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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Yes, there is the possibility that self-reported cases are untrustworthy. But there is no reason to think vegan cat owners would be more biased than non-vegan cat owners.

    My desired outcome is simply showing that it is possible for cats to be healthy on a vegan diet. I only need one example to show that. And there are examples of such cats in the study my link had. At least for its tested disorders, reported vegan cats on average were slightly less likely to have at least one. The majority of both groups were in fact “healthy” (having no measured disorder). The difference between the healthy rates is small enough that it can be explained by variance and other factors contributing to health besides diet, and that’s fine.

    Before anyone starts, yes there could be health metrics not being measured that are relevant to the spirit of the idea being explored. But you need to measure easily quantifiable things. If you just asked “Is this cat healthy?”, you would have some owners disqualify a cat for having a cut on their paw, and others disregarding serious concerns just because there hadn’t been a diagnosis. This is as wide a scope as you can expect to explore a qualitative idea with.

    Unless you are suggesting that literally every owner reporting a healthy vegan cat in the study is just lying, my claim is supported by the study. And if you thought otherwise, you invented a different claim and assigned it to me.

    I genuinely want people to engage honestly with other people’s arguments made in good faith. I know Lemmy is ultimately a collection of largely anonymous internet users, but still, I expected better than what I have seen in this thread.



  • I noticed you forgot to include a very important contextual sentence for your myopathy quote:

    Only three studies [27,29,30] have carried out hematological and/or biochemical analysis of blood in cats that were fed vegetarian diets, and it is worth noting that sample sizes were low. Cats on a high-protein vegetarian diet exhibited hypokalemia which accompanied recurrent polymyopathy [29]. There was also increased creatinine kinase activity, likely reflecting the muscle damage caused by the myopathy, and reduced urinary potassium concentrations. Potassium supplementation prevented development of this myopathy, strongly suggesting a link between the potassium and myopathy.

    Meaning there was a health problem when one of the cats’ dietary needs wasn’t being met, which no longer appeared when the deficiency was corrected.

    Even so, no one was trying to claim every conceivable vegan food mix is healthy for a cat. Of course trying to switch an animal who would be a carnivore in nature to a healthy synthetic vegan diet would be difficult. But there only needs to be one diet that succeeds to show it’s possible. And unless you’re going to claim literally all of the vegan cat guardians who reported healthy cats are lying about their cat’s health or diet, that requirement has been met.


  • What? That wasn’t my source, and it was a different comment chain created after my comment. How am I supposed to have read that?

    Anyway, to be clear, the source commenter claimed it is impossible for a cat to be healthy with a vegan diet. All that’s needed to refute that is an example of a healthy cat with a vegan diet. So I found an article discussing how that has been observed. That’s it. But many people in this thread are either unwilling to concede this or are creating strawmen.



  • Look, block who you want, but I don’t get this adamant rejection of reality. You think a thing is impossible, someone shows you a study stating that the thing does happen, and you still insist the thing is impossible. You don’t even give a reason why. But you have the nerve to say others are being irrational?

    To all the other free thinkers using the disagree button for dissent, reflect on if you are actually open to having your mind changed about things in the face of new information. Being occasionally exposed to sincere people that challenge your way of thinking is healthy. You may walk away with a more accurate view of something you previously dismissed, or even if you don’t have your mind changed, you are enriched with the confidence that your views can withstand a degree of criticism. And you don’t have to reply if you don’t want to argue or whatever, but at least be honest with yourself so you can grow.



  • Cats have dietary needs that would require them to eat meat in nature. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.

    I don’t understand why people upvote summaries that don’t even try to be objective. I honestly think the mods there do notably abuse their power to remove comments, but let people decide that for themselves. This commenter is telling you who to support while being confidently incorrect on the original issue.




  • At 15:05 it isn’t clear what is meant by a “full campaign”, but it does sound like you can set up games to be only one age. I hope so, as I am skeptical about swapping civilizations. It was actually the primary thing that put me off Humankind, rather than a selling point. Resetting not only your Civ’s identity but also the world’s resources, map size, and the tech tree is concerning. If one age isn’t an option, I am sure mods will save us at least.

    Mod support and multiplayer are huge interests for dedicated fans, so hopefully we will get more information soon. VI improved a lot from V, so I expect it will be good.

    I prefer the new graphics to Civ VI’s overall, but I don’t want to say it actually tops V until I’ve played it myself. A few screens seemed visually unfinshed. Story events, navigable rivers, leader skill trees, and the calamities at the end of ages seem intriguing at least. No mention of a world congress, hopefully they have a better system in mind than VI’s.

    Still curious about culture progression. They didn’t show a card system like VI, so that at least makes me hopeful. Ideally I would like a permanent unlock/upgrade tree and a way to temporarily boost something at a cost in another system, like edicts in Stellaris.

    Looks like districts and wonders still take a tile to build, but now other buildings do too? Cities sprawl out a lot, and are diverse within. Perhaps we will be able to build duplicate buildings that were previously one per city, especially since they mentioned city specializations. It also seems like workers/builders might be attached to a particular city rather than movable units.

    Overall, I’m a bit less excited and more worried. There were a lot of changes from V to VI that I was disappointed with from the onset and honestly they did not grow on me.






  • Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.

    When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.


  • For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.

    For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly “opt out” of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.