Evolution is not our friend. Evolution favours reproductive fitness, not happiness. Happiness is just one of many tools in the toolbox for getting us to reproduce.

The current situation with low birth rates due to the availability of contraceptives is a temporary blip. Right now you can witness a wide range of forces arrayed against that status quo. Note that for humans, evolution operates not only at the genetic level but also at the cultural level since parents can pass their culture on to their children.

We’re witnessing a major backlash and reaction against secular liberalism, a return to authoritarianism and a revival of religious membership. Religion has always been one of the most powerful of evolution’s cultural weapons for increasing reproductive fitness.

No, those salts don’t affect satiation at all. They just affect taste. The satiety part has to do with food bulk.

Potatoes are a good example. Very high in carbs, like Doritos, but also very bulky. The bulk makes you feel full, unlike the Doritos, so you cannot eat a huge amount. Potatoes also don’t come with the flavour enhancing salts so people don’t want to stuff themselves anyway (unless they add the ingredients themselves, such as with loaded baked potatoes).

I believe a prison actually experimented with this. Gave the prisoners all you can eat plain boiled potatoes with nothing to dress them up. The prisoners actually lost weight because they only ate enough to feel full, not to gorge themselves. On the other hand, rats will become obese on all you can eat Doritos but not on plain rat food.

I guess not many people remember that Microsoft was convicted of antitrust violations against Netscape (which effectively destroyed that command).

It makes food taste good without bringing the feeling of satiety. People can eat a whole bag of Doritos without feeling full, despite consuming a full day’s worth of calories.

The taste vs satiety hacking of modern fast food is a reasonable hypothesis on the cause of the obesity crisis.

It’s not just MSG though. It’s also disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate which work together with MSG to produce the most profound umami response.

Don’t forget to paint over those cracked weld joints!

AI makes it pretty trivial to vomit out large amounts of code. 250,000 lines is nothing. The code quality is garbage, of course, and will be hell to maintain in the coming years. It will likely just be rewritten again if the company is still around.

If there’s one thing high school students have a ton of it’s free time. When I was that age I put thousands of hours into video games and got nothing to show for it. I applaud this kid for turning his high school hobby into a paycheque.

Yes! The hard part is staying on earth!

Not mentioned in the summary is joint issues. Relaxin is a hormone produced by the corpus luteum within 2 weeks of ovulation (rising even further during pregnancy). This hormone softens joints, increasing flexibility and helping to prepare for giving birth. Unfortunately it also increases the risks of joint injuries, especially for knees and ankles.

Chinese food with baijiu.

Korean BBQ with soju.

Yakitori with sake.

Pub/bar snacks with beer.

It was mentioned above that British kettles are 2 kW, not 1.5.

2 kW @ 120 V is 16.7 A, which exceeds the 15 A limit on most household wiring in North America. To be able to achieve that you’d need to get a 20 A rated circuit installed by an electrician which means pulling out and replacing the wiring with a heavier gauge.

The advantage of 240 V rating in the UK is that you can draw more power with less current, so you don’t need the wiring to be so heavy for a high power appliance like a kettle.

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.

Canadian here. I spent most of July 1 in bed! Was not feeling patriotic! Did not watch any fireworks.

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!

It’s a cognitive dissonance thing for collectors. They want the preserved, playable copy but they don’t ever want to break the seal because that lowers the value.

I bet there are a bunch of collectors out there in possession of empty game boxes (with placebo weights) that have been expertly resealed and then submitted to grading companies for a seal of approval.

Yes, of course. Look at Amish communities. Largely self-sufficient and thriving.

People who haven’t tried it greatly underestimate the amount of work though. I’d recommend dipping your toe in with some gardening at home first. Jumping in the deep end will usually lead to failure and disillusionment.

People feel no social obligation because they no longer feel connected to anything. Membership in civic institutions and community organizations has fallen off a cliff. Urban planning has turned suburbs from walkable mixed-use communities into car-centric ghost towns. Rampant inflation and cost disease have destroyed affordability for many. Homeowners have become some of the worst ladder-pullers with extreme NIMBYism slowing housing construction to a crawl.

You gotta read between the lines. OP is close to father, not mother. Mother demands OP cut off all contact with father because he cheated.

It’s clear to me that mom is just trying to drive a wedge between OP and dad in order to hurt him. She doesn’t care how that will affect OP!

Maybe dad started cheating because mom was cold and unavailable? Maybe he fell in love with someone who reciprocated and was available emotionally because his wife wasn’t? He invited this woman to move in, so obviously it wasn’t just a fling.