Daniel Haran

Today's main mission: find customers for a few tonnes of vegan milk chocolate chips.

The last person I blocked was a friend of a friend who insisted we were too lazy to read his scientific studies showing the benefits of raw milk. He was not just confused about the science and debating in good faith - he was obnoxious.

Today I muted another dude who enjoys JAQing off.

After the Unite the Right event, an acquaintance asked why I wasn't proud to be White. It didn't take long from there to figure out they were a white supremacist.

Facebook seems silly, but it helps the trash take itself out.

The same pattern with Covid, Trump, and now Gaza.

When it comes to cacao, it's as if consumers paying more for eggs was causing Avian flu. We've completely inverted causation, and the mainstream media acts as a marketing engine for our best known companies and academics.

Had Ghana's COCOBOD been able to raise prices more last year, more trees would have been solved. In other words:

Low farm-gate prices are partially responsible for today's high prices.

This week's farm-gate price raise won't rise world prices, but a higher price might prevent a bigger rise.

Floods, droughts and various cacao diseases are reducing supply, forcing world prices to rise.

Lindt and Barry can't delay purchases until Cacao swollen shoot virus negotiates. Unless farmers are paid enough that they can stop those diseases, more trees will keep dying.

Back in 2019, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire tried to tack on $400 per tonne as a Living Income Differential.

Big chocolate companies just slowed down their purchases. Those countries also weren't even able to demand a floor price.

That all became moot as bad harvests tripled world prices.

The Ghanaian Cedi's slide against the USD means farmers aren't seeing a 60% hike in prices in terms of their real currency.

In terms of market impacts, COCOBOD has ~20% of world cacao. There's no way their paying farm-gate prices less than 70% world markets will raise prices significantly.

GCCP Slams Government’s 2025/26 Cocoa Price as Misleading, Calls for 70 percent of World Market Rate - Ghanaian Times The Ghana Civil-Society Cocoa Platform (GCCP) has criticised the government’s newly announced cocoa producer price for the 2025/2026 crop season, describing it as misleading and inadequate in addressi...

Ghana's cacao all gets sold to COCOBOD, which insists on being an intermediary and treating all cacao as an interchangeable commodity.

They increased farm gate prices last year and again this year, although it does not quite amount to 70% of world market prices:

International Cocoa Organization - Statistics The Statistics Section carries out various studies on the cocoa market, some of which can be found on the statistics web page: daily cocoa prices, monthly averages, market reports

One (or *the*) authoritative source for cacao prices is the ICCO. Daily prices are currently $7,652.69 a tonne, with London's exchange being cheaper than New York - the next future contracts are trading there at $8037.

So: $7-8/kg.

Augmentation du prix du cacao | Une facture plus salée pour votre chocolat ? Un prix en hausse et une qualité en baisse. L’augmentation par le Ghana du prix du cacao à la production risque d’avoir une incidence sur le chocolat qui nous sera ensuite proposé.

@lapresse.ca just published an article on Ghana's cacao farmgate price increases - and it's wild because literally everything in that article is wrong.

You're not reading what I wrote, are you?

Do you think sit-ins were considered civil? Were they popular?

You sound like a generic civility cop from the 1960s.

That's your characterisation.

It's wild being literate enough to know what Fraktur conveys while many are arguing that Sig Heils are Roman Salutes.

That's... not subtle.

Were there studies showing that sit-ins at lunch counters were effective before 1960? That blocking Manhattan in September 1989 would work for ACT UP?

By asking for studies you're just pretending to be serious, while not actually having to think critically about your civility fixation.

Any hedge fund managers here?

Please short those REITs, then flood the housing market and fund YIMBYs.

Lots of development projects are shovel-ready, just waiting on finance.

Maybe make your opinion crystal clear, unless you want everyone to assume that your opinion is hideous.

Oh, and the arguments about protests not changing minds are wrong and worn out, used to tut-tut civil rights, Vietnam protests, ACT UP... you'd always have been on the wrong side of history.

Your behaviour suggested otherwise.

If you do have a well-defined viewpoint AND you're comfortable publicly telling protesters how to protest AND you want your professional association in your bio without a disclaimer AND your workplace doesn't appear neutral...

"Stop targeting politicians' homes with protests" is imperious rhetoric. You claim epistemic and neutral viewpoint privilege, even as you take sides in a conflict.

These things are not compatible.

Getting back to the question that started my thread, your institution has a civility bias, and you behave as though you can tut-tut protesters for being outside some civility norms.

Protesting in front of a residence is not civil, while genocide and lying about weapons shipment are OK.

Hey, I know you're a wordsmith. That you chose to not answer that direct question says a lot.

If the people at the Gazette collectively lack the clarity or courage to use the word "genocide" even as children are being starved, some may think your use of "war" amounts to obfuscation.

Has The Gazette called it a genocide, or does it only refer to it as a war?

We can argue about the precise meaning and what the word by itself does or does not imply.

But use of that word while avoiding any mention of genocide appears as an editorial choice for your employer, no?

Primecoche: Balbuzard, à Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.

Lifer: Osprey!

Yet people ARE changing their minds.

If you spoke with more protesters you'd learn how many aren't doing this to change minds. No one is reporting on that strategy, which has parallels to what ACT UP did.

Media really are failing us.

All the advice by media people about how to protest is to do it in ways they regularly don't cover, things which have been tried.

They also ignore decades of theory by people across social movements, from King to Sharp to Thunberg.

Pundits: what concrete steps have you taken to stop the genocide?

2. Emotionally Limited Parents Misread Neurodivergence as Defiance Neurocomplex traits often get pathologized in emotionally rigid households. Curiosity becomes backtalk. Sensory sensitivity is framed as overreacting. Executive dysfunction gets labeled as laziness. These misinterpretations aren't just invalidating— they're identity-shaping. Over time, kids absorb the belief that being different equals being difficult.

This is also about school.

Anyone who thinks the Trump administration has a stopping point is deluding themselves. Capitulation only accelerates their timeline.

it’s easy to throw stones, but they actually produce some content about topics our sclerotic educational establishment refuses to discuss

Three r's in rhododendron.

It is still abysmal on areas I know about deeply, not even as good as a half-drunk freshman writing a last minute essay, let alone a team of PhD researchers.

How long are we going to endure this hype before this obscene bubble pops?