I got a soda stream with glass bottles. You can make soda from fruit (lemons and oranges are especially delicious - plus I can control whatever sweetener I use). Also, if you really want cola, then you can get concentrated syrup so there’s less plastic and liquid transport overall.

I can’t fully tell but it looks like it might be ai. The left pupil doesn’t go fully from top to bottom of the iris which doesn’t look right.

Democrats are pragmatically there for the money. They aren’t comically evil, but they are corrupt. They will throw an election before they ever give up AIPAC money and count on the next election swinging back to them. They get to sit back and watch the republicans be the bad guys and stir shit up for a few years. Then, when they get back in power, they fix the things that’s don’t make them money and look like he good guys but conveniently leave the unpopular policy the republicans enacted that makes them money and they don’t have to look like the bad guys. They just look incompetent. But they aren’t. This is all very purposeful. They love this dynamic. They benifit from it.

The democrats as they are for sure need to go. But we need to be more pragmatic ourselves about removing them instead of throwing elections to the republicans hoping it will teach the Democrats a lesson. Because it won’t. We need to focus on getting a foothold and changing the party. And that means turning out to vote in every election no matter what. Vote third party. Vote write in. Vote whatever. But sitting out of elections to teach democrats a lesson just isn’t going to do anything. It’s just throwing away the small amount of political capital most people have. If we don’t vote now its either corporate feudalism or civil war in the future.

Voter suppression is a real and serious problem. I still think most people too beaten down and busy to get out to vote, even if disenfranchised, aren’t about to help out with a civil war or do much to help fix the current regime.

One American to another, we need to recognize that most of our country either voted for this or enabled it by not voting. Most if us either support this malicious behavior or are apathetic to it. Sure. If you take a poll, most Americans don’t want the us to mess with Canada. But if people won’t even vote, then how do you expect them to take up arms to save Canada?

It definitely is! But why? Such a weird little edit that makes the picture uncanny valley. An older tech filter would have been less weird even. There used to be one on Snapchat I used on my cats years ago that was hilarious.

Sorry to be a buzzkill but at least the bottom pic is AI. Cat pupils aren’t wobbly and amorphous.

If you have a pixel. I use calyxOS since I don’t and it’s a bit more secure than lineage.

Also, if you bought your phone through your cell provider, its probably not happening. The bootloader is probably locked. There miiight be some janky tutorials to get around it, but you might brick your phone. Ask me how i know.

Ahh so the whole pic is Photoshop and he actually still looks like an android

Haha, no, my cat is named Finn.

And if you go to the right part of the us, then you’ll find arguing without shooting each other is a past time and greatly welcome. But, don’t go to the us. It has beautiful nature but not for long and not much else to offer.

Countries already have lax immigration laws for scientists. I immigrated to Europe and where I am scientists are fast tracked to the nice residency and aren’t made to learn the local language.

Haha I’ve had a few wild apples out and about in the US but nothing too crazy. There’s a USDA orchard for genetic diversity and breeding of apples. They collect apples from central Asia for breeding stock. Many apples in the us are actually limited in their genetic diversity since only a handful of genotypes actually made it over. They collect genetic stock to introgress disease resistance when needed. And there are tours sometimes. You can find apples far worse than anything you’ll see out and about the wilderness of the US. Some of them look more like large cherries than apples.

https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/geneva-ny/plant-genetic-resources-unit-pgru/apple-collection/apple-collection/

They don’t advertise it here, but the orchard is in Geneva NY and they usually do one public tour every fall if you’re interested in tasting the worst apples of your life :)

https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/geneva-ny/plant-genetic-resources-unit-pgru/docs/publictours-apple/

They also have some grapes and stone fruit.

Hopefully the USDA isn’t hurt too badly in the coming years. I already have some old colleagues that have been laid off by the Trump administration. It’s all I see on my LinkedIn feed right now.

The USDA does a lot of work maintaining plant genetic diversity. You can even request a bit of seed from them for different genotypes of almost any plant you can imagine if you give them a good reason and are a bit patient. But maybe not with the upcoming staff shortages.

https://www.ars-grin.gov/

I’ve only requested seed for academic research, but I think if you explain that you want seed for some backyard breeding they might give you some too.

Those specific types of leftists want accelerationism the us. They will encourage you not to vote even. They want trump because they think that Trump will crash the government and the US will either be crippled and unable to exert imperialism or the people will become so disenfranchised they’ll experience class consciousness and there will be a glorious socialist revolution. What they don’t realize is that companies will gobble up power and the US will become corporate feudalism that’s even more awful on the global stage and few citizens will fight back as long as they feel personally safe and can eat.

Man I think this is just ensuring job security. Until you hired the interns and ruined it!

There’s a lot of local positions and some relatively leftist pockets in the us. This is why leftists need to vote more in small local elections.

The people related to immigrants are often voting constituents interested in their and their families rights if that’s what you mean. Immigrant do have constitutional rights. For example, you can’t just deny them freedom of speech or enslave them just because they’re non citizens. That would be wild.

Yup. I live abroad and pay no US taxes.

Non domesticated potatoes have high levels of toxic glycoalkaloids. Original potato recipes actually included clay to make them less toxic. I doubt these potatoes are toxic, but they may have been eaten with clay which people who aren’t used to it would find unpalatable.

Alternatively, a lot of foods in their center of origin (the Andes for potatoes) have a lot of genetic diversity and can taste very different to the potatoes that have been hyper bred for flavor and shipped worldwide. There’s some pretty awful tasting apples out there that are so astringent they make your mouth seize up.

OK genocide apologist.

Forcing a people to be part of your system against their wishes is subjugation. The Ukrainians wanted independence. They literally fought for it and lost. Excusing genocide because there was some bonus education is disgusting. Excusing imperialism because you like the perks makes you an imperialist.

Its honestly disgusting how much you try to explain away disproportionate grain quotas so much that you mass starve the very people producing your food and are conveniently also trying to subjugate as unintentional. I’m sure you have lovely things to say about the Irish potato famine as not being genocide too. It’s only genocide when checks notes the imperialists I don’t like do it.

Genocide doesn’t have to be sophisticated, systematic, and performed with guns to be effective. I didn’t compare this situation to the holocaust for a reason.

Intent is a wishy washy excuse when the reality is targeted death of a specific subjugated people. It’s how everyone tries to weasel out of being accused of genocide. Israel doesn’t want to kill all of the Palestinians. Its not their intent. They just want the land and mass Palestinian death is just an unintended side effect. If I roll my eyes any harder I’ll lose them to the back of my head.

but lets look to Raphael Lemkin who is the one credited with coming up with the term genocide:

What I want to speak about is perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation