decisions like this.

Note this isn’t true of all products, merely those that are in demand but that many people can’t (yet) afford. Unfortunately, or fortunately, meat and beef is one of those products.

This kind of left-progressive environmental horsecrap just grinds my gears.

Equating natural with healthy, organic with anything that might be useful in this context, and just the general SYNTHETIC == BAD approach. What a load of garbage.

Here, have some arsenic. Perfectly natural. Surely it won’t hurt a fly. When you realize how many myths, urban legends, pure wishful thinking, unadulterated obvious lies and propaganda even people on my side believe, you really begin to despair and want to live Ted Kaczynski-style, just without all the bombing.

I guess in the end I’m on no side because no side gives a damn about the truth or trying to find it.

Because Emma Dumont is in it, I watched the first episode of Bunheads. While not a great show (at least so far) it has some good lines. Unfortunately, Emma is not in Bunheads nearly enough and in some ways she’s discordant with the show.

Like a lot of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work, it is like a stage play put on TV and Dumont’s style is very naturalistic and unforced so she’s mismatched stylistically with the feel of the show. Still, though, she’s great and amazing and enviably talented and makes it all better. Or, at times, makes the show seem worse because she is so damn good. Most of the other actors, it’s like they are listening only to hit the cue for the next line but she seems like she’s actually present in that reality.

I just wish she were in it more.

Kelly Bishop, who plays the older mother of one of the characters, is also really good. The others are meh at best.