It definitely comes and goes in waves, I think. The interplay between infrastructure and economy is key. Your economy is dependent on things like ports, rails, pipelines, cables, roads, powerstations, etc. A country can’t continually overhaul those things, and once they’ve invested in them, they are stuck for a while. This leads to weird situations where one country that’s been behind for a little while can pass another country.

The US electrified first, and when Europe electrified, it used higher voltage, which allowed for more efficient home electrification, while many Americans are stuck with slow kettles, and clothes dryers, water heaters, furnaces, and stoves that run on fossil fuels. Similarly, widespread internet rolled out in the US first, but countries that came later were able to get higher speeds.

The economy of most countries, especially the US and China, is a house of cards. While there may be more investment, there’s also more risk, and more inequality. Germany may be more stagnant, but it also may be more stable. It doesn’t matter if the GDP per capita is higher in the US than Germany if the average person has no healthcare, paid for schooling, or social safety net.

One of the biggest lies (maybe more of a “spin” than a lie) that has been told over the past century is that the “economy” is the stock market, gdp, net import/exports, commodities, etc. Those are all important, and economists like to use them cause they are easier than getting to what really matters to most people.

It’s a straight razor with replaceable blades

We definitely get most of our groceries from standalone grocery stores. For the most part, you drive right to it.

I just looked at some Sydney shopping centres, and they look much like our malls on the inside (except for groceries), but it seems like they are much more integrated in the neighborhoods. It looks like parking garages are more popular there than the giant lots here.

I just looked at the dead mall wikipedia page, and it has a picture of the century 3 mall. That’s a good example of what they look like here; separate from where people live, and surrounded by big lots. You can actually see the strip malls that replaced it all around it.

In America, there’s like 3 different things you could call a mall. When most people talk about them, it means a giant building with central indoor paths connecting a bunch of businesses. Typically, there would be a handful of “anchor” businesses, like department stores and a movie theater, and then space for a bunch of much smaller businesses in between including restaurants. These malls (at least the ones I’ve been to) for whatever reason don’t typically have grocery stores. I have seen pharmacies and small Dr’s offices in them.

Then there are “strip malls” that are typically a row of businesses on one side or surrounding a big parking lot. Typically grocery stores are in those.

Lastly, there’s “outlet malls”, which are often set up like a fake town with parking distributed throughout. They are commonly built on cheap land in the outskirts of towns, and they have mostly clothing. They are typically brand specific stores (e.g., Nike), so they are allegedly cheaper.

It’s that first category that Americans are going to be talking about if they just refer to a “mall”, though. The idea to have all your shops in a convenient place has been around forever, and still works great in many traditional business districts. The “shopping mall”, though, was somewhat of an artificial movement in the 80’s and 90’s that was always a bit destined to fail. Like people have said, the internet is partially responsible, but malls were hurting before the internet started really doing damage. In America, you basically have to drive everywhere, and if you are driving everywhere, it’s easiest to just drive directly to whatever shop you need. With malls, you have to park far out in a giant lot, and walk a long way to get to whatever business. You could call it lazy, but if you’ve only got a little bit of time after a day of work to do shopping, are you going to do the option where you get the task done in 30 minutes, or an hour?

It actually screws us 2 ways. First, by removing liability/responsibility from the company and putting it on people. Second, by forcing everyone to have to car about the stock market, and be subject to its whims

It’s called black tea because of the color of the leaves, not the final product

Poop indirectly on crops. Systems like this or the Aztec chinampa system, basically try to keep nutrients in the loop with fish and other aquatic organisms. Obviously, there’s a disease risk if you do it wrong, but that’s also true for modern water treatment.

The background check agency probably uses data brokers, though. They would just only pass along what they are allowed to.

Any info on surface roughness? I’m thinking shiny side would be smoother and therefore less sticky, though I don’t know how much the passivation layer would affect it. Probably no where close to making a difference at the end of the day, but I’m curious.

This is going to be different country to country, but organic farming can still use pesticides. I posted a link below as well, but organic farming is also not conclusively better for the environment. It has lower yields, and therefore requires more land. You have to balance the effects of converting more land into organic farmland versus the benefit of, for example, less fertilizer runoff.

At the end of the day, “organic” is a marketing term, not a statement of health or ecological benefit. Most complaints about conventional agriculture (and GMOs) are actually complaints about industrialized agriculture as a whole.

I wish there was a good, regulated term for food that was produced with the best known processes (and perhaps there is for specific foods), but “organic” is not it.

