Please let that be a thing.

Hi friend, I propose you try an experiment: post a small handful of anonymous comments on the Internet, try to make them benign as possible but casually slip in an acknowledgement that you are vegan. Something along the lines of “God that recipe looks amazing, but I think I might swap out the beef broth for veggie broth as I am vegan” like I said the point of this experiment is to say something completely as benign and inoffensive as possible.

Once you post sit back and wait for the responses to roll in. You will likely find that while not every time, it is incredibly common for people to send you pictures of bacon, and an abundant of angry responses to the mere offhand mention of the word.

I sincerely wish it was a straw man fallacy, but it unfortunately is a exceedingly common response to the word.

Hey non-vegan, fun fact: No one really cares when you tell them eating plants are more efficient.

Common responses include “bAc0Nnnnnn!” and “I’m gonna eat two times the amount of meat to make your efforts useless”.

None. The bastards have been known to eat me alive, but it just seems like a fools errand, as if I’m going to make a dent in their population.

Besides I’m morally opposed to killing living beings, so the act seems rather cruel unless I’m in mortal danger.

As someone who spent virtually the entirety of his life in a inner city in the North East, of North America we have lots of mosquitoes here. Which parts of the world do you come from? Some place with a good mosquito control department I assume?

I’d argue they are better than anything after The Undiscovered Country. But yeah otherwise I agree, 2009 is one of my top trek films, and I’d rather watch it over any of the TNG movies. Sorry, not sorry.

Yeah the only catch is that it turns out humans are really good at warming planets up, and that’s one of the big stumbling blocks to making Mars habitable. Reversing the process is not something humanity has ever done before. So why not turn one of our biggest bugs and turn it into a feature? Plus if we are going to experiment with intentionally changing the atmosphere of a planet I’d rather we experiment on a place where the entirety of humanity isn’t currently living.

Friendly debates can be a healthy thing. Angry, heated, bitter arguments? Yeah, I’d argue they aren’t too great for your mental health.

As someone who went through the NY public school system many years ago, I can confirm hats were/are hard banned. Like unless it was for religious reasons you really couldn’t even think about putting something on your head.

Cell phones were also banned in my youth but I guess times have changed?

You know I could see him being a hard ass captain. It would really be a shame for him to be relegated to bad guy, that being said he would probably make it the bad guy you love to hate.

Yes i understand what you are getting at there, but my question is precisely how long does one have before the wheels fall off while eating a strict vegan diet? Are we talking a matter of days, weeks, months, years, or decades?

I suspect Tuvix would like a word with you.

So precisely how long are vegans able to survive without suffering ill effects? Because I mean we’ve all heard of people who have lived on that diet long term, so at what point do the wheels start to fall off so to speak? Is there some kind of extended latency period where you are okay before you get sick, or are vegan influencers just pretending to be healthy?

Also your how do you propose we change our agricultural practices so that our food supply isn’t tainted by sick meat grown in poor conditions? There’s a lot of evidence that there’s not enough land mass on earth to feed everyone a diet of free range grass fed beef. Or do you propose we run full steam ahead with factory farming and damn the consequences?

While I understand and respect your viewpoint, I’m not quite sure you understand what I’m saying here… The question is designed to be a no win scenario, it’s phrased in such a vague way that no matter how you answer someone else can chime in and say oh no, your not imagining the terrible scenario I’m imagining. There’s literally no way of answering it in a way that someone is going to chime in and tell your wrong.

It’s literally designed to be a test designed to gauge your reaction more than it is to be answered seriously.

Without more info one can’t possibly respond in a legitimate manner. And any responses without additional information is more of a mirror to your own personal disposition and fears than it is a legitimate response to the question.

Totally agreed, the question is so vague it’s absurd. Are we talking a panda or a grizzly? Is the man a locked-in paraplegic or an violent ex con?

Regardless how you answer there’s always another possibility that makes your decision look stupid.

To me it makes sense, there are a ton of ethical ramifications to the EMH being sentient that the people of the federation would likely have a very hard time coming to grips with.

Data is a novel one of a kind technology for which the vast majority of people have never seen or interacted with. It’s easy to classify him in one way or another as it doesn’t effect their life in the big scheme of things.

EMH on the other hand is just a standard hologram, not one created via extenuating circumstances. Meaning the people of the federation would effectively be creating and destroying lifeforms for their own pleasure every time they use the holodeck. I think the modern day equivalent would be to say that every time you turn off your TV or change the channel someone has to die. Or better yet imagine if every time you killed an opponent I’m a video game a sentient life form would have to die.

Possibly a better modern analogue would be the meat and dairy industry. People in modern times commonly accept that dogs are sentient unique individuals with their own personalities, likes, wants and a possibly even a soul. But cows are mindless automatons where it’s okay to use them for our pleasure. They aren’t ‘real’ to people the way dogs and cats are. Most people don’t want to consider the ethical ramifications of every meal they eat especially when they’ve been doing things one way for the majority of their life.

If EMH is sentient does that mean they have to stop the use of the holodeck all together? Do they have to “dumb down” the processing of holodeck characters to prevent it from accidentally creating a sentient life? And what would be the ethical implications of all of your holodeck adventures? If you have sex with someone on a holodeck adventure is that considered rape or sexual assault? What is consent if your programmed to feel a certain way from inception.

These are heavy issues for the average federation grunt to have to ponder every time they want to blow off some steam. OR they can just put EMH in the same bucket as every other holodeck character who thinks they are alive but in reality are probably just a few lines of code sitting on the computers storage.

Could you clarify how not voting is specifically a fascist statement?

Like what if there aren’t any fascists on the ballot? Or why would not voting only be a vote towards fascism rather than towards libertarian, anarchism, moderatism or any other kind of “ism” out there?

Why do we always assume the ones who don’t vote aren’t going to vote to run us off the cliff?

My frustration with the get out and vote push is that there is always this weird assumption that the ones who aren’t voting are some how going to magically push things into the “right” direction. What if we are all better off if they don’t vote?

I’ve never heard people in an online forum go “I’m European” only to have someone argue back “Well ackchyually it’s Afro-Eurasia!” And yet this pedantic argument is constantly made for the Americas.

Thank you for being a voice of reason here. I’ve never understood this argument, yes the same word can refer to two different things and both sides can simultaneously be right (and wrong) about the usage of the word.

It’s like no one has ever met two people who share the same name, most reasonable people don’t argue with random people “You can’t be Joe! My friend is named Joe and you aren’t him!”.

And to compound the fact I’ve noticed that people’s native languages and place of birth tend to determine where they fall on the argument. You guys realize that words can sound and be spelled similar and mean something different things in different languages and cultures, right?