There is a thick line between veganism and the celebration of violence. The chasm between the desperately impoverished and the decadently entitled widens by the hour. We witness the disparity at broadband speed and with the suddenness of a tsunami.
Africa is an enormous continent that gets depicted as approximately the size of Greenland on the very faulty default Mercator projection, used to depict everything from an extraordinarily specious perspective — one where the North Pole and the South Pole are infinitely large. This is to say that a single point with no dimension gets presented as limited only by infinity. Altogether all you need to know about the specie that finds Mercator’s single-purpose map indispensable to everything.
WorldMapper, it is scaled according to meat consumption.
“Meat, as shown here, refers to all animal products that are consumed by people. Meat consumption per person is highest in Western European territories. Nine of the top ten meat consuming populations live in Western Europe. The anomaly in this ranking is New Zealand, a territory that is famous for its high ratio of sheep to people and the production of lamb. The most meat is consumed in China, a quarter of the world total. A fifth of the world population lives in China, eating on average 510 calories of meat per person, which is above the world average of 432 calories of meat per person.”
— WorldMapper
Two very different journalists on Korea.
First the vegan, Charles Newkey-Burden, author and journalist. He also writes for Shortlist, the Daily Telegraph and Four Four Two.
Offended by Koreans eating dog? I trust you’ve never had a bacon butty
“Yes, dogs are smart and friendly – but so are pigs. Researchers from Cambridge University found pigs are as smart as three-year-old humans. They can play computer games and recognise people they met several years ago. They develop trust and empathy like we, and dogs, do. Few people relish the thought of any animals being slaughtered so it’s normal for those who eat meat to try to justify it. Just as westerners get angry about people in Asia eating dogs and cats, many Indians get outraged by westerners eating cows. People shake their heads in disbelief at guinea pigs and alpacas being served up in South America.” — Source
How much is your approach to meat a reflection of inculturation? Whom does the culture incarcerate and whom does it traffic?
The next article is by the non-vegan Andrew Keh, an international correspondent, covering sports from Berlin. He has previously covered Major League Baseball and the N.B.A. and has reported from the World Cup and the Olympics.
An Olympic Challenge: Eat All the Korean Food That Visitors Won’t
At a restaurant near Gangneung Olympic Park, a colleague and I slipped on plastic gloves and each grabbed scissors. (When I’m president, scissors will replace knives on everybody’s dinner tables.) We pulled crab parts from a bubbling pot as deep and wide as a witch’s caldron. We broke our busy silence only to marvel at the ribbons of red and white meat dangling between our fingertips: They were feathery soft and, yes, so sweet. When all the legs were gone, we asked for a couple packs of instant noodles to repurpose the cloudy russet broth. The place also serves sannakji, raw octopus so fresh that the slices quiver on the plate. For non-Korean visitors, the dish exists almost exclusively as a dare. — Sourcehttps://static01.nyt.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=unknown
billziegler1947 
Well played, Bill, “The chasm between the desperately impoverished and the decadently entitled widens by the hour.” Splendid article, indeed.
Thanks for writing.
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Thank you, Peter, for the very kind words and for your ardent support of sentient beings everywhere — the trillions of such sentient beings “processed” for the whim of appetite and fashion get casually swept to the bottom of that widening chasm and get unceremoniously covered over by human sewage.
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More great info here, Bill. Glad you’re still blogging in my blight absence.
The thick line is indeed a chasm. That disparity between Haves and Have Nots is not going to continue without an uprising. It historically never has.
I watched a video of a Chinese chef contest where the contestants filleted and par-cooked a fish while fully alive (scaling, slicing, gutting, boiling). The winner resulted a cooked ready-to-eat animal that would still gasping for breath on the plate.
How is it we celebrate this kind of show? And humans call lions barbaric.
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Hello Shannon, as I always say, and always mean: thanks for reading 🙂 The nihilists casually philosophize, exchange witty banter and casually tick off memories of previous extreme dining adventures at well appointed tables around the planet — all while looking into the eyes of a being with an equivalent highly developed central nervous system. The acclaimed photographer captures the moment of desperation in the eye of the animal gazing through the lens of a highly crafted camera in the moments before the fork conveys living pulsing tissue into the gaping mouths of the gourmands with delicate palates…
https://static01.nyt.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=unknown
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Well put. I’m not sure what the last link is though … it wouldn’t play for me.
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Hi Shannon, thanks for reporting the broken link ’cause it’ll stay broken until it gets fixed. Fortunately my son knows how to “embed video code” so the link should work real soon now :=)
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