You are supposed to never have any other god before the Christian god at any moment. That means that if you pray to the Christian god every day of the year except for one day where you suddenly pray to another. Then during that day you put another god before the Christian god. Think of it like cheating in a relationship. Even if you are exclusive to your partner 99% of the time that 1% still counts as cheating.

It wasn’t too bad before in my opinion but this year there was a big drought in the Mediterranean and now it’s extremely expensive. Even butter is cheaper than olive oil now I’m afraid… I just try to use less of it. Speaking of butter there are now a few big studies out there showing that milk fat is not as bad as the saturated fats found in meat. But they are all funded by dairy companies so I don’t know if I can really trust them. It’s hard navigating the world of fats and health. Fats are good for you but it’s hard to know which ones are the good ones.

https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-the-studies-say

I found this post immensely helpful in describing the science behind the health effects of seed oils. But it remains to be said that saturated fat doesn’t seem like the best thing for you either. I use the mostly unsaturated oil olive oil nowadays.

Russia has been a horrible place to be a peasant for a long time. In most of Europe peasents gained a lot of freedoms after the black death. But in Russia peasents, or serfs as they were called, only suffered worse. The serfs in Russia couldn’t even marry or move without the permission of their lord. The lord, or boyar as it was called locally, had pretty much full ownership over you. Russia pretty much enslaved their whole population until the mid 1800s. Complete disregard for the life of the commoner has been a constant theme of Russian life for a long time and it arguably continues to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia?wprov=sfla1 Some dark but enlightening reading about the historical situation of peasents in Russia. Peasents were de facto enslaved there for far longer than anywhere else in Europe. I can’t imagine living through such a time. Dedicating your whole existence and work to serving some fat boyar who cares nothing about you. At any time you could get drafted for a deadly war which you probably are not going to be returning alive from. This arguably still happens there today.