People are probably downvoting you because “lives lost” is not an effective metric for contribution in a war.

Also, let’s be clear, “the US lost only 100,000” is only true if you are just counting mainlanders. Estimates of deaths in the Philippines, who were American, top 1,000,000.

If you are going to incorporate all the SSRs in the USSR casualty counts, you should be incorporating the Dutch east indies for the Netherlands, India for the UK, French Indochina for France, etc.

I think thats probably not a good thing to do, cause if you are a citizen of a current/former colony, you probably dont feel like your colonial masters should get to “claim” your death. This also holds for all the non-russian SSRs and internal minority groups in Russia, though.

Most ALS is not genetic, and im not sure about parkinsons, but I suspect it’s similar. Lots of studies these days are finding links between viruses that dont actively cause much harm when you are infected, but and up being highly associated with autoimmune diseases. A prime example is Epstein-barr virus and MS. I have no clue what the mechanisms are, and im sure scientists are still learning, but basically an infection could cause an immune response that is too strong, and even after the infection is gone, the response remains.

That is a relatively new vaccine. In the US, that’s part of what you get as a kid now (not going to fact check the current guidance cause im afraid to look), but if you’re old enough to have actually gotten chickenpox, you likely havent gotten the vaccine unless you asked for it.

In my experience in the US, it seems like Dr’s dont really keep up with recommendations once you are over 18.

Oh yeah, I didn’t think you were conflating them. I actually really like the “among 100 women” wording cause it makes it really clear.

I basically just wanted to mention a common pitfall in this type of literature if anyone wanted to dig into it based on your comments.

Not nitpicking your numbers at all (mainly cause im too lazy to go hunting down the original sources), but a big problem that science media gets completely wrong is how they report risk percentages. They conflate changes in absolute risk with relative risk constantly, and it really hurts messaging.

For example, a few years back, the WHO released a report on consumption of processed meat and how it relates to colorectal cancer risk. Even their own press release, which should be perfect, says “each 50 g portion eaten daily increases the risk by 18%”. That is really misleading if you dont know they are talking about a relative risk. The average person will interpret this as new risk %= baseline risk % + 18%.

The absolute lifetime risk of colorectal cancer is ~4%, so daily consumption of processed meat should bump it to ~4.7% (well, technically lower since the 4% includes processed meat consumers). Giving the before/after percentages helps communicate the risks way better. Even better is a risk curve showing how the risk changes as consumption increases (obviously that relies on the data being available).

Its also better to be able to contextualize so you can make well informed decisions across your life, e.g., it’s dumb to deprive yourself a joy that increases lifetime cancer risk by 0.5% while ignoring other facets of your life that increase cancer by a much larger margin.

Idk about where you are, but basil plants sold in grocery stores by me are always way way too densely planted. They throw like 25 seeds in one small pot, which puts out a lot of foliage to look good for a very short window. If you harvest basil like you are “supposed to”, any regrowth becomes basically impossible, and the plants die. The better way is to just cut off whole stems until there’s only one or two. Or, if you want to keep a basil plant, just buy one from a gardening store, not a grocery store.

Seems like they learned nothing from the Spanish American War. Congress was worried that war with Spain was being pushed for territorial expansion, so they passed the Teller amendment, specifically forbidding Cuba from being made a US territory. Unfortunately, they didn’t say anything about the other Spanish colonies (Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam) because i don’t think they expected the degree with which the imperialists were poised to go for those other colonies.

Usually, on land that is intended to be preserved, they don’t want random people hacking away at vegetation, so they will have rules about it. If a park ranger or someone like that sees you cutting down trees or whatever, you are probably going to get yelled at or fined or something.

It’s also highly dependent on species and location. Some invasive species will basically multiply if you try to tear them out, either resprouting vegetatively, or through seed spread. Species like tree-of-heaven or paulonia also become huge trees, so they probably don’t want you cutting those down.

Some places like Oahu are basically 95% invasive species, so if you remove that, you have nothing left. Oahu is basically all guava and mesquite trees, and without that, the soil washes away, and there’s no hope of recovery, so invasive management needs to be done in consultation with experts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout

As it pickles, the contents will likely get a little softer, and the weight might drop down into the larger portion of the jar. If that happens, you’ll be able to rotate it out of the way, and get all your stuff out of the jar. Then you can actually stick your hand in and grab the weight and try to pull it out perpendicular to the opening. Odds are that the weight (and the jar opening) are not perfectly circular, so you can try rotating both to pull it out.

Borosilicate glass (which this probably is?) has low thermal expansion, so heat probably won’t help.

Slow cooking? How long does that take? I’ve used a pressure cooker to make applesauce really fast, but then obviously you’d have to evaporate off a lot of moisture to get butter.

I have one that’s bamboo, and it’s not that great, but i also have one that is probably maple, and it’s great. You don’t need it to be actually “sharp”, but i suppose there’s no reason I couldn’t sharpen it periodically.

