I strongly believe that this should be the standard everywhere. Unfortunately most governments won’t tell you this, because a few of them are busy building golden temples for their authoritarian leaders, and blowing half of it on cocaine while pretending it’s the immigrants’ faults
This is a poor take, a few to vote is not the easy to go about this. Even owing taxes shouldn’t bar someone from voting as voting is about being represented and everyone deserves representation. Even hardened criminals.
Not only this, I think this should be selectable by taxpayers before they pay taxes so they can customize the amount that goes to each category. This would be the true democratic way of doing it. So, for example, based on your salary you need to pay 20k in taxes. You’d then select how much you want to go into Transportation, Healthcare, defense, education, etc.
This would quickly force the government agencies to work for their money.
This wouldn’t be truely democratic. It would rather be just like donations. Government spending works, because it’s all out into the same basket. If it weren’t, then rich taxpayers would move the movey to projects they want - and as would have very little old-age welfare, because they don’t pay much taxes anymk6and every group in society would put the money into their projects.
This is but one of many sites which show a breakdown of where our money in the US goes. Having one that breaks down each person’s personal contribution would be especially interesting, but a percent is a percent so if 20% of our money collectively goes to X, then 20% of what your paid as an individual will also go to X.
sometimes accessibility and user experience is more important than "its available if you look for it.: 99% of people don’t really have time, they have families, jobs, some leisure, cooking, paying bills, visiting family. etc. etc. So it should be easy and the FACT that it isn’t easy is purposeful whereas the Australian system is purposefully easy.
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but again, it IS easy. It took me less than 10 seconds to find the link I provided. Sure, make it even easier still by including it with every tax return, but let’s not kid ourselves - this shit is incredibly easy but average taxpayers just don’t want to bother.
I would argue average taxpayers don’t know it exists and a ton of them, particularly older ones have a very hard time with technology. I’ve had to show my mother in law how to get a url from her phone to her desk top, I’ve explained what the read mode means in Firefox, and numerous other things. Easy for you doesn’t mean easy for everyone.
In August, remote or hybrid job posts attracted more than one-half of all applications in 157 of the largest metro areas, according to LinkedIn data analyzed by Bloomberg. All the while, the number of hybrid or remote job posts has declined since 2022.
So companies that allow remote work will have the pick of the best applicants, while those without will be left with anyone who can't get a remote job. This will make in-person companies less effective and productive, especially because studies are showing remote work is more productive.
But at least their commercial property values won't go down. So that's nice.
Why would I do that instead of going to the office of my company? Besides, knowing me, my productivity wouldn’t be much better if any compared to at home
It also means that remote employers can pay less for better talent due to the intense competition. It’s somewhat of a win-win, as it results in cost savings for companies while allowing workers to choose if they prefer flexibility of remote work versus a higher paycheck. I imagine that the pay doesn’t make much of a difference in pocket money when considering commuting costs and higher CoL in areas closer to jobs.
I mean, companies that forced back to office had massive exoduses. It makes sense that they have to pay more to find replacements. I personally went from fully remote to hybrid and nearly doubled my salary.
Any company who sees that by going fully remote they pay less for better workers and avoid paying for office space and doesn't do it is going to see investor backlash.
It’s so obvious it’s a scam too because of how vague some of the “challenges” are. “Click all the squares that contain a bike” and then you do it in every conceivable way AND IT STILL WONT ACCEPT YOUR SUBMISSION. Stupid
I had one today where it was click on all the squares that contain a bus. One square very clearly contained a truck, not a bus. When I didn’t select that square, it told me I was wrong.
I have a suspicion that it might depend on a few factors that might be related to Google’s ability to track, such as the browsers you use and whether you’re on VPN. I saw a post on Lemmy the other day (can’t remember where) that they suspect captcha is more annoying on Firefox, whereas fine with Chrominum-based browsers, esp Google Chrome. I think I sometimes experienced this as well, but I didn’t keep track.
Here’s the thing about all search engines that aren’t Google (including the ones “based” on Google results). They all suck for regional results in many non-Latin languages.
Even the history of this is fascinating. This is the "Moses Bridge", and it's a renovated part of the old dyke system that was used to prevent attacking armies from getting in - because the dykes and levee's had blocked the sea so effectively, they realised they could stop attackers by... flooding them out. Literally.
When it came to renovate this area, they wanted to provide access without denigrating the fact it was an old defensive structure, hence this unique sea-level bridge.
I feel I can explain this discrepancy with a bit of history.
TL;DR in the last paragraph.
The EU has a numbering system for additives, preservatives, colourings etc that have been tested and approved for human consumption, so instead of putting Sodium Sulphite, you can put E221. They used to be very very commonly listed in ingredients in the UK. The difference between Sodium Sulphite (E221) and Sodium Hydrogen Sulphite (E222) is unclear and unimportant to most consumers, so manufacturers just listed the “E numbers” instead.
