Russia’s economy is roughly comparable in size to the Netherlands. Putin has destroyed so much of it. He’s caused enormous brain drain by driving young men with any means and intelligence out of the country. He’s devastated his own industrial base and now he’s on the brink of losing to Ukraine, a country far smaller than Russia.
He’s very, very, very far from owning the planet.
Curing (removing moisture from food by means of salt) is a distinct process from smoking (adding smoke to food as well as removing moisture via heat). Curing with nitrite and nitrate based salts (sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite) is what’s been implicated in cancer.
Smoking meat is much more complicated from a chemistry perspective. Different types of wood, different temperatures, moisture content, salt content, and cooking durations can all affect the concentrations of carcinogenic compounds in the food. For example, softwoods (such as pine) tend to produce a lot of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known class of carcinogens, but thankfully softwood is undesirable as a smoke wood anyway so is rarely used.
Smoking technique can also dramatically affect the result. Poor smoking technique allows the wood to smoulder at a lower temperature, producing a harsher smoke with more carcinogenic, toxic, and bitter compounds. Expert smoking technique uses a smaller, hotter fire which produces a much cleaner smoke that also results in better flavour.
No one is untouchable. No one is invincible. No one has unlimited resources.
One day Putin will seem untouchable. The next day he gets pulled out of a ditch like Gaddafi.
The Bible is notably silent on government social programs. Many Christians have taken it upon themselves to believe that social programs are evil, that they perpetuate the problems they’re intended to address, that they destroy the nuclear family, etc.
They sincerely believe that they are doing good by getting rid of these programs because they want to see the Christian family and the church take the central role on these issues, not the government. Furthermore, they believe that a government which tries to solve all social problems and create a utopia for everyone is fundamentally evil, hence the phrase:
“Don’t immanentize the eschaton.”
In their view, he would. They believe that Jesus wants people to give directly to charity, not to create government programs for it.
Canadian here. I spent most of July 1 in bed! Was not feeling patriotic! Did not watch any fireworks.
You are still not addressing the difference between “a portion of individuals will be capable of having a viable pregnancy at this age” with “adulthood”.
My original comment never made that claim:
By human biology, a 14 year old is sexually mature and capable of becoming a parent. The terms “child, teen, adolescent, adult” are all social constructs. We as a society have drawn arbitrary lines and even changed them over time.
The fact that we may define adulthood at 16 or 18 or 21 (depending on the country or the context) but that indigenous cultures defined adulthood (subject to completion of the rite of passage) at 12 or 13 is strong evidence of the social constructedness of these terms. That’s what I wanted to illustrate along with the biology examples showing that maternal mortality is a tradeoff and not an indicator of sexual maturity.
Mortality risk in pregnancy never goes to zero. Many other species (such as salmon, octopi, many insects, arachnids) have a mortality rate close to 100% for either one or both parents after reproduction. Ultimately it is a tradeoff over resources between parents and offspring. Many other mammals have smaller offspring than humans though they lack humans’ large brain volume relative to maternal pelvis size. Scientists have debated about the reasons for women’s small pelvis size relative to the baby’s skull size and the rough consensus seems to be a tradeoff between intelligence and walking/running ability as well as agility.
Your definition of sexual maturity would seem to imply that the optimal time to have children is when a woman’s maternal mortality risk is minimized but that assumes all other risks remain constant over time. They do not, especially not in the past when famine was a much greater risk and all-cause mortality was much higher (including infant and young child mortality). This means the optimal time to have children would be much earlier given that famine or disease or other misfortune could strike the family at any time and that children matured into productivity quite rapidly (children didn’t always go to school for 12 years). It should also be noted that famine and the associated loss of body fat can halt the menstrual cycle in women of any age.
Lastly, I need to point out that many traditional and indigenous communities throughout the world have or previously had initiation rites to welcome children into adulthood and full standing within the tribe at or around the age of puberty. Contemporary society with its emphasis on more and more schooling has been the primary driver of the push to longer and longer periods of adolescence. The mental health and physical development effects of such extended adolescence are only beginning to be understood.
I think they already do, hence the private islands and Bond villain style lairs.
