US "The Squad" Megathread - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib Derangement Syndrome

I honestly only know about American politics from what I read on the Internet but since we all love shitting on leftists I figured we'd get a kick out of this. Also it's trending on Twitter so you know it's important.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...irect=on&noredirect=on&utm_term=.960552c9ba53

NEW YORK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political novice running on a low budget and an unabashedly liberal platform, upset longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley on Tuesday in the Democratic congressional primary in New York.

The surprise victory by the community organizer in a district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens came after an energetic, grassroots campaign that mustered more than enough support in a low-turnout race that many had expected to be an easy win for Crowley, a member of the Democratic House leadership.

“The community is ready for a movement of economic and social justice. That is what we tried to deliver,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who has never held elected office and whose candidacy attracted only modest media attention.

She told The Associated Press after her victory that she didn’t have enough money to do polling in the race, but felt in her gut that her message had a chance to connect.

“I live in this community. I organized in this community. I felt the absence of the incumbent. I knew he didn’t have a strong presence,” she said.

Crowley has been in Congress since 1999 and hadn’t faced an opponent in a primary election since 2004, when Ocasio-Cortez was just a teenager. He was considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

“It’s not about me,” Crowley, 56, told his supporters at a campaign party following his loss. “It’s about America. I want nothing but the best for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I want her to be victorious.”

He later played guitar with a band at the election night gathering, and dedicated the first song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” to Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, where he is also the leader of the Queens Democratic party.

Ocasio-Cortez was outspent by an 18-1 margin during her race but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s far left, including MoveOn, as well as the actress Cynthia Nixon, who is running for governor. She defeated Crowley by 15 percentage points.

Born in the Bronx to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father who died in 2008, Ocasio-Cortez said she decided to challenge Crowley to push a more progressive stance on economic and other issues.

She attended Boston University, where she earned degrees in economics and international relations, and also spent time working in the office of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

After graduating, she returned to the Bronx where she became a community organizer. In the 2016 presidential campaign she worked for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Among her issues is expanding the Medicare program to people of all ages and abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. She recently went to Tornillo, Texas, to protest against policies that have separated parents from their children at the southern U.S. border.

Ocasio-Cortez gained some internet attention for a campaign video called “The Courage to Change,” a two-minute spot for which she wrote the script and featured footage from her own home.

Crowley is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest ranking position in Democratic leadership in that chamber of Congress.

His loss drew the attention of President Donald Trump.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” he tweeted.

The Republican candidate for the office, Anthony Pappas, is running unopposed and had no primary. Pappas teaches economics at St. John’s University.

She was a Bernie campaigner, is supported by BLM, and wants to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Also this was in a solid-blue Congressional District so you know she's a shoo-in for next Congress.

But hey, we did get to see Trump laugh at Crowley on Twitter.

 

[Gone_Fission]

Current agricultural policy is to grow ludicrous amounts of subsidized soy and corn purely as livestock feed, literally the least effective use of land and water possible with the added benefit of toxic shit lagoons and methane release.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Current agricultural policy is to grow ludicrous amounts of subsidized soy and corn purely as livestock feed, literally the least effective use of land and water possible with the added benefit of toxic shit lagoons and methane release.

So it would be easy to reduce it simply by letting market forces take care of it as the price of feed increased to better reflect its true value. No need for a massive redundant bureaucracy over seeing cow farts.

 

[Gone_Fission]

So it would be easy to reduce it simply by letting market forces take care of it as the price of feed increased to better reflect its true value. No need for a massive redundant bureaucracy over seeing cow farts.

If subsidies were removed and farmers had to actually pay the clean up costs of things like shit lagoons and fertilizer runoff, and we also cracked down on the massive overuse of antibiotics for livestock then the actual market price of meat would rise high enough to reduce consumption and make more sustainable alternatives like lab meat or plant products far more competitive and profitable.

 

[Stoneheart]

If subsidies were removed and farmers had to actually pay the clean up costs of things like shit lagoons and fertilizer runoff, and we also cracked down on the massive overuse of antibiotics for livestock then the actual market price of meat would rise high enough to reduce consumption and make more sustainable alternatives like lab meat or plant products far more competitive and profitable.

Or just feed Pigs with Illegal immigrants.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

literally the least effective use of land and water possible

Almond Milk. Fight me.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I just realized that every time this chick talks it sounds like she's about to cry.

 

[AnOminous]

Current agricultural policy is to grow ludicrous amounts of subsidized soy and corn purely as livestock feed, literally the least effective use of land and water possible with the added benefit of toxic shit lagoons and methane release.