Yeah, that’s the thing. Weight loss by pill is only possible in a few ways. Diuretics temporarily cause weight loss. The only real options are drugs that decrease your food intake (like the new diabetes drugs), presumably drugs that could interfere with nutrient absorption (not sure if any of those are out there, but it seems like it would be sketchy), or drugs that increase what you burn.

People think that last category could be magic, but burning calories is called burning calories for a reason; it’s an oxidation reaction, and it generates heat. There are a few others that also seem to really work, basically all stimulants: nicotine, caffeine, and methamphetamine (which is available by prescription).

That could be because it’s an unregulated product, and you were getting THC.

I agree with almost everything you said, except I wouldn’t advocate for people including stretching as a regular part of exercise. Despite what people tend to think, there isn’t really evidence to support broad general benefits of stretching. Obviously, if you are a gymnast or another type of athlete with specific needs for range of motion beyond what is “normal”, go for it. It may not hurt, but it is likely a waste of time, and if you are constrained in the amount of time you can spend on exercise, you should spend that time doing things with well established benefits, like weightlifting.

The other thing I want to add on (again cause I agree with what you said) to the diet part is that people probably shouldn’t trust products like Athletic Greens to “count” as their daily vegetables, despite their marketing. I haven’t been able to find good research on it that wasn’t funded by them. Also, just more generally, I’m skeptical of the purported benefits of juice and smoothies. Again, it’s hard to find good studies on it, but much of the benefit of fruit and veggies is in the fiber and resulting delayed digestion, so it stands to reason that the processing removes some of the benefit.

It depends on the country. Everywhere but the US, I believe, osteopaths are witch doctors on the same level as chiropractors. In the US, they were originally like that, but their professional organization basically pushed it into being a real medical degree.

Now they go to the same length schooling as MD’s, and take the same exams as far as I know.

The core of the whole discipline, osteopathy, is a pseudoscience, though. While they are usually competent doctors they still have that core of pseudoscience. They like to market themselves as more “holistic”, but that’s usually a good dogwhistle term to let you know information not supported by science is going to follow. They bring up that they are the same as MDs, but with additional training in osteopathy, but that can’t be true because the schooling is the same length, so to fit in the pseudoscience, they get less science.

The real reason why we have DO’s is that we don’t have capacity in our country to educate enough MDs, so we have this weird parallel system.

Oddly enough, that’s one of the few functions I’ve found the LLMs useful for. Looking through big pdfs for specific information, lots of times “ctrl+f” doesn’t do the trick because the exact term I’m looking for doesn’t appear. Worse sometimes it’s a phrase that could be in there under many synonyms. Using the LLM to find the actual info is pretty nice, it just isn’t “AI”.

Being a coroner in some places. Medical examiners are professionals with a degree (and coroner’s usually are too), but the coroner is often an elected position, and elected positions usually only have residency and age requirements. Coroners have a huge level of power because they get to decide what is and what is not murder. Someone dies in police custody? They can call it natural causes, and it never goes to the court system. A political opponent dies by two gunshots? That can be called a suicide.

If we are being really pedantic, a Dutch oven is a type of pot used for cooking on open fire. They used to have little legs built on so you could place it over some coals. The lid would be flat so you could put coals on top of it. That way you could use it as an actual oven to bake bread or whatever on a wood fire.

Modern people don’t cook much on wood fires, but in the US, we still generally call any big cast iron pot a “Dutch oven”.

Yeah, it’s pretty BS. No one would ever make fun of someone driving a car for not being 100% human powered.

I will say that the only time I get a little uptight about ebikes is when I come across them on trails/paths that are designated for non-motorized traffic only. Somehow people think that motorized only means combustion engines.

You may or may not have a good answer to this, but why are so many ebikes fat tire bikes, and why did you pick one? A fat tire is going to have more inertia, so it will take more energy, but the ubiquity of them, even for commuting confuses me.

Something that I’ve learned is that it’s basically built to contain steam, while an air fryer or regular oven is built to vent steam. If you are doing something like dehydrating, it basically has to run for forever to actually dehydrate things since the interior stays humid. It’s easy to get around though by just leaving the door ajar by a little bit. I prop mine open with a dish towel.

It’s harder when air frying cause you don’t want to let all the heat out. If I’m air frying something like Brussels sprouts that have a lot of moisture, I’ll just open the door a few times during cooking to let out all the steam.