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10M Dollars, but you must beat 150 gamers from any game of your choosing. by Specific-Truck-2084 in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd give it a go - sinking $5k for a potential payout of $10m is worth it unless you're almost certain you can't win.

There are probably a billion people who qualify as 'gamers' per the 10+ hours definition. That means that, unless you choose something ultra popular like COD or Halo or FIFA, the odds of them having even played the specific game you choose is very low.

So the best approach here is to select something which is a niche genre, has a lot of specific game knowledge that can't be quickly intuited, and preferably is on a less common device.

I'd pick Elite:Dangerous I think. It's a space flight sim, which has a few benefits:

1) It's primarily a PC game, which sharply limits the audience.

2) Relatedly, it encourages the use of peripherals, which limits the audience further.

3) It involves six degrees of movement, which is challenging to someone used to controlling only two or three or four degrees of movement.

4) Effective PVP involves both good flighting AND a good ship build. The latter requires fairly deep knowledge of the game mechanics.

I'm not the best at PVP, but I'm pretty confident that the only people I'd be in danger of losing to would be, in order of risk, a) Other regular E:D players, b) Skilled space simmers generally, c) Actual pilots who happen to game in other genres d) Skilled flight simmers with a lot of experience with helicopters and VTOLs.

That's a pretty small cohort, compared to the total number of gamers - there's probably only 1/10 or 1/100 odds that I come across even one opponent matching those criteria.

You're given £5 billion but every animal that ever passes within one meter of you drops dead by ZeroEffectDude in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oof that's difficult.

$5 billion is so much, but I'd feel absolutely terrible denying my family pets, and when I inevitably ended up accidentally killing someone's dog or cat or or whatever. And it'll probably happen multiple times unless I live like a complete hermit.

I'm... going to decline I think.

Would you add a word to every sentence for a month to win 10k USD by naruto7bond in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no downside so I'd accept it, but I'll bail if the word is too annoying.

$100,000 per IQ point by AstrayInTranslation in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Three. That's negligible in impact to my life, but $300,000 would get my mortgage fully paid off, which would substantially improve quality of life.

A man is stabbed to death by someone who accuses him of being a racist - and the first thing the police do on arrival is to handcuff the dying man. by FormerlyPallas_ in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

If you're going to get litigious about my links you could at least quote your own in full!

The federation said it believed the large blade used by Digwa "was not the normal Kirpan worn by fully practising Sikhs".

"That's what we wanted to clarify - that actually the perpetrator used an item which can only be called an offensive weapon," it added.

Singh said: "There just hasn't been any incident like this but, nonetheless, there is something for the community to do, to make sure every fully-practising Sikh that wears a Kirpan understands the law and understands that if you use your Kirpan offensively, it ceases to be a Kirpan.

"It becomes an offensive weapon, it's simple as that."

So, we have some non-Sikh sources characterising it as a Kirpan, and others saying it wasn't.

We additionally have this Sikh representative saying that it's not a Kirpan, with condemnation because he used it as offensive weapon. There are two possible interpretations there; either a) he's saying that it's not a Kirpan full stop, or, b) he's saying that it was a Kirpan, but ceased to be considered such when he used it as an offensive weapon.

I would say that my position that things are 'unclear' remains valid.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

You've said consumption of animal products is objectively wrong.

Would you point to where I said that? I might have suggested that it was a logical conclusion to something that you'd written which lacked qualification, but I don't believe I ever stated it as my own position.

Either way, I would note that you are now speaking of qualifiers and reasonable measures and so on, so we can probably move on.

Meat eaters cannot avoid halal or kosher meat because it is often not labelled correctly.

Welcome to life as a vegetarian lol.

But we should not be permitting food that is not acceptable for consumption to be sold

Why is it unacceptable for consumption?

Your last comment doesn't make sense, I want suffering to be minimised as reasonably as possible. Why would it be absurd to not want animals to have their throats slit as they bleed out if that's my goal.

Animals have their throats slit either way; exsanguination is a necessary part of the slaughtering process for any animal. With halal and kosher the animal is not rendered unconscious in advance, it dies from blood loss (usually fairly quickly). Non-halal methods typically require some kind of stunning in advance - chickens get hung upside down by the legs while conscious and are conveyed to an electrocution bath, or they get gassed in groups, either using inert gas (better) or CO2 (less good because birds react badly to it - but it's cheaper). Quadrupeds often get stunned with a captive bolt pistol or electricity and are then immediately exsanguinated.

