Chester Draws

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@guwinster @wanyeburkett If you believe Hamas, Israel does all sorts of evil things.

I don't believe Hama though.

Especially since Hamas is only too happy to snipe kids and bomb churches.

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@AmazonHelp Way to lose business!

I'm not paying a large amount of money to ring across the world in the middle of the night.

There is nothing wrong with my US account but I'm not allowed into it every again?

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@amazon I had a security alert on my .de account. I now can't sign into my US account, because it always directs me to the .de one. Where it asks for my card details -- for a card that I stopped using years ago. Now I can't access any accounts! I'm not ringing International!

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@AmazonHelp So you are saying that I can't ever access Amazon again?

I'm not ringing Germany from the other side of the world.

I can't access the .de website because it asks for my account details, which I can't verify because the card is too old.

I don't even want a .de account!

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@AmazonHelp I don't live in the US, so it would be very expensive to ring your help number. Also my English is hard for Americans to understand.

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@sabaone @AllisonPearson Other countries have that system you decry. They still provide better health services than the NHS. Much better in most cases.

The NHS is too large to be run centrally in any case.

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@DrProudman At the time, she would have starved to death. Quite quickly too.

Who would be paying for her to get an education, given that she repudiated her family?

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@Antipro67288688 @CharlieDalton14 @Gemma4rights @djuric_zlatko A battle has to occur somewhere.

50,000 men died over the tiny village of Waterloo.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 You're combining dairy with beef. Very, very different.

But most importantly, most of the world's cows don't live in the US.

I'm not a big fan of US style farming btw. It would be outcompeted by open farming if the borders were opened, as they have fewer costs.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 Stop protectionist blocs, like the EU and NAFTA which refuses to buy the 3rd World's produce, so that those countries have markets. Then they can start to farm more efficiently.

Gaining extra land, especially marginal land, is no good if the extra produce can't be sold.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 Ah, the most efficient way.

Then it is getting rid of subsistence farms and replacing them with efficient farming. That need not be industrial, but requires machinery, irrigation etc.

Then Africa alone could feed the world.

China did it, and now produces surpluses.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 Yes, there is a lot of marginal land in the world. All the huge dry bits in the centres of the continents. Massive steppes, pampases and prairies.

The amount of really good cropping land (flat, watered, with transport links) isn't very big. That's all that graph shows.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 Very little meat is produced on factory farms. Even in the US they only fatten them up at the end. Most animals spend most of their lives on grass.

In NZ, Australia, Argentina etc the % factory farming is zero.

It's not economic, unless their are subsidies.

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@matryoshka_core @takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 Sure, which is why you have natural parks.

But do you want every marginal farm turned into wilderness? People still got to eat.

What that land can't be though, is cropped.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 The US tried to crop the prairies. All they got was the dust bowl. The USSR did the same, and also failed.

Land which doesn't get reasonable rain can support animals, but *cannot* be cropped.

You don't gain crop land by stopping animals husbandry.

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@BrentRenters You think adding more regulation is going to reduce the cost of housing?

Regulations are a cost. They make it more expensive for renter who, in the end, has to pay for it.

There's one cure for excessively expensive accommodation, and that is to build more of it.

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@takilburn @NutritionMadeS3 A NZ beef farmer puts his cows on the hills, and that's mostly it. They eat grass and he makes sure they are well. The energy involved is small.

That land could not be usefully cropped - far too hilly.

Same with places too dry for crops - pampas, prairie.

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@ossamaneh @GiveEmHellHorns @McFaul So in WWII the invaders made lightening gains, largely by surprise. Then there was so bitter fighting as the defenders mobilised and gained allied support. A city was surrounded, then captured. Then the attackers were thrown out. Got it.

Look like history is repeating alright.

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@AntDisgruntled @paktrades @Michael97453926 @RealCynicalFox You have no idea the manpower cost. It's a very closely guarded secret. What it isn't it anything like the vatnik propaganda numbers.

The area is difficult to supply, as the roads run the wrong way for Ukraine. The weather is not great.

But the advance continues, albeit slowly.