Soy fixes nitrogen and doesn’t affect the rest of the nutrients. Without soy in the crop rotation you have to simply buy more nitrogen fertilizer for the subsequent crop, which will make it more expensive to grow. Soy is good but it’s not a looming disaster without it. The EU barely grows soy and is doing fine. And regarding dust bowl. Those areas of the US have already switched from plowing to no-till decades ago. Another dust bowl is unlikely even with drought because of it.

Dependence on food imports? The US is a large net food exporter. And will remain so for a long time. Especially in wheat, corn and soy beans. Harvesting grains is incredibly labour efficient. The labour crisis is mostly in fruits and vegetables which are very labor intensive. Even if soy and grain yields would be unexpectedly badly impacted by climate change it will first impact the exports and lastly animal feed and agro ethanol. The yields would have to be unrealistically devastated for it to lead to shortages in human food like bread. So at worst we are looking at a shortage of meat, fruits and vegetables but we are extremely far away from any situation involving starvation. This also includes Canada, the EU and Australia. And it’s not all vegetables either. Potatoes, carrots, peas and onions are machine harvested and won’t get affected by a farm labour crisis and will continue to be available. No one is gonna starve for having to substitute broccoli and asparagus with carrots and peas. No one is going to starve when fruits gets expensive either, they are healthy but you can live without them.

It’s the part of the third world which currently relies on western food exports that will have food insecurity in a worsening climate crisis. The west is at worst facing a more boring and monotone diet.

You can’t criticize all Muslims as a group because they all truly have different ways of interpreting the Quran and some very liberal Muslims may not put much weight into the Quran at all. However I feel very justified when I directly criticize specific passages of the Quran that say stuff like how the witness of 1 man is equal to the witness of 2 women. Or how the Quran says that homosexuality is a serious transgression. The Quran is a heavily homophobic and misogynistic text.

60% * (1/20) = 3%. 3% + 40% = 43% chance to get skin cancer compared to baseline

60% * (1/40) = 1,5%. 1,5% + 40% = 41,5% chance to get skin cancer compared to baseline

I did get the math slightly wrong I’ll admit but the principle is the same. And yes you could say you reduce your risk of sun caused cancers in half. But it’s not a meaningful reduction of total skin cancers. Redo the calculation to every form of cancer and you will have reduced your risk to all cancers by far less than a percent by switching from spf 20 to spf 40.

By staying in a deep mine the whole year I will reduce my risk of getting killed by a falling asteroid by over 99%. Sounds great right? But how big was the original risk really? That’s worth taking into account. You’re better off looking into ways to reduce the risk of other cancers than switching from spf 20 to spf 40.

For someone like you I totally understand. Getting sunburned after 15 minutes of cloudy weather is extreme. My condolences.

60% of skin cancer is caused by sun exposure. The rest has other causes. Therefore if you switch from 19/20 to 39/40 you would decrease your risk from 42% of baseline to 41% of baseline. Much less impressive if you put it that way.

DNA doesn’t just start getting damaged before the sunburn. It’s instantly from the first millisecond you’re out in the sun. However it’s surprisingly not a linear relationship where 60 minutes or sun carries twice the risk of 30 minutes of sun. The heavy inflammation associated with a sunburn has a cancer risk of itself, independent from the actual UV dose. So while minimizing UV is important, it may be just as important, if not more important, to make sure you are never sunburned. I can provide sources if asked

I don’t get chasing the biggest spf numbers. An spf 20 already blocks 1/20 of UV rays. I personally get a sunburn after approx 1 hour in my climate and with my skin. Logically I would then have to be outside for 20 hours to get a sun burn! That will never happen. Not even counting that the skin will partly self heal during those 20 hours. Even if you’re one of those who burn in 15 minutes a spf of 20 should still get you 5 hours before a burn.

I say those 50+ SPF sunscreens are over the top and extremely few need a strength that high. Maybe if you’re sun allergic I could understand. And for cancer. Reducing my risk by 1/20 is enough for me. That’s a massive reduction and on top of that skin cancer is the world’s easiest treatable cancer with the lowest death rate. Skin aging? I don’t care. I’m not out to look 15 at 50. I wanna look 50 at 50. That’s my take on it all.

I have a well paying job, not overly so, but around 20% over the national median. I also have a wife and 1 (soon 2!) kids. I work 8-17 with a 30 minute commute. After work I’m too exhausted to want to do much of anything except some gym and maybe some gardening. Before I even got together with my wife she suggested that she be a stay at home mom, which I accepted. Because of that we are far far below the national median family income to the point where we technically are just below the poverty line.

But oh my god I don’t think I would want it any other way. My wife can take care of most of the domestic tasks and the brunt of the child care and none of us are overly stressed or burned out. I gladly take that hit in income in exchange for the huge quality of life increase compared to if we were to both work full time. I still help around the house on weekends so my wife can have some time off from her duties as well.

I constantly get more confident in our choice when I listen to colleagues and their constant complaints about how hard it is to keep your life together. Full time work, 8-9 hours a day, was designed in a time when a stay at home partner was the norm. It just doesn’t make sense if you’re single or if both are working. Maybe we two are lazy but I honestly don’t think we could manage it mentally and energy wise.

I do understand however that I’m very privileged to live in a very low cost of living area. Our lifestyle, with my wage, would be impossible in most of the country I live in. Living close to poverty is alright with me. I don’t desire much and we both have cheap hobbies. We cook all the food we eat. My wife repairs clothes that break. We only have one old shitty car. We don’t travel internationally. But we still manage just fine.

