Peren Ambergross

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Have you looked into Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack, the lego mecha skirmish game? Or MFZ: Firebrands, the RPG spinoff?


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Bob_Loblaw wrote:
Gaberlunzie wrote:
So, my date stood me up but I still went to the game club akd learned a bit of Netrunner. Was fun, though I would've preferred to do it with the guy. Hurts a bit to be stood up, but I'm chatting with another really nice person (and also really cute, waaay out of my league really). Hopefully they won't do the same.
You know, there are a lot of people who thought they were playing out of their league, but then they turned out to be playing in just the right league.

Yeah I know, my ex was also way out of my league yet we ended up sharing six years. But still, at least I was young back then. But thanks for the encouragement, it's appreciated.


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So, my date stood me up but I still went to the game club akd learned a bit of Netrunner. Was fun, though I would've preferred to do it with the guy. Hurts a bit to be stood up, but I'm chatting with another really nice person (and also really cute, waaay out of my league really). Hopefully they won't do the same.


Hi KatVonChatte :)

Selene Spires wrote:

Congrats and good luck. I am sure it will go great.

Sigh...one of these days I will go on a date...one of these days. :(

Thanks, I'm sure you'll do so soon :)


Thanks for the support! Gotta say I'm more than a bit nervous, not been on a date for close to a decade and I'm pretty awkward. I just hope they're as awkward as me xD


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I think I've got a date! I think it's a date since we met on tinder... A geek, obviously. Very cute style, and new in my city. We're gonna go to kind of a "netrunner for newbies" event, since neither of us knows how to play. Seems to me that learning a new game together might be a great way to get to know each other without forcing too much small talk.

Don't know if I'm actually ready to get into something for real now, but getting a new queer friend would be nice regardless and someone wanting to go on a date makes me feel less old and ugly. If it goes to a second date I won't feel so awkward and stupid either! XD


Thanks! :)

So, how's everyone's weekend been?


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Woohoo, happy surprise for me: My name change went through. While not *directly* an LGBT thing for me, my birth name is still one I associate with a lot of anxiety and sadness and mental illness, and I think some people here can relate to that.

So now I am Elias in every way, and no longer have to worry about people seeing my ID and think I've been lying to them.


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Hope everyone gets a great weekend :)


Just started a new campaign with the Risus system, in a setting thats Gothenburg two hundred years in the future. Robot apocalypse and all that jazz, and we're present-day people just awakening from cryosleep and wondering why the frakk Sahlgrenska Sjukhuset is crawling with murder robots and why Liseberg has turned into a jungle with star fruit and tiger-sized cougars.

Playing a middle-aged badass lunch lady that loved all her students but would never admit it. She's gay (or at least almost gay) but thats unlikely to explicitly come up, as she was happily single at the time of freezing and we've yet to meet other people and the only other woman in the party is a student less than half her age.

I'm also worried if it does come up in terms of how to roleplay it without it turning into a joke, when most of the game has been fairly silly (i mean, another character's defining trait is *literally* "Clueless Fool: 4d6"). Well, "that day, that sorrow" as we say here in Sweden.


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Hi all! Long time, no see - several years actually, and I was mostly a lurker back then anyway.

But I remember this as a kind place, and only really stopped coming here because without an rpg group the forum overall was less relevant and I was in a relationship where the queerness simply didnt matter that much in my life. Now that I'm both gaming again and single again these things are much more on my mind.

So yeah thats me in a nutshell. Hope you're having s great day :)


If the spell is personal, has a target of You, and does not allow for a saving throw, then you don't have to make one.

If the spell targets willing creatures only (such as Polymorph), then you cannot target yourself with it. ["While raging, the barbarian cannot be a willing target of any spell"]

If it allows for a saving throw (such as Bull's Strength), you must attempt the saving throw. ["must make saving throws to resist all spells"]

I don't think there's any spell that has a target of You and is hindered by saving throws/spell resistance.

Remember that specific overrides general. The rules for a specific rage power overrides the general rules for willingly accepting spells or forfeiting saving throws.


Quark Blast wrote:

Meh, I'll happily side with the Australian government on this one.

Seriously? I don't know if you're just completely oblivious to what they actually say, or if you're deliberately twisting it.

You're implying we shouldn't focus on making more climate models because they're so inaccurate.
Australia is saying we shouldn't focus on making more climate models because those we already have are so accurate.

Whether or not that's a good stance is a different thing, but Australia is saying literally the opposite of what you're saying re:usefulness of climate models.


