Easiest place to get it is from the product you want to produce.
For example, if you want to make yogurt then grab a little bit of the leftover yogurt in your fridge, drop a dollop of it in, and viola, it'll start the yogurtification process.
You can also rely on the open-air bacteria for some culturing, but the results can be all over the place. This is how a lot of sites suggest starting sour dough.
Thank you. I was a little bit disappointed that these more sinister parts were occluded but I guess that is to be expected after all, the dairy industry spends insane amounts of money to keep us gaslighted. Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant...
Let's also not forget that the article basically skips what rennet actually is just naming it an enzyme.
I think there's a linguistically-driven temporal misunderstanding happening here. A cow couldn't have a calf if it hadn't become pregnant.
But there's so much to the linguistics of animal husbandry and dairy that many folks don't know. It goes way deeper than just the milk-oriented terms in the article: Heifer versus cow, freshening and calving, steer versus ox versus bull, AI (not the LLM kind) versus natural service, the barn, parlor, and pasture, and more. Plus plenty of technical knowledge. If you're not hand milking, how many mmHg of negative pressure should you use? Do you use a surcingle, or a claw, or a robot?
Even in the milk-oriented terms, there are others not covered by the article. HTST and UHT aren't the only options, there's also LTLT. Pasteurization can be done in a pipeline, or in a vat. Smaller vats for home and small farm usage can be multi-purpose: I pasteurized milk and cultured yogurt in mine. Some folks even care about the specific proteins (A1 beta-casein versus A2), which is genetically determined by the cow (and can be bred for).
I’m curious curious, what’s the English term for a female calf that lived more that two years and didn’t experience pregnancy? Never heard such a term in any language.
I don't think people are kept abreast of the realities of animal farming in general.
Cows simply produce milk like chickens lay eggs.
Consider how imagery of a farmer inseminating a cow with his arm disappearing up some tract or fitting a spike to the baby so it can't drink its mom's milk -- or farm conditions in general -- are basically shock footage that people are insulated from until they maybe chance upon a movie like Dominion.
I didn't want to put a spiked nose ring on the first calf born on my small farm because of the visual shock. Its mother didn't kick the calf off as it grew up. The calf wouldn't stop nursing, kept the cow in milk for far too long, and I believe eventually caused her death.
These are not sapient beings that are capable of looking out for their own well-being. We've bred that out of them over hundreds of human generations.
The gestation period of a cow is approximately 9 months, similar to humans, by coincidence. Only a cow that has given birth to a calf will produce milk. The normal lactation period is 305 days before the cow is "dried up" before giving birth again. 10,000 pounds of milk is considered a good lactation total. Typically, cows are bred to calve once per year. Typically going through 10 lactations before that one way trip to MacDonald's.
Dairy bulls are notoriously nasty creatures, so artificial insemination is almost universal in the dairy industry. The "tract" that you speak of is the cow's colon. The technician is careful to guide the pipette so as not to injure the animal, and the colon provides convenient access to feel what is going on inside.
If you are squeamish about such things as cow's colons, then vet school is not for you.
I was speaking from the perspective of the people in my opening sentence. How commonly known would you suspect those facts are in your comment?
e.g. "[They might assume] cows simply produce milk like chickens lay eggs."
It's normal to never really think about it -- our society is set up so that you never have to. The secretion comes in a jug, the meat comes in cellophane, and that's it.
> e.g. "[They might assume] cows simply produce milk like chickens lay eggs."
You may have a point that many have no idea how chickens work. Egg laying being like giving birth isn't an unreasonable explanation if you had to come up with one on the spot while completely in the dark. But most understand how milk is produced because even if they've never seen a cattlebeast, they deal with milk-producing humans daily.
A cow must have been pregnant to produce milk. So it's artificially inseminated and the calf separated (so as not to steal valuable milk) which is arguably traumatic to both the mother and the calf. Most modern people, if they've ever even thought about it at all, likely think that cows are bred to (or naturally do) produce milk without pregnancy being involved, like sheep are bred to grow wool around the year.
> Most people think that cows are simply bred to produce milk without pregnancy
Am I misinterpreting you here? You're saying most people think cows are bred (you know, what causes pregnancy), and presumably think that that calves are born — I've never met anyone who didn't know what a calf is, but somehow don't realize that pregnancy happens inbetween?
