There are a lot of religions in the world.

[Citation needed].

As a religious/spiritual person I agree, and I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. In science we understand that our models are all wrong, and only the next most accurate representation of a part of reality until a newer discovery or testing allows us to make even more refined models.

All religions can benefit from an application of the scientific method.

Would you care to elaborate on what you feel like when you try living on plants? What do you tend to eat? How long does it take before you start feeling like shit?

Judging by your last comment about it “not hitting the same” my initial thought is that the issue might not even be nutritional, possibly more psychological/subjective.

Mint is literally a slightly modified Ubuntu.

I don’t, to be perfectly honest the builtin controls are the only part I don’t like. Too heavy, too bulky, terrible dpad, and for me it’s so uncomfortable to use the LR bumpers that I almost always remap them to the back paddles.

The sheer amount of changes that occur on a plant-based diet are too numerous for me to be able to pinpoint any specific thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if I do get more vitamin a these days, as well as quite a few other important micronutrients that I may or may not have been low on.

And that’s not even getting into the vast topic of phytonutrients.

Or just use flatpak or Appimage.

Is the Snap backend available and open-source? If not, then it’s antithetical to software freedom because Canonical is trying to close their users into a walled garden in the ways that Apple and Google are with their app stores.

There are plenty of software packaging systems that work just as well or better than Snap, and promote software freedom (Flatpak, Appimage, or even just traditional package managers). By using and promoting Snap over these, you are working against the growth of digital rights.

It’s impossible to have a fully free system?

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

But more to your point, it’s a false dichotomy. Even before the latest changes to the Debian install media, for years it was maybe unintuitive but still easy enough to just choose the “nonfree” install iso. That one would automatically include all the proprietary bits that are necessary for a fully functional Linux system.

But now those nonfree parts are in the Debian install by default, so there really is just nothing that you get from Ubuntu that can’t just as easily work in Debian - especially since everyone is moving toward flatpaks, and appimages anyway.

This.

But you’re also promoting Ubuntu’s continued use, when Snaps are just one example of Canonical being antithetical to free software values. Mint is all the benefits of Ubuntu without that garbage, so why not that?

Snap should be reason enough that everyone should abandon Ubuntu, especially when Mint is right there. The last thing we need is to make Linux more like Android+Google Play.

The last straw with consoles for me was when they all started charging money regularly just to play online multiplayer games.

My Steam Deck makes for a better console-like experience than any of the major consoles, and more. I have zero interest in going back to Sony or especially Nintendo’s scams.

The thing about these salt substitutes is that more studies are needed, just because there’s few of them. The evidence is very promising though, and people switching to these substitutes has been shown to distinctly lower blood pressure, and appears to make a difference for all-cause mortality.

Experts and industry leaders are looking into incorporating added potassium salt into their foods, so it’s probably only a matter of time before virtually everything that everyone eats will have lower sodium and higher potassium.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.123.21343

When something needs to be said, it needs to be said.

Sorry, but this is dangerous misinformation that you’re spreading. Refined carbohydrates are harmful and can contribute to the various forms of metabolic syndrome. However one thing being bad doesn’t automatically make something good, and there is still no single factor in heart disease that’s more causally linked than saturated fats. To demonize sugar and say fats don’t play the most significant role is about equivalent with being a climate change denier.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OkqWdY5_2-8

They’re somewhat more on the frontier of nutritional science, but no other interventions out there have had as promising of results as Esselstyn’s and Ornish’s lifestyle medicine practices - both of which call for reductions or even eliminations of cooking oil that is considered radical by most people’s standards. But their results speak for themselves.

https://www.dresselstyn.com/site/

https://ornish.com/

I don’t blame you for not knowing any better, there’s a lot of persistent myths and outright lies about veganism, plant-based lifestyles, and nutrition. But you are spreading misinformation again, about protein. Our society’s obsession with protein has little to do with science, and a lot to do with marketing. In the first place the vast majority of people do not need nearly as much protein as they think they do. It’s so easy to get adequate protein even on a plant-based diet, that as long as you’re at least mostly eating real food and getting enough calories, you are getting enough protein without even having to worry about it.

Even the whole “plants don’t have complete proteins” is a myth. Just about all plants have all essential amino acids. What the protein combining myth points to is that the amino acid ratios in plants are a little bit different than the ratios in our muscle tissues, with some plants being low in a key amino, and other plants being high in that amino but also low in another. Getting what we need is as easy as being sure to eat a variety of plants. A person does not even need to make sure they’re eating rice and beans in the same meal - they could do just as well by either eating a larger helping of one or the other, and/or eating one and then the other at another time or day.

The big takeaway here is to consider that maybe your perspective on plant-based lifestyles is being informed in the same way as if someone who only ever ran Windows started trying to tell you what it’s like to use Linux. Maybe it’s worth checking out the perspectives of people who actually have experience with the thing and know what they’re talking about.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0aGluZyB5b3Uga25vdyBhYm91dCBwcm90ZWluIGlzIHdyb25n

I understand that everyone has different circumstances that make a plant-based transition easier or harder, or maybe even entirely unfeasible, and that’s okay. We’re okay as long as we’re doing what we can with what we have.

On the other hand consider trying to shift your perspective on it. I commented in another thread about the remarkable benefits of going plant-based for my depression, and the thing to understand here is that going plant-based can have near-miraculous benefits for a wide range of things like that. So consider the possibility that a lot of what might be making it hard to switch is that the consumption of animal products is keeping everyone in suppressed, unmotivated, lethargic, or even outright depressed states of mind.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but instead of seeing a plant-based transition as a burden, consider that working through the challenges might be just the medicine that a person needs to reach a state of mind where, say, things like home cooking begin to feel possible again.

Again I want to be clear - I know there are circumstances where it’s not realistically possible for a person to go fully vegan, and not realistically possible for a person to do their own cooking. We should be seeking ways to fix that on a societal level. However what I’m telling you is that what everyone thinks is possible is being perceived through the lens of lifestyles that are making everything that much harder - working through that tough transition to being fully plant-based expands the range of what we think is possible. Life becomes significantly more doable on plants.

Oh, and for both health and ethics there is no meaningful difference between which particular animals you choose to eat. For example you’re still progressing heart disease regardless of whether you’re consuming 29 grams of saturated fat, or “only” 23 grams. And a chicken is every bit as capable of contemplating their own suffering as a cow is.

One of the things that’s too often overlooked is that subtractions might do more to help than additions. If you’re taking a host of vitamins, herbal remedies, and strange supplements and still feeling like shit, it’s likely because all the medicine in the world won’t heal if you’re still taking poison.

Not to be that person, but I am fully convinced that eating animal products plays a decisive role in depression and other mood disorders. Not only is there science pointing in that direction, but it matches my own personal experience as well as what every other plant-based person I’ve known has experienced as well. Before the switch I was so far in a constant background noise of depression that I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to live or not.

I’ve tried a lot of things, with only ever small or temporary results at best. Going plant-based, within weeks of staying consistent with it, marked the first time in my life when I actually began to actively want to live (even in spite of our capitalist hellscape). That desire to live has endured since then to the point that it’s tempting to say I might be cured of depression.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/anti-inflammatory-diet-for-depression/

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-boost-brain-bdnf-levels-for-depression-treatment/

Two main problems I have with cast iron - the care that they take is too much effort, and their constant risk of rusting if they’re not coated in oil at all times is just too much bullshit to deal with for a kitchen tool. The other issue is that I try as best as I can to do oil-free cooking, and cast iron is antithetical to that.

A baking sheet with parchment paper, in a toaster oven, is significantly more convenient.