Did you start from dried chickpeas? That’s the key

My only complaint about my immersion blender is that the part at the bottom is 100% metal, which sounds good, but it makes me paranoid to use it in my enameled pots for fear of scratching up the enamel. I wish I had one with nylon or silicone overmolding.

In terms of really simple “gadgets”, my favorites are wooden spoons that are flattened and almost sharpened like a chisel. They are great for scraping the bottom of pots/pans to get up fond.

In terms of more complicated stuff, I really like my Anova oven. It’s basically an overbuilt convection toaster oven that has a thermometer for wet-bulb temperature and a water tank to create steam. You can control temperature to the degree, and humidity in 10% increments. It also has a built-in probe thermometer. What this basically means is that you can set the oven to a strict temperature to hold with steam and convection, and you can cook a roast to an exact temperature for an exact amount of time (which they call sous vide, even though there’s no vacuum sealing involved). You can then set it to automatically ramp to a high temperature for browning.

It’s really nice for baking bread.

They made a new version at double the price with even more advanced features, but they’ve given it the nebulous “AI” treatment, so it might be enshittified.

Pressure ovens are a thing; I know someone with one. I think it has potential to really do some interesting stuff, but since they aren’t common, I figure it’s a lot of trial and error.

Meat is an obvious good use case, but i also use my thermometer to check the doneness of bread. Recipes often tell you a time/temperature, but it’s going to really depend on your oven/pans/the rise/etc, which is why recipes will tell you to insert a toothpick or something like that. It’s way easier to just stick a thermometer in.

I’ve found that you need to use an instant read for this, though, not a leave-in thermometer because bread has much less thermal mass and thermal conductivity than meat (which is mostly water), and the probe of a leave in thermometer will conduct heat into the bread, giving an arbitrarily high reading.

I also use my thermometer for checking the temp of leftovers because I hate when something is cold on the inside, and I don’t like jamming my finger into like 5 different spots to test to see if I heated something up enough.

So many people way overuse the term “sterilize”.

For anyone unaware, “sterile” means zero life remaining, not “really clean”. You serilize things with a pressure canner and strict protocols or an autoclave (which is essentially a pressure cooker). With steam, you need 15 minutes at 121 °C or 3 min at 134 °C. Dry heat requires 2 hours at 160 °C.
There are a handful of other ways (like tyndallization), but not common or convenient.

For fermentation, you don’t need sterile unless you are working in a yeast lab or something like that where you are trying to grow up pure cultures. Sanitization or disinfection is good enough. Basically you want to kill enough of the bad bacteria/yeast that the good stuff out competes it.

Trying to get jars sterile for fermenting peppers is pointless because the peppers themselves are host to a huge heterogeneous population of bacteria and yeast, and you aren’t operating under a laminar flow cabinet or something crazy like that.

Yeah, you want them clean and sanitized, but it’s really all about controlling the probabilities. Higher salt concentration helps, being really careful about keeping things submerged helps, using a good airlock and relatively small headspace helps, and rejecting any peppers that seem suspect helps. Also, resist the urge to open the jars a whole bunch of times. Every time you do, you let in oxygen.

Also, OP, buy some pH test paper. It’s nice to be able to double check that the pH is in the right range once you think it’s done.

And most importantly, fermenting takes fruit/vegetables/whatever, and turns sugars into lactic acid, reducing the pH and making it inhospitable to spoilage microbes.

That’s why cabbage spoils quickly, but sauerkraut lasts a very long time.

If you like the style of running shoes, but for just walking, and you want something wide, I’d go for altra LP alpine. I mainly like altra cause they don’t squeeze my feet like hokas (and practically every other brand) do.

Lone peak is altra’s top selling trail running/hiking shoe, but they made a hemp/suede casual version that should be pretty durable.

Altra also has the a version of the Torin (a road running shoe) for casual wear that’s all leather, so it’s probably pretty durable, but it’s a little narrower, and i don’t like the styling as much.

Ive never been a “running shoe for casual wear”-person, though, so i haven’t worn either of those.

For slightly nicer looking (or cold weather) casual wear, I have Jim Green boots. They are very comfortable and basically the only boot company that actually makes something that doesn’t squeeze your toes. If you don’t like what they have, look for other boots/shoes made with stitchdown construction. Most nicer boots/shoes use a Goodyear (or similar) welt, which wraps the upper under your foot, making it more narrow. Stitchdown has the upper flip outwards at the midsole, making it wider.

For more casual wear, I have Bedrock clogs. Also super durable/resolable and nice and wide. It doesn’t have any foam underfoot, which i like, but isnt for everyone.

For whatever reason, wikipedia seems to have been really pushed down the page on search engines specifically for medical information. It’s a shame because I can acquire the surface level of information (which is all i really ever need) way faster from wikipedia than the other sites that come to the top of the list (mayo clinic, John’s Hopkins, Cleveland clinic, govt sites).

I really shouldn’t complain about it too much, cause they could be pushing pseudoscience blogs.