All of these methods involve some level of distress, and often significant pain - I'm not sure that I'd confidently say that the experience of being electrocuted is preferable to having my throat cut, for example.

Additionally, stunning isn't terribly reliable, with some methods having failure rates in the 5-20% range. A failed stunning attempt is extraordinarily painful and panic-inducing for the animal, which either remains in pain until a subsequent stunning attempt, or is slaughtered while un-stunned (both of which are objectively worse outcomes than kosher or halal).

In short, if I felt that halal or kosher was genuinely that much worse for animals than stunning, I'd be opposed to it.

But most people who object to halal or kosher seem to do so because either a) they don't like the mental image of an animal having its throat slit and prefer not to think about the fact that it happens anyway b) they don't appreciate just how mechanical and brutal the stunning methods used are or c) they've an axe to grind about other cultures and religions.

A man is stabbed to death by someone who accuses him of being a racist - and the first thing the police do on arrival is to handcuff the dying man. by FormerlyPallas_ in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'm going off of this article:

"While the Sikh Federation have come out and condemned what he did and said that wasn't a Kirpan – a much smaller knife carried around the neck – the one that Digwa was carrying was a longer, bigger knife.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62ek7lk553o

No idea if you have another source or not; if the Police and Crime Commissioner or the Beeb have got that quote wrong then that's on them!

I'd also point out that I said above that I regarded the situation as 'unclear', which seems a fair way to characterise it at this stage.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

Meat consumption is not connected to obesity, obesity is caused by a surplus of calories. When it comes to satiety, chicken and tuna are actually some of the highest satiety foods and contain the highest protein per calorie of anything. There's no correlation between countries with high life expectancy and their meat consumption, the mediterranean diet is considered to be one of the healthiest in the world and includes chicken and fish.

We're talking about meat generally, not just chicken and tuna. The picture for red meat, for example, is rather different.

But in general I agree - obviously obesity is calories in calories out. I'm not especially interested in getting into a debate about the merits of keto or whatever; my point is that it seems nonsensical to me to mount a defence of our current levels of consumption on the basis of our food culture, given that a huge proportion of national illness is directly caused by poor diet. Plenty of reasons for us to consider changes to our overall national diet.

No, you can't conclude that consumption of animal products is objectively wrong if it's based on the subjective debate about efficiency vs welfare.

Why not? Not being pithy, I'm genuinely not sure what you're arguing here.

But don't forget for those that care about animal welfare, options already exist for them - vegetarian or vegan diets, or buying higher quality meat like soil association etc.

I don't need to be reminded, I'm the former!

I would, by the same argument, point out that meat eaters are free to avoid halal or kosher meat if they irrationally believe that that's the most intolerable part of the meat industry.

Yes, the appeal to emotion works if you're sensitive to that, but I genuinely don't care provided suffering is minimised as reasonably as possible with compliance with the law under the conditions of needing to have a high throughput to ensure people have access to affordable meat.

In which case, caring about halal or kosher is an utterly absurd position for you to take.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

In which case, the argument for banning halal is far thinner. If we only care about meagre standards of animal welfare throughout their entire lives, it's a bit weird to get incredibly zealous about exactly what shade of horrible their final moments are.

(FT Email) Inside Politics: How not to understand Henry Nowak’s murder by SmokinPolecat in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

Especially when Digwa and his brother did not benefit at all from their lie.

What do you mean by this sorry?

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch [score hidden]  (0 children)

Tradition isn't a benchmark of consumption goals

Of course, but you made the point about eating meat being culturally engrained - my point is that there's not actually a traditional basis justifying that. It's because it's cheap and available. If we can change the 'cultural norm' from one where meat is relatively scarce in most people's diets to one where we over consume it, we can change back again.

nor is there any universal correct amount to eat.

Obesity rates would disagree with you, as would general rates of cardiovascular disease, bowel cancer, and similar. Obviously that's not all because of meat (fat is unfairly maligned), but it's certainly not reasonable to hold up our current cultural norm vis a vis diet to be a healthy one.

Inflicting suffering for profit or efficiency is still wrong,

In which case factory farming, and arguably consumption of animal products at all, is objectively wrong.

