The case for cutting meat consumption is so compelling that you would think politicians would be less shy about making it. Yet while campaigners warn with increasing urgency that global livestock production is accelerating climate breakdown and causing devastating damage to nature and human health, governments remain reluctant to tackle meat-eating.

Industrial livestock systems designed to extract ever greater commercial value from farmed animals have repeatedly been shown to depend on cruelty to animals and the armies of workers processing them.

Animal foods have been long promoted as superior as the source of “complete” protein, containing in one package all the amino acids we need for the body’s building blocks. Plant food that only contained some of them, or needed to be eaten in combination to obtain all of them, was seen as inferior.

Protein deficiencies are rare in developed countries and most of us, including vegetarians, eat much more than we need. Yet the cultural preferences persist.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2021/sep/30/less-meat-is-good-for-us-and-the-planet-why-are-politicians-shy-to-say-so

The full article is a good one. Honestly, it is a little pollyannnish. We have yet to eliminate slavery from our food supply (Cough Thai fishing vessels Cough).


For example, a farm in Spain might supply oranges to a distributor who then on-sells to a grocery chain in the UK and a grocery chain in Australia. The Australian and British customers may ask the distributor to complete a questionnaire. The distributor will need to ask its farmers what the status ogf their indentured workforce. – including the farm in Spain. The farm in Spain may not be able to use slaves for production that goes to those distributors.

A Black family from Virginia who say their neighbor has been playing recordings of racial slurs and monkey noises since their arrival received no recourse after police deemed their neighbors’ actions “not criminally actionable”, reports CNN.

“We noticed a little erratic behavior like these blinking lights that are on a sensor. When my family or any other family leaves or returns to their homes, they all start to blink,” Martinez said, in addition to loud music that the neighbor had customized for each family.

Soon after the Martinez family called the local police to complain about the blinking lights and music, Martinez said her neighbor’s erratic behavior escalated. The same neighbor began playing monkey noises whenever Martinez’s family would arrive or leave their house. The neighbor also began playing skits containing racist slurs.

“Since that day he’s been playing [N-word] skits that he found online,” Martinez said, skits that say: “Black people have nothing better to do but go to a comedy club on a Friday night,” and, “Hey everyone, look it’s [N-word] guy. Everyone say, ‘Hi [N-word] guy.’”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/virginia-beach-family-neighbor-racial-slurs-police

This neighbor probably has relatives and possibly even an employer. It is time to name and shame such assholes.

Private jet providers are experiencing “unprecedented demand” from wealthy customers seeking to avoid the “mosh pit” of commercial flights on autumn getaways as coronavirus travel restrictions ease.

Flexjet, which offers shared ownership in its fleet of private jets in Europe, said it operated 53% more flights in September than the previous month, bucking the usual seasonal trends.

“We are currently experiencing exceptionally strong demand, with the appetite for personal travel not yet sated after a later start to summer due to restrictions, and now business flying is also taking off alongside.”

His consultancy, Brian Foley Associates, has predicted that about 700 new private jets will be delivered in 2021 – roughly the same as previous years. However, he said a “meaningful ramp-up will begin in 2022 and continue unabated for several years, easily surpassing the 900-unit level for the first time since 2007”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/demand-for-private-jets-soars-as-rich-travellers-try-to-avoid-mosh-pit


I always get a laugh when a rich celebrity uses a private jet to visit a Global Warming conference. It happens so often I just can't understand the tone deafness of it.

Beyhan Mutlu had been drinking with friends on Tuesday when he wandered into a forest in Bursa province.

When he failed to return, his wife and friends alerted local authorities and a search party was sent out.

Mr Mutlu, 50, then stumbled across the search party and decided to join them, NTV reported.

But when members of the search party began calling out his name, he replied: "I am here."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58746703

https://ny.eater.com/2021/9/29/22700073/eleven-madison-park-vegan-nyt-review-meat-room

New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells slaughtered Eleven Madison Park’s revamped, veganized menu in an unstarred critical review this week — but the real golden nugget from the piece is that the all-vegan restaurant, has, well, a secret beef room. According to Wells, Eleven Madison Park offers an optional beef tenderloin dish to customers in its swanky private dining room, while maintaining the much-hyped vegan menu out front. Wells writes, “It’s some kind of metaphor for Manhattan, where there’s always a higher level of luxury, a secret room where the rich eat roasted tenderloin while everybody else gets an eggplant canoe.”



