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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Important caveat: IANAL.

    I’ve seen elsewhere the response to the Ben and Jerry’s news hitting basically boiling down to “fucking cry about it sell outs, you got into bed with Unilever”. Which, sure, fine if that’s your (general “you”, not you specifically OP) perspective, far be it from me to yuck your yums. That being said, according to the AP article I read, they carved out (or attempted to) the right to continue to manage the social justice aspect of the Ben and Jerry’s brand without interference, in perpetuity, as a condition of the sale. As I understand it, Unilever has done a number of things to erode those carveouts, basically by repeatedly spinning off portions of the business into new companies, which they argue are not beholden to that agreement. For example, despite Ben and Jerry’s public support of Palestine and objection to their products being sold in Israel, Unilever simply licensed the product to Israeli manufacturers who sell it under their own brand names. Additionally, and this is what appears to be what precipitated this departure, they are now spinning all of their frozen confectionary brands off into something like Magnum Foods (because the two things I want to have on my mind while looking for ice cream are guns and condoms).

    Like, I understand anyone who looks at the hundreds of millions that these guys received in 2000 and has difficulty mustering sympathy for their plight. That being said, I don’t begrudge them their pay day. They said, at the time, that the partnership would enable them to extend their social justice campaigns beyond what they could do as independents. From what I’ve seen, they’ve largely lived up to that over the ensuing years.


  • I don’t want to yuck your yums, since it’s sort of a subjective call, but I wouldn’t necessarily call 200 meters a “long distance” shot. It’s not close range, but hitting a mostly stationary human sized target at that distance is, if not “easy”, certainly achievable with a minimal amount of firearms experience. I think this holds true even without the assistance of scopes or other optics. For reference, basic rifle marksmanship qualification for the armed forces has you taking on targets out to 300 meters with iron sights, and, despite never firing a weapon prior to basic training, I was able to consistently hit the 200 meter targets (though beyond that range was a coin flip)

    Furthermore, calling the weapon a high-powered rifle is, to some extent, redundant. Again, it’s subjective, but pretty much any firearm which fires rifle caliber ammunition is going to be by default “high-powered”, unless it’s .22LR. That’s the only rifle cartridge I can think of that is commonly available that would not qualify as “high-powered” by a reasonable definition.

    The only reason I bring up this little bit of pedantry is because, as you mentioned in your post, calling it a “long distance shot with a high powered rifle” leads the listener towards certain conclusions that are not well-founded at this juncture. It’s not inaccurate or untruthful, but I do think it leaves out relevant context.