We make food “from scratch” on a regular basis.

We’ve found a few different sources for fats. I’ll focus on the pork-fat ones.

The most common source is to just collect fat any time we make pork things. The advantage is that it’s cheap and easy; just let it cool and add it to a jar in the fridge. The disadvantage is that it will have a lot of other flavors (especially salt).

Sometimes we just by processed lard. That’s basically the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s very pure and has no flavor besides the fat itself.

Often we’ll wet render our own fat. Traditionally that would be the trimmings off of other cuts. Unless you’re butchering a pig (or have bought into a fractional pig through something like a CSA) those bits usually aren’t available. Typically we’ll just buy cuts that are very high in fat. For pork, that would be pork belly. We’ll just buy an uncut slab and wet-render it. Trim any meat you want to cook with (belly is the part that bacon is made of) throw the rest in a pot of water an simmer it for a few hours. The fat layer that collects on top is almost pure lard.

We’ve also found that duck fat is a great substitute for lard. It has a similar smoke point to lard (slightly higher). It tastes different from lard but it’s also good enough that the flavor itself will improve meals. Duck breasts are about 50% fat if you buy them with skins. You can also buy duck fat on its own.

I’d broaden that to a whole host of “green” and “alternative energy” sectors.

All the panic about Chinese “overproduction” of EVs and similar technologies is just China going whole hog on those industries. It’s not an “overproduction” in the traditional sense, where a company produces more than the market will bear and has to sell excess inventory at a loss. China just produces all of this stuff cheaply and at a huge scale.

About 20 years ago the general perception was that EVs were a joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2HX5wsQVEA Now we have cost effective solar and wind, efficient battery storage, good and cheap EVs and drones, modern heat pumps etc.

I don’t even think all the tariffs will matter in the long run. China is currently adopting all that stuff at a breakneck pace. Their production capacity won’t just go away once they’ve saturated the domestic market and the growing number of countries that have trade agreements with China). At that point, Chinese manufacturers will have no choice but to start actually selling below cost, just so they can clear inventory.

And this has a snowball effect too. Energy is often the limiting factor in production. An abundance of cheap energy makes it cheaper to produce more cheap energy production.

People call something a “manifesto” when they want to imply that it’s a long rambling text written by a crazy person.

This situation has me pondering 2 hypotheticals.

1. How long until people start posting the names of individuals perceived as traitors (eg the McSnitch, the journalists shilling for Thomson, the politicians leading the charge against Mangione, etc)?

2. Can he realistically be tried at all? A broad cross section of people are really supportive of Mangione. We’re in such a weird timeline that I could potentially imagine groups like Black Block and Proud Boys standing side-by-side on this one.

Tell me you’re old without telling me you’re old :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmGXeAtWUw

Couldn’t you say the same for the Republicans, or any party for that matter? ie, “Join them and if enough people like you join them they’ll change.”

Realistically, some new political operator isn’t going to get any relevant positions. And nobody with the relevant positions will listen to a new political operator.

That may work in theory but it’s basically saying to create a new Demcratic party from within.

What would joining consist of?

Register as Democrats? Vote whoever they tell you to vote for?

Yes. I really think that the translation part is one of the hardest.

As a brief aside, I want to note that this conversation is happening in one of the languages we’re discussing and that could influence any conclusion we come to. I’m also going to suggest that we ignore Gödel for now

There are many people who are good at math. There are even a lot of people who are reasonably good at grinding through the mechanics of math. That doesn’t solve any of the problems you described above.

Statistics are a great example of this. Early statistics classics are mostly about the mechanics; here’s how you calculate the mean, standard deviation, confidence intervals, etc. 2 types of students generally come out of that class; math students who will forget all of that because they’re going to learn the “real” versions (eg they go through a huge number of proofs that involve calculus and linear algebra), and students who will forget all of that because the whole thing sounds like gibberish.

We teach natural languages the same way but we go much farther. Students learn vocabulary and grammar rules but they’re also expected to learn how to use them correctly. We had students current events articles and ask them to analyze them. We ask students to practice many writing methods including fiction and expository writing.

When I talk to my own kids about statistics I never write any formulas. I ask questions like, “What do you think ‘mean’ means?”, “If I have a bunch of <example item> does ‘mean’ describe it well?”, “What happens if I add an <example item> with <huge outlier>? Do you still think it’s a good description?” “How would you describe it better?”

If I ever had to design an introductory statistics course it would contain very little “math”. Classes, homework, projects, and tests would consist of questions like; “Here’s some data and an interpretation, are they lying? Why or why not?” “Here’s a (simple) data scenario. Tell me what’s going on.” “Here’s some (simple) data. Produce a correct and faithful summary. Now produce a correct but misleading summary. Describe what you did and the effect.” “Here’s a conclusion. Provide sample data that most likely fits the conclusion.” “Change one word in the sentence, ‘Increase your chances by 80% means that there is now an 80% chance.’ to make it a true statement.”

