constantius

Fair. I believe the Empire only ended with Byzantium, and as far as I know the edict was never repealed, but I do differentiate between Rome and Byzantium elsewhere, so I see the point.

Yes, the idea of empire as being something bigger than a kingdom is a popular misunderstanding.

However, Rome (and Byzantium) were actually very good at integrating conquered populations into their culture.

Very early in the empire, a law made all conquered people officially Roman, with all the benefits and protections it entailed.

After 2-3 generations, there was not much difference between a Roman from Gaul and a Roman from Rome: they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, had the same education, and viewed themselves as Roman. And critically, the Romans from Rome didn't see their compatriots from elsewhere as different.

The Senate was composed entirely of men, but apart from that it was a DEI dream. Some of the emperors were dark-skinned, originating from current Syria: we only know because of their genealogy, their portraits, but otherwise no one cared enough to mention their skin colour, especially in a negative way.

To such an extent that, for most of their existence, Rome and Byzantium did not actually fit the definition of empire.

You seem to have decided that people who are against immigration are stupid, racist, authoritarian, and evil: by all.means, that's an understandable bias, as the most noticeable part of most countries' populations who hold this view indeed appear to be what you think. However, it is still a bias, that leads to you engaging in the kind of self-righteous, irrational rage that might make you feel like you're standing up for the oppressed when you're actually not.

Most people seem to conflate immigrants with refugees, which is false (refugees are a small minority of all immigrants), to see immigrants as poor, hard-working people who just need one chance, which is also false (most immigrants are skilled workers, generally not the poor of their country, and most immigrants you see are probably family members of other skilled workers), and to view immigration as a leftist cause (again not true, immigration is something that's mostly lobbied for by corporate interests).

But many more people feel opposed to migration for entirely different reasons: personal hardships directly due to immigration (loss of job or house), political leanings (pro-working class can mean anti-immigration), social cohesion/sustainability/community considerations, etc.

Not empathising with those people and having a reductionist view of immigration, which often stems from simply being shielded from any negative effects of it, as most on this forum are, lets people take a position like yours, which further polarises society and plays into the cards of the powerful you seem to oppose.

We probably agree on almost every political view apart from this.

I'm supporting your position elsewhere: mentioning to avoid being dismissed as right-wing/ethno-nationalist.

However, support for migration is not a left or right issue. Accepting refugees might be (and I fully support that), but non-refugee immigration (the vast majority of it) is not an unalloyed good.

Immigration has a number of negative effects, on housing, employment and wages, inequalities, social cohesion, political direction.

Being a radical leftist and against immigration is not contradictory.

The claim made was that all crime is linked to refugees.

We can agree that the 'all' part was just the original commenters own biases, but that 'refugee' part is still unfounded based on your quotes.

Refugees are a small minority of immigrants (historically around 10%, don't know what it is in Sweden). The quotes you cite are about immigrants, and the few nationalities mentioned are Turkey and Serbia: neither is a country where refugees originate (except maybe LGBT people, but I'd be very surprised if Sweden is in the thrall of gay Turks...).

So the assertion about immigrant backgrounds seems to hold, but nothing says it's related to refugees, otherwise the large majority of these criminals would be Afghan, Syrian, Eritrean, etc., which doesn't seem to be the case.

I will comment on this discussion elsewhere, but wanted to mention your contributions here have been disgraceful: providing a source that does not support your second (bigoted) claim, obviously feeling caught in your lies, and then weaseling out of it by claiming it's common knowledge repeatedly and copy-pasting that answer about other commenters being more eloquent. Flagged.

It is indeed unreasonable.

No animal evolved solely to produce food for humans and to be property, and I think that's a major blindspot that people have, which allows them to believe into this idea.

Buying an animal, restraining it in your property, subjecting it to whatever's needed for it to produce (look this up if you need to), consuming said products, and in the end of its useful life selling the animal (and let's not imagine that it's sold to animal sanctuaries): none of this is in line with being vegan. All of it harms the animal in some way and normalises the dismissal of animal life, independent of whatever the person wants to believe.

Someone who believes veganism is the right way, but is not personally vegan, can say just that: it's a perfectly tenable philosophical position to have. Self-identifying as vegan while not being vegan is where it becomes absurd.

That quote seems to be reinforcing my point but your excerpts indicate you disagree, so I'm.not sure why you posted this: I will assume you're disagreeing, sorry if I misunderstood.

The adaptations in that quote are about the animals who will be harmed without your intending to do so during your own attempts to survive, like the insects killed during harvest. The essence and the last sentence of the definition are also in line with what I am saying. Eating dairy by choice while identifying as vegan is not due to one coming to the limits of 'as far as possible', under any definition of 'possible' or 'practicable'.

