Unfortunately, the alternate option was not “let them stay hostage a while longer”. It was “let the hostages die”. And maybe that would have been the more ethical call. But let’s not delude ourselves that they could have been kept alive any other way.

It happened in Maine. And Alaska. And is on track in Nevada.

Modern industrial farming is not sustainable for the next hundred years, no, but there are a lot of levers to work to transform it into something that will reliably feed future generations.

One lever is amount and kind of meat in the average diet. It takes something like seven pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. Modern chicken breeds are amazingly efficient at converting feed grain to chicken meat, but even they are something like two pounds in to one pound out. Reducing the percent of meat in our diets would make our food go significantly further.

The plants use energy from the sun to turn carbon dioxide from the air into edible calories. When our animal bodies “burn” the food we eat, that turns it back to carbon dioxide, which we exhale.

The energy input is the sun, and most of the calories come from the air (carbon dioxide). Given so much external input, harvesting from a plot without reducing soil fertility is totally possible. With nitrogen-fixing crops (soybeans being the poster child), even the nitrogen fertilizer comes from the air.

Technically correct is the best kind of correct

This is more like you measure the fragment speeds with both a laser and with radar, and get different readings off the same fragment.

It reduces bone density. Not to unhealthy levels in teens, but there are concerns the lower baseline will increase osteoporosis risk when the patients get to old age.

They can also only be used for a couple of years. Some non-binary people want to be on them permanently, but doctors won’t prescribe that. Some kids want more time to decide, and unfortunately there isn’t anything safe to use through the full teenage years.

With Hamas being very clear about wanting to commit genocide, the choice is this conflict is not genocide vs. no genocide. The choice is about which side is given more opportunity to commit genocide. Horrific that is the choice, but it’s not like disarming the Israelis would result in fewer human deaths in that region.

Local chapters are going broke because deep-pocketed conservative donors don’t trust the people elected as officials to be good stewards of their money. So the donors give directly to candidates or to PACs. I am not yet convinced there is less overall money being injected on the Republican side, though that would be a hopeful development.

It used to be more true, when straight chlorine was what was used. Now most municipalities use chloramine, which is more stable. Most plants don’t care, but it’s an issue for fish, so there are “water conditioner” products for aquariums that remove both chlorine and chloramine.

So says Robin Red Breast, the bird with orange belly feathers

Apparently a number of them live in their DC offices and shower at the Congressional gym.

To an extent, this is already happening. I work in manufacturing, and the last couple of years there was more demand for our product than our factories were physically capable of producing, and prices were raised to weed out the number of customer orders to what we could handle. Projections for this year are for softened demand, and sales expects to have to offer significant price cuts to keep enough orders for our manufacturing lines to stay busy.

Collective “we have enough stuff and will buy less” at work.

It’s not like housing is inherently capped. Cities choose to pass and enforce zoning laws that limit the number of housing units - shortages drive up prices, which homeowners love.

Blaming AirBnB for taking up a fraction of housing units in a market that is profoundly short on housing because of the NIMBY greed of residents is missing the forest for a tree.

You are probably being sarcastic, but for those who haven’t come across it - operating rooms are often called theaters.

I work for a manufacturing company, and during the demand boom our customers wanted way more product than our facilities are physically capable of producing. I suppose sales could have complexified and ratcheted up our existing rationing process (have to have one at some level when it takes months to produce an order), but raising prices made demand go down so it matched our actual ability to make stuff.

Given the wild increase in demand beyond the infrastructure capabilities, the only alternative to inflation was rationing, and I do not have enthusiasm for ration lines.

Eh, witch hunts are a big risk in the immediate aftermath when crowd tension is the highest. It has been three years, at this point I expect the sleuth work on suspect identification would be all upside.

The bigger security concern is sleuths figuring out all the camera locations and, by deduction, the blind spots. Johnson is setting up the next Congress to be much more vulnerable to violent attack.

My understanding was fuel is the main thing Hamas wants imported, with unconfirmed reports they have taken fuel from some hospital stocks that were being used to run generators for medical equipment. Other estimates say Hamas already has enough fuel stockpiled to keep tunnel ventilation fans and their internal phone network going for months without resupply, so I don’t know what to believe.

That food, water, and medical supplies are going to general use aid isn’t surprising. But the continued embargo on fuel, and resulting increasing electricity blackout, is an ongoing major contributor to the humanitarian tragedies.