You are supposed to never have any other god before the Christian god at any moment. That means that if you pray to the Christian god every day of the year except for one day where you suddenly pray to another. Then during that day you put another god before the Christian god. Think of it like cheating in a relationship. Even if you are exclusive to your partner 99% of the time that 1% still counts as cheating.

Yes Gaza is ruled by Hamas which is a terrorist islamist un-democratic organization which can’t provide for its people, leading to foreign aid organizations providing most of the amenities there. A source for that will come later. The west bank is ruled by the Palestinian authority which is a functional state which has been mostly peaceful for the last few decades and which I support. The Palestinian authority is on paper supposed to rule Gaza too however Hamas declared war against the Palestinian authority in 2007 because they opposed the results of a democratic election and took over the Gaza strip. You can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)

Music festival celebrating “friends, love and infinite freedom” right by the border fence. Hamas killed 260 of the attendees on the first date of the war. Washington post source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/08/israel-festival-attack-gaza-militants/

“Hamas’ traditional weapon is the Qassam rocket, a cheap garage-built weapon assembled from industrial piping, home-made rocket fuel of sugar and potassium nitrate fertilizer, and commercial explosive” Forbes soruce: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/10/09/how-hamas-leveraged-cheap-rockets-and-small-drones-to-ambush-israel/

This sources does say it’s made from fertilizer but this does not say explicitly that the fertilizer is from foreign aid (I found sources but they are all isreali). However if it is or is not does not matter as much as the fact that fertilizer should have been used to produce food for the starving people in Gaza. Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, can’t provide for most basic amenities for their people. Foreign aid powers a lot of basics such as schools and healthcare (which is great!) while Hamas uses their budget to bomb isreal. (If you want to read an American-jewish pro-isreal source about the accusation it’s here: https://jewishjournal.com/israel/336609/made-in-gaza-hamas-rockets-the-product-of-foreign-aid-and-smuggled-material/)

https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-foreign-aid-gaza-strip-611b2b90c3a211f21185d59f4fae6a90

This article talks a bit about the foreign aid which goes to Gaza. Thankfully most foreign aid is now earmarked for certain projects (which is why the UN runs their own schools for example, so they know where the money is going)). Isreal has called for this for a long time because they were concerned foreign aid is used to fund terrorism. In addition isreal grants work permits to tens of thousands Gazans to work in isreal across the border. On the other hand it’s not possible to enter Gaza as an Isreali. I think it’s clear that isreal is the party with the most good will in this conflict. It’s also worth mentioning that some arab nations does not support Hamas either. Egypt for example is on the side of the Palestinian authority and has had a blockade against Hamas ever since the take over in 2007.

When it comes to Israel vs Palestine then I absolutely think it’s alright to support either side. Both sides have valid reasons to exist and both sides have done horrible things to each other. But remember this is not Israel vs the Palestinian authority (the west bank). This is Israel vs Hamas (Gaza). That makes a world of a difference. In this conflict I believe Hamas is in the wrong.

Many people accuse Israel to be an apartheid state. I would argue Israeli arabs have it much better than blacks in south Africa did (polling even shows arab-isrealis (the ones who ended up in isreals side of the border in 1948) prefer living in Israel instead of Palestine because of their quality of life) however they are certainly not equal to the Jewish isrealies. But now ask yourself. How would a Jew be treated in Gaza? There are none and there is a reason for that. They would get killed on the street immediately. If isreal is an apartheid state then Gaza is a puristic ehnostate. Both are racist but Gaza is infinitely worse. They don’t want to coexist with Jews at all, no they want them all dead.

Hamas is one of the worst organisations on earth. They don’t even care for their own people. When western nations give Gaza free fertilizer to feed their people and reduce starvation then Hamas used it to build bombs to fire at Israel. When western charities gave Gaza money to feed their people, they bought guns instead. This is a regime ruled by nothing else than hate and does not even have a concern for their own people. Isreal supplies Gaza with water and electricity and has done so for decades. Gaza would never do something like that for isreal. I believe there is no case for Hamas at all. They are in the wrong here quite definitely. Just look who they are attacking. First target was a music festival by the border where they raped, kidnapped and murdered all the participants. This music festival was a music festival for peace. That’s why it was right by the border fence. Hamas didn’t believe in peace.

It wasn’t too bad before in my opinion but this year there was a big drought in the Mediterranean and now it’s extremely expensive. Even butter is cheaper than olive oil now I’m afraid… I just try to use less of it. Speaking of butter there are now a few big studies out there showing that milk fat is not as bad as the saturated fats found in meat. But they are all funded by dairy companies so I don’t know if I can really trust them. It’s hard navigating the world of fats and health. Fats are good for you but it’s hard to know which ones are the good ones.

https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-the-studies-say

I found this post immensely helpful in describing the science behind the health effects of seed oils. But it remains to be said that saturated fat doesn’t seem like the best thing for you either. I use the mostly unsaturated oil olive oil nowadays.

This is totally correct. Just to add how they do it, it’s in-line filtering. The juice goes through a pipe at high pressure though a filter and all the solids are removed through this process. This is used for many edible liquids. Almost all beer is filtered in this way for example. Most varieties of beer are cloudy without filtering. The filtering of juice (and beer) increases the shelf life. In addition it makes the juice easier to turn into juice concentrate. In my country at least all the big juice brand are just reconstituted juice concentrate. Juice concentrates are by far cheaper in many regions because they are traded as a commodity on the world market so you can source it from the cheapest source. Fresh juice however has to be made locally and has a low shelf life, hence the higher price.