In the UK, when it was discovered that certain food additives can trigger conditions such as ADHD, instead of naming the specific chemicals that were causing the problem, the British media just called them E numbers.
Cue a fair bit of hysteria about how E numbers are harmful and some legitimate concerns, and suddenly the public start checking their food to see if it has any of those nasty E numbers, and they find to their horror that a lot of processed food contains a lot of E numbers, because preservatives, flavour enhancers, food colourings, sweeteners make food more appealing, and people re-buy appealing food. Suddenly it’s very much in the manufacturers’ interests to name the chemicals instead of the shorter E number so even today in the UK it’s more common to name the chemical than the E number, which was never required anyway. To prevent hysteria over “chemicals” in food and to inform, it’s become common to label then with their purposes - flavour enhancers, colours, preservatives etc.
There’s still some really quite noxious chemicals that are perfectly legal to put in food. My son’s A-level chemistry teacher saw him drinking the same brand of squash every day and commented “You drink a lot of that. Are you sure there’s no aspartame in it? There’s no way I would deliberately put aspartame inside my body.” Make of that what you will.
Anyway, the media storm around E numbers dies down because the manufacturers largely just avoid naming them that way, and carry on pretty much as before. Some kids have had reactions and occasionally news stories come out, but the media persist in avoiding using chemical names.
There’s some perfectly sensible advice that says that it you eat less processed food, and especially less “hyper-processed” food, and instead eat more food made from more natural ingredients, you get a more balanced diet with better vitamin and mineral intake, thus feeling feeling fuller for longer. (If the food is designed, with proper experimental testing, to get you to buy it more, it is inevitably also designed to get you to eat it more than you need to.)
But how can you tell if the food is processed or not? What’s the difference between me spending half an hour mixing the ingredients and then mixing them for me and precooking it so I just bung it in the pan? Well, a random member of the public almost certainly has salt and pepper, maybe even a few herbs and spices, but probably not any L-alanine. Look out for ingredients that you wouldn’t use at home, they’re probably a sign that it’s highly processed.
Hence the nearly good information that there aren’t any artificial flavours or colours. Nearly good, because it doesn’t mention preservatives and nearly good because it is definitely and certainly processed food designed to maximise profits rather than health.
So the UK food processing industries continue to aim naturally for maximising re-buying which includes reassuring the consumers that this is the healthiest (pre-prepared, highly processed, addictively tasty) low-priced convenience food they can, whilst being attractive to supermarket profits with longer shelf lives. If the bacteria and mold-killing preservatives aren’t as kind to human biology as just making it yourself and eating it sooner, and a few people have had reactions, it’s just not obviously bad enough for it to be something people will do anything about.
**TL;DR ** So, my understanding is that the hysteria about artifical flavours and colours was highest in the UK and the folks from the other countries aren’t looking for technicalities to reassure them about the ingredients because they were never trained by their media to hunt for nasties in the small print - those that care can see straight away this is very firmly in the processed food category, and those that don’t, don’t.
The science teacher’s comment is far removed from the evidence presented in that link:
with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake
Kinda funny that this person correctly explains the silly hysteria people had over E-numbers and then in the same comment spreads some silly hysteria over aspartame.
No no, he said an idiot that is/was his kid’s science teacher (ironically enough) mentioned the aspartame thing. The person you replied to is in agreement.
As for myself, idgaf about whether it’s outright healthy or not to drink aspartame as long as nobody’s dying or being injured from it; I’ve heard the quoted stats on diet soda and it sounds safe due to even processed sugar being more carcinogenic, but diet soda and aspartame in general still triggers insulin production.
Long story short, I just drink regular soda and try to limit my intake of processed foods. I’m not particularly concerned about my physical appearance or even my continued survival, but death by suffocating under my own body weight or losing limbs to diabetes does not sound like a fun way to spend my final moments so “YOLO means you don’t have multiple lives so stop doing stupid shit, dickheads” prevailed in my mind and I try to keep my weight getting higher than it already is.
For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.
You’d be running to the bathroom every 5 minutes too
My son’s A-level chemistry teacher saw him drinking the same brand of squash every day and commented “You drink a lot of that. Are you sure there’s no aspartame in it? There’s no way I would deliberately put aspartame inside my body.” Make of that what you will.
There’s no way I will deliberately put aspartame inside my body but only because it just simply does not taste sweet to me but instead it tastes bitter. I’m not the only one either futurity.org/why-fake-sweeteners-can-taste-funky/
Finland definitely had the E code craze. And more recently about natrium glutamate, when many products advertised getting rid of it. That was basically fueled by FUD.
But processed meat basically requires nitrates (E249-250) to avoid bacteria growth and the recommended intake for those is rather low especially for children. That’s one I would worry about if processed meat is common in diet.
