Subpoena + publicity = uninsurable. And when you work for a low-profit endeavor, your “damages” are limited to the money you might have made were you insurable, at least that’s how the courts measure it and the lawyers decide to take the case or not. OpenAI would probably gladly lose a case and pay whatever income The Midas Project lost as a result of OpenAI’s actions - profit isn’t the point of The Midas Project, reporting what is happening in the industry is, and that mission has been effectively thwarted with the uninsurable status.

this has absolutely nothing to do with freedom.

I have often said: the courts have absolutely nothing to do with justice, at least not the kind of justice people think they do.

That’s what they’re best at avoiding. Even more remarkable is their ability to look in the mirror and see only the best in themselves.

Anyone who introduces himself using words like moderate and humble is telling his audience how to think, that they should not think for themselves, just accept what he says as the truth.

No, I thought they ate butterflies and sunshine.

Conversion of rain forest to grazing land has been a sickening thing to watch for the past 40 years - it’s got an up-front massive incentive through sale of the old growth hardwoods, then they turn around and make residual continuing income off of the grazing instead of letting the forest regrow.

But, then again, that’s pretty much what happened to most of the continental US’s forests in the 1800s. We’re starting to replant commercial tree farms, but those are monoculture biodiversity deserts.

My brother lived with our grandmother, and I think they were mostly lazy - didn’t like to cook / shop for groceries. Neither one of them really got health problems from that, though my brother did gain a bit of weight.

Great grandmother (reportedly, never met her in person) was mean spirited and feisty to the end.

Nothing happens in isolation… Producing a little less meat shouldn’t cause additional harm, but shutting down a lot of meat production all at once would cause a lot of harm - starting with people who make their living both directly and indirectly from the industry, and if you shut down enough of it all at once you’d be disrupting enough of the supply chain that even people who just consume the food are going to run into problems.

We should strive to do better, but avoid arguments like “STOP ALL X NOW!” - it’s overreaching, and would be counterproductive if you actually achieved it.

I wish everybody would get more “precise with their language” instead of running around spouting “zero harm” “absolutely no suffering” and such things, because people who say that often enough start to really believe it - instead of having a second of thought.

Define harm. If a pig is born and raised by a meatpacking operation, there’s a pig that would never have been born without the meatpacking operation - if it is raised and slaughtered humanely (which they aren’t, these days), is it harmed? If people are starving due to shutdown of all inhumane meatpacking operations, have we reduced overall harm?

And here’s the hard to reconcile thing: if everybody did their absolute best effort, investing 5 hours a week in the family or local cooperative chicken farm to get their eggs, and nobody bought mass produced eggs anymore, salmonella and other disease deaths would skyrocket. Not that everybody who raises chickens for the eggs gets salmonella, just that modern rates are so low - a return to individual farming would see them rise 10x, maybe 100x - even with conscientious chicken ranchers.

Now, get real about how much effort most people would actually put in on personal chicken-egg operations if they had no mass produced options and you’re looking at 1000x increases…

It’s some better, not a lot if you research most of the sources for those packages that say “freeroaming.” The only way the minimum standard for “freeroaming” labeling looks good (and, face it, no profitable operation does more than the minimum required) is by comparison with the factory hell-houses.

no living creature is harmed in the process.

Everything annihilated by aerial spraying, and the creatures (including farm workers) dying of cancer from non-lethal doses, would beg to differ.

This was food waste with a glaze.

You mean BBQ sandwiches? I worked at a Rax (like Arbys, with a salad bar) - the meat scraps and leftovers were thrown in a tub, covered in sauce, stuck in the cooler and sold as BBQ for the next day or so.

My grandmother ate Wendys daily, as her only meal of the day, for 20+ years, she lived to 99. She’s unusual (and she also controlled her calorie intake so she didn’t become overweight.)

Your mileage will most likely vary, that stuff isn’t healthy. Oh, by the way, her mother chewed tobacco to age 96 and lived to 98 - also not typical.

This reminds me of the “Big Gulp” 64oz of soda for 0.99 days - basically when sugar was replaced with HFCS and the price of soda syrup fell through the floor.

We’ve been automating factory production of chicken and pork for a while now, gotta sell it somewhere.

I rented a house with some friends while at University… come to find out, the reason the owner rented it to us was because the neighbor was doing extensive renovations for 16 months… at 12 months the landlord “let us” switch to a month to month lease, then when the renovations completed she served us notice to vacate within 3 weeks.

One to mix the kool aid, one to serve the kool aid, nine for the kool aid servers to sleep in while preparing for the crowds coming to drink the kool aid…

Were I a neighbor (with a lot of money) in this situation, I think I’d be waiting until Zuck tries to use those properties, then registering my neighboring properties via overseas shell corporations and starting a Cuban Embassy infra-sound attack regime, right up to the limits of what’s legally “acceptable” for construction noise limits - shutting it off as the cops approach the neighborhood, then restarting it at random times every day for as long as this construction is taking. When a formal complaint is filed, document return of the noise cancelling headphones as “obvious adequate relief.”

That may be, but politics does you - whether you let it or not.

Those would be optional, before the expense, votes for the choice to spend the money or not.

This is a case of necessity, they’ll be in violation of various laws and judgement decrees if they don’t raise the money.

many people who are completely innocent will be impacted.

And motivated to make changes for the better, as opposed to ignoring the problems.