Corn subsidies, whether for corn ethanol or just on their own merit, are the biggest government boondoggle currently in existence, and largely because huge agro firms like Archers Daniels Midland, Pioneer, etc. basically fucking own every single Congressman on the Ag Committee responsible for the bloated Farm Bill.

 

[Gone_Fission]

Almond tard cum. Fight me.

Most commercial almond milk you buy at the store doesn't have that much almond actually in it, and thus uses only a small fraction of the water as dairy.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

Most commercial almond tard cum you buy at the store doesn't have that much almond actually in it, and thus uses only a small fraction of the water as dairy.

It takes 1 gallon of irrigation to produce 1 almond. Almonds are the third largest water use crop in California with a hilariously small total acreage.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

and grow crops in LED lit automated hydroponic farms.

You aren't going to replace the grain belt with metal sheds with grow lights. One little bit of stem rust gets in there and you are done. It gets into the soil, the beds, the walls. Knock it the fuck down and start over.

Dryland farming is a highly efficient use of land. Especially when done in in conjunction with no-till practices. It isn't going anywhere.

If subsidies were removed and farmers had to actually pay the clean up costs of things like shit lagoons and fertilizer runoff, and we also cracked down on the massive overuse of antibiotics for livestock then the actual market price of meat would rise high enough to reduce consumption and make more sustainable alternatives like lab meat or plant products far more competitive and profitable.

Stop getting your agricultural information from reddit.

 

[PT 522]

literally the least effective use of land and water possible

Solar panels.
Not only do they require deforestation and/or the destruction of fragile desert ecosystems to be set up, but they also are built with rare earth materials that are mined with fracking. So essentially you destroy the land you put them on and you destroy land somewhere else for nothing except a cheap "we're so green and earth friendly" and energy output that wouldn't pay for itself if the sun was on earth.

Wind farms are a similar story.

 

[Gone_Fission]

Solar has its uses, but agreed about it taking up way too much land area for too little output. We should have never stopped cranking out nuclear plants back in the 1970s, and it's a damn shame that alternate fission reactor designs such as molten salt thorium plants were pursued more aggressively. At current consumption rates, we still have plenty of uranium left, but if we intend to go fully nuclear IIRC then we have less than a century's worth of the stuff. Thorium, however, could last us about a millennium.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

like lab meat

Gonna have to stop you right there unless we're hitting "a steak would cost 2,000 dollars" territory. People don't realize how expensive and complicated cell culture can be. I mean yeah, it's cheaper than engineering, but it's gonna be a long time before it becomes feasible to sell something that has to be grown in an isolated CO2 filled chamber in fluid that is itself taken from ground up cow fetus. Also it wouldn't taste even close to the same.

 

[Gone_Fission]

Gonna have to stop you right there unless we're hitting "a steak would cost 2,000 dollars" territory. People don't realize how expensive and complicated cell culture can be. I mean yeah, it's cheaper than engineering, but it's gonna be a long time before it becomes feasible to sell something that has to be grown in an isolated CO2 filled chamber in fluid that is itself taken from ground up cow fetus. Also it wouldn't taste even close to the same.

Cell culture meat has gone from costing around $300k for a single burger a few years back to now being closer to about $20 per burger. People have been treating lab meat as a far off pipe dream like fusion energy for so long that they didn't notice that a staggering amount of progress has occurred with the technology.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Cell culture meat has gone from costing around $300k for a single burger a few years back to now being closer to about $20 per burger. People have been treating lab meat as a far off pipe dream like fusion energy for so long that they didn't notice that a staggering amount of progress has occurred with the technology.

Do you have any literature on the subject? Because I simply can't believe this. What are we calling a "burger" at this point? A thin paste of cow-cancer between two pieces of bread?

EDIT: Plus I'm assuming they're using serum-free medium or it invalidates the whole point. And that alone gets expensive pretty fast. Looking it up, since it's been awhile, I'm seeing prices like $100 dollars a liter. Which has come down significantly since a few years ago but is still not great considering this isn't exactly something you can re-use. The sheer nature of economies of scale would bring that down over time but still, not a $20 burger as far as I can tell. Though I've never grown anything for this purpose I can easily imagine it could be as much as a liter per burger even though that's far more medium than you normally use. But for most laboratory purposes you're just growing this stuff in a monolayer at the bottom of a flask. Which isn't enough tissue to eat. You'd have to go to something like a hollow fiber system instead, and a very large and weird one at that. So that's another big expense.