Forget this guide because their control recipe is less than perfect. This recipe is perfect. Fight me. I didn’t perfect it, America’s Test Kitchen did. Kudos to them.
I call this recipe perfect, not only because it makes the exact kind of cookie I crave, but because it can go from stored ingredients to finished cookie in the time it takes to prepare (without the hassle of softening butter) and it will make your house smell heavenly the entire time.
Buy good (and fresh) ingredients, you can’t make perfect cookies with rubbish ingredients.
Perfect Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
1-3/4 cups (210g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 (3g) teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons (197g) unsalted butter
1/2 cup (99g) granulated sugar
3/4 cups (160g) packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon (9g) table salt
2 teaspoons (11.2g) vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1-1/4 cups (296mL) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup (177mL) chopped pecans or chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
PREPARATION Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large (18- by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
Heat 10 tablespoons (140g) butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl.
Stir remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter until completely melted. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny. Using rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using), giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie scoop). Arrange 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies the edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking.
Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies completely before serving.
Give these cookies away. Seriously, they are too delicious. Your waistline and your neighbors will thank you. Just don’t give any cookies to the ignorant fucks whining about units. They got the conversion all wrong anyway.
Edit: I am actually not sure about the amount of butter. Another table I found would give the amount as about 400g, which is insane. That would make this just butter with sugar and some stuff to keep it all together. But on the other hand that does sound very American.
The recipe translated for the mentally sane:
Perfect Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
<span style="color:#323232;">~150g unbleached all-purpose flour
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1/2 teaspoon baking soda
</span><span style="color:#323232;">200g unsalted butter
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g granulated sugar
</span><span style="color:#323232;">150g packed dark brown sugar
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 teaspoon table salt
</span><span style="color:#323232;">2 teaspoons vanilla extract
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 large egg
</span><span style="color:#323232;">1 large egg yolk
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g semisweet chocolate chips
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100g chopped pecans or chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
</span>
PREPARATION Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 190 degrees. Line 2 large (30-45cm) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
Heat 150g butter in 25cm skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl.
Stir remaining 50g butter into hot butter until completely melted. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny. Using rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if using), giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie scoop). Arrange 5cm apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies the edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking.
Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies completely before serving.
One cup of flour weighs less than one cup of sugar and different kinds of sugar also have different mass. And I rounded up or down to be in line with usual recipe amounts. But what I saw from the ranges given by helpful people here and what I found online, these vague recipes can fuck a rake. A fucking tablespoon of butter alone can be anything from 10 to 40 gram. With 14 tablespoons that gives you a range from 140g to 560g. That’s insanity.
That’s why it’s just easier to work in the original units of the recipe instead of needlessly converting it for nor real benefit. We’re making a single batch of cookies, not bread for an army or drugs; SI units and excessive precision just don’t matter that much. The recipe isn’t vague, just your understanding. A tablespoon isn’t a vague measurement, you’re just trying to adapt it to a needlessly precise unit of measure and forgetting everything your maths and sciense teachers should have taught you about significant digits.
A tablespoon as measurement for a non-fluid is extremely vague. How much mass do you pile onto it? There’s an extremely wide range of possibilities.
Also, this entire discussion under a post about how much different amounts of ingredients affect the outcome is just rich. Your recipe could be all of the examples in OP’s picture, depending on how people interpret it. If you treat baking recipes as art, sure, your recipe is great. If you want reproducible outcomes across different people it’s useless.
I hear that people like US recipes because they don’t use exact metrics and instead use spoons and cups and those are supposedly easier to scale. In baking I absolutely hate that. Give me metric units. I have no problems scaling those up or down as required. What’s a cup? I have .2 liter cups and .4 liter. How the fuck is that supposed to be easier? And what’s up with tablespoons of butter? Depending on how much you put on a spoon that can easily mean double/half as much butter. With grams and liters there is no doubt and no second-guessing.
A cup in US Customary is 237 ml (often rounded to 240 ml). Americans don’t exist in a world where they have to play “is this cup US Customary or different measure also calling itself a cup measure?” as all their measuring cups are going to be in US Customary. Butter usually comes in quarter pound sticks with teaspoon (4.9 ml) and tablespoon (14.8 ml) measures printed on the wrapper so you can just cut a hunk of the appropriate volume from the stick and if you were using a measuring spoon to measure butter you’d use a level measure to create consistency and not just let it heap up.
Note: I prefer weighing ingredients and in metric at that. I’m just answering your questions.
Weighing ingredients is so much better. I can cook significantly faster when I don’t have to measure volumetrically, plus recipes scale so much more easily. If I want to make 3.134 of a recipe, weight is the way to go.
Oh, I agree. If I use a recipe regularly I’ll often convert it or if I’m creating one from scratch I’ll usually just have everything by weight from get go.
