Compared to the massive increase of meat consumption in the population-dense developing world & other major influences on price such as improvements in the efficiency of meat production, the impact of the veg-movement is nigh negligible.

The price impact is rather on the side of restaurants & grocery chains in their logistics, now requiring a more diverse offering to be able to serve both the traditional clientele and veg-customers. Spreading the same demand over a larger range of products leads to a lower per-item throughput. Hence slightly lower efficiency, more waste & more overhead, which leads to marginally increased food prices overall in western countries.

Was just thinking that, awesome little game!

I do think we agree on the practical implication for jobs - just that laws don’t align with that where I’m at. (If you can’t/refuse to do the job, you shouldn’t be working it)

That’s odd, because one could just say “I can’t change the job description without changing the role I am hiring, and I only need that role.”

It’s central to the problem. Individuals from religious groups sue employers (often successfully) citing that not hiring them or firing them for refusing to fulfill the job description would be discrimination. (This is not unique to any one group btw)

you’d prefer to force people to not adhere to their religion

No. What I’m saying is that they should be solely responsible for the consequences of their faith. Other people should not be forced to give them special treatment due to their religion.

I think you’re referring to Muslim practice as delusional

I wasn’t. I was creating a hypothetical of somebody non-religous (or at least not an adherent to a major religion) placing greater or equal value on not shaving as a religious person might. The point being that major religions are given preferential treatment as compared to other beliefs and preferences.

So to be clear, yeah, a faith to the Muslim god which forbids shaving is respectable and not delusional.

There are certainly different ways for religious folks to be faithful. However, in the modern day, literal adherence to many modern religions essentially amount to centering your life around a myth. At best, it is a sign of being misguided and ignorant with regard to scientific fact (which is incompatible with those myths) and at worst it amounts to a delusion (yes, I will use that word). Willfully rejecting overwhelming evidence.

Somebody can be respectable in spite of that, but in my book, it is a clear negative.

Yeah, obviously.

What’s so obvious about it? The initial example here is facetious and absurd, but what’s to say that I don’t take my “beard honour” just as seriously as someone else does their religion?

Because I’ve certainly met people who take their religion very lightly, yet absolutely will use it as an excuse for special treatment at every opportunity.

A less absurd example might be somebody with the delusion (a.k.a strongly held personal belief) that their value as a man depends entirely on their beard, that they might as well kill themselves if they were unable to have one. Or someone with a facial scar tied to incredible emotional trauma that they use their beard to cover up.

The simple fact is that special treatment of religious adherents is discriminatory, not against them, but against everyone else. The root of the problem is that laws that were intended to prevent special maltreatment of religious adherents have instead become leveraged as a basis to grant privileges. When they don’t get the job after refusing to follow hygiene protocol, shake hands with certain demographic groups or perform job duties, they sue their employer for discrimination. They demand the job, and demand that the job description be changed to fit their personal preferences.

I agree, it should be as simple as “can you do the job or not”. If being clean shaven is part of the job description (which I certainly could find good reasons for, such as gas masks or hygiene) and you refuse to be clean shaven, then you’re out.

The most at hand explanation I think would be biological differences between the genders. Male puberty is, on average, delayed by approximately 18 months in comparison. Girls/women are earlier in development and mature earlier, boys/men later.

Puberty was pretty much the defining factor back in the day for adulthood vs childhood.

Those “special privileges” aren’t a “privilege,” but a duty to one’s faith.

If I were to say I had a “duty” to my own atheist sense of beard honor or whatever, that’d fly out the window. Religion is a preference, a choice. The duty is only to the persons own sense of pride and morality.

We have similar problems with nurses of certain religions in my country, refusing to do their job (for instance related to abortion) and endangering patients citing religion.

Thankfully the regulations have been upheld and these people have been told “If you refuse to do your job, you’re fired.” in these cases, but there is a religious lobby rapidly growing in influence in my country, and have already secured exceptions from stuff like hygiene rules in healthcare.

A “beard exception” matters little in truth, but allow one such exception and suddenly they’re everywhere (I’d argue let people have their beards ffs!). However, this kind of pandering is insane, dangerous and my patience for it is very limited. Religion is their choice, but that is no excuse to impose their will on the rest of society.

Either everybody should be able to have beards, or nobody. Believing in a fairytale should not be tied to special privileges.

Historic sci-fi is certainly interesting!

I do not.

FOSS is the natural conclusion of public code having a negligible cost to supply once it has been produced. Ideally it takes IP out of the equation and allocates compensation towards development rather than rent extraction.

FOSS is a question of centralization & authority vs decentralization & freedom.

An interesting hypothesis I read about focused on the era of the universe when everything was lukewarm. Literally an entire universe in the “sweet spot” for the building blocks of life to form and propagate.

The idea is that the molecules would form, and then once the universe cooled further would freeze and be spread literally everywhere in similar asteroids. The rare part would be a location sufficiently stable in the goldilocks zone to evolve advanced life, not life itself.

Definitely has happened but not often. It’s a lot easier if there’s a common ground to start at though.

Yep, unfortunately a lot of people haven’t experienced what good traffic planning, cooperation & educated drivers can accomplishes on a daily basis in many European countries.

In my experience, the worst and most commonly recurring offenders are phone zombies on e-scooters. Possibly due to being more dangerous than pedestrians and more noticeable than a distracted highway driver.

Am I the only one even a little happy to see the head of a major company mentioning upgradability as an appeal for customers?

Please do stick with two unsoldered SODIMM slots for your laptops Asus.

Estimates of the global population reliant on synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, produced via the Haber-Bosch process for food production. Best estimates project that just over half of the global population could be sustained without reactive nitrogen fertilizer derived from the Haber-Bosch process.

Source: OurWorldInData

For sure, wind is an especially good complement for hydropower, since the latter can store the surplus when it’s windy and release it when it’s not. Still, wind generation can, like other variable renewables, slip to nigh 0 production from time to time, at which point there must be enough dispatchable capacity to cover the supply/demand gap. Otherwise you get rolling blackouts in the middle of a -20°C winter. Not great.

Here’s a showcase of one such day in my country this winter. Average temps below -20°C (which means demand is very rigid due to heating needs) and the wind died down completely in the morning across all of Scandinavia & northern Germany, which meant there wasn’t room to import either. Winter prices on electricity ranged between 10-60€/MWh back when our nuclear plants were in full operation. Half have been shut down in the past decade due to political pressure from the green party.

Perfect is the worst enemy of progress. Right now the highest priority must be to get rid of the fossil fuel plants, and logistically speaking hydropower is simply the best. Mostly because of the built in function of energy storage and ability to load follow, something that the other variable renewable options entirely lack.

As with everything, politicians are at least 15 years too late in their thinking.

Any country that runs a sizable nuclear industry for power generation does have the capability to develop a nuclear weapons programme in relatively short order.

This is false. Sweden does not have a nuclear programme and does have a sizeable nuclear energy sector.

I disagree. Next to hydropower (which is limited by geography) it has been the champion of non-fossil electricity generation so far. Still, the fossil fuel lobby is a powerful foe.

Simply put, we should invest in all non-fossil options, and where solar is geographically viable, it is great. In other places however, where peak electricity demand coincides with the coldest, darkest parts of the year dispatchable production is strictly necessary, which is where nuclear shines.

Tasted maybe a handful of times before 18 including being offered a shot of vodka once. I barely drink even now (23 y.o), maybe 1 unit every 2 or 3 months.