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Cash Cows

ageofinvention.xyz

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Re: Cash Cows

#21

Post by bugglebeetle »

golergka wrote: post #19
hristov wrote: post #6

Despite the optimistic tone this is rather depressing reading. This is the beginning of the industrial farming trend that has made all meat products rather tasteless.

Industrial farming is how humanity managed to avoid its constant companion — hunger. I would rather eat tasteless meat everyday than use bodies of my diseased children to feed surviving ones.

Industrial farming of meat has little to do with that, but instead sating the appetites of a minority of consumers in the US:

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd...

Other forms of industrial agriculture, sure, meat, not so much.

Re: Cash Cows

#22

Post by webwielder2 »

hristov wrote: post #6

Despite the optimistic tone this is rather depressing reading. This is the beginning of the industrial farming trend that has made all meat products rather tasteless.

You really threw me for a loop with the conclusion that industrial farming is bad because it made meat bland, rather than because of its profound environmental and humanitarian costs.

Re: Cash Cows

#23

Post by Aurornis »

Avicebron wrote: post #3

> "caught the improving mentality, or attitude — the one thing all inventors, both then and now, have in common — which had him viewing everything around him in terms of its capacity for betterment." As much as I resonate with this sentiment personally, I've recently been reading the works of Byung-Chul Han, specifically "The Burnout Society", which has made me really think about how this mentality can be pretty insi…

The successful entrepreneurs I’ve known have all been the type of people who are energized by this type of thinking, not drained by it. Similar to how some people are energized by social situations and others are drained by them.

Everyone can get burned out under the right (wrong) conditions but I think the mismatch between personality and entrepreneurial ambitions is a bigger problem than we like to acknowledge. There are a lot of people out there who want to be entrepreneurs but when it comes down to it they either don’t want to do the work required or they aren’t the type of person who can handle it.

Re: Cash Cows

#24

Post by vinniepukh »

Off-topic: I'm looking to read more old books and the genre of travel diaries from the eighteenth century that the author mentioned seems very interesting.

Does anyone have recommendations for those kinds of books?

Re: Cash Cows

#25

Post by swalling »

One interesting fact is that Darwin directly referred to Bakewell in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species:

“a kind of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. Nevertheless I cannot doubt that this process, continued during centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as Bakewell, Collins, &c., by this very same process, only carried on more methodically, did greatly modify, even during their own lifetimes, the forms and qualities of their cattle.”

Re: Cash Cows

#26

Post by msrenee »

mritchie712 wrote: post #15
hristov wrote: post #6

Despite the optimistic tone this is rather depressing reading. This is the beginning of the industrial farming trend that has made all meat products rather tasteless.

I kept thinking each "improvements" is likely making the animal miserable. e.g. making the cow extremely top heavy couldn't have been comfortable.

The continuation of this style of "improvement" of livestock brought us the meat chicken that quickly grows to a point where its legs won't support it. It's inhumane to keep them around for too long past slaughtering age (8-10 weeks) as they just suffer. You see people trying to "rescue" them in the backyard chicken groups and there just isn't a way to give them an acceptable quality of life.

Re: Cash Cows

#27

Post by fbdab103 »

Selective breeding always struck me as interesting for the sheer amount of time required for experimentation. Pick your pairs, and then wait 2-5 years before you can repeat the cycle again.

Amazing that a single lifetime was able to yield measurable results.

Also reminded of the fox domestication program[0] where they were able to go from wild foxes to a dog-like domesticated breed within a decade.

>Belyaev was correct that selection on tameness alone leads to the emergence of traits in the domestication syndrome. In less than a decade, some of the domesticated foxes had floppy ears and curly tails (Fig. 2). Their stress hormone levels by generation 15 were about half the stress hormone (glucocorticoid) levels of wild foxes. Over generations, their adrenal gland became smaller and smaller. Serotonin levels also increased, producing “happier” animals. Over the course of the experiment, researchers also found the domesticated foxes displayed mottled “mutt-like” fur patterns, and they had more juvenilized facial features (shorter, rounder, more dog-like snouts) and body shapes (chunkier, rather than gracile limbs)

[0] https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...

Re: Cash Cows

#28

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #23
Avicebron wrote: post #3

> "caught the improving mentality, or attitude — the one thing all inventors, both then and now, have in common — which had him viewing everything around him in terms of its capacity for betterment." As much as I resonate with this sentiment personally, I've recently been reading the works of Byung-Chul Han, specifically "The Burnout Society", which has made me really think about how this mentality can be pretty insi…

The successful entrepreneurs I’ve known have all been the type of people who are energized by this type of thinking, not drained by it. Similar to how some people are energized by social situations and others are drained by them. Everyone can get burned out under the right (wrong) conditions but I think the mismatch between personality and entrepreneurial ambitions is a bigger problem than we like to acknowledge. The…

[deleted]

Re: Cash Cows

#29

Post by lostlogin »

AlbertCory wrote: post #20
crazygringo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the reason many meat products are "rather tasteless" is due to the low-fat movement of the 1970's, when animals started being bred for more muscle and less fat -- particularly chickens (absurdly large chicken breasts) and pigs (pork chops used to be fatty and marbled like a ribeye, now they're dry and flavorless). You can still get a fantastically flavorful pork chop anywhere in Japan, for example, where they did…

Interesting, thanks. Speaking of "gamy": I found the halal market near me actually sells mutton, in sandwiches, kebabs, etc. I never saw it in the meat case so I didn't think they had it. Gotta try that.

> gamy

I think it might be ‘gamey’?

Re: Cash Cows

#30

Post by crazygringo »

lostlogin wrote: post #29
AlbertCory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thanks. Speaking of "gamy": I found the halal market near me actually sells mutton, in sandwiches, kebabs, etc. I never saw it in the meat case so I didn't think they had it. Gotta try that.

> gamy I think it might be ‘gamey’?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gamy

gamy: adjective

variants: or gamey

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