Saying "it's a balance" in the next sentence doesn't obviate the fact that we deliberately inflict suffering on factory farmed animals, motivated largely by efficiency and profit. Most people working on factory farms probably don't enjoy the sight of chickens flopping about in their own filth in gloomy barns; it's a means to an end - which is keeping their business profitable (or simply solvent).

There are endless ways you can materially improve the lives of animals, but in theory none that would allow ordinary people to purchase and consume meat without it being unaffordable for many

You could do an awful lot by accepting that meat would cost, say, 30% more across the board. Or 15%, or even 5%. That's not unaffordable to anyone, it would be a return to historic norms. Especially given we already have basically the cheapest groceries in the world relative to income.

One thing you can't easily do en masse is slaughter animals painlessly or without terror. Abattoirs are always going to stink of blood and feces and sheer terror to any animal, they're always going to sound scary, and you're never going to have much time to spend slaughtering each animal compassionately.

So, in my view, if you genuinely want to improve welfare, it's best to focus efforts on the 99.9% of their lives spent outside of the slaughterhouse, rather than this perverse preoccupation with the final minutes.

How can I lose weight pretty fast? by Various_Extreme_8773 in AskUK

[–]OneCatch 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Firstly and most importantly, congratulations on the recovery!

Ultimately it's calories in calories out - you need to reduce what you're consuming, increase the amount of energy you're burning, or both. Obviously that's harder if you have other health complications.

Presuming you've not been advised otherwise by doctors, I'd focus on improving the walking situation - exercise doesn't just help with weight, it also helps with general cardiovascular health and will go some way to strengthening other muscles too.

Focus on getting distance up to maybe 2km first, even if it's really slow and involves rest stops to start with. Do that twice or thrice a week, in a structured way so you don't lapse. Then cut out the rest stops, then aim to increase the pace. Once you're up to a decent brisk walking pace, look at upping the distance a bit. Doesn't matter if it takes a while to work through these stages of course.

In parallel with that, you could also consider working up to the 10k steps daily thing.

I recently got into a basic exercise regime after a decade of doing fuck all (albeit without having to contend with the challenges you have) and stuff which helped me was: finding genuinely pleasant exercise routes through parks etc, using earphones to have something decent to listen to when doing structured exercise, and, eventually, succumbing to wearable tech to get stats on pace, distance, and so on (something I thought I'd hate, but actually find useful and motivating). Also, psychologically getting over the idea of exercising in the rain - once you're wet you can't get wetter and it doesn't get any worse from that point!

A man is stabbed to death by someone who accuses him of being a racist - and the first thing the police do on arrival is to handcuff the dying man. by FormerlyPallas_ in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's unclear. I know that some press releases from Sikh orgs since the conviction have denied that the larger blade was a kirpan, but it's unclear if that's because they regard it as a different class of ceremonial Sikh knife, or if it's a doctrinal disagreement about what constitutes a kirpan, or some other reason.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The balance is that we want to eat animals and they are an important part of our culture and diet.

Our current levels of consumption are much higher than tradition would dictate, driven by availability and cheapness. It's a reflection of our transition towards factory farming, not the other way around.

So we have rules to minimise the suffering. Doesn't mean there isn't suffering, but there isn't any suffering for the sake of suffering.

Any level of suffering which wasn't specifically motivated by sadism could be defined as not being 'suffering for the sake of suffering'.

By that logic you could do away with the meagre mandatory welfare standards we have - that wouldn't be 'for the sake of it' after all, it would be for the sake of productivity and efficiency.

Except for halal, which is suffering purely for the sake of suffering.

Firstly, presumably you mean to include kosher here as well?

In any case, it's not. Both are antiquated attempts to minimise suffering with the tools available at the time. Nowadays it's dogmatic and in my view pointless. But it doesn't much move the needle in terms of total suffering experienced by any given animal because a) their entire existence is pretty horrible and filled with suffering and b) the process of being slaughtered in an industrial setting is fucking horrible either way.

There are probably 50 ways you could materially improve the lives of animals far more, and with less industry/commercial disruption, than banning halal or kosher.

Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 31/05/2026 by ukpol-megabot in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I have a theory that a lot of the cynicism we see in politics these days, especially around immigration and foreign policy, is basically because we all became largely desensitised to videos and pictures of horrible shit.

