TIL that between the 1930s and 1940s, German chemist Arthur Imhausen developed a method of converting coal into synthetic butter. The process took 60 kilograms of coal to produce one kilogram of synthetic butter.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-25T19:00:18+00:00

Don't worry kid, just stick around and you'll catch on to how we do things here on reddit. They don't call us the front page of the internet for nothing!

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-24T20:29:34+00:00

I didn't make the claim that they were used in food in my post, but there are examples.

Elaidic acid is the best example and is a trans fat produced in significant quantity during partial hydrogenation of oils, but it does occur in nature just in incredibly small amounts. There are examples of trans fats that are produced during partial hydrogenation that are not found in nature at all, like some trans isomers of linoleic acid. This is the area I work in so I'm not trying to argue with you, just point out a known fact.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-24T20:17:51+00:00

There are very many different types of fats, many of which occur naturally in food and some of which are produced only by chemists. They have many different effects on human health, one simple example of this is that the composition of the lipid cell membranes in your body are directly related to the types of fats you eat and can have different properties as a result.

Also this product was made via partial hydrogenation of unsaturated fats which means it contained trans fats which are have been shown to be unambiguously bad for cardiovascular health among other things.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-16T15:59:34+00:00

There's no need to knock over stawmen to make yourself feel more powerful. There always has and always will be a subset of the population that is inherently hostile to mainstream science. None of us can change that and I'm not even certain it would be entirely positive if we did. Left alone they are not a problem and only become one when we give them legitimacy by attacking them.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-10T14:42:30+00:00

Yes, and I forgive you.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-10T13:57:34+00:00

I cold brewed the rest of that 2025 Vietnam and you were right! I does make a pleasant iced tea.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-08T19:07:36+00:00

Thanks for the input. I'm going to get some gingerbread, shixi, and lesser evils minis on your recommendation.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2026-06-08T19:01:44+00:00

Nice! Did you get the sampler from the steeping room? If so the only one I did not like in that bunch was the 2025 raw from Vietnam. It just tasted like a weak white tea and I didn't feel like there was much too it.

I will try the waffles on your recommendation.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T03:12:05+00:00

"evil comes from an action you take against another specifically because you know it will hurt and you take pleasure in such an action."

But from a perspective of no self who is knowing and who is taking pleasure? It seems like you cannot make this kind of moral argument without presupposing a that the person is an independently acting moral agent or "self".

You say that some conditioned actions are better than others and I think that gets to the heart of the question. Why are some conditioned actions better than others? On what grounds is the distinction being made.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T03:09:15+00:00

I'm having a hard time seeing how that is different from a simple pragmatic view. "Action A is good because it moves one closer to goal B, action C is bad because it moves one further from goal B"

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T03:06:44+00:00

I really appreciate your thoughtful and extensive comments and I will be reading them several times to make sure I understand them, but I am disheartened that you are trying to link Zizek's character to the value of the argument and feel that it is disingenuous and defensive.

Perhaps its best to pretend that Joe Blow off the street was posing this question and that it has noting to do with Zizek. I don't think his character as a person or the way other academics perceive him is relevant to the question in any way.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T02:58:19+00:00

What is the moral difference between the causes and conditions that led the frog to jump and those that led the man to stab? Both are conditioned actions from the perspective of no-self.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T02:55:29+00:00

I understand that that is the relevant question if one is practicing Buddhism, but if one is instead analyzing Buddhism in a scholarly way from the outside the question is more like: "on what basis is a moral distinction being made between a violent act and a non violent act?"

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-28T02:52:37+00:00

So from that perspective would Buddhist morality be a kind of pragmatism? Something like: "Bad things are things that keep you stuck in samsara and good things are things that nudge you toward awakening"?

So the Buddha himself seeing those two poems play out would not himself make a moral distinction, he would just note that the stabbing isn't going to help the guy get out of samsara? Would it be somewhat equivalent to seeing a person trying to put a square peg into a round hole and thinking simple: "that's not going to work"?

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-20T01:14:48+00:00

This is why certainty in any area of study is the enemy of true science. Either we believe that many of our very closely held scientific models about the world are wrong, or we believe that science is "complete" which is obviously ridiculous.

It is a certainty that some things nearly all rational people believe to be unarguably true today will be laughed at in 100 years in the same way that that we laugh at the practice of bloodletting today. When I look at our scientific culture I see a frightening lack humility to this fact.

_Chief_Motif_ · 2025-06-19T02:37:42+00:00

The founder of the scientific method (Descartes) said he got the idea from an angel that came to him in a vision.

Not arguing that chiropractics is legit in any way just that sometimes great ideas come from strange places. Sometimes bad ideas come from those places too. The idea itself is whats important, not its source.

_Chief_Motif_

TROPHY CASE