Freedom of speech is protection from legal restrictions, not protection from criticism from David Tennant

I am aware you already have a good profile picture now! but you may as well have these squid offerings since i made em :)

It's the worst thing I've seen all day but it's not worse than the human brain organoid computer from a few weeks ago

No need to apologise, I agree :)

I'm also in a labour safe seat, and grateful I can vote my conscience, I'm just sad other people aren't so fortunate. Labour are saying some tiring stuff now to win over the Conservative voter base: it's the one time where I hope that politicians lie. Let's hope that Labour uses their win for good things, as they've promised in previous years.

May we all get to vote for more positive things within the next decade 💚

Some of Labour's recent policies (and stances on Palestine, trans people, etc) are scary and harmful. It's emotionally hard having to vote for a party that has spoken about removing your rights.

Pragmatically though: I know voting Labour will still shift things towards being better, even if that "better" is way worse than I wanted, and I would never begrudge anyone for voting for them. There's always more we can do in-between elections anyway

Surprised it's only 16%!

That sucks. What can we practically do about it?

Its reasonable to be angry at world politics right now (I don't know many people who aren't) but you can be a good leftist and be kind at the same time.

So I agree: it is an unproductive distraction to start beef on the internet about voting and elections. We both want the same things:

• Real, measurable direct political action, on dozens of issues that the main 2 parties won't solve
• All of the pro-genocide, awful politicians out of parliament (and ideally, off of Earth).

Why not share stuff like: https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch instead of getting into the weeds with strangers

I used to be a party member but left years ago when it got rough! Maybe getting back into politics more directly is the way to go: changing parties from within!

Almost everyone hates FPTP, and we know it sucks, but unfortunately, tactical voting is a realistic option for most areas in the UK. I'm personally very likely to vote Green (or lib dem) as I'm in a safe Labour seat, and I won't conscionably vote Labour for a myriad of reasons (including being trans), but it's a bigger priority to get the Tories out than anything else right now.

More optimistically though: voting is one part of a large variety of things people can do to influence politics. Protests, voting locally, working with local and bigger organisations, writing to MPs, donating to causes we care about, etc. can all help offset the feeling of having to vote for a party you hate slightly-less than the worse one.

It's just getting more and more difficult to feel okay voting Labour. I know splitting the left wing vote isn't tactically smart, but voting for labour isn't even a left wing vote anymore :(

(I'm still pro-tactical voting, I'm just doing it with more frustration than ever before)

Book purchased! As well as the other one mentioned by Destide earlier. Excited to learn lots, thanks for the recommendations

We've got a gas grill, but didn't know you had to clean the tubes. I always look in all the crevices to check for spiders anyway tho, so hopefully no future accidental fires

Also: I didn't know what a big green egg was until earlier today but they look fantastic! Hope your eggy barbecue dreams are coming true with having one :)

I definitely agree about veggies/vegans getting stereotyped as too-healthy :) Although I do find that, even if a recipe has technically same level of unhealthiness, the vegan equivalent of a meal never makes me feel quite as unhealthy as a meaty one.

I think veggie/vegan creativity makes for much better meals than just your standard unseasoned beef and bread combo. If I'm going to use meat, I might as well use it wisely, but if I can get the deliciousness of meat, without using meat, then that's even better! So SauceStache is a perfect recommendation, thanks! I'm going to watch a lot of his videos (especially the one on DIY Beyond meat).

I've tried bbq-soy-sauce-feta-watermelon once before - I think I was the only person who genuinely enjoyed it. I might end up being my own guinea pig if I end up being too adventurous again :)

Thanks for this, really helpful stuff :)

That book looks great! I love how-to-cook books instead of just recipe books (i.e. Salt Fat Acid Heat or Sohla's Start Here) and that looks like a great BBQ version.

wrt food safety, I should be alright! One of the reasons I haven't BBQ'ed much in the past is that I'm very safety focussed.

Another reason is that I don't eat much meat unless I'm planning on making it really delicious! Meat thermometers will definitely help (with both deliciousness and safety).

The Number 1 reason I don't BBQ more often is that my garden is down a ladder at the moment! Once we've got stairs, (and meat thermometers!) there'll be nothing stopping me :)

Did you have any advice for cooking for veggies? (a lot of my friends are vegan and they deserve good food too!)

good question!! I actually might have been mistaken by saying sea salt was an INP (whoops).

Sea salt is a great condensation nuclei (CCN). CCN allow cloud droplets to form instead of ice crystals.

For cloud seeding to work well, it's better to seed with INP instead of CCN because if you encourage lots of droplets to form, all you get is a bunch of really tiny droplets, making a really bright white cloud (no rain!). (Side note: that's why rain clouds look dark: they're made of fewer really big droplets.)

Adding sea salt to clouds is a thing though! It's been proposed as Marine Cloud Brightening - adding lots of sea salt to the air over the ocean, making the earth more reflective to combat further global warming.

As far as I know, most inorganic salts are good INP or CCN, but have varying efficiencies. Sea salt dissolves in liquid water whereas silver iodide doesn't, and silver iodide has the right sort of hexagonal crystal lattice for ice to start sticking to. So silver iodide is a great INP whereas sea salt is a great CCN.

Even longer (and reasonably silly) explanation here: https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/09/01/why-are-clouds-seeded-silver-does-it-work-16538

If you mean climate change, then yeah, obviously humans do influence the climate. In terms of individual scale events (weather, big storms) there's not any existing technology that exists that can cause a single targeted big storm event.

This article isn't perfectly scientifically accurate but it's better than most! For those interested, here's a better (detailed) explanation of the science:

Cloud seeding works best in supercooled liquid clouds, which start with barely any ice in. For ice to form in clouds, you need INP (ice nucleating particles), aerosols such as sea salt, or dust, for the ice to grow onto. INP can be pretty rare, depending on where you are in the world.

By adding silver iodide (an efficient INP) ice crystals can form. This means the cloud has both ice and liquid water in (a "mixed phase" cloud).

For multiple reasons, ice grows better and faster than liquid cloud droplets (the "Wegener Bergeron Findeisen effect" for one). Because there's only so much water in the cloud, these ice crystals then grow at the expense of water droplets in the air, allowing for big snowflakes to grow, but droplets evaporate.

This turns it from a cloud with many tiny droplets, into one with big heavy snowflakes, which fall out of the cloud. Before the snowflakes reach the ground, they melt, turning into rain.

TLDR; cloud seeding takes the water already in the cloud, and makes it precipitate slightly more efficiently, but only if you improve the balance of aerosols in the air just right

There is no technology on earth that can make storms of this scale. Cloud seeding doesn't add any water to the cloud. At most, it causes a very slight increase in rain. If you accidentally cloud seed "too much" you nucleate lots of ice crystals within the cloud, making many tiny ice crystals (which don't precipitate at all).

They didn't seed this cloud - but it wouldn't have done anything if they had.

it's a feminist movement, in backlash to misogyny and pro-natalism in South Korea (it's becoming more widespread, though). The 4Bs are the "four no's":

• no dating men
• no sex with men
• no marriage with men
• no childbearing

It gets a lot of pushback and is called selfish etc. but women are very angry & upset that the government only sees them for their reproductive use, and it's reasonable to not want to date someone who doesn't view you as human.

So much beautiful snow photography (stock footage etc) comes from Wisconsin. It's well known for snow and snow research. Sad to see the landscape changing over there