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Cake day: June 20th, 2025

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  • I’m mixed race and it’s disturbing how true this is. One of the weird things about being mixed race is that people feel comfortable telling me about their racial views.

    There are a bunch of racial and ethnic prejudices that white people (particularly white Americans) don’t even know exist.

    One funny thing is that many forms of racism focus don’t focus on skin color and instead focus on other arbitrary markers; ear lobes, noses, hair patterns.








  • It has some grains of truth but it’s mingled with too much personal opinion.

    There are studies on how much water humans really need. If you want to calculate it the scientific way, you need to factor in at least lean muscle mass, total mass, surface area, ambient temperature and humidity, activity levels, and diet. There’s no magic number of ounces that’s correct for everyone.

    Fortunately we’ve evolved a really awesome mechanism. When your body needs more water, you get thirsty.

    So if you want to stay properly hydrated, drink whenever you feel even a little thirsty.




  • How about food then? About 50% of the food on earth relies on the Haber Bosch process.
    Are we willing to give up half our food?

    You’re absolutely correct that there are many environmentally beneficial choices we can make with minimal impact on our welfare. It’s a lie to pretend that any significant amount of it can be done at no cost. We just need to be willing to pay that cost.


  • nednobbins@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Climate Summit
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    1 month ago

    I’m curious why you see my comment as a defense of shareholders?

    The beneficiaries of faster transportation, abundant food, and vast material wealth are the consumers. The shareholders only benefit indirectly in that they can take their money and consume goods and services that others have produced.

    That’s a tradeoff that happens no matter what economic system we choose. I’m also not even suggesting that we pull back on addressing climate change; I’m saying that this is an ineffective way to advocate for it.


  • nednobbins@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Climate Summit
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    1 month ago

    Rather than argue semantics I’d rather rephrase the same statement using different words in the hopes that that removes confusion.

    The comic essentially argues that we can fight climate change at no cost. That’s nonsense. The cost is there and it’s quite steep. The better argument is that even the high cost is worth it because the cost of not fighting climate change are much higher.


  • nednobbins@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Climate Summit
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    1 month ago

    When you look around your room do you not see a plethora of goods made by polluting industries?
    Do you travel exclusively by foot?
    Do you eat only foods that can be brought to your area without refrigerated trucks?

    Other’s have certainly reaped the lions share of the profits from pollution but we reaped huge benefits from it. None of us are willing to give up the computers or network infrastructure we’re using to have this conversation so it’s safe to say that those computers and the network infrastructure are benefits that we value.


  • nednobbins@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Climate Summit
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    1 month ago

    I’m a big fan of protecting our environment but this fails because it’s a straw man.

    Everyone knows that the things we get far more than “nothing” from our rampant pollution. We get fast transportation, abundant food, and vast material wealth.

    If we were really giving up “nothing” it would be an easy choice. Very few people would be willing to pollute just for the sake of polluting. Even if we only got a little bit of benefit from pollution there would still be incentive to pollute.

    Instead we get a ton of benefit out of pollution and we’d have to give them up if we wanted to stop polluting.

    The more honest take is that polluting activities have a tradeoff. If we keep polluting at our current rate, we’ll eventually push the ecosystem to a state where it can’t sustain us. We need to be willing to make some hard sacrifices to prevent that and we need to identify those sacrifices, rather than pretending they don’t exist.