I seriously feel like I'm being DDoS'd, because this position is so absurd and has so many counters to it (can you really not realise this?) that I don't know where to start.

The definition of veganism includes more than just not eating animal products, but that aspect of it leaves no place to ambiguity.

What's the appeal of including vegetarians and carnists into veganism? It's not like vegans wield political power or are privileged in some way, where does this strange type of inclusivity at the detriment of reality come from?

How is this veganism? Or a form of it?

It's by definition not vegan to consume animal products. I'm happy that the term is considered so virtuous that people want to self-identify as such (I've even heard meat-eaters say they're vegan "except from time to time"), but I don't think it's intolerant/bigoted to simply look at the definition.

I always found it weird when people confidently speak from the wrong end. And the crab mentality of "it's only good there temporarily, then it'll.be the same shit as here" is tiring.

If you had lived in the UK, you'd understand that it's not about temporary vegan menus in restaurants but about the whole country, even in a chain in the middle of nowhere, having vegan alternatives and packaging for years and years.

The sibling comment has more eloquent advice, but I'll add that you're neck deep in an echo chamber if that's how you react. Being vegan, mentioning that a country is difficult to live in as a vegan, in a thread about veganism, is not about signaling. Ask the next vegan who'd been to a Global South country instead of imagining people in your head: if it was a pain, they'll say it was a pain, there is no commentary about virtue in there.

Examples of Christian (or any other religion's) priests taking the politically difficult view and living by their own precepts and stated values are few and far between.

From the very beginning. Look into how the churchmen happily destroyed pagan temples and killed pagan priests in the Roman Empire when they had the power to do so. Look at how they justified and clamoured for death (including of Christians) during the Crusades. Or at how long they've taken to take a position against slavery. Or how they've bent the knee to fascists in the XXth century when it was politically expedient to do so. The few who stood by their principles are very rare, even though they've been used to whitewash their institutions later.

And to avoid getting blamed of anti-Christianity: that's also true of Buddhists (look at how they killed Muslims in Myanmar), of Muslims (the Saudis especially), and the way most Jewish synagogues have reacted to the genocide is nothing but horror and shame.

Religion (as in the institution) has almost always lagged behind virtuous developments: it's virtuous people who have largely initiated these movements and sacrificed for their cause. You don't get to the level of wealth and power that the Church has by taking morally right stances.

Read my other answers.

I recognise your handle because I've vouched for a fair few of your comments: we're generally debating on the same side.

My comment here is arguing against casual, and especially unbased, bigotry against men. Which your comment demonstrates.

Drive-by shittiness makes the community worse. Do better.

I actually appreciate your replies and the argument, not attempting to belittle you.

My point is that, whatever your papers assert, the differences on carnism, in absolute terms, are so insignificant on the political/gender spectra that accusing one side on this basis can only be seen as having the only purpose of attacking that side, not of genuinely wanting to see meat consumption reduced.

When you look at the data (or when you don't eat meat and regularly debate randos about it), you will see it's not a conservative/liberal, man/woman thing, but a generalised disregard for animal life. So turning it into a culture war just makes it worse, because the conservatives who read your attack will be likely to start seeing it as part of their identity while liberals will do nothing, so in total this worsens the issue.

A big part of my debates on this site is about animal cruelty, so I'm not defending those who eat animals here, only pointing out this approach is both a lie on numbers and bad for the cause.

justified in bigoted

You seem to think that bigoted means having a negative view, but it's actually "obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them". The unreasoning part and acting on prejudice is what I'm saying is bad.

Thinking badly of right ideologies is justifiable, but being bigoted is wrong in any way.

I answered your comment because it was purely about gender, nothing political, and because the claim about social media posts being a major barrier was nonsense.

Yes, there are political underpinnings to eating animals. I assume you're American, so here's a gallup poll for the US:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/510038/identify-vegetarian-vega...

Since this is about America, it's about right vs liberals (so not left), and indeed they're 3 times more likely than conservatives (9 vs 3%), and indeed women are 2-3 times more likely than men to be vegetarian/vegan (6 vs 2%).

But we're talking about tiny, tiny percentage points. It's the same across the entire West. So singling out men, or even conservatives, for a tiny difference feels like antagonisation with no basis, and your comment reads not like arguing for climate or animal welfare, but as fighting your culture war. And everyone outside of your bubble will see it for a weak attack and dismiss it as just a vehicle for your favourite flavour of bigotry.