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I don't really have a stake in this, but I think Berinor has said some pretty important things that got rejected without proper consideration, especially considering the word "even".

"Even" can in different situations mean either "including" or "despite".

example wrote:
"I have a pretty nice Magic collection, even a mox pearl!"

In this case, "even" clearly means "including". If we sub "even" for "including", it still makes sense and match what I'm trying to convey.

Berinor's example wrote:
"We can get you approved, even if you have had past credit problems."

In this case, "even" clearly means "despite"; they're not stating they have a carte blanche ability to get anyone approved, and their statement shouldn't be taken as being able to get, say, a foreign citizen hunted by Interpol for serial murder and on CIA's terror toplist approved for a loan; the "even" is used as a "despite", to note what is special about their ability to get you a loan; apart from being able to approve those with past credit problems, their ability to get you approved isn't implied to be out of the ordinary.

Now, with Freedom of Movement, the "even" can be substituted for either "including" or "despite", and the sentence makes sense either way. If treating the "even" as a "despite", it functions as the example of the loan ad; it's not meant to imply a carte blanche ability to aid no matter the impedement, but rather to note where it's ability separates it from the norm. If the "even" is interpreted as "including", it can be used to argue for preventing any kind of movement impedement - and where the limits to that go is a whole other can of worms that I don't care for.

All in all, I think there's good arguments in both directions, but in the specific case of "even", I fully agree with Berinor that it's so vague that no black and white answer can be found in that whole sentence.


Atarlost wrote:
Skaeren wrote:
Atheists DO NOT BELIEVE. There is a fundamental different between believing in a lack of something and not believing in the existence of something.
Agnostics do not believe. Atheists believe in a negative statement.

As a tl;dr summary of what the words are commonly understood to mean:

Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s). Many atheists also believe that there are no god(s); this is sometimes referred to as "positive atheism" or "strong atheism".
Agnosticism is used in two concepts: Either to refer to (a) people who "neither believe or not believe" (a concept I personally cannot get my head around), or to (b) people who say that we cannot know for sure whether or not gods exist.

When used as (a), agnostics and atheists become kinda overlapping. When used as (b) (which seems more common when discussing religion), it's more of a different axis and coexists with atheism/theism; atheism/theism is one's stance on belief, while agnosticism is a stance on the possibility to know. When talking about it that way, I'm an agnostic atheist, as I don't have any faith in any gods, but I think that we cannot really have any idea (which is why I find it pointless to have faith). Others can be agnostic theists, like those who find Pascal's Wager a reasonable line of thought.


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Josh-o-Lantern wrote:
This is logically IMPOSSIBLE. You can say they aren't God till you're blue in the face, you can say "Oh, they are just powerful outsiders" or any other non-sense, but that IS what a God IS. A powerful freakin' outsider.

So, are planetars gods? If not, what in-world can be used to prove the difference? Is a mythic planetar that grants divine spells a god? If not, the same question applies.

Quote:
Also, Ur-priest is NOT an Atheist.

This can be very true, as the class doesn't mention it at all. Some ur-priests may be atheists, others not. Note that the forgotten realms wiki is a fan-made homepage for a single campaign setting, it's not a useful source for info on a class. For that, look in Complete Divine or the Book of Vile Darkness.

However, the Athar are as a faction and as a class atheists.


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BoVD was also incredibly silly. I still have it around somewhere, because some of the prestige classes where somewhat useful, but the whole "nipple rings of eeevil" made it sound like it was written by a 12-year old from a conservative family trying to be as edgy as possible.


Matthew Downie wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
Stat blocks of NPCs with flight spells don't apply the maneuverability bonus.

Where do you find these? Do they include the +1/2 caster level?

The only example I could find with Fly pre-cast was Azure Bolt Sorcerer (Level 13 Sorcerer from NPC Codex).

There's also a few monsters, like the Ogre Mage. Granted, these have it as a constant spell-like which might be considered different in terms of "natural". But here's the breakdown for the ogre mage:

It has 64 skill points, and 8 skill points each in 8 different int/wis/cha based skills, leaving nothing for Fly.
Fly should be +3 Dex + (9/2) CL, -2 ACP, -2 Size = +3 before maneuverability. Final listing is +5, which is weird since it's too high but still too low to take good maneuverability into account.

