makx

This, and also: all the discoveries that don't immediately help solve our problems rarely make the news, or if they do we gloss over them and forget them immediately.

You're right on some, but I have to say that some of those are indeed common (instead reminding me that these things may not be common outside of Japan). Including: the calculator on ATMs (at least Mitsui-Sumitomo ATMs usually have them), the all-in-one sink with soap, braille on top of cans (just checked my fridge and all alcoholic beverages have it), the paper in bubblegum boxes (always bothers me when I'm in Germany), that most restaurants (including fast food) try to make the dish look like the ad, and reading glasses at city hall.

I'm not opposed to fasting, but many things are wrong with this. Just to point out a few:

(1) A general "naturalistic fallacy" where the author believes that people of the past must have been more healthy.

(2) I assumption that there is an increase of cancer in modern age solely because of humans change of diet - ignoring factors such as environmental pollution, ozone depletion, increase in radioactive particles from weapons testing and accidents...

(3) Assuming that a change in mean is brought about by changes in every individual to the same degree. Differences in the mean can be produced by just a subset, even a minority of outliers. Today, many people are overweight, which is known to increase all kinds of risks. So caloric restrictions applied to the whole society will always cause a rise in mean life expectancy. But that doesn't mean that it will have any benefits for the people who aren't overweight.

(4) Confuses brain size with brain function. I guess the author then must also believe that women are significantly more stupid then men. Also fails to explain that people can sometimes lose a big chunk of their brains and still perform well on tests.

Again, I'm not saying fasting is bad, but that the author just throws together some unrelated scientific studies with a bunch of common fallacies (and, it seems, bias towards his own lifestyle choices).

I think that's a pretty contrived "after-the-fact" explanation for why it's called "~punk", that reduces the whole of punk culture to just mean "rebellion". But the truth is, just like every scandal is now called "~gate", new genres are just called "~punk" because it sounds good. Not because they have anything to do with punk culture. Where is the "rebellion" in "steampunk" or "dieselpunk"?

Whether or not that's the case, they are not perceived as such. Europeans may be mistaken in believing Ukrainians just want temporary shelter and Syrians are coming to stay, but whether it's true or false doesn't matter. It's this belief that affects their attitude.

You'd think that there are even qualified people who would do it for (almost) free, just for the chance of building a resume...

I find it a bit strange that she's decrying that the laws makes people afraid to associate with her, but she's perfectly fine with the fact that her clients/customers are criminalized. It appears to mike like some cognitive dissonance of her to think that her clients are justifiably "bad" by buying her services, but her selling these services is okay. Maybe I'm naive, but if my customers would face criminal charges for buying my products, I'd speak out on behalf of my customers or (if I really feel they should not buy such stuff) I'd stop selling it to them.

That's what I thought as well. Possibly also correlated with the time of day. Temperature and other possible factors vary over the course of the day and cats tend to be active at certain hours of the day. As a stupid example: some update service is set to check for updates between 5pm and 6pm. A bug in the update check causes crashes. The cat expects dinner at 5pm.

Why not? If you'd rate your happiness or peace of mind on a scale of 1 to 10 every day, and after a donation the rating goes up, that's an empirically measurable improvement to your quality of life, much more so than a product that may make your life more convenient but you're still stressed and unhappy.

While not technically a "purchase", I also must say that this year, no single product even came close to the donations I made to those who protect the environment and fight climate change.

Now, every time I consider a purchase I ask myself: "do I really need this?" and if the answer is no, I forgo the purchase and donate the same amount of money instead.

This "negative consumption" turns my feelings of gloom and helplessness into a sense of purpose and power.

I can only imagine how awesome it must be to be able to donate almost a whole salary!

Can you please share some of the charities you've found to be trustworthy?

Thanks for sharing those links! This is so f*ed up that that's an industry. If all that money would have gone to preserving the wildlife we do still have left (but are losing rapidly)...

It seems like you're already trying to change your consumption, which is all I'm hoping (and arguing) for.

(Surely, there's always ways we could all do more like reduce the use of single-use plastic, or communicate the problem to more people in our communities, or financially support those who try to combat the issue. But like I said, it seems you (and me ;-) ) are already ahead of the curve here).

They produce them for the average Joe. They don't force anyone to buy their products.

And if they would stop producing the products, what would happen? As long as people buy, someone else would produce them.

And, yes, a billionaire would have more power to change the world, if just buy giving them the ability to run a massive media campaign to change peoples minds. Yet here we are in this very article blaming them for using their financial power to try and influence the public opinion.