Herzlichen Glückwunschen von Bulgarien! Mein Geschenk für dich: ein Maimai

The question here is whether to give farmers the freedom to choose to grow it - most will continue growing other varieties. Idk what uncontrollable regulations you are referring to, but no regulation will force you to grow something.

I also want to solve the problem and this is a great solution. It’s worth enacting it, unless you have a better idea - children have been dying, die right now, and could continue to die if something isn’t done.

Nah read into it, the guy had planned all-GM and had kicked up a shitstorm with the “cross-pollination” theory to try and get away with it. Unfortunately reality matters in court so he hit sued (Greenpeace never told you that part)

Greenpeace, as usual, argues against GM by jesting towards a nebulous cabal of shady globalist BigAg companies. They are endlessly malicious and no amount of benefit can ever be a convincing reason to take even one step back on this issue. This is a classic case of paranoia and it cannot be reasoned with.

A quick reality check on some of those points. Many of them are based on a paranoid belief that the Golden Rice will somehow invade and take over. We are discussing introducing a new variety, not erasing any - farmers will continue to grow other varieties. Thus, many of the arguments about monoculture and control over seed fall apart. Syngenta have excluded smallholder farmers from paying licensing fees, so they’d get the seeds are a reasonable price. Lastly, countries which grow GM also grow organic crops - the farmers fearing losing their licenses are swept up in the paranoia. There is also no evidence of GM genes finding their way into other varieties in any meaningful amount. If this was a common occurrence, maintaining any discrete variety would be impossible (and we’ve been doing it for over a century).

Introgresion of the beta carotene-giving T-DNA locus into local varieties would take a decade before we can obtain a cultivar that resembles local varieties, and this is only if said local varieties are highly homozygous. If they are not, what you are suggesting is simply not possible with 2024 technology and I don’t see it becoming possible soon. Such a delay would mean large numbers of children dying and many more suffering. The Monsanto boogeyman’s profit desires are not relevant, unless you’d like to give them some credit for making the damn thing, and I’m not even sure they were involved? A company called Syngenta made Golden Rice 2, maybe you’re referring to that?

I know the coffee bit is bullshit (https://coffeeabout.com/coffee-consumption-by-country/) so likely the other stuff is too

Curious how at no point do the creators of the museum highlight the deficient funding for enough civil servants and how taxing the rich could pay for much of this to go away.

Interesting article but it bizarrely completely misses what is likely to be by far the biggest source of climate change-related death: famine. Humans can shelter from the heat and we can displace our air pollution (thanks EVs) but our crops are still stuck in the field and you can pretty accurately predict yield losses from increased temperatures and increased/decreased rainfall.

This is bad enough in developed nations, where food prices will increase, choice will decrease, and general inequality will worsen. But things will become way worse in developing nations. These mostly practice inefficient, environmentally-damaging subsistence farming and when they start to produce even LESS food, they will just become failed states and hotbeds of civil war. This will bring about much more death and migration, most of it only visible to your average westerner on their TV screen as talk points for your local left/right-wing politicians.

I don’t see how these claims are supported by the research in question?

The main reason is that the article is paywalled (disappointed to see the authors chose to publish in a non-open access journal in 2024) but judging purely by the abstract it seems like this is just a study showing an association between being a black woman in Georgia and signs of stress-induced health issues? Also, they didn’t seem to have a control group?

The negative effects of chronic stress are well-known but in the linked article this is spun into a weird narrative about microaggressions with seemingly no evidence for it? I am surprised to see the first author of the scientific article deviate so much from the published findings in her journalistic article.

If you’re in a granny cottage then just burn wood instead? Doing this rn and am very happy to go off-grid for ca. 48 hours

Documenting interactions as way to prove harrasment (which is illegal) is not a dick move, it is the obvious adult move. The harasser deserves punishment for his crimes, which will likely be a fine and a restraining order. His actions should also be made public, so others may act upon it (I’d fire him immediately, rather than let him fester in my organization)