EDIT: As for the sorceress, there seems to be quite a bit of weirdness going on with her stats in several places; looking at the hit points, they seem weird too. Her Con is listed at 18 post-buff, which should yield 6+12d6(HD) + 65(Con+Toughness) + 15.5 (False Life) = 128, not 141. Now, if we add in the human favored bonus it adds up to 141, but then there's some severe issues with the skill points. Now, you accidentally forgot the class bonus to perception, but even removing those, we end up at 31 skill points before fly, which is very strange as she should only have 24 if her FCB went to hp. But, even if she had absolutely 0 ranks the numbers don't add up as she should have 6 (CL) + 2 (Dex) = +8, not +10. If she had at least one rank, it should be at at least +12.

Personally, I think the sorceress stat block is just a bit screwed up.

EDIT2: Looking at the Lamia-Kin from RotRL, here's the breakdown
5*21 = 105 skill points

Skills
Intimidate 21 + 3 + 4 = 28
Perception 21 + 3 + 4 = 28
Sense Motive 21 + 4 = 25
Stealth 21 +3 +1 -8 = 25

Fly: 21
+7 cl
+4 maneuver
+3 class
+1 dex
-4 size
=32 (CORRECT FOR ONCE! DINGDINGDING!)

Here including maneuverability makes it fit perfectly.


EDIT: If you're talking about the class from this product: [url=http://shop.d20pfsrd.com/collections/northwinter-press/products/mystical-kingdom-of-monsters]

then it seems to be intended from a custom campaign setting and/or the book itself includes definitions of "monsters". It seems to be something like a "pokemon pathfinder", which sounds interesting, but you can't really use such a class in a standard pathfinder game as it lacks the needed context to be used.


There is no rules definition of "monster", because it's not a rules term. I have to say that not including such a definition in a 3rd party product while having a class centered around it sounds a bit sloppy.

I haven't looked at the class so it's hard to say definately, but I can see a few ways to consider it. These are, in order of most to least likely to be ruled a monster at my table:
1. Unintelligent magical beasts, unintelligent dragons (are there any?) and monstrous animals/vermin: These are relatively mundane but clearly monstrous creatures that are still non-sentient and where "training" is most relevant; it's the kind of creature you could use handle animal on.

2. Intelligent magical beasts and dragons. These are generally corporeal, non-humanoid creatures that are still of this world. They still feel somewhat like monstrous animals; they are "creatures" in the same way as creatures in the real world, though supernatural.

3. Aberrations, plants and certain outsiders. These are corporeal creatures, but much less "creatures" in the sense of things in real life. They are so much more alien.

If the 3rd party class is available online, you could link it and we could look in it for an answer, but without that it's hard to say.


I'm considering trying my hand at making some cheap papercraft minis for some wargaming in a computer game based world (specifically, Dominions 4). I've got loads and loads of sprites from the game (who cares about lowres when a lowres aboleth looks as great as this?), but am wondering about the feasability of printing and using these as wargaming minis. I have access to a printer that can print decently thick paper, but not cardboard.

Specifically, I was wondering about using some "2.5d" effect through making the minis either in three parallel layers (so there's a right, a left and a middle) or at a different angle (like this, but more primitive).

Any suggestions?


Krensky wrote:

Of course those numbers don't cover bicyclists injuring or killing pedestrians.

Nor do they discuss how many bicycle accidents would or should be adjudicated as the bicyclist's fault.

That is true (and it would be very hard to get statistics for the second of those measures) but doesn't take away from my point: If one is going to claim that TechInsider is lying, it'd be nice to provide some kind of evidence of one's claim.

So far I've seen very little data, but the data I have seen seems to fit better with TechInsider's claim than Kirths. If we have little indication of X, and no indication of not-X at all, it seems we ought not to claim people saying X (who may also have data we don't) are lying and that not-X.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Techinsider wrote:
The car ban in Oslo will reduce pollution and make it a safer city for those on foot.
The second part of this statement is an outright lie. With so many more bicyclists zooming around like they own the place, I expect that it will be nearly impossible for a pedestrian to move more than ten feet without being struck down.

I think that if you're going to claim that a pretty well-respected journalistic outlet is outright lying, you'll have to back that up with some statistics. While this doesn't pertain to pedestrian deaths from bicycle accidents, it does seem to imply that an increase in bicycling leads to a drop in bicycle accidents; I think that less cars on the roads being the reason is a valid hypothesis, though I'd love to see more data on it.


Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


Apologies for being serious a lot lately...

If there are TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), are there also TARF (Trans-Accepting Radical Feminists)?

Is that such a fine point that it may as well be the head of a needle that spirits of various flavors are having a rave?

