Is this really up for debate?

Florida bans lab-grown meat, adding to similar efforts in three other states

Much like with the fossil fuel industry squeezing out renewable energies at every opportunity, I suspect we’re going to see the powerful agricultural lobbies shut down competitors until the owners of these big businesses can insert themselves as the sole proprietors of the lab meat industry.

On the flip side, retailers are going to want to drive down their costs, so they’ll only switch when the price drops below the current floor set by firms like Tycoon and Cargill. But once it does… you’ll be foolish to assume what you’re eating isn’t lab grown if it means a business increasing its profits.

Despite these potential benefits, Haracz believes that the high cost of lab-grown meat products will remain an obstacle for McDonald’s and other fast food establishments. He mentions the deals that the restaurant gets when it purchases beef and surmises that these great prices will not be available with lab-grown beef. Haracz also cites pressure from the beef industry, which will likely use its influence to dissuade McDonald’s and other establishments from using meat that comes from non-traditional sources.

The end result will be people who want lab meat finding themselves prohibited from buying it and people who don’t want lab meat unwittingly consuming it.

Unfortunately, RSS doesn’t do anything for the links to the NYT in my Lemmy feed.

I can’t be bothered to visit any mainstream news site anymore. They’ve made the process of accessing the content so adversarial that there’s no point.

I’d say it’s less about imagination than gameplay. I’m reminded of old action figures. Some of them were articulated at the knees, elbows, feet, wrists, and head. Very posable, but you could see all the joints. Then you had the bigger and more detailed figures, but they were barely more than statues. Looked great but you couldn’t really do anything with them.

And then you had themed Lego sets. Only a vague passing resemblance to the IP, but your imagination is the limit on what you do with them.

Jessie?

James?

I suddenly have an image of the people in this conversation…

Don’t get me wrong. After all of this high drama, it would be extremely funny if Luigi Mangione can prove he was in Rochester on the day of the shooting.

No, as these are things they must do to survive.

If you really want to get to the nut of “The Problem of Evil”, you get into how many acts of personal survival impinge on the welfare of others.

However, if these creatures were designed by a creator in such a way that they had to perform “evil” to survive, then they are innocent and the creator is evil.

And if there is no Prime Designer? Does that mean they are evil by their nature?

Again, we’re hand-waving the term “evil”. One of the biggest problems of The Problem of Evil is defining evil. Because, God or No God, what we’re headed towards is a very nihilist philosophy of existence itself being a malicious force.

omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (perfectly good)

Part of the problem with “The Problem of Evil” is assuming your personal experience turning sour is a sign of an existential “evil”. Take this to a macro-level of the natural world and you can argue the wolf eating the sheep is “evil”. And the sheep eating the grass is “evil”. And the grass polluting our air with coercive oxygen is “evil”. But then you’re in the position of arguing that existence is evil, which flies in the face of the Abrahamic assumptions of creation.

Does your single bad day refute the eternal existence of the Perfect Being? Does your pessimistic view of the natural order refute a Perfect Being? Or is the problem entirely with your personal limited perception and selfish worldview?

it seems logically impossible for significant evil to exist, as god would both know about it and have the power to prevent it.

It seems logically impossible to define “evil” objectively. You’re coming into the conversation as an ill-informed and deeply biased observer.

Is the fly evil because it lays maggots on your meat? Is the spider evil for killing the fly? Is the rabbit evil for killing the spider? Are you evil for killing the rabbit? Well, then why are you complaining about the fly spoiling your dinner?

Humans seem to define evil merely as unpleasantness, as though “pleasant” and “good” are synonymous. But if you just want to feel pleasant all the time, we’ve got a tool for that. It’s called heroin. Shoot up until you waste away and then tell me that God Is Great, because you’ve lost the ability to perceive your misery. Your actions will be perfectly predictable and your behaviors extremely pliable, while your sensations are entirely blissful. Is this the Divine Perfection you’re looking for?

From this it results that nothing we may do or fail to do would impact them, so there are no sins, no divine laws, prayers and rites are useless…

That’s not entirely true. You’re describing what is effectively Calvinism (also, Hinduism/Buddhism) wherein you are born into a particular state of grace (or absence of it) and you just have to play the hand you’re dealt because its “part of the plan”. If you are aware of God, that’s a kind of blessing in its own right. But its like being aware of a political head of state or a famous historical figure. Knowing they exist can give you insight into how to live your life, but they don’t fundamentally know or care that you exist and you don’t impact their grandeur in any meaningful way.

There’s little difference between an emotionless God and no God at all.

There’s a huge difference, in the same way there’s a difference between a Law of Physics and No Law.

Understanding physics allows me to live relatively safely compared to someone who is totally unfamiliar with how conductivity or gravity or momentum works. Understanding spirituality will (presumably) serve the same effect. Spiritual enlightenment affords you a way of avoiding certain hazards, like not holding a big metal rod above you in a storm or leaping into the ocean without a buoy. Ritual and prayer becomes like a car’s safety belt and air bags, cushioning you from the psychic trauma of daily life and protecting you from malicious spiritual entities.

