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Cake day: August 31st, 2023

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  • I have not used either for cars but I have tried both for driving bicycles. The thing with open street map is that they have a lot more of the small streets that bikes can go on but cars can’t. In my experience google maps usually wants me to drive my bike right on some huge multi-lane car road for 3 hours and totally ignores the bike path right next to it. When I went on a 1 month bicycling trip I tried both but found that OSMAnd had vastly better suited roads. Some of the tiniest tiny roads it sent me on were some of the most memorable of the whole journey. Sometimes the path in OSMAnd will just be a dirt path half a meter wide and I love that. I thought many times who on earth even added all these roads! I’m so thankful for every local nerd who added every single dirt road in his neighborhood on there. Simply amazing sometimes. But yeah it doesn’t work at all if you don’t download the map that’s true. Also I really can’t answer for navigating by car.



  • Yes Gaza is ruled by Hamas which is a terrorist islamist un-democratic organization which can’t provide for its people, leading to foreign aid organizations providing most of the amenities there. A source for that will come later. The west bank is ruled by the Palestinian authority which is a functional state which has been mostly peaceful for the last few decades and which I support. The Palestinian authority is on paper supposed to rule Gaza too however Hamas declared war against the Palestinian authority in 2007 because they opposed the results of a democratic election and took over the Gaza strip. You can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)

    Music festival celebrating “friends, love and infinite freedom” right by the border fence. Hamas killed 260 of the attendees on the first date of the war. Washington post source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/08/israel-festival-attack-gaza-militants/

    “Hamas’ traditional weapon is the Qassam rocket, a cheap garage-built weapon assembled from industrial piping, home-made rocket fuel of sugar and potassium nitrate fertilizer, and commercial explosive” Forbes soruce: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/10/09/how-hamas-leveraged-cheap-rockets-and-small-drones-to-ambush-israel/

    This sources does say it’s made from fertilizer but this does not say explicitly that the fertilizer is from foreign aid (I found sources but they are all isreali). However if it is or is not does not matter as much as the fact that fertilizer should have been used to produce food for the starving people in Gaza. Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, can’t provide for most basic amenities for their people. Foreign aid powers a lot of basics such as schools and healthcare (which is great!) while Hamas uses their budget to bomb isreal. (If you want to read an American-jewish pro-isreal source about the accusation it’s here: https://jewishjournal.com/israel/336609/made-in-gaza-hamas-rockets-the-product-of-foreign-aid-and-smuggled-material/)

    https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-foreign-aid-gaza-strip-611b2b90c3a211f21185d59f4fae6a90

    This article talks a bit about the foreign aid which goes to Gaza. Thankfully most foreign aid is now earmarked for certain projects (which is why the UN runs their own schools for example, so they know where the money is going)). Isreal has called for this for a long time because they were concerned foreign aid is used to fund terrorism. In addition isreal grants work permits to tens of thousands Gazans to work in isreal across the border. On the other hand it’s not possible to enter Gaza as an Isreali. I think it’s clear that isreal is the party with the most good will in this conflict. It’s also worth mentioning that some arab nations does not support Hamas either. Egypt for example is on the side of the Palestinian authority and has had a blockade against Hamas ever since the take over in 2007.


  • When it comes to Israel vs Palestine then I absolutely think it’s alright to support either side. Both sides have valid reasons to exist and both sides have done horrible things to each other. But remember this is not Israel vs the Palestinian authority (the west bank). This is Israel vs Hamas (Gaza). That makes a world of a difference. In this conflict I believe Hamas is in the wrong.

    Many people accuse Israel to be an apartheid state. I would argue Israeli arabs have it much better than blacks in south Africa did (polling even shows arab-isrealis (the ones who ended up in isreals side of the border in 1948) prefer living in Israel instead of Palestine because of their quality of life) however they are certainly not equal to the Jewish isrealies. But now ask yourself. How would a Jew be treated in Gaza? There are none and there is a reason for that. They would get killed on the street immediately. If isreal is an apartheid state then Gaza is a puristic ehnostate. Both are racist but Gaza is infinitely worse. They don’t want to coexist with Jews at all, no they want them all dead.

    Hamas is one of the worst organisations on earth. They don’t even care for their own people. When western nations give Gaza free fertilizer to feed their people and reduce starvation then Hamas used it to build bombs to fire at Israel. When western charities gave Gaza money to feed their people, they bought guns instead. This is a regime ruled by nothing else than hate and does not even have a concern for their own people. Isreal supplies Gaza with water and electricity and has done so for decades. Gaza would never do something like that for isreal. I believe there is no case for Hamas at all. They are in the wrong here quite definitely. Just look who they are attacking. First target was a music festival by the border where they raped, kidnapped and murdered all the participants. This music festival was a music festival for peace. That’s why it was right by the border fence. Hamas didn’t believe in peace.


  • It wasn’t too bad before in my opinion but this year there was a big drought in the Mediterranean and now it’s extremely expensive. Even butter is cheaper than olive oil now I’m afraid… I just try to use less of it. Speaking of butter there are now a few big studies out there showing that milk fat is not as bad as the saturated fats found in meat. But they are all funded by dairy companies so I don’t know if I can really trust them. It’s hard navigating the world of fats and health. Fats are good for you but it’s hard to know which ones are the good ones.



  • This is totally correct. Just to add how they do it, it’s in-line filtering. The juice goes through a pipe at high pressure though a filter and all the solids are removed through this process. This is used for many edible liquids. Almost all beer is filtered in this way for example. Most varieties of beer are cloudy without filtering. The filtering of juice (and beer) increases the shelf life. In addition it makes the juice easier to turn into juice concentrate. In my country at least all the big juice brand are just reconstituted juice concentrate. Juice concentrates are by far cheaper in many regions because they are traded as a commodity on the world market so you can source it from the cheapest source. Fresh juice however has to be made locally and has a low shelf life, hence the higher price.


  • Russia has been a horrible place to be a peasant for a long time. In most of Europe peasents gained a lot of freedoms after the black death. But in Russia peasents, or serfs as they were called, only suffered worse. The serfs in Russia couldn’t even marry or move without the permission of their lord. The lord, or boyar as it was called locally, had pretty much full ownership over you. Russia pretty much enslaved their whole population until the mid 1800s. Complete disregard for the life of the commoner has been a constant theme of Russian life for a long time and it arguably continues to this day.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia?wprov=sfla1 Some dark but enlightening reading about the historical situation of peasents in Russia. Peasents were de facto enslaved there for far longer than anywhere else in Europe. I can’t imagine living through such a time. Dedicating your whole existence and work to serving some fat boyar who cares nothing about you. At any time you could get drafted for a deadly war which you probably are not going to be returning alive from. This arguably still happens there today.