While often not explicitly using the description of "radical feminist", anarchafeminists (and intersectional anarchists in general) share a lot of analysis with radical feminists but tend to be far less transantagonistic.

While I don't know of any larger organization with this perspective (as anarchist organizing tends to be localized), there are a few online places where this is common; on Facebook, I recommend the group Anarcha-transfeminism.


Sissyl wrote:
There is a difference between a description and a definition, Gaberlunzie. The quote is a good description, as such things go. If you want a definition, a biology/taxonomy book might be a better choice, hmm?

Yes. Which is my point. Though M-W used the word definition; it's not like there's a hard line between them. Read the last dozen posts or so though, the context I made my post in (by bolding):

BigNorseWolf wrote:
The definition of philosophy I'm using is that its investigation of the universe done chiefly by speculative means.
meatrace wrote:


So, yes, a pejorative rhetorical definition.
BigNorseWolf wrote:
b : a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means

The last post BNW linked to Merriam-Webster, which has the quoted description/definition in the top center area right under the header "Philosophy".

That's why I posted that according to the same metric, that is, defining the word by the top-center definition under the header of "Tomato" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, cherries and raspberries can accurately be described as a tomato.

It was intended as a tongue in cheek way to point out that using general dictionaries - and the first short-hand description in them in particular - as sources of definition in a serious discussion, is useless.

If I want to know what a tomato is, and have a good, solid definition, I want a biology or taxonomy or gastronomy book or whatever depending on the purpose I need the definition for. Likewise, if I want to know what philosophy is and have a good, solid definition, I should aim for a book that deals primarily with philosophy, not a general dictionary.

Sorry if my tone didn't come through in the text. I did not mean that cherries are actually tomatos or that dictionaries in themselves are bad. It's just that using them to define words about a certain topic in a serious discussion is generally a bad idea.


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Krensky wrote:


Considering that neither the cherry or raspberry are: a) berries, b) native to South America, or c) members of the Lycopersicon genus you are completely wrong.

The first definition, in the same section where BNW found his definition of philosophy:

Quote:
: a round, soft, red fruit that is eaten raw or cooked and that is often used in salads, sandwiches, sauces, etc.

Cherries and raspberries are both round(ish - a tomato isn't spherical either), soft, red fruits and both are often eaten raw or cooked (as jam) and are used in (fruit) salads or (jam) sandwhiches or in sauces.

Note that BNW did not quote the whole list of definitions, but just the first, short one, for which the corresponding definition of tomato is the one mentioned above. Hence:
"even more so for M-W's first definitions, as those are deliberately made to be even shorter and less precise"


Your Daily Reminder that according to Merriam-Webster, cherries and raspberries are tomatos.

Hence why generalized dictionaries are at best a good quick guideline to be in the right ballpark of what a word means, not something to fall back on in a more serious discussion. And it's even more so for M-W's first definitions, as those are deliberately made to be even shorter and less precise (and why calling a raspberry a tomato would be correct according to that method). They're like the Simple English of wikipedia. Which isn't bad, it's a very useful tool, but actually using them as a source in a serious discussion is useless.

Not to mention how creationists would love to throw around M-W's definition of "theory" to show that evolution is just "possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true".


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BigNorseWolf wrote:


Brontosaurus is back!

So, a few months ago, if I asked a paleontologist and a drunkard outside a bar whether there's been brontosauri, the drunkard would be more likely to give the correct answer than the paleontologist.

WHY DO WE NEED SCIENCE?!?!? D': bwa bwa


Redelia wrote:
BigNorseWolf is also defining philosophy as only those things that professional philosophers do.

While widening "science" to stone age people opting out on berries after getting sick from them.


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thejeff wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
I just don't like using the term because thats not how english generally works. You don't mention a 4 legged dog, or a furred bear, or apples with seeds. Yes, that comes with the implication that cis is normal and everything else isn't, but why does not normal have to be not good? Have you met normal people? They're boring.

Like having words like "heterosexual" or "straight". We could ditch those too and just use "normal".

"Cissexual" exists for exactly the same reasons. It's just more recent.

Or right-handed. Or healthy. Or asian.


Yes, well, Sissyl and I are both Swedes :P

But I don't particularly mind using any single definition, as long as it's applied consistently.


Sissyl wrote:
Well, not quite. Time and time again, democracy has been proven to be more resilient, provide for better quality of life for citizens, reduce wars more than any alternative.

I don't see how you can prove this? To find evidence you would have to:

1. Define democracy in such a way that you can classify exactly what countries are democratic and not and
2. Compare many countries that are similar in everything but system of governance, or where we can satisfyingly account for all other variables.