There’s also a host of spiritual intermediaries in the more esoteric faiths. Catholicism has its saints and angels, while Islam and Judaism has the prophets. Animist religions have spirits of the land and the animals. Pagan faiths have their pantheons and demigods. And they’ve all got their terrestrial spiritual adversaries - demons, heretics, the acolytes of rival deities, etc.

Why am I praying to ward off evil spirits if there are none? Why am I wearing these vestments and holy symbols to insulate me against “evil” radiation or bad juju? Why am I going on these crusades if I don’t think capturing the Holy Land has any benefit for my nation or clan?

You don’t have to believe in a “Personal Jesus” to believe in the consequences of a God or a Godly World. Sometimes its just Metaphysical Capture the Flag.

Whipping out my clover and putting on my best Irish Accent to explain the Holy Trinity

why would you read corporate media?

It’s saturated the market. Very hard to miss.

If you choose to consume food from a trash can

Very few people choose to eat from the trash can. More often, they eat from the trash can because no other food is available.

There’s plenty of great journalists in DC.

Fewer and fewer at the bigger outlets. They’ve been pivoting aggressively to AI.

Biden did an apology tour for native american boarding schools two weeks before election day

This, on the heels of a slew of Felony Mob indictments aimed at Gaza Protesters

The way presidents will flip the history book back 50 years and issue a polite “My bad” while they persecute a new generation of people and scrub out the associated civil rights movement in real time is nauseating. It’s less than meaningless. I have to wonder what horrors President Pete Buttigieg will be apologizing for in another twenty years, in between the ethnic cleansing of Panama and the War to Liberate Singapore.

Probably because we were more focused on the things that mattered.

Peanut the Squirrel, a popular OnlyFans account and local NY resident domesticated squirrel, who was euthanized a week before the election to test it for rabbies was wall-to-wall headline news on election day.

Jangle any set of keys loud enough and you can get the handful of remaining living DC journalists to stare in rapt fascination, because its easier and cheaper than doing any amount of meaningful long-form investigative journalism.

Why do you think every 10’ of soil is a potential pit trap if not to catch the prerequisite number of people for soul harvesting?

Hell, getting a conga line of ambitious unwitting adventures to plow themselves through one of your local death mazes feels like a collections technique when you’re farming sentient but uneducated mortal humanoids.

I feel like a world where people stumble around every corner tapping surfaces with with 10 foot poles has sufficiently high fatality to make the Lich a rarity.

Seems like a world that deadly would have a surplus wizards investing in automatic instant resurrection.

you don’t live to 2000 by making enemies

You only live that long by making enemies. That’s what gives the setting juice. A few dozen deified egos playing tug-of-war with the Prime Material Plane for an eternity.

I don’t begrudge the core concept. Players need to understand there’s always a bigger fish, especially in a game where you play fast and loose with the min-maxing. But if one wizard can do the math on this, you have to believe its not the only one. The whole perk of being an unkillable necromancer is that you can rub people the wrong way without ever suffering for your hubris.

Whether that’s a direct affront - taking the eye-teeth of a seventh born son on his 13th name day, because its a valuable material component - or indirect - hanging out in a big tower doing strange magicks far longer than the local divine orthodoxy considers “inoffensive in the eyes of Heaven”, you’re going to have some people who revile you.

Setting up an Angelic/Demonic entity impatiently waiting to collect its soul or establishing some bitter rivalry with another arcanist adds more history and flavor to the character as a set piece, even if there’s never a pay-off or a material change in the status quo.

Dragon Quest 11 has a T-for-Teen rating and it’s got a literal casino built into the game. Roulette, poker, and slot machines. This isn’t even uncommon for JRPGs. Curious how the ratings agencies just glaze over this fact when assigning their scores.

Have you tried partnering with Disney and incorporating some Marvel/Star Wars IP into the Balatro Cinematic Universe? Perhaps selling your company to Ubisoft or Sony and letting their massive legal/lobbyist team take a swing at this? Perhaps you could just take a total end-run around the problem and release an edition that uses the Minor Arcana instead of standard poker cards?

Doublespeak is real and good. I love my libertarian capitalism just like I love my public safety officers and my right to work states and my rules based liberal international order. Liberty! Whiskey! Sexy! These are the tenants of a righteous, free, and - most importantly - godly nation.

If we just work hard enough and remain honest and forthright and vigilant against the horrors of evil foreign manipulations, every man can live like a king! Work Will Set Us Free! That is why we must keep the truth always within our hearts - that better days are coming if we all just work together towards the ideal individuality. So gather round, my beautiful brilliant diligent future millionaires, and repeat after me:

Welcome to Costco, I love you.