351 karma · joined May 11, 2020
Combining different ingredients is basic food science and you'll see fantastic things in the ingredient list of most modern industrial foods. No need for a made-up AI or stories about finding a match of 'molecules'.
Happy to see the veggie space grow but this marketing is just outrageous...
P.S.: I've been veggie for more than a decade and Incredible Burger despite all its advertisement tastes rancid and sad compared to many existing alternatives. If you don't like it don't be fooled into thinking that all veggie/vegan stuff tastes bad ;)
Similarly if you dare use content of a US media organisation you'll get a global DMCA takedown. Even if you do e.g. a critique or it's playing as background in a video recorded in a public space, all of which are protected under most countries' legislation. Hell videos of families singing Happy Birthday are DMCAd as one of many american troll companies claims to own the copyright to the lyrics.
On the other hand, gruesome and deeply intrusive/personal videos of e.g. murder or violence are tolerated on Facebook and similar sites as those are in the US context not undedstood to be harmful.
In germany public holocaust denial can be punished with five years in prison (although it very rarely goes so far), but Facebook serves as wonderful breeding ground of conspiracy theories about Jewish world conspiracies and the holocaust being a lie. Cause "free speech" is final, even blatant falsehoods.
I don't think a regional Austrian court should be the judge for the internet, but the only reason it is trying to take this role is because these sites' host country applies absurd laws (what's more harmful for a 15 year old to see, a beheading or some lady's nipples?) and the sites refuse to apply common sense. This lady was harassed quite intensely and Facebook refused to take action - that's the case here.
So what's the solution? Some global court system? Agreed minimum standards? Companies localising content more? I have no idea, but its pretty clear that the US giants have a harmful effect not just on US but global public discourse as they refuse to address misinformation, lies, harassment, holocaust denial, etc etc
And then it didn't load the actual content...
My lesson: avoid consumer companies.
Even more surprising that DK hasn't been paying attention to any of that apparently...
But thats nitpicking, for me the question is: what does this mean? are these recently desertified areas and the trees are just the last survivors? Are these areas becoming more or less rich in trees? Is this only regional or is the density similar to other areas of the sahara? What lessons does this contain for the great 'wall of trees' 20+ African nations are working on to stop desertification? ...?
- IKEA will only accept things in decent-ish condition and will (if necessary) refurbish and resell them.
- you get a voucher, not cash
So an assumption that they try to kill the second hand market seems absurd - on the contrary they become a marketplace for good-condition second hand products AND get people into the store with a voucher in hand (which means they might spend even more to buy something and like many vouchers may also end up unclaimed).
So no nefariousness here, just good business sense. Nonetheless having used options in the store, allowing you to decide to take that shelf new for 130 or that used one for 70 seems to me as a net gain for everyone.
I am actively learnkgn Esperanto and find it deeply enjoyable - I speak English, German and French (mostly) fluently and have dabbled in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Malayalam, Mandarin and a tiny bit of Lojban. None of them have given me this sense of joy while learning vocabulary or practising as its really just a matter of 'recognising' a word - usually from your own native language and sometimes from others.
I'd dare to say this is the key feature of Esperanto: its incredibly pleasant and beginner friendly.
As to Lojban, I was incredibly motivated but just had to give up after a few weeks. Its like Latin or Sanskrit, a mostly theoretical written language with overly stingent rules. Lojban words can be used as verbs or nouns, but when used as verbs they have a strict fixed order where subject and objects go that you simply have to learn by heart. All words are 'averaged' from the most common languages and follow a common scheme - so pretty much none of them are recognisable to anyone. As such just a horror to learn.
That said I still admire the effort. Learning different languages opens wide horizons and completely new conceptual worlds and anyone who doesn't try at least to learn a second language really misses out even on understanding their own language better.
That said, I like how Netflix handled sense8. The plot was clearly getting more and more absurd and season 2 had a massive cliffhanger for season 3. Then it was cancelled - but still they produced a final somewhat absurd but satisfying movie-length final episode that tied all lose ends. That was probably a contract term and not perfect, but it worked out better than a third season or no end at all.
That said, both bing and ddg tend to give me similarly disappointing results. They just seem focused on the US and searching in any other country in English, or even dare to use another language the result quality and especially recency drops significantly.
On vacuum cleaners - i would hazard a guess that you are in the UK where this has been a major talking point e.g. during the brexit referendum. Truth is that there are plenty of studies showing that new vacuums are as good as old ones and just use less energy. Regulating vacuums was a huge success in that sense. Of course if you get a 40£ tesco vacuum they fared better before they were obliged to try and be efficient, but by a proper brand and you shouldn't notice any difference (except where the brand maybe decided to reduce cost e.g. Dyson has gone downhill for years and recently decided to move HQ to Singapore...).
China, the US, Russia - these are all today just autocracies with an elite serving itself. The US has a chance to get back to sanity as its democracy is still not fully gone, but this whole duopoly of two nearly identical parties that only disagree over a few issues (both would be on a European political spectrum on the far right) prevents any real questioning/challenge of the status quo.