I don't think this has ever been done, or really can be done easily. The most we can do is look at anecdotal evidence. We can see that life expectancy is higher now than it was 200 years ago, but we can't account for the technological changes. On the other hand, in the modern world, I wouldn't be surprised if the average country determined as "democratic" was involved in more wars than the average country determined as "non-democratic" currently. But again, this is just anecdotal evidence and very weak. While the average "democratic" country has higher life expectancy than the average "nondemocratic" country, it's also hard to account for the influence of economy, technology and world dominace. When comparing countries in similar areas and situations it's often far less clear; Panama and Uruguay are democracies, Cuba is not, yet Cuba has higher life expectancy.


UnArcaneElection wrote:
Gaberlunzie wrote:
So, aboleth tend towards the arcane classes, especially wizardry. {. . .}
So they did, but that was written long before Occult Adventures came out. Psychic (or Psionic, if you go the Dreamscarred Press route) magic seems right up their (dark) alley.

Yes, but I'm not using psionics for this (and the reasons for that are too long to go into, but it's not something I can be convinced of in this case)

Quote:
With respect to schools, they should know ALL of them, although not necessarily using the same style as Humanoids. After all, where did Humans get their knowledge of magic from?

That's a fair point. Although, of course, humans can have further developed certain aspects that Aboleths wouldn't care much for.


Yeah, in D&D they had their magical sigils - forgot about those. I should go dig up lords of madness from wherever I have it.


So, aboleth tend towards the arcane classes, especially wizardry. What schools and kinds of spells do you feel are most fitting for aboleth mages in general? Mainly from a thematic viewpoint. Evocations? Necromancy?

Illusion and enchantment are quite obvious in that they're already strengths of the species, but maybe other magical knowledge would be used to spread out, rather than focus?


Krensky wrote:
Economics isn't a science and the far left is notorious for rejecting science in favor of critical theory or ideological convenience or purity. On the other hand pretty much all of the right does the same.

Since he specifically mentioned Popper being disliked for his dismissal of Marx, and since I've specifically seen marxist historians and economists say we need to approach economics in a more scientific fashion, it didn't add up for me.

Do you have any specific example of modern marxist economics rejecting the scientific method? Seeing as how part of their criticism of marginalism is that it's infalsifiable, it seems like a claim that would need to be at least somewhat backed up.

I agree that modern economics is usually not very scientific, relying on pseudoscience and baseless assumptions, much like the current shape of evolutionary psychology, but there is nothing inherently anti-scientific in studying economies.


Todd Stewart wrote:
but there's been a bizarre strain of criticism among non-scientists for years (that I suspect is partially due to his rejection of Marxism).

This seems strange to me. I've several times seen discussions where marxists have pointed out that marginalism in unfalsifiable, where the response from neoliberal economists have been to dismiss the requirement for falsifiability.

Is there something I missed? Some context I'm not aware of here?


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Orfamay Quest wrote:


For example, you are a combat rifleman and you decided that, as a life-long Quaker, you are a conscientious objector.

Yeah, any life-long quaker will want a railgun, or at least a rocket-launcher.


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Aniuś the Talewise wrote:
since I do not interpret steven as being a binary cis boy (but rather having a broader and more nebulous experience of gender) I dont see steven and connie's relationship as hetero, i also see it as being somewhere between platonic and romantic in nature.

Yes, that's how I interpreted Steven too. I don't know Stevens' gender, but since he's referred to himself as a boy several times it seemed it could be interpreted as hetero. But it's not like he seems too tied up in being a boy considering various stuff like the Giant Woman song and various things Stevonnie says. I have no idea on their relationship though, and honestly, I kinda like that it's so nebulous and unspoken. The show tends to be pretty explicit on romantic interests

Spoiler:
see sadie>lars, pearl>rose, ruby&sapphire, pearl&greg
, so when it doesn't make anything explicit, it seems it might be completely platonic (or not).

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mechaPoet wrote:

It's not impossible, though.

** spoiler omitted **

Seriously, it's the gayest show I've ever watched, in the most fantastic way. And not just in the clearly defined relationships/romances, but in like, everything. You get the feeling that straight is the exception, which is nice for a change. It's also rather flipped the "tragic gay" trope on it's head, as the only romance that seems to not be tragic to some degree is one of the gay ones. And, well, I guess one can interpret Stevens' and Connies relationship as a het romantic one, but they seem more like close friends and that one just assumes there's something romantic going on because of heteronorms and that many kids' shows don't show explicit romance.

