🌙 🦇 How Smoked Salmon is destroying our minds 🍣🧠

sufi

lala
He's preaching mainly to the converted i suspect, but no harm in getting the message out there


the way that food particularly and life generally is commodfiied is disgusting, no doubt

i think i'd go further than just to say that it's commodification though (he never mentions c*pitalism). It's the hard rationalist mindset/lack of spiritual or moral rootedness, which demands that everything is, as george says, quantified, and monetary value is the dominant mode of quantifying

i agree with george though that the pandemic may have brought a new realisation of how shit this is to many people, especially in "western" states where the dysfunction has been exposed by the failure to manage the crisis
 

Leo

Well-known member
I salute people like this who take a stand and speak passionately about it. but aside from eating exclusively homegrown vegetables, eggs from chickens in your back yard and fish you catch yourself, what's the alternative? everything we buy is commodified, traveling through that disgusting consumerism funnel to arrive at our market and dinner table. how do we step outside it, or get around it?

and sadly, the vast majority of people are lazy, clueless or don't care.
 

martin

----
I salute people like this who take a stand and speak passionately about it. but aside from eating exclusively homegrown vegetables, eggs from chickens in your back yard and fish you catch yourself, what's the alternative? everything we buy is commodified, traveling through that disgusting consumerism funnel to arrive at our market and dinner table. how do we step outside it, or get around it?

and sadly, the vast majority of people are lazy, clueless or don't care.
The problem is this so often becomes a holier than thou pissing contest where smoked salmon or avocados become these terrible things you can feel good about boycotting, while ignoring the fact that all your socks were made in a sweat shop.
 

sufi

lala
I salute people like this who take a stand and speak passionately about it. but aside from eating exclusively homegrown vegetables, eggs from chickens in your back yard and fish you catch yourself, what's the alternative? everything we buy is commodified, traveling through that disgusting consumerism funnel to arrive at our market and dinner table. how do we step outside it, or get around it?

and sadly, the vast majority of people are lazy, clueless or don't care.
The problem is this so often becomes a holier than thou pissing contest where smoked salmon or avocados become these terrible things you can feel good about boycotting, while ignoring the fact that all your socks were made in a sweat shop.
sure, we are all trapped, and because of that we're all implicated. If you live in the city the choice is stark if you buy george's line - be a hypocrite about it or starve basically.

but this is a situation where raising mass awareness of how shitty things are is actually worthwhile - look at the contrast between biden and trump on this stuff, lines can be drawn. We need mass support for politicians, businesses, campaigns, influencers, movements, whatever who are trying to do the right thing, or at least making the right noises about it,

not even so much for political or democratic gains - those boats sailed long ago (full of dead dolphins 🐬). the stories are so important to politicians like that prick boris, he's shit scared of public opinion
 

sufi

lala
i like the cold war steve style montage on the yt, he does look suitably deranged holding that hastily cropped fishy
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I salute people like this who take a stand and speak passionately about it. but aside from eating exclusively homegrown vegetables, eggs from chickens in your back yard and fish you catch yourself, what's the alternative? everything we buy is commodified, traveling through that disgusting consumerism funnel to arrive at our market and dinner table. how do we step outside it, or get around it?

and sadly, the vast majority of people are lazy, clueless or don't care.
This is what Mark talked about though. Capitalist realism. And no, I don't have an answer either.
 

sufi

lala
This is what Mark talked about though. Capitalist realism. And no, I don't have an answer either.
well no political party is promoting any answer either, they can barely even mention the question

but people aren't daft, not too daft to understand that cronyism and so on are unacceptable, even more so in these self-inflicted poxy times.
the answer (apart from psychedelic communism) is mass awakening of some sort 🔥
 

sufi

lala
i wonder whether george's subject matter here is more effective in activating support than going on about climate change - it's closer to home, more evident
 

martin

----
i like the cold war steve style montage on the yt, he does look suitably deranged holding that hastily cropped fishy
By the title, I thought it was going to be something about getting dementia from consuming microplastics in salmon. Incidentally, there's a big report out from Germany - while land-based packaging and waste is definitely causing problems in European waters, it's mainly confined to coastal areas. But in the depths of the North Sea, they've recorded a huge amount of microplastics and have worked out it's the paint from ships' hulls - and that's just one area, and there are a LOT of ageing ships out there...
 