 

[Gone_Fission]

Do you have any literature on the subject? Because I simply can't believe this. What are we calling a "burger" at this point? A thin paste of cow-cancer between two pieces of bread?

EDIT: Plus I'm assuming they're using serum-free medium or it invalidates the whole point. And that alone gets expensive pretty fast. Looking it up, since it's been awhile, I'm seeing prices like $100 dollars a liter. Which has come down significantly since a few years ago but is still not great considering this isn't exactly something you can re-use. The sheer nature of economies of scale would bring that down over time but still, not a $20 burger as far as I can tell. Though I've never grown anything for this purpose I can easily imagine it could be as much as a liter per burger even though that's far more medium than you normally use. But for most laboratory purposes you're just growing this stuff in a monolayer at the bottom of a flask. Which isn't enough tissue to eat.

It's essentially cloned muscles cells from chicken, pigs, cows, and even tuna. Right now the technology basically only produces meat with a texture like ground beef, but they're currently experimenting with cell scaffolding to grow entire muscle groups so actual cuts of meat like steak could be made.

Bay Area companies race to get the first cell-based 'meat' to market

You could call it a meat race. A select group of Bay Area and international companies is vying to get the first cell-based meat to market: that is, a meat product created entirely with in-vitro cells derived from chicken, fish, beef or pork, rather than from slaughtered animals. Proponents say...

www.sfchronicle.com

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

So now we're doing co-cultures and feeder layers in roller flasks. Or later 3d printing. That's even more expensive, and a lot of this stuff cannot easily be automated. Where does this article talk about the cost? And even if it is cheap, you have to convince people to buy it. Even co-cultured with fibroblasts to more realistically simulate the organs in question, their 3d printed steak produced with serum-free plant media is going to taste and feel very little like the chemically complex actual in-vivo grown steak. It'd be a hard sell.

Oh and of course the main thing the article is pushing is that it would be environmentally friendlier and result in less greenhouse gas emissions. The former may well be the case, not sure, but I'm pretty sure you use a lot of energy and produce a lot of pollution to make and maintain these cultures. I mean, they're flushed with CO2 continuously as part of the incubation process and that's not going into all the plastics and powered equipment involved.

 

[Gone_Fission]

I believe that Just, Inc. has already developed a proprietary plant based serum that eliminates the need for bovine serum. There currently seems to be a lot of serious funding going into the tech, so it's going to be interesting to see how they do cell scaffolding on an industrial scale, but I'm optimistic about it. Realistically, this is primarily going to be used for cheaper meats like burgers and nuggets for a while and premium meat like steak is still going to be the real thing.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I believe that Just, Inc. has already developed a proprietary plant based serum that eliminates the need for bovine serum. There currently seems to be a lot of serious funding going into the tech, so it's going to be interesting to see how they do cell scaffolding on an industrial scale, but I'm optimistic about it. Realistically, this is primarily going to be used for cheaper meats like burgers and nuggets for a while and premium meat like steak is still going to be the real thing.

There were already serum free media options. Lots of them. That's because it's a hard thing to get right. A tissue that evolved to be instructed and supported by many organs in an actual body has a lot of needs that are hard to take care of if you want it to actually resemble what it's like in-vivo instead of de-differentiating into a big useless protoplasm with no discerning characteristics.

This reads to me like a silicon valley tech company doing something that's already been done and spinning it to look like it's revolutionary by claiming it's a step towards a massive technological leap that's just around the corner. Something that happens, very often. No doubt it helps them get investors when the media eats this up and gives them free advertizing, but in reality if that company is representative of the state of cultured meats we have a long, long way to go.

 

[queue-anon]

There were already serum free media options. Lots of them. That's because it's a hard thing to get right. A tissue that evolved to be instructed and supported by many organs in an actual body has a lot of needs that are hard to take care of if you want it to actually resemble what it's like in-vivo instead of de-differentiating into a big useless protoplasm with no discerning characteristics.

This reads to me like a silicon valley tech company doing something that's already been done and spinning it to look like it's revolutionary by claiming it's a step towards a massive technological leap that's just around the corner. Something that happens, very often. No doubt it helps them get investors when the media eats this up and gives them free advertizing, but in reality if that company is representative of the state of cultured meats we have a long, long way to go.

It reminds me of the “chicky nugs” in Oryx and Crake that were essentially lab grown and tasted more like tofu than real chicken. Even if you figure out how to feasibly grow the stuff, it’s not going to taste like the real thing.