P.S. Nothing makes me annoyed at a recipe faster than seeing something like 2.5 cups of chopped broccoli.
This is very close to the “perfect” recipe I use from Tasty. But they add in a little bit of espresso powder. It’s not enough to make the cookies taste like coffee, but it does make the chocolate flavor more intense. I really like this recipe, but now I want to try the ATK recipe and see which one is better because I swear by the Tasty recipe ever since I found it. Here it is if anyone’s curious: tasty.co/…/tasty-101-ultimate-brown-butter-chocol…
I got this off Bluesky. No, squirrels in North America are mostly grey or black, and the red ones we do have in woodsy areas definitely don’t have these ears.
I’m so tired of this “proper order” date debate among regions. Can’t we just accept that there can be more than one correct way to do things?
We commonly write dates 02/29/23 because we speak or write “February 29th 2023” while in other languages, it’s customary to speak or write “29th of February 2023” leading them to the common format 29/02/23.
Edit: to curb the ISO standard comments, yes, that is the most efficient and organized way to write a date, but how many of you speak dates in ISO format? If you don’t commonly say “2023 February 29th” out loud, then you intrinsically understand that not all situations call for the ISO standard.
The ISO is an organization trying to get everyone on the same page, they are the accepted standard globally. If you see ISO and you go against it, you better have a damn good reason and you’ll be liable everytime.
When was the last time you spoke a date in ISO format? Do you say “2023 February 29th?” If not, you intrinsically know ISO is not always the best format for the situation.
It’s about the correct standard, which if exists, should be the same whether spoken or written. I’m saying that no such standard exists, and there are different correct ways depending on the situation/region.
The comment I was originally replying to was talking about the two most debated formats while ignoring ISO for “non-technical” people. Those two formats are that way because of the way people most commonly speak it in the region where they originated. I agree that the best written format is ISO, but it’s not commonly used outside of technical circles because it requires that you say it in a different order than you read it, which proves difficult for a lot of people.
The reason why it’s superior is (mostly) just because it removes that ambiguity of whether your region lists months or days first. By using a global standard you are still able to prefer whatever method of speaking it, but especially in situations around health and safety the less chance for confusion the better.
Like, the whole “flammable” vs “inflammable” label is another problem if someone incorrectly assumes inflammable is the equivalent of non-flammable.
I am familiar with the ISO format and use it every day. But let me ask you, do you speak dates in ISO format? If not, then you understand it isn’t always the best format for the situation.
When was the last time you spoke dates to anyone in ISO? If you don’t ever say the year before the month and day, then you intrinsically know ISO is not always the best format for the situation.
It happens a few times a month, when dealing with something important to make sure people understand, same reason as to why I sometimes say times in a 24h format.
you actually think you’ll be able to convince anyone even remotely stupid or stubborn to use this? you must have never tried anything like this before then…
I’m not implying you can’t say “of” in English, but it’s common (and shorter) to say “Feb 29th.” It is not however correct to say “Feb 29th” in many other languages, which is why Europe made day first dates the regional standard. And just like with the imperial vs metric systems, England has shifted to more often use Europe’s standard rather than the one they came up with themselves.
Are you trolling or just incapable of acknowledging that you can speak a date differently than its written representation? The entire reason for any standard is just to ensure you’re working within a known/consistent framework. You can measure in imperial or metric but you can’t label an imperial or metric unit as the opposite just because you prefer it that way.
If I hand you glass of milk with a skull and crossbones sticker on it why would you assume it’s harmful when in my region it’s used to signify its high calcium content? I can say “poison” or I can say “milk”, but a skull should never be interchangeably used.
In the same way, a date written in a global standard format should always be immediately recognized as signifying ONE particular date, and you’re then free to localize it however you please.
Indeed, one of our regional airports has housing with taxi ways to the runway as well. Instead of garages for cars they have hangers for the planes and cars.
These exist all across the country! Here’s a fun fact, the street signs are all 2 feet tall in these neighborhoods so that even low-wing airplanes can make turns around corners that have signs without risk of completely destroying their plane.
I believe it’s because these states are west of the Mississippi River and something something Louisiana Purchase (high school history was decades ago).
Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan are east of the Mississippi. We couldn't reliably cross the Appalachian Mountains until shortly before the American Revolution. Expeditions before Daniel Boone forged the Wilderness Road had to go around so the most direct route between NY and where Chicago is now went about halfway down Alabama. The Appalachians were the original western frontier and the Midwest was the Northwest Territories. As the country expanded westward and new territories were established and the Northwest Territories gained statehood they became the Midwest.
Yeah, living in Colorado has always been weird hearing that we’re “the west”. We’re about as middle of the country as you can get. 3 states to our west to get to the Pacific, 4 states to the east to get to the Atlantic.
mildlyinteresting
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