What would “in” consist of?

Democrats had both houses and the Oval Office in 2021. The Democrats were as “in” as they can reasonably expect to get unless we want to go back to 2011 when the Democrats had all that and a supermajority.

What was stopping him from doing something now? Who forced him to send more arms to Israel?

And how is the Democrats ability to do the right thing inhibited in any way by people complaining about a CEO supporting genocide?

These arguments sound a lot like when my 10 year old tells me that they’ll stop watching video games and do their homework as soon as I stop nagging them. That’s nonsense. They do their homework when I take the laptop away and tell them they can’t have it back until the homework is done.

In what way are the “Democrats and liberals” changing the situation from the inside?

Biden just approved another $680m arms package. That should be condemned, not celebrated. Acts that support this genocide should also be condemned, rather than celebrated.

Why not both?

I’ve always thought of math as a language and I talk to my kids about it that way too. Math is an other way to describe the world.

It’s very different from spoken languages and translating between the two needs to be learned and practiced.

Our math education doesn’t include enough word problems and it should be bi-directional. In addition to teaching students how to write equations based of sentences we should teach them how to describe what’s going on in an equation.

It’s completely disingenuous to refer to it as just “visiting family.”

He was the one who decided to post a photo op in Tel Aviv. His previous posts make it clear that he knew he was doing so right next to an active genocide. According to the article, pro-Israelis interpreted it as an endorsement of Israeli policy.

Reasonable people still have boundaries. Reasonable people don’t “hold their nose” at genocide. Reasonable people stop believing in empty promises when every Israeli atrocity is rewarded with praise and unwavering support.

If any part of the left is OK with genocide the right is already winning and the only hope is to split with them.

It’s the timing.

Israel is currently engaged in a genocide. Some guy talking about how much they love all the beautiful things about Germany in 1942 would get down voted to hell too.

Your post completely ignore my first and main sentence.

It’s the timing that makes you an asshole, not your sentiment.

Israel is currently engaging in genocide. I know it. The UN knows it. Dogs know it.

Timing matters. I have family in Austria. I like a lot of things about Austria and I also don’t approve of a lot of things the government does and did.

If someone were to have voiced that sentiment loudly in 1942, they’d probably be an asshole.

CFR has a discussion on the aid to Ukraine https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine The accounting can be a bit confusing but it’s certainly costing the US money.

That seems to be the crux of the matter. People are objecting to the implications of a proxy war rather than the actual meaning. Past treaties, and Russian aggression have nothing to do with whether or not it’s a proxy war. The intent to strategically prevent future Russian aggression, without direct involvement, is exactly what makes it a proxy war.

There also seems to be some implication that “proxy war” means that the entire purpose of the war is to satisfy the greed of some shadowy cabal. It literally just means that there’s someone who’s helping pay without being directly involved.

That makes it even more like a proxy war.

The cold war era proxy wars were all about saving Democracy and the “free world”. We funded one war after an other under the “domino theory.” Those are the same arguments we hear today except we’ve replaced USSR with Russia and Communist with Authoritarian. The message is the same; we don’t want to get involved directly but we’ll support this country as a bastion against world domination.

Some of the aid to Ukraine is structured as loans with expedited provisions to forgive the loans and some of it is outright grants. The US made a lot of money off of the lend lease program to the UK. I haven’t ready any analysis that suggests that the US expects to make any money off of Ukraine.

This is much more like our support of Afghanistan than our support of the UK.

I see. Even with that expanded, and very subjective definition, it’s still hard to see how this doesn’t qualify.

The US has obvious strategic interests in the war. Various US and EU politicians and even Zelinsky himself keeps making that point. Ukraine obviously isn’t just fighting for to support US interests but that’s the case in every proxy war. The rich, third party nation doesn’t hire mercenaries, they fund the groups who already have an interest in fighting (like defending their home).

Zelinsky would obviously like that situation to change. If the US and EU were willing to send troops it would stop being a proxy war and Zelinsky would clearly be thrilled.

If we’re using this more detailed definition of “proxy war”, which includes intent, I’d say that Russia is not a proxy for China. The difference is that isn’t providing any donations to Russia. It’s buying, selling and lending on terms that are so favorable to China that it’s better described as carpetbagging. China, and to a lesser extent India and Iran, are all raking Russia over the coals. China also trades with Ukraine. It does so at a much lower rate than with Russia (565 vs 21,800 respectively in September) but at a higher rate than the US does with Ukraine (197 in September (source: https://oec.world/).

I’m not sure why people keep saying this.

A proxy war has nothing to do with either side being “a proxy.” It only means that one of the sides is being supported by some nations that’s not part of the war. That’s very obviously the case here.