That’s incorrect in several different levels.
Could you elaborate? Throughout history people have successfully become parents at that age or even younger. Your flat denial is an extraordinary claim and you haven’t given any evidence to support it.
By human biology, a 14 year old is sexually mature and capable of becoming a parent. The terms “child, teen, adolescent, adult” are all social constructs. We as a society have drawn arbitrary lines and even changed them over time.
Lots of people drink bottled water, soda, beer, or other drinks not immediately connected to the water supply. Furthermore, poisons are unlikely to remain undetected long enough to kill the entire population. While a strong dose of a deadly poison like cyanide can kill in minutes it’s likely to be detected quickly due to how rapidly its effects begin to show up.
A slower-acting, accumulating poison like dimethylmercury could potentially kill more people because its effects don’t show up immediately. On the other hand, the delayed effects of the poison would provide the victims a chance to retaliate against the poisoners.
Either way, it’s a very crude and unfocused attack against a population which is unlikely to achieve any political aim besides wanton destruction and outrage.
Medieval technology is vastly more complex, broader in scope, etc. compared to the Stone Age stuff on Primitive Technology. It’s actually extremely challenging to go from scratch like he does and then achieve medieval-level ironworking. He can barely make a few little iron pellets which are excessively-hard (too much carbon) and need further processing to become workable. He is a very long way from building a proper medieval smelter capable of producing pig iron or other cast iron products.
Same with any pair activity. Paddling a canoe is no fun if one person doesn’t like water and wants outta there ASAP!
Perfect hexagons are not to spec. Notice how each hexagon is different yet they all fit together. That gives it an organic look. Makes it far more difficult to machine since now you can’t just machine a single piece of round stock into a long hexagon and then cut them off into pieces with the right thickness.
If they were perfect hexagons it would be easy. Just need a big enough piece of stock.
Yes, it is a choice. However one of the biggest problems is that so many of the good choices are gone. I’m talking about the positive social institutions and community organizations people used to belong to. The third spaces.
Communities have fragmented. Neighbours hate each other. Both of my neighbours hate our family. One is a childless, alcoholic husband and wife who also hate each other (they used to be nice years ago) who also hate us and give us creepy looks all the time. The other is green lawn-obsessed neighbour who hates us for the pine trees we have growing on our property and refuse to cut down (at our own expense) to suit their tastes.
We’re a society of severely mentally ill, isolated, confused, and angry people. Our villages and communities are all gone. We’re all a bunch of islands unto ourselves.
The manosphere is one symptom of a much larger problem. Look at it in isolation and you’ll miss the big picture. Authoritarianism is on the rise globally. Loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions. Society’s traditional institutions are a distant memory. All we have remaining are loose groups of people shouting at each other as the spectre of war lurks in the background.
Thanks for this.
Greed is a dangerous word on Lemmy. It’s usually associated with billionaires, not people from Latin America trying to make a better life for themselves.
The problem is you’ve created a false binary between refugee and economic migrant. In reality there’s a huge spectrum of economic and political conditions which drive people to leave their home country and seek opportunities elsewhere, none of which has anything to do with greed. In so doing you’ve painted vast swathes of people as greedy, the same thing the Trump admin has been doing to justify using ICE to break up families.
Real refugees are a very narrow class of migrants. They’re narrowly defined by the UN because their acceptance is controversial in international politics. Almost all migrants are economic but almost none of those I would classify as greedy (people travelling from wealthy liberal countries to the US to pay lower taxes and make more money). Many economic migrants are people travelling from poor countries with corrupt/oppressive governments to seek a better life in the US, Canada, or Western Europe. These folks end up working as cleaning staff for businesses, delivery/Uber drivers, or working on farms picking produce. Hard jobs that no one would accept out of greedy motivations alone.
The remaining are international students (or recent graduates), usually from Asia, who are classified as economic migrants but I would consider political/social migrants. I know A LOT of these folks. I wouldn’t call any of them greedy. They’re here for a better opportunity, yes, but also to get away from their parents and the social/political problems back home.
Not really. Suppose he invaded China. Do you think he’d get away with that?