EDIT: And, if someone still hasn't watched the show and hasn't been convinced to do so, watch this clip, though I should warn that it is spoilery. But better be a bit spoiled than miss out on it :P


Interesting discussion!

Sissyl wrote:


For ADHD, central stimulantia do work in a majority of cases, though certainly not all. They cause no damage, they can be taken out if they do not work, and the side effects are not damgerous.

Just wanted to point out, this depends a lot. I'm on methylphenidate (which is the default treatment here), and the list of side effects that are dangerous was quite long, and some where quite common. Potential side effects include psychosis, high blood pressure, irregular heart beat or even heart attacks, suicide attempts, liver failure and coma, difficulties to breathe, myocardial infraction, sudden death (yes, that's what it says as a side effect lol), and epileptic attacks.

Most of these are fairly rare (in the <1% or even <.01% category each) but with such a long slew of side effects, the amount of people who suffer from at least one of them is probably quite high. Before I was allowed to start on it they had to do stuff like take EKG's and similar.

I think some other substances like Straterra may have milder or less dangerous side effects, but it doesn't work nearly as well on most people. But, all in all, ADHD medicine isn't generally dangerous if one doesn't have other conditions, but it's dangerous enough that one shouldn't try it from their friend's pill bottle..


So, I got diagnosed with Aspergers and ADHD some time ago, and have just started medicating for the ADHD. But, I've gotten thinking, is there some kind of correlation between being LGBT and being neurodivergent? It seems like nearly everyone neurotypical I know is straight, and nearly every autistic person or with ADHD is ace, gay or bi (I don't think I know any straight trans people).

Googling around it doesn't seem like there's any established link; a single study showed some correlation but it's too small to make any conclusion based on it. but I talked to an acquaintance in Norway who had the same experience. Have you noticed some kind of correlation like that?


CBDunkerson wrote:
thejeff wrote:
To wrap back to climate change and reference the current debate, not eating meat, but still eating dairy does reduce your contribution to the part global warming caused by cow methane (however small that is), but doesn't eliminate it.
Actually... it depends on what food source(s) you switch from and to. For example, everyone in the world giving up fish in favor of rice would result in a massive increase in methane emissions.

Switching from fish to rice would be an incredibly weird thing to do though. For the whole world to do it would be utterly bizarre. They have very few nutrients in common. Of all common grains, rice is one of the lightest on protein, for instance. Wheat and oat are both far higher.

A more reasonable comparison would be switching from fish to soy or wheat, but I really have no idea how that would affect greenhouse gas emissions. Also, thejeff didn't talk about switching out _just_ fish, so a more fair comparison would be what jeff actually said; stopping eating meat in general, and switching to vegan alternatives.


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Krensky wrote:
Gaberlunzie wrote:
Krensky wrote:

I find the lack of even common sense knowledge about how dairy farming works saddening.

If you choose not to eat meat because you don't want to kill animals but still consume dairy you are doing it wrong. It is an absolute, there's no wiggle room or rationalization of it. Calves, kids, and lambs are useless to a dairy farmer, so they get slaughtered.

Now excuse me, I need to go make some veal scallopini with lemon cream sauce.

I know how it works. But people may have stances that aren't quite as simplistic as not eating animals because you don't want to kill them. For example, my lacto-ovo-vegetarian friend has explained their stance akin to this (we've discussed it a bit, and this is not their exact words but how I understood her):

"Killing animals for food is imposing unnecessary suffering on them; there's no getting away from this. There can't be an animal meat industry that doesn't cause loads and loads of suffering. "Consumer power" is pointless liberal BS though, so not eating animals or using animal products won't directly affect the meat industry. However, eating animals normalizes and entrenches meat-eating as a cultural phenomena, making it harder to fight against the meat industry in other ways.

On the other hand, eggs and dairy don't inherently require animals to suffer, so even in a post-capitalist society without industrialized animal torture having dairy and eggs is possible. Due to this, it's less important to fight against dairy and eggs as a cultural phenomena."

Now, I can find them a bit naive (maybe because I'm a revolutionary defeatist lol), but there's nothing hypocritical about it, and it in itself is not a baseless or unsound analysis. I just find the imagined end of capitalism during our lifetimes to be unnecessarily hopeful.

Whatever postmodern gibberish makes you folks feel better about rationalizing your choices.

That analysis is mainly based in marxist thought, not postmodern.

