Once.

I would still pick the African ones, nonetheless.

There is no need for sarcasm.

We tend to forget Africa had great kingdoms, with advanced civilization standards, before colonial times. Those kingdoms ruled the largest continent on the planet for centuries and elephants were animals used for both work and war.

Hanibal took elephants across the Alpes (most died) in order to invade Italy. I seriously doubt the general ordered his elephants from India.

I can’t remember where I read it but it was a good coverage on the historical use of elephants in Africa in pre-colonial, as in during the great african kingdoms. And lets not forget war elephants, in Roman times, were from Africa.

Yet I remember reading somewhere african elephants were tamed before their asian counterparts.

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You raise a good point and ending slavery should be a top concern.

I’m in Portugal, and we’ve had a few cases of slavery and abused foreign workers here as well, which is shameful for us as a nation, but we have many good examples of good practices where applying technology improved production, lowered waste, turned out better product for the consumer and allowed for less use of hand labour but with higher salaries.

The starting investment is high but the subsidies you mention could/should be converted into low or zero interest, long term loans and the money recirculated towards more improvements in the sector.

Greenhouses do consume immense ammounts of fertilizers but water is better manageable under those conditions than sowing corn, which is well known for being a syphon for water and agro chemicals, and usually leaves the soils destroyed after a few years of intense farming.

Any change for a better model done will a step forward. Cattle, as it is raised today, I don’t find it sustainable.

I remember reading a book on the Astec empire and its fall by the spanish was a sum of perfectly aligned random events, based on their system of beliefs. They could have resisted the invasion and records by spanish soldiers of the time on how the astecs were fierce and fearless warriors exist.

The astecs just stopped resisting at some point and either got assimilated or slaughtered and their civilization wiped out.

“red meat”

What does this expression even means nowadays?

Beef should be expensive. It should return to what it was thirty or forty back: a luxury item. Nobody needs to eat a steak every day.

But is pork still - or again? - red meat? It had been disqualified as such some time back.

Bring on cheaper vegetables, please. I’m seeing cabbage peak at €2,19. Poultry is on average €2,29, peak on the €2,69. It’s borderline as expensive to make a pot of quality soup than to make a roast chicken.

Aliens took them, obviously. What else? What other logical, rational, simple explanation could there be?

I really doubt that much rock can’t find any other use except being dumped into the ocean.

Then why not just use it to extend a coast line or build an island?

Not doubting your word, something doesn’t add up.

There are hotels in my country that already buy and install dessalination plants, in order to save costs, to fill pools and fountains and even irrigate gardens.

These instalations have steep requirements to be installed and the off products can’t be dangerous for return to environment, as the return often goes directly to the sea, through beaches.

Concentrating the salt is also another intelectual itch for me. We naturally concentrate salt by evaporation. There are a few programs aimed at developing low energy/high efficiency processes to obtain salt from sea water. The few I was described involved using systems built around the pressure cooker working principle or purpose built enclosed systems alike to greenhouses to force the water out. I’d risk the processes would be useful to make use of the brines.

Call me skeptic but I’ll risk there are a good number of industries that could use and profit from using that brine.

And you opted by the chemical process. Why not use reverse osmosis or pure and simple forced evaporation?

Anywhere near the mines?

Thank you.

But… Why do you assume I have instant knowledge of acronyms because I opted to insert a comment on a topic that teased my interest? Does it pressuposes anything about my person?

And me building hope on the legend that Norway was a civilized land.

Then what is the choice?

Couldn’t it be just pilled up and eventually used to back fill the mine shafts?

Good morning.

Let’s call that example the canary in the mine but I’m seeing many similar situations where I live.

Being in a less than urban area, there is still a bit of industry around and some factories are cutting staff and a few have already shut down operations, especially in sectors more closely related with end user products (clothing, footwear, yarn, etc). Industries with ties to industrial use (metal working, construction materials, wood and derivates) are keeping afloat but only replacing workers that go into retirement or that for some reason or another just quit, and these industries, in my understanding, are keeping afloat because of the hard push into more sustainable and efficient houses, which is forcing a good deal of public investment into large renovation projects and funds.

Parallel to this, bakeries, coffee shops, small businesses that rely on consumption, are shutting down. For me, this implies there is less money floating around.

Paired with the hike in housing…