Not anyone. You have to be rich.

Solid puns but this is actually a problem. Beehives are quite valuable, like $500 per hive or so to just straight up sell them, or obviously they can also be incorporated into an apiary for long-term production.

Theft of beehives is really not unheard of. Similar to how people steal cows and shit. Beekeepers will sometimes brand or otherwise mark their hives in an attempt to deter such thievery.

Personally I keep my beehives in huge steel cages, though that is primarily to protect them from bears.

If you’re able to find time to do a 10 day vipassana retreat, I highly recommend it. It’s free and they provide good food, run entirely by volunteers and donations and they have centers all over the world. I’ve done it a couple times and I know several other folks who have and it is a very compelling experience. I really think the technique they teach is a real cognitive skill, it’s taught from a buddhist perspective but there is no requirement that you adhere to any particular spiritual beliefs.

I’m sure there are other forms of meditation that may or may not be helpful, this is just the one I’ve had positive experiences with.

I hope this doesn’t come across as patronizing but have you tried vipassana or a similar style of meditation? My wife had really severe anxiety and she found this to be the thing that helped her the most.

Your belief is that respecting elders is unique to Christianity? That’s simply and obviously untrue. Painfully so when you compare the way the dominant Christian culture treats its elders compared with how First Nations cultures treat theirs.

respect for elders isn’t really a value among young Americans

I’m sure it’s valued more or less across different sectors of the young American population, but yeah I think it’s pretty widely recognized that our culture doesn’t really treat our elders well. And we should feel ashamed about that.

we know that the idea that old people are inherently wise is a farce

Nobody is inherently anything, but everything is the way it is for a reason. There’s a reason why respect for one’s elders is a nearly universal maxim, to the extent that it extends beyond our species, and to disregard that ancient principle is to invite disaster. Old people aren’t the problem.

To me it seems the United States is heading towards civil war more than revolution. There’s factionalism at play that is deeper than just class antagonisms. I read a book recently where the author was talking about how times when states are transitioning into or out of “democraticness” in when civil wars are most likely to occur. Factionalism and shifting democratic integrity means high risk for civil war. Apparently.

This is why Athenians considered representative electoral systems to be of the oligarchical political type rather than the democratic. It was apparently the understanding then that such a system is one in which the rich and powerful rule by way of money and influence, as opposed to a democracy in which rulership was determined by lottery.

No voting at 70? Wow. That seems so tragically disrespectful towards the people in our community we should be regarding as our elders. I think you are exaggerating the extent of mental decline with age pretty significantly and not appreciating the benefits. One of the most politically active and motivated people I know is in her 70s.

16 year olds may have the most skin in the game, if one can handle such generalized statements, but clearly the thing that teenagers lack is perspective and experience.

Not all elderly people are Mitch McConnell, just like not all young people are George Santos.

No reason to think there aren’t other dimensions, and if there are any there might as well be an infinite number, and surely in an infinite number of dimensions someone in at least one of them discovered how to travel between them.

I dunno if my life is easier because I’m a vegetarian or what but we mostly make our food and most of what we make is not time consuming. Steamed greens and carrots with boiled potatoes. Roasted veggies in the oven. Stir fries. Beans and whatever stewed in a crock pot with canned tomatoes.

For breakfast, oatmeal with chia seeds, hemp hearts, flax meal, sunflower seeds, peanut butter and fruit goes together real easy. Alternatively, frying some eggs and having the above things on toast instead of oatmeal.

Usually we make a bunch of stew or soup that will be used for lunch over several days. Cook like 4 cups of rice to go with it. Then for dinner, usually steamed stuff or perhaps roasted veggies or a stirfry with rice or noodles.

Homemade pizza is also pretty easy. It takes about 5 minutes to throw the dough together, then you can prepare whatever toppings you want while the dough rises for 45-60 mins. Takes ~10 min to bake when ready. I can post the recipe if anyone wants it but I’m sure you can find stuff online.

I don’t believe the only options are to do nothing or to use horrific weapons which primary kill civilians and which have been banned by over 100 countries, including major U.S allies who, unlike almost everyone in this thread, are quite critical of the United States for sending these munitions to the battlefield.

If the logic of supporting Ukraine and ending the conflict as quickly as possible supports the use of cluster bombs, why not chemical weapons? Why not nuclear weapons? Where do you draw the line with this logic of escalation?

What I said was that Western nations funneling increasingly deadly weapons into a brutal war might not be the best of all options, and that maybe, maybe, working towards a negotiated settlement that ends the war, even if it means territorial losses for Ukraine, would be better. That is not “saving lives at all costs”, that is not “blaming the victims for not giving up quicker”. The idea that the only options are complete and unambiguous Ukrainian victory or the extermination of everyone in Ukraine, (an argument being made here by people, incidentally, who clearly have no skin in the game), is the logic of armageddon.

The logical gymnastics here are just astonishing. To suggest an alternative to military escalation makes me a tanky. To suggest negotiations makes me an authoritarian. To advocate for peace is to advocate for “might makes right”. This is the logic of nationalism.

I’m sorry, did you just accuse me of being a far-right tanky for suggesting that a negotiated peace might be the best of bad options?

What exactly do you think the word “tanky” means?

It’s interesting how everyone is anti-war until there’s a war, then everyone is suddenly a nationalist. This isn’t a video game, this isn’t a movie.

There is a very real possibility that Ukraine is going to lose this war, and I’ve not heard realistically say this war will be over soon. In which case a plausible argument could be made on humanitarian grounds that a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible is the best of the bad options. But seems not to be what the United States or Ukraine wants, so. It’s really quite fucked up.

Like I don’t know how I would feel if I were Ukrainian. I absolutely think they are on the right side of this. What the Russian soldiers have been doing to Ukraine is despicable. But with cities being destroyed, nuclear power plants at risk, massive oil pipelines being bombed in the ocean, millions of people displaced…

if dropping ten of these prevents the Russians from dropping one of theirs you are coming out ahead in terms of UXO

Hmm. However justified one feels Ukraine’s struggle is, it’s hard to understand how sending more weapons into a brutal war will result in less violence. NATO supplying Ukraine with weapons is not having the effect of shortening the conflict, it’s having the exact opposite effect. You can make an argument that the U.S and its allies should continue to support Ukraine so that Ukraine can hopefully win this conflict, but that’s a different argument than the humanitarian angle of shortening the conflict.

This is a very, very dangerous game that is being played. Russia has nuclear weapons. It’s a real tragedy what’s happening one way or another.

People will always use this logic to justify whatever horrendous crime their “side” is committing.