Quote:
If you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons but still eat dairy your ethics are inconsistent. No amount of ethical calculus, flam flam, rationalization, or goal post moving changes that.

You do realize that claiming something many times doesn't make it more correct, right? You also realize that a reasoning not being sound doesn't make it hypocritical, right?


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A lot of countries where people starve are also major food exporters. See for example the countries surrounding Lake Victoria.

Food is absolutely inseparable from politics. Through allowing private firms to claim ownership over natural resources and the means to use them, we can import loads of fish from Uganda while the population eats the heads or starve.


Krensky wrote:

I find the lack of even common sense knowledge about how dairy farming works saddening.

If you choose not to eat meat because you don't want to kill animals but still consume dairy you are doing it wrong. It is an absolute, there's no wiggle room or rationalization of it. Calves, kids, and lambs are useless to a dairy farmer, so they get slaughtered.

Now excuse me, I need to go make some veal scallopini with lemon cream sauce.

I know how it works. But people may have stances that aren't quite as simplistic as not eating animals because you don't want to kill them. For example, my lacto-ovo-vegetarian friend has explained their stance akin to this (we've discussed it a bit, and this is not their exact words but how I understood her):

"Killing animals for food is imposing unnecessary suffering on them; there's no getting away from this. There can't be an animal meat industry that doesn't cause loads and loads of suffering. "Consumer power" is pointless liberal BS though, so not eating animals or using animal products won't directly affect the meat industry. However, eating animals normalizes and entrenches meat-eating as a cultural phenomena, making it harder to fight against the meat industry in other ways.

On the other hand, eggs and dairy don't inherently require animals to suffer, so even in a post-capitalist society without industrialized animal torture having dairy and eggs is possible. Due to this, it's less important to fight against dairy and eggs as a cultural phenomena."

Now, I can find them a bit naive (maybe because I'm a revolutionary defeatist lol), but there's nothing hypocritical about it, and it in itself is not a baseless or unsound analysis. I just find the imagined end of capitalism during our lifetimes to be unnecessarily hopeful.


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Aniuś the Talewise wrote:
Gaberlunzie wrote:
Aniuś the Talewise wrote:
Well, there is a world of difference between 80 years ago and a thousand [and a half] years ago.
Exactly, that was what I meant :). My point was that yet, a healthy vegan diet was impossible until quite recently, but healthy diets in general were nearly non-existent until quite recently. There's a gap between them of a few decades, probably, which is a blink of an eye in terms of human history.

Well, here's an example of what I'm talking about: spices and herbs were used liberally in european cuisine throughout the middle ages and even the renaissance, then later on post-renaissance, aristocratic snobbishness and increasingly awful medicinal theory (who let the four humors take root as a theory anyway?) led to spices falling seriously out of favor, and that has apparently been a problem ever since.

and another example: the working schedules required during the industrial revolution led to a radical change in the sleeping habits of the industrial world, for the worse. People started sleeping one sleep at night, without any naps in the day. Before this change, two sleeps at night (with a waking period in the middle of the night) or a shorter sleep at night with a nap in the day (siesta) were commonplace. This isn't related to food, but it's the same general idea.

Yeah, you're right in that our eating habits might have gotten worse (if that's what you're saying?), I'm not disagreeing with you. But I know here in Sweden, most people have had a crappy diet since at least the 1500's, mostly various forms of carbs. Lack of storage options, and general lack of technology to make the most of animals, meant a lot of the year a lot of the people mainly ate porridge and similar grain-based stuff (Source: Historieätarna).

But I'm not disagreeing with you in that our knowledge of medieval and ancient cuisine is limited. But with their limited understanding of our bodies, the lack of things like freezers, and in general being exposed and at the mercy of nature to a larger degree than we are in modern times, I find it likely that most of the population did not have a well-composed meal most days.


Aniuś the Talewise wrote:
Well, there is a world of difference between 80 years ago and a thousand [and a half] years ago.

Exactly, that was what I meant :). My point was that yet, a healthy vegan diet was impossible until quite recently, but healthy diets in general were nearly non-existent until quite recently. There's a gap between them of a few decades, probably, which is a blink of an eye in terms of human history.

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While I've been a vegetarian for a long time, the claims that we could feed the world if we stopped eating meat and grew plants instead is nuts.

Just because the land can support some grass and cattle can get to it doesn't mean its usable for corn and a tractor.