I am sorry but this is hilarious.

As Chelsea Fagan states.

can't stop thinking about the secret beef room at eleven madison park. let's reboot boardwalk empire but about bootlegging beef into other plant-based restaurants

I think more vegan restaurants need secret rooms where you can get a decent steak.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/large-or-extra-large-my-perilous-first-condom-purchase

“Large or small?” she asked, looking up. This threw me completely. “Large,” I said. To be clear, I’m not making any claims for myself here, but I wasn’t going to say “small”, was I? Even in an empty shop. But then she asked: “Large or extra-large?”

“All right then, extra-large,” I spluttered, starting to think it might be some kind of wind-up.

It was only as I walked out that it dawned on me the poor woman was referring to the size of the box, not to any part of my anatomy. I’d only gone and depleted my student grant buying a bumper box of 48 condoms. I wandered back to my room dazed, confused and even more apprehensive about everything than I was before I’d boarded the bus an hour earlier.

People risk developing type 2 diabetes if they can no longer fit into the jeans they were wearing when they were 21, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the disease.

And if people discovered they could no longer fit into the same-sized trousers then they were “carrying too much fat”, Prof Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, said.

The participants, who had type 2 diabetes despite having a “normal” body mass index (BMI), managed to cut the levels of fat in the liver and pancreas, and the activity of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas was deemed to be restored.

Taylor, the principle investigator, said: “Doctors tend to assume that type 2 diabetes has a different cause in those who are not overweight. What we’ve shown is that if those of normal weight lose 10 to 15% of their weight, they have a very good chance of getting rid of their diabetes.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/27/people-who-cant-fit-into-jeans-they-wore-aged-21-risk-developing-diabetes


This is excellent news that people with Type 2 diabetes can reverse the disease even if normal weight by losing an additional 10 to 15%. Plus of course, it helps with everything else, from cancer to heart disease to joint health.

A Type 2 Diagnosis is much worse for you than AIDS nowadays, as the Lancent pointed out a few years ago. But it doesn't have to be slow decline to the loss of limbs, blindness, then death.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/28/san-francisco-bay-area-gun-violence-murders-2020

Racial disparities in the burden posed by gun violence were stark. The overwhelming majority of homicide victims in the region in 2020 were Black and Latino, with 194 Black victims among the 450 killed and 150 Latino. Of the 345 Black and Latino victims, 293 were male. Their ages ranged from one all the way to 94.

That means that the Bay Area’s Black residents are still more at risk of succumbing to gun violence than members of any other racial group. Black residents make up just 5% of the region’s population, according to 2020 census data, but more than a third of its homicide victims.

The racial discrepancies were apparent even in the region’s safest counties. San Mateo county, home to the millionaire-machine of Silicon Valley, saw homicides go up in 2020, but the rise was not equally distributed. The county of 770,000 people recorded 16 homicides. Just one victim was white, despite most of the county’s residents being white.


Santa Clara county, where Google is based, reported 52 homicides among almost two million residents. At least 32 of the victims, or more than half, were Latino, though Latinos make up 25% of the county’s population.

I notice a lot of people buy gifts out of habit. This might be a good year to break the habit, especially for non-spousal adults in your family.

Buckle up, as they used to say, it is going to be a wild ride.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/phone-scam-therapists-16483251.php

It started with a voice mail on Jaime Bardacke’s cell phone that sounded work-related. It came on Father’s Day, and the licensed clinical social worker was driving back to her San Francisco apartment after visiting family, eager to eat dinner and watch the NBA playoffs.

That message kicked off a harrowing 6½-hour odyssey during which she was fleeced of thousands of dollars as she drove around San Francisco and the Peninsula on the phone with a swindler — who was in her head both literally through her earbuds and metaphorically through manipulation tactics.


The caller instructed her to go a nearby ATM. Her daily withdrawal limit was $800. He told her to increase the limit via the bank’s app, but she couldn’t do it — “I was getting more and more flustered; it was hard to figure out” — so he told her to call the bank while he stayed on the line, listening in. She upped the limit to $1,500 and withdrew that amount.

The caller told Bardacke to go to a nearby Safeway to buy prepaid Visa cards with the money.


I know part of me has empathy. This could happen to anyone, I would like to say. But read the whole article. I wonder if Therapists are vulnerable to being conned more than other professionals.