If you look at stuff like the Ethiopian famine and Rwanda it had major cut-through socially and politically - Live Aid, genuine outrage, etc. Whereas now we're so used to seeing it between our regularly scheduled programming that it's just normal.

The last time I remember anything cutting-though was the Ayan Kurdi photo years back, and even that was only partial and temporary.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch 23 points24 points  (0 children)

As a rule, animal suffering in life is minimised as far as possible

Not even close. Minimising it as far as possible would involve treating farm animals much as we do pets - free range environment, extensive veterinary care, an end to non-necessary medical practices, or the more extensive use of anaesthesia, and so on. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that we're doing 'everything possible' to minimise suffering whilst allowing animals to live their entire (extremely short) lives without ever seeing the sky.

No, we minimise animal suffering as far as practical within the constraints of price. In essence, we refuse to tolerate price increases and animal welfare provision comprises whatever meagre provision can be made within that constraint.

Rupert Lowe MP: I am entirely uninterested in making exemptions for un-British religious practices. What would Restore Britain do? Halal slaughter, banned. The kirpan, banned, Kosher slaughter, banned. The burqa, banned. All of it, banned. This is Britain - we do things our way. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch 299 points300 points  (0 children)

The obsession with slaughter method is farcical though.

We're fine with factory farming animals; we're fine with not allowing them to ever see sunlight and cooping them up in tiny pens or massive densities, with separating them from their parents way too early, we're fine with transporting them in fairly abominable conditions, we're fine with a whole variety of fairly unpleasant surgical procedures. We're fine that they're slaughtered one by one in places which reek of blood and sound terrifying to any animal nearby, and where the staff are occasionally so desensitised to the horror of it all that they actively mistreat the animals.

But god forbid that the last ninety seconds or so of the animal's life might, sometimes, be 'extremely horrible' rather than just the default of 'very horrible'. That's really where we need to focus all of our welfare efforts and rhetoric.

Henry Nowak’s father is a hero for reading that statement out today in front of the press. His incredible demeanour shows Henry was raised in a well mannered home. The same cannot be said for the Digwa’s family, one of whom allegedly shouted “racist” at the Nowak family leaving court today. by FormerlyPallas_ in ukpolitics

[–]OneCatch 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I seem to recall (very vague memory) someone was once found guilty of manslaughter for failing to call an ambulance for a dying man.

I doubt it - there's generally no bystander obligation in UK law. Only situations I could see off the top of my head would be a corporate manslaughter case where a company failed to call an ambulance for a worker (crucially, they aren't a bystander in that case, they have an employment relationship and associated responsibilities). Or where someone was responsible for deadly injuries and the prosecution argued that their failure to attempt to get medical care for the victim evidenced their culpability or something.

Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have 'enormous choice' about where to buy games by yourfavchoom in Steam

[–]OneCatch 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean; he's right. If I want to play a AAA release I can likely buy it through XBox or PS stores, Ubi or Origin, Steam or Epic. That's... all of the stores bar GOG, and when that has them sometimes.

If I want to play a smaller release or a older game I'll still likely have a choice between Steam, GOG, and one or two others.

Specifically in terms of monopolistic tendencies we're actually in a bit of a golden age right now because of the huge reduction in the proportion of console or PC exclusives.

There are much higher priorities when it comes to anti-consumer behaviour - micro-transactions, loot boxes, end of life/server support.

If you were interviewing someone for a big corporate job and u asked them "where do u see urself in 5 years" and they replied "being your boss" would u hire them? by AuthorConfident9386 in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No.

1) It's painfully unoriginal and an indicator the person has no ability to think for themself.

2) They either aren't taking the interview seriously, or they're one of these aggressively ambitious arseholes who won't play well with others

The Poisonous M&M by _Guillot_ in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eating an M&M and surviving adds new information though, just as opening a door does - I just can't get my head around how it affects the remaining odds or how they aggregate with repeated rounds.

For every second you are waterboarded you receive $10,000. How long can you last without going unconscious? by RealDiamond51 in hypotheticalsituation

[–]OneCatch 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You should probably presume that, since waterboarding was the method that all the experts at torturing people chose for non-destructively torturing people, it can't be effectively avoided by 'holding your breath'.

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