Yes, you're misinterpreting me. Breeding involves making calves, obviously. But once you get the hypothetical continuously-milk-producing cows, they don't have to make calves. Making more cows can be delegated to cows specialized to making more cows, so cows producing milk for humans can do that without inconvenient pregnancies.
But that's not how it works. Every single milk-producing cow must have been pregnant at least once, and typically several times in its life to keep producing desired amounts of milk. And the calves are an unwanted byproduct that must be taken away. At least they're not shredded in a big blender like the male chicks of egg-laying chicken breeds are.
Where else are you going to get them from? A calf factory?
> And the calves are an unwanted byproduct
Am I misinterpreting you again? Heifer calves are the prized possession that ensures that your dairy continues into the future. Cows don't last forever (or even all that long).
You maybe had a stronger case for bull calves, but now that modern breeding can select for heifers with ~90% confidence, that's hardly an issue anymore. And, I mean, in this day of age of high-priced beef, even if you get the occasional bull you're not exactly complaining either.
> modern breeding can select for heifers with ~90% confidence
May you expend on this? I know we kinda have selection techniques for eggs to crush them before hatch but I guess that’s not what’s happening with milk caws as the diary is the main target and the cow need to give birth to start lactation. Or perhaps it’s the impregnating technique or some hormone therapy that tricks the odds?
> in this day of age of high-priced beef, even if you get the occasional bull you're not exactly complaining either.
I depends on the breed: in this days of high volume diary and meat consumption, most of what people eat comes from specialised breeds that hare very good at producing milk OR muscle. The non-desired sexed are not so valuable. Switzerland (and others countries I can’t remembers) recently passed a calves handling low to require farmers caring them for a minimum days in response to industrial sloped into unethical territories.
That documentary shows another practice in India : some invaluable calve are just roped to a fence and forget until dehydration. https://christspiracy.com
Huh? A holstein bull calf is selling for around $3,000 right now. That's... insane.
I remember from what doesn't seem all that long ago when fats didn't even fetch half that much. Beef has gone wild. If that's not valuable, what do you consider valuable?
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same data. Here’s the price evolution of lived calves in EU. They happen to be very high since 2025 (300€/500€ for diary/meat) but if you click « select all » on the top left you can see they use to be around 100€/200€ in the previous 10 years, going as low as 60€/head during covid.
Fair point, I didn’t express it well: I don't think calves “have no value” in general, they’re sentient beings. However, as you pointed out and shown ahead, they are also part of a market and in some places their value is not high enough to care them well [0]. Some of them happen to be euthanized very shortly after birth:
> In one survey of Canadian farmers, an average of 19% of calves were euthanised at birth and of those respondents that euthanised calves, 34% reported using blunt force trauma (sharp blow from a solid object to the head) [1]
There’s also the "bob veal" (2–3 days to 1 month) [2], I guess the goal is to have a different taste but I’m not sure about that.
side note: I found the technique used to "select for heifers" you mentioned: the process is called flow cytometer and it sorts the sperm with a laser.
To have a better understanding, one could suggest to search for the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize
Exactly. From my point of view the strongest plausible interpretation of "in this day of age of high-priced beef" is that it recognizes that the current situation is a historical anomaly.
But that isn't how it was interpreted. We saw the weakest plausible interpretation + silly criticism transpire instead. However, I trust in good faith that it wasn't intentionally interpreted in the weakest way, but rather that it simply failed to communicate its intent.
Which is where I seek an understanding of where it broke down so that I can be clearer in the future.
Indeed I didn’t read "in this day of age of high-priced beef" as a few month (or 1-2 years) situation for beef only and more like "in this days of inflation", like since a few decades.
The communication breakdown also comes from me as we are two in the thread. I should probably re-read "How to Win Friends and Influence People", a best seller that truly changed my relation to others 15 years ago.
As I said, I doubt most people think about this at all. But if they do, I find it an entirely reasonable assumption that, as I said, if cows could make milk without making calves, in modern industrial farming the calves would be made by individuals that only make calves, and milk would be made by individuals that only make milk, for efficiency reasons. That's what I would assume, probably.
> One could argue there's more suffering in a glass of milk than a steak
What I find quite bizarre that in India (where I am from) milk is considered ethically vegetarian whereas unfertilized chicken eggs are not.