I agree that it's a bad claim to make, but I'm not sure we can say that it's not true either; I just don't think it's been calculated on, really, and there are factors in both directions;

On one hand, as you say, a lot of ground can support animal husbandry but not farming...
On the other hand, globally, the vast majority of livestock is fed mainly with food specifically farmed for them (eg soy)...
On the third hand, this isn't true for fish, which still largely feed itself and so makes use of areas we can't otherwise use...
On the fourth hand, our access to edible fish is very limited and quickly shrinking.

And so on, there's probably another dozen hands or so. But mainly I think it's a pointless argument to say that if we go vegan we can feed the world, because the reason people starve is not a lack of food production in the world, it's about distribution; we already produce enough food to feed the whole world, and a lot more could be produced just by modernizing the most primitive agriculture to modern levels.

So while I think it's hard to determine whether or not a purely vegan food industry would be more effective than the current food industry is, ultimately it's a pointless question since production/efficiency isn't the bottleneck for people to get food: Economy is, and the systems that violently keep people away from the food.

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If you're not eating meat because of moral reasons, dairy's right out too.

That depends a lot on the moral reasons in question. Most people have some degree of nuance to their moral views, and such nuances might mean drinking milk can be okay while eating meat isn't. On the other hand, I know few groups that tend to reject nuance as quickly as certain vegans...


Aniuś the Talewise wrote:


*snip*
That being said, I suspect that a balanced vegan diet is only possible in the modern era with modern innovations like dietary supplements and the fact that much of our food is enhanced with supplements
*snip*
But then again, I only suspect, I haven't actually researched this.

Essentially, yeah, this is correct. I think the era between "people in the wast in general have at least decently balanced diets" and the current era of "people in the west can in general have a very well-balanced vegan diet" are fairly short though, as before B12 supplements et cetera people's understanding of nutrition and access to well-balanced omnivorous diets where a lot limited.

I know the vast majority of people here in Sweden ate like crap 80 years ago.


Sissyl wrote:
And, yes, I know you can take supplements for it, but it sort of puts a damper on the claim that "humans can live perfectly well on a vegan diet".

Why would it? If you can get vegan B12, which you can, whether in the form of a supplement pill or added in vegetable milk or through eating unwashed vegetables (not recommended), it doesn't in any way put a damper on that humans can live perfectly well on a vegan diet.

And, of course, it's very common among older people - even those eating meat - to need B12 supplements to not get a deficiency. So if the argument is that you can't live healthily on a vegan diet because you need supplements, then the same could be said for omnivorous diets.

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At the very least, we did not evolve for or with a vegan diet.

Has anyone disputed this? We didn't evolve for or with cardriving or medicine either*.

However, even in a setting without supplements or a food industry you can get B12, because eating many wild roots and vegetables will get you B12 through the dirt they're in. Again, this is not recommended in general, but neither is unprepared meat.

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And what happens if you don't get enough? Why, your nervous system starts taking damage, from loss of sensibility from your feet inward, to depression and dementia. The idea of a child not having enough during development is not a happy one. Given this, the reason most vegans who do not get supplements for it don't get severe symptoms from a deficiency is that they have a store of it built up during childhoods eating meat and giving up veganism before these run out.

I have a genetic, permanent condition which makes my body nearly unable to get B12 from food in general, and it wasn't diagnosed until I was 23, so I know very well how it is growing up with a lack of B12 regardless of how much meat I ate (I currently eat about 35 times the recommended daily intake via pills, which would be basically impossible to get through food). And yeah, you should definately get B12 supplements (or products with it as an additive) if you're a vegan. And in general, I'd probably not serve my kid (if I had one) a completely vegan diet from a health perspective, as if I get a deficiency I'm much better equipped to notice and communicate and adress it.

That said, I think if I fed a kid a vegan diet, it'd probably still get a healthier diet than the average kid in my country. The trust people place in meat and milk as a healthy baseline is dangerous. Also, of course, this isn't helped by allowing companies to run wild with additives such as heavy salting of basically everything, the lacking education about nutrition, and that poor families often don't have the time or energy to get a good, healthy, well-balanced diet.

That doesn't really change much though, unless one can actually show that lack of nutrients is even more common among vegans than other people. Because, you know, it's not like the avegare meat eater will know what nutrients they get and what they lack. Scurvy is on the rise among children in the UK, and I'd bet my life that's not because of veganism.

If you think you get your carbs from meat, chances are you won't notice building up symptoms of vitamin E deficiency.

*Well, we're still evolving, so one could say that we're evolving with both cardriving, medicine and a vegan diet, but I guess that's not the point here.

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