Dark or White Meat
August 9, 2019
The Daily Pnut covers a wide range of topics and news, and one particularly interesting article we read recently was about different people’s chicken preferences. We also had a recent experience at a BBQ restaurant that did not serve dark meat which got us to discuss about meat preferences: and whether dark meat, white meat, thighs, wings, even chicken fingers are choices largely influenced by a person’s socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and upbringing.
So we thought we’d ask you, the Daily Pnut readers, to test out the theory for ourselves! Please help us collect data on meat cut preferences. Please share this survey with your friends and family. We’ll share the results next week.
“Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.” – Michael Pollan
“We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often at the center of our plates.” – Jonathan Safran Foer
He Shut Off The White Power
They’re a much bigger problem than most people knew or thought about. Now everyday Americans must think about them — and what to do about them — because their numbers are growing, and they’re showing up to murder people. They’re not lone wolves; they’re an angry, disaffected, once-marginalized-now-mainstream community of White Supremacists. And the mayhem they cause is going to get worse.
So says Christian Picciolini, a former violent extremist who joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago and now works to get people out. Picciolini runs a global network, the Free Radicals Project, where former extremists like him provide counseling to others trying to leave radical movements. He discussed the mainstreaming of white nationalism with two Atlantic journalists — what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists, and why the problem is metastasizing.
Picciolini says the underpinnings of the ideology have always been around, but three decades ago it was still on the fringe; recruiting happened face-to-face. “Nowadays, those millions and millions of young people are … finding a community online … and having conversations about promoting violence. I never thought we would have a social and political climate that … brought it to the foreground.”
Picciolini’s extrication method doesn’t involve a debate or confrontation, but a lot of listening, and finding resources to help deal with whatever trauma motivated someone to go in a radical direction. “Nobody’s born racist; we all found it …. people hate other people because they hate something very specifically about themselves, or are very angry about a situation within their own environment, and that is then projected onto other people.” And despite the urgency, he believes there’s just no political will to fight “domestic extremism.”
- El Paso massacre upends white nationalists’ normalization strategy (Reuters)
- American History X Remains Tragically Relevant 20 Years Later: The neo-Nazi crime film starring Edward Norton says more about our current society than we might like to admit. (Esquire)
- An amazing and powerful film: Official Trailer: American History X (1998)
- Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens? (Cosmopolitan)
Australia’s Maginot Line
- The head of the Australian Parliament’s intelligence committee, Andrew Hastie, issued a dire warning about the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic ambitions via an op-ed published Thursday.
- The influential politician, who served in the military before becoming a lawmaker, said many Westerners have erred in thinking that China’s economic liberalization in recent decades would lead to greater democratic freedoms, and the approach to containing China is akin to the failure to prevent Nazi Germany’s aggression.
- “This was our Maginot Line,” he wrote. “… the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940 …. their thinking failed catastrophically. the French [hadn’t appreciated] the evolution of mobile warfare….[Likewise] Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbor has become.” (WaPo)
And He Was Just -234 Days From Retirement
- Senior government security officials said Hong Kong’s former deputy police commissioner Alan Lau Yip-shing had been called out of retirement to deal with the violent protests that have rocked the Chinese-ruled city for over two months.
- Lau oversaw handling of the pro-democracy demonstrations that wrought Hong Kong in 2014; his recall suggests the government lacks confidence in the capacity of the current police leadership to manage the response to the escalating protests. (Reuters)
- Chinese Official Warns Hong Kong Protesters Against ‘Color Revolution’ (NYT, $)
A Bloody Search Yields Bloody Results
- Canadian police announced Wednesday that the bodies of two teenagers suspected of killing three people in remote areas of Northern British Columbia in mid-July had been found near a river in eastern Manitoba.
- A massive search through rugged and unforgiving wilderness was conducted for the teens, who had eluded authorities. Last Friday the Canadian Mounted Police found some items linked to the fugitives near the Nelson River, and police were able to narrow their search.
- Residents in nearby Gillam, Manitoba, a town so remote it has just one road in and out, were overwhelmingly relieved the suspects were no longer on the loose. (WaPo)
Additional World News
- Italy’s Salvini says government is finished, wants elections (Reuters)
- Yes, scientists have created Chernobyl vodka. No, it’s not radioactive. (WaPo,$)
- Kyrgyzstan’s Former President Arrested After Deadly Encounter (NPR)
- Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists: Internal documents show how the company worked to discredit critics and investigated singer Neil Young (Guardian)
- As Scotland’s ‘Trainspotting’ Generation Ages, the Dead Pile Up: What happens as opioid abusers hit middle age? “What your body tolerates at 18 it doesn’t tolerate at 38 or 48.” (NYT, $)
Everybody’s Workin’ For The…Actually They’re Just Working Because They Have To
Sociologists and economists tend to use a person’s income, education and job type (or a combination of the three) to identify whether or not someone is working class. Some objective qualities include earning a low hourly or salaried wage at a job that doesn’t require much skill or education; surviving in the workforce without a college degree; or being above the poverty line but lacking the discretionary income characteristic of the middle class. Working-class Americans tend to be factory workers, farmers, artisans, mechanics and carpenters.
But the working class is also made up of Target cashiers, weed trimmers, fast-food workers, personal trainers, bus drivers and baristas. A recent report from the Pew Research Center says they make up more than half of employed workers in the US. And as the new, younger generations enter the labor force — like Millennials and Gen Zers with their different skill sets and vastly different workplace values — traditional working class stereotypes are being challenged. (Mel Magazine)
Home Is Where The Happy Worker Is
- Finland is a small forest-covered country with a dispersed population of 5.5 million. It’s also a major European tech hub that’s a magnet for successful IT firms, gaming start-ups and digital financial services. Furthermore, it’s the world’s leader in flexible work.
- Ambientia is an IT firm with around 200 staff. Some 15 years ago it began opening smaller regional offices as a response to staff calls to cut commuting times to Helsinki. It actively encourages staff to do some of their tasks remotely, as part of efforts to promote efficiency and creativity.
- According to the firm’s HR manager, offering agile working patterns has become increasingly important in the race for talent. “Not everyone wants to live in the hustle and bustle of a big city. It’s wasteful not to utilise the talent that you might have five hours away,” she says. (BBC)
- Note: As a Daily Pnut writer can attest, working for the San Francisco-based digital media company from her small horse farm in Texas is just the best.
Weekend Reads
- I’ll read this later: Eight ways to curb your procrastination: Procrastination is common – but in extreme cases it can be bad for your health, putting you under extra stress as the missed deadlines whizz by. Here’s how to break out of the habit.
- Is wealth immoral? I was born into the 1%. I think having this much money is wrong. (Vox) Vast industries in America exist singularly to cater to high net worth family offices.
- Seeds, kale and red meat once a month – how to eat the diet that will save the world (The Guardian)
- How to Resist the Lure of Overconfidence: A practical guide to putting things in perspective (Scientific American)
- The Endless, Invisible Persuasion Tactics of the Internet: Online shopping turns your brain against you, but you can fight back. (Atlantic)