Hence why dropping it would have been better.

As an aside: women are the vast majority of leisure travellers (>70% for all travel, and much higher for leisure only). Women are probably 99% of consumers of fast fashion, and the majority of consumers of smartphone updates. The gap is much starker, and seeing it as a culture problem would be justified in discussions about pollution (though not socially acceptable...). But if you were talking about, I don't know, the externalities of coffee production, and women/liberals drank 51% of coffee and men/conservatives 49%, and you complained about women, I'd also just dismiss your comment as bigotry.

What's the purpose of this caricature?

You're talking about eating plant protein, what's the point of throwing in an atack on men, even a subset of them? Or do you really think that the main thing that bars us from eating less meat or any other kind of utopia is some evil men doing "or something" on social media?

Your comment could have stood on its own without throwing your bigotry, or ignorance, in to unnecessarily antagonise people.

Thanks for the overview: the common and intuitive view when transparency is attacked in this way is that the ruling class wants to protect themselves, and your list provides ample evidence.

I hope the Parliament doesn't buy the story about protecting critical infrastructure.

Agreed. The only goal of these skills/tricks/requests for humanising LLM writing is to be able to pass it off as your own, because they know it's shameful and want to avoid the opprobrium.

Some will say it's just for their own quality of life when they're reading LLM output, or "just for docs", but this is an extremely marginal use case.

90% of farmed animals globally are in factory farms: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-est...

I don't have data on the West specifically, but I'd be surprised if it's not 99%. "Free range" animals are largely a fiction.

Animals being used for pasture grazing, for the benefit of the climate, could be understandable, but I think enslavement and torture of 200+ billion animals annually is a moral failure that goes far beyond its effects on CO2 ppm.

I'd push back.on blaming the populace for this: the widespread belief in general polls is that the climate situation is dire and that drastic measures need to be taken.

However, the constraints that most people have to contend with do not allow them to be more radical in their calls for change. You saw it in the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests uprising in France, that was motivated not by the passion for IC engines but by the inability to weather the costs of taxation on older vehicles.

The real culprit is far and away corporations that benefit from activities that carry with them extreme effects on the climate, and who can influence both politics and media. The research (sorry for lack of link) that shows that political direction is largely controlled by moneyed interests is not ambiguous.

I do agree that the populace also deserves some of the blame however: regular renewals of electronic devices, and especially the continuing consumption of animal products, is a moral failure justified only by pleasure.

As another comment points out, you added the disclaimer after publishing (and probably the backlash):

https://web.archive.org/web/20260712212920/https://scrapfly....

So you don't seem to stand by anything apart from swindling.

Saying no is always an option, and this seemed like the opportunity for this. Highly paid devs consistently choosing to do this and using the "following orders"/"food on the table" defense should be socially unacceptable. However, the parent seems to feel no guilt despite the many comments blaming him, so I think protecting his feelings is not necessary.

I was not aware of the incident with Tuta, thanks for mentioning.

https://hackread.com/encrypted-email-provider-tutanota-backd...

However, Proton is leaving Switzerland, because of changing legislation, to Germany.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329654

This reads like the mental hoops someone who works for or invests into Meta comes up with to resolve their cognitive dissonance.

You might as well have said that without advertising, we wouldn't have charities, freedom of thought, and literature: the argument is as strong and might make you feel even better about yourself.

Oh, turns out that you did say that advertising solved slavery in another comment. Carry on, mate.

Fair. I've seen the use of nuclear waste to derail conversations about nuclear so often that I reacted without looking at the context, sorry.

As far as I know, it hasn't happened, not even once.

Your objection appeals to emotions, not to reason. The very kind of objection that has enabled fossil fuels to be seen as less dangerous. FYI, nuclear energy has killed single digits of people. Fossil fuels kill around 10M annually through pollution alone.

Granted, your lament aims to make people privilege clean energy over nuclear, but in nature it is still the kind of thought-terminating fearmongering that gets us surveillance to protect children, so I object on principle.

The US has been the monster for most of the world for the last 70 years. It's shocking that most Americans still don't see that.

The Middle-East's bad record on human rights can be traced back to in large part to the meddling of the US, because it serves the interests of Israel and because of oil. In the time of Nasser, the Middle-East was a different place.

They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot.

FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or 5km3 of waste per year.

For comparison, German landfills can accommodate 70M metric tons per year.

France, a country famous for its investment into nuclear, is not covered in nuclear waste, and does not seem to have any issue disposing of it safely.

Nuclear has its disadvantages, but painting the many people who advocate for it on HN as delusional or ignorant is not very respectful.