But the weirdest experience I have ever had was at the main Google cafeteria. One gentleman with a steak on his fresh plate was quizzing the attendant at length to be sure that the mashed potato was vegan. After many months of thinking I found a plausible reason.
I know a number of people who have allergies to some animal products (notably eggs or dairy). Given the growing familiarity with (and catering to) vegan diets, they find it much easier to use "is it vegan" as a shortcut to "can I eat this" rather than interrogate food workers about specific ingredients.
It's indeed pretty interesting how our society has normalized being. what I would say is antisocial by the norms of previous generations in the form of the gen z stare.
Funnilly I remember a situation where I got a job offer from somebody from an older generation and I just stood still and stared for 1 minute. Not because I wanted to be disrespectful but because I was processing the information and I was simply so baffled that I forgot the social dance of showing the thinking on my face and doing thinking sounds (if you know you know). This led to the other person holding a lecture on how you should respond that you do not have a response yet but I thinking. I ended up accepting.
Method,Logistical Requirement
Automatic/Tunnel,The vehicle must be present to be processed through the brushes or jets.
Self-Service Bay,The vehicle must be driven into the bay to access the high-pressure wands.
Hand Wash (at home),"If the ""car wash"" is a location where you buy supplies to bring back, walking is feasible."
Detailing Service,"If you are dropping the car off for others to clean, the car must be delivered to the site."
> it's common for people to be bad at a second language
Non-native speaker here: huh, is "you are absolutely right" wrong somehow? I.e., are you a bad english speaker for using it? Fully agree (I guess "fully agree" is the common one?) with this criticism of the article, to me that colloquialism does not sound fishy at all.
There might also be two effects at play:
1. Speech "bubbles" where your preferred language is heavily influenced by where you grew up. What sounds common to you might sound uncommon in Canada.
2. People have been using LLMs for years at this point so what is common for them might be influenced by what they read from LLM output. So while initially it was an LLM colloquialism it could have been popularized by LLM usage.
Thanks for the thorough explanation, that, indeed, is a level of nuance that's hard for me to spot.
Interestingly, "absolutely right" is very common in German: "du hast natürlich absolut Recht" is something which I can easily imagine a friend's voice (or my voice) say at a dinner table. It's "du hast Recht" that sounds a little bit too formal and strong x[.
Agreed on the sycophancy point, in Gemini I even have a preamble that basically says "don't be a sycophant". It still doesn't always work.
> in Gemini I even have a preamble that basically says "don't be a sycophant". It still doesn't always work.
Using this kind of strategy eventually leads to the LLM recurrently advertising what it just produced as «straight to the point, no fluff, no bullshit». («Here is the blunt truth»).
Of course no matter how the LLM advertise its production, it is too often non devoid of sycophancy.
There's likely a cultural element to it as well regarding how we admit mistakes and correct ourselves.
With how blame-avoidant western individualist culture can be, seeing something "admit" doing wrong so quickly, and so emphatically, could be uncanny valley-level jarring.
It's a valid English phrase but it's also not unlikely that someone states something as a fact and then goes immediately to "you are absolutely right" when told it's wrong - but AI does that all the time.
It fails the basic human behaviour. In general humans are not ready to admit fault. At least when there is no social pressure. They might apologize and admit mistake. Or they might ask for clarification. But very rarely "You are absolute right" and go on entirely new tangent...
I'm also a non native speaker. The point is, you tend to make grammatically correct phrases (mostly), but in a way that's not very common between native speakers. You're right that there are many factors at play. I think dismissing something as AI generated just because it uses common AI-generated strings is not correct. I'm speaking in general and not about the specific case.
It is clear that Alphabet is his baby and neither he not Larry ever fully left.
He is still in his 50s so maybe just too young to play golf and chill on superyachts all day. While him being a billionaire makes any lesson derived have to have an asterisk him enjoying technical work even after long having won the rat race is a pretty cool role model.
This is exactly my thoughts. If you are reading this, author, please either make the snowflakes less distracting or toggleable. They are a pain on mobile.
Yup: all the animation stops, the overlaid snowflakes disappear, and the background changes from blue to yellow. I haven't bothered to check the foreground/background contrast of the two versions, but I suspect that, although the yellow version will have less contrast, the removal of the snowflakes will make for a net benefit to readability for the average person.
