It’s precisely what everyone said would happen.
I don’t disagree with your general point, but I remember that there were many people (on reddit, but also on lemmy) who said there would be lots of power-hungry redditors just waiting to take over and that the admins would thus have no trouble at all finding replacements.
The article gives another reason:
Authorities say the river will help expand agricultural land and reduce the need to import food and wheat.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year drove a global surge in wheat prices, leaving Egypt struggling as it is the world’s biggest wheat importer.
In addition, in recent years there have been droughts in East Africa as well, which can’t have been good for the amount of water the Nile carries, and the dam you mention just adds to the whole thing.
For those wondering like me where the water is supposed to come from:
Authorities have said that water for the artificial river will come from recycled agricultural drainage and groundwater.
This doesn’t really strike me as a long term solution though, unless Egypt has vast reserves of groundwater.
i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us
Do you have a source for that? Intuitively 1/3 of all species extinctions (keep in mind this in general includes plants and other kingdoms of life, not just animals) sounds far too high imo. Maybe you have read that number in a slightly different context, like bird deaths in urban areas, or perhaps in a more specific context similar to the one in your link? Don’t get me wrong, like your link shows, (house) cats can easily have a devastating effect on the local wildlife, in particular birds and small mammals or reptiles (wikipedia has an article on the topic, although I didn’t find anything like your numbers in it). But as far as I know the major ways in which humans have caused extinctions are historically overhunting (mostly affecting large birds and mammals), habitat loss in particular since the advent of agriculture, and more recently of course the effects of the climate crisis since the industrial revolution.
No, it says
100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate
both in the general intro and in the “Extinction rate” section, and
10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth
in the “Extinction rate” section (both verbatim quotes from its first sentence).
lesser function
Putting aside that this might be difficult to quantify, why do you think it matters? There are some groups of humans who exhibit severely diminished mental capacities compared to the average human (e.g. babies, severely mentally handicapped people, people in a coma, etc.). Would it be okay to eat them? Because I’m fairly confident that for whatever measure to compare cognitive functions you could come up with, we would be able to find at least some humans who perform worse on them than the average pig, for example.
different species
Why does this matter? As a hypothetical thought experiment, do you think it would be morally justified for us to eat aliens who are biologically very different from us but of comparative intelligence (or higher)? Or for them to eat us?
it’s the easiest, most accessible, most fulfilling, and healthiest way
Apart from the “fulfilling”, which is arguably subjective, I don’t think the rest is true. At least I don’t see how not eating meat would be difficult or “inaccessible” in a significant way, and considering the last point studies regularly show that vegetarians and vegans are, on average, slightly healthier than other people if anything (which might be in part just correlation, but it does contradict your claim of meat being the “healthiest” way to get nutrients).
Fuck Tyson though, those bastards can go to hell.
On this we can definitely agree.
they are not sentient
Science disagrees with you here. Most of the animals being used for meat are in fact not just sentient, but also conscious:
Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.
– From the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
nature intended
Nature doesn’t intend anything, it simply is. We are, in the grand scheme of things, not separate from nature, and in this sense everything we do is natural. If you’re using “natural” to distinguish things from the results of human civilization, then eating animal products stemming from animal agriculture is just as “unnatural” as supplements, as both are products of civilization.
Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
That is a slight understatement:
There seems to be a bit of a difference, even though both involve asking questions. To quote wiktionary:
Apparently coined by this webcomic:
So the way I understand it, “JAQing off” is when you’re trying to guide your audience towards a certain conclusion without stating it outright (e.g. “Are the official numbers of holocaust victims really as solid as people claim? Are there alternative historical interpretations? I’m just asking questions here, not implying anything folks.” when you think just saying “The holocaust didn’t happen!” might make it too obvious you’re a Nazi), while sealioning is more about annoying the other party and trying to make them look bad/unreasonable and yourself polite and reasonable in comparison (e.g. “I’m just curious, is there any actual evidence that fascists are inherently bad people, as you claim? As a person with no opinion on the matter, I would just like to have an honest and open debate on this subject.” so when people reply with something like “Fuck off, fascist!” you can say “Wow, so much for the tolerant left.”). Both tactics are frequently applied by online trolls, especially of the far right, but they have somewhat different goals.