Ben Gibran

Now that X has long-form articles, here's my ENTIRE book (copyright: 2021 Ben Gibran, all rights reserved)! Constructive comments welcome. Expletives, insults and ad hominems blocked. Enjoy and share!

When I was a student at the University of Leeds in the early 90s, they had a refectory where they cooked on site. Best fish & chips I've ever had, their quiche & chips was to die for, heavenly apple crumble with hot custard for desert! Guess what? It's still there! The menu's more international now, but there's fish & chips (with mushy peas, of course) every Friday: gfal.leeds.ac.uk/where-to-eat/r…

A British school dinner in 1975 was cooked on-site, from whole ingredients, by a dinner lady who knew, without consulting a nutritional database, what a growing child needed to eat. The dinner was: roast beef, gravy from the drippings, boiled potatoes, cabbage, and sponge pudding with custard made from eggs and milk. Or shepherd's pie from real mince. Or liver and onions. Or fish on Friday, battered and fried in beef dripping. In a single sitting: haem iron from the meat, calcium from the custard, B12 from the liver, vitamin A from the gravy fat, vitamin D from the eggs, zinc from the beef, omega-3 from the fish, collagen from the gravy, complete protein from every component, and roughly 800 calories dense enough to carry a child through an afternoon of running around a playground in January. Then the system changed. In the 1980s and 1990s, local authority catering was outsourced. On-site kitchens closed. Dinner ladies were made redundant. Central production kitchens began manufacturing meals reheated in convection ovens. The roast beef became a turkey twizzler. The shepherd's pie became a pre-formed disc of processed potato and reconstituted meat product. The liver disappeared entirely. The fish was coated in breadcrumbs and fried in vegetable oil. The custard was made from powder, water, and yellow colouring. The sponge pudding was replaced by a yoghurt tube. Jamie Oliver's 2005 campaign filmed children who could not identify a tomato. Kitchens where the only equipment was a deep fryer and a microwave. Menus that contained less nutritional value in a full week than the 1975 dinner contained in a single sitting. The government pledged reform. But the on-site kitchen did not come back. The dinner lady did not come back. The roast beef and the liver and the custard made from eggs did not come back. The 1975 dinner lady, who had no nutritional qualification and had never heard of a DIAAS score, was producing, at approximately 30p per serving, a meal that contained more bioavailable nutrition than anything the modern system produces at three times the cost. She has been replaced by a supply chain. The supply chain is more expensive. The children are less well fed. The dinner lady knew what she was doing. Nobody asked her.

🇬🇧 1958 #Jaguar Mark VIII

The 'Sun Ball' creates its own private space. Designed by Ferdinand Ris. (c1960s)

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

La Fiat 124 Spider aveva l’eleganza semplice delle auto riuscite davvero: bassa, filante, leggera, con quel fascino italiano che ancora oggi sa farsi notare senza alzare la voce.

✅⬜🟥 1951 #Fiat Abarth 🦂

He’s saying “hey, put the phone down, right here on the table and pet me”

The flip side of his argument is that if a member of ANY species (say, a chimp or even an AI) wants to go on living or avoid unnecessary suffering, we humans are morally obliged to enable it to do so. In practice, it's ONLY humans who have this duty, because we're the only species that can acknowledge commitments based on reason and argument (maybe AI can in future, or it may possibly only care about itself), aims (albeit imperfectly) to reduce suffering in general, and also has substantial means to do so. There is one problem, though. If we try to meet such "animal rights" obligations even halfway, humans are likely to go extinct or be severely weakened from resource self-deprivation. Which would impair human programs to reduce suffering in other species. Conclusion: Reducing suffering in non-human species entails educating humans and PRIORITIZING human flourishing over that of other species. A policy of doctrinaire anti-speciesism is actually more likely to INCREASE aggregate suffering. More here: ben-gibran.medium.com/anti-speciesis…

Peter Singer on why most abortions aren't morally equivalent to killing a person: Singer addresses a foundational question about abortion ethics by examining what actually makes killing wrong in the first place. He begins by acknowledging the obvious biological point: "In one sense the fetus obviously is a human being. It's a member of the species Homo sapiens and it's alive." But Singer argues that being biologically human isn't what matters morally. The real question is: what makes killing a human being wrong? "What are the characteristics that make it particularly wrong to kill a human being? Why do we think that killing a human being is normally wrong?" His answer focuses on the capacities that persons actually have: "It's not just being a member of the species Homo sapiens that makes killing wrong. It's rather the fact that you know, you and me and anyone else listening here is a being that has got certain capacities, can think, can want to go on living, is aware of the fact that he or she is living and wants to go on living." These capacities, self-awareness, the ability to think, and the desire to continue existing are what make killing a person in the street "a terrible thing," according to Singer. "None of that applies to the fetus. When most abortions are performed, the fetus is not even conscious, and it's certainly never a being who can think 'I want to go on living.'"

Ford GT

1951 Jaguar Mark V 3½-Liter Drophead Coupé

This is Julius. My neighbors decided to kick him out of the house and stop leaving food out for him so he came and asked if he could move in. How could I say no! He came to me with an u.r.i, heart murmur and is fiv+. 2 days ago he got neutered, up to date on all vaccines. His blood work came back good. I'm waiting for the "honeymoon phase" to be over so I can see what kind of shenanigans he is capable of.

Billionaire Car - What a beautiful sight in Rome. The ultra rare Pininfarina masterpiece 1 of 1 Ferrari Testarossa Spider built for former President of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli.

“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.” ― Camille Paglia

🇬🇧 1973 #Jaguar XJ12 Series 1 SWB

@VinnieSull1van @Lost___London @PubHistoryTours I'm kind of OK with it. The roof keeps out the weather, but maybe they could have used some mock-stone cladding round the British Library rotunda, or the words of Shakespeare and other British writers wrapped around it.

The whole point of revival architecture is to bring the past back to life. One simple change can alter the way we look at and appreciate something that would have otherwise been a very different experience if it had been left alone. ⏳️ The British Museum, London.

Halcyon Great Eight Series Rolls-Royce Corniche Rose and Scroll

Sure, teach them economics. Teach them that the market mechanism can't satisfactorily address negative externalities, the tragedy of the commons, or inelastic demand. Teach them that the "free market" is a theoretical abstraction with a lot of ifs and buts. For example, is a market "free" if companies can patent an idea (or buy a patent) but not use it, just so no one else can? What about if a company colludes with NGOs and politicians to introduce burdensome "safety" regulations to keep out competitors? What economics teaches is that the "free market" isn't a Newtonian self-regulating system. All markets require constant regulatory intervention, involving judgement calls about what counts as "unfair competition" or a "public good", what to do when there's inelastic demand (e.g. in medicine), or when market forces exceed moral boundaries (e.g. child labor). That's "democratic socialism" in all but name.

Students are “arriving to campus not only skeptical of free markets, but openly embracing democratic socialist ideas. The problem isn’t that students have rejected capitalism. It’s that many have never been taught how it works or why it matters.” —@SamuelAbramsAEI

Boat tail Riv.

Citroën SM