sufi

lala
By the title, I thought it was going to be something about getting dementia from consuming microplastics in salmon. Incidentally, there's a big report out from Germany - while land-based packaging and waste is definitely causing problems in European waters, it's mainly confined to coastal areas. But in the depths of the North Sea, they've recorded a huge amount of microplastics and have worked out it's the paint from ships' hulls - and that's just one area, and there are a LOT of ageing ships out there...
well yeah there's that too :(
these issues and issues like how polluted small waterways are, and just how much litter there is in any feral area are much more obvious and immediate than scientific predictions of climate doom - if food exports have been crushed by Brexit then maybe change is gonna happen anyway and we need to support the moonbat
 

martin

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we need to support the moonbat
I probably agree with most things he says - he just makes me cringe. He's like the Dick Lucas of Guardian writers (obscure Citizen Fish reference for Droid). But then again, I could just be a contrary git.
i wonder whether george's subject matter here is more effective in activating support than going on about climate change - it's closer to home, more evident
I think so. Speaking personally, news last year about brooks in North London being choked up with bottles, cans and other waste struck more of an emotional chord than anything I've seen about global warming - which just reminds me of a tortuous geography project at school, and made no sense the other night when I had to put on a jumper AND a hoodie.
 

Mellsman

Well-known member
Not a thread about Salmon, I know.
But when George says farmed fish are fed on other fish he might also have pointed out the ratio at play.
2 pounds of feed fish to grow 1 of salmon.

.
 

sufi

lala
Not a thread about Salmon, I know.
But when George says farmed fish are fed on other fish he might also have pointed out the ratio at play.
2 pounds of feed fish to grow 1 of salmon.

.
yeah if you can be bothered to think about it, it's so obviously wrong and disastrous
key quote "consumerism is the stifling of our moral imaginations"
 

sufi

lala
I probably agree with most things he says - he just makes me cringe. He's like the Dick Lucas of Guardian writers (obscure Citizen Fish reference for Droid). But then again, I could just be a contrary git.

I think so. Speaking personally, news last year about brooks in North London being choked up with bottles, cans and other waste struck more of an emotional chord than anything I've seen about global warming - which just reminds me of a tortuous geography project at school, and made no sense the other night when I had to put on a jumper AND a hoodie.
yeah feargal sharkey is gonna do his nut today cos he lives in a houseboat on the lea and everytime it rains all the litter from the brook next to my house gets washed downstream as it transforms into a raging grey torrent due to all the runoff ditchwater - it just started raining cats and dogs
 

john eden

male pale and stale
He's preaching mainly to the converted i suspect, but no harm in getting the message out there



the way that food particularly and life generally is commodfiied is disgusting, no doubt

i think i'd go further than just to say that it's commodification though (he never mentions c*pitalism). It's the hard rationalist mindset/lack of spiritual or moral rootedness, which demands that everything is, as george says, quantified, and monetary value is the dominant mode of quantifying

i agree with george though that the pandemic may have brought a new realisation of how shit this is to many people, especially in "western" states where the dysfunction has been exposed by the failure to manage the crisis

He does actually mention capitalism towards the end. The end is actually OK but the stuff about morality and celebrities is terrible. I mean it is a a good summary of liberal thought but he could also mention campaigns to make the evils that salmon are subjected to more visible (for example through labelling) or reduced (through consumer law.)

Just buying different stuff (or less stuff) won't resolve the alienation at the heart of capitalism, comrades. It IS the relationships that we build that can evolve into a way of realising our collective power though. So, that. But also cream cheese and salmon bagels.
 
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