Iirc the USA did investigate making them during the cold war but concluded that the (very real) benefits - such as the ability to recall a missile after launching - weren’t worth cooking US citizens and allies with radiation from an unshielded nuclear reactor flying at mach 3 just above the surface; they planned to fly as low as 150m!

Their initial plans basically were to build a nuclear-ramjet “missile” that could fly for several days straight carrying dozens of nuclear warheads, autonomously dropping them on “enemies”. The big problem was that it’d have to fly over the USA and/or western Europe in order to reach the USSR.

Read up on Project Pluto if you wanna know more!

Actually I’m not from the Americas (though one of my ancestors did decide to leave Florida in the 1830s or 40s cos he had very dark coloured skin).

And I disagree that there’s a need to “pick a side” - both “sides” will stomp on smaller countries no matter what because that’s what authoritarian imperialistic powers do.

Treating minorities better than the USA isn’t exactly a high bar.

My country also treats minorities better than the USA, it’s easy to get into uni, celebrates diversity, has an alright social welfare system and socialised healthcare, does the occasional infrastructure project etc.

Thanks for teaching me that I’m actually living in a socialist paradise rather than a poor, neoliberal capitalist, physically isolated island where private corporations are free to wreck the environment for profit!

I’ve legitimately got no idea how they can fix their countries (or if they can even be fixed) as I’m more focused on my own country. I do not want my country to copy either the USA or China, and I resent the close relationship my government maintains with both of those oppressive states.

The USA pressured our government into performing illegal searches/arrests to favour their corporations, and the CCP has repeatedly been caught infiltrating our parliament. Those big authoritarian countries just bully smaller states to get what they want, and we need to stop pretending that it’s morally justified and normal. It’s not okay.

Yeah and? I don’t want to live in an oppressive shithole, doesn’t matter to me if they became oppressive because they were copying China, the USA, Nigeria, the UK or whatever - they’d still be oppressive!

I honestly didn’t think that saying “I don’t like authoritarian capitalism” would be such a controversial statement…

Yes, exactly. Most people don’t want their governments to copy imperialistic authoritarian capitalist shitholes like China, the USA, or Russia.

The American government being awful doesn’t mean that everybody else should copy them and be as awful as they can.

Can you prove that China isn’t an oppressive authoritarian capitalist state?

A Chinese corporation openly tested those spy balloons over my country a decade ago (allegedly just for monitoring livestock), why is it so unbelievable that they’d use a more polished version on their biggest geopolitical rival?

Kinda hard to have a stable food system when an imperial power is stealing most of your food in a rather genocidal fashion!

Pretty sure that’s actually just a reference to the film Soylent Green…

Back during WW2 we made some shitty tanks by welding a bit of corrugated iron and some bren guns to tractors cos that was the best we could produce in-country!

Climate activists have been trying to fix things through peaceful, unobtrusive protests for decades now. It’s achieved sweet fuck all and we’re almost out of time.

I just kinda liked beehaw when I was first switching to lemmy - was one of the first few people to join the Te Wai Pounamu community when it initially got started a few months back though!

I’m not confident saying for sure without reading the actual paper - it really depends on how PPO interacts with the flavanols, but at the end of the day denaturing the PPO with heat should make it a non-issue. Keep in mind though that bananas are far from the only smoothie ingredient with PPO!

I’m not in the right headspace to read any studies on it but based on my understanding of how food works on a chemical level I’d say it’s a safe bet to say that the difference in preparation is mostly down to heat and steeping time.

If you steep for longer it gives the water more time to absorb flavanols.

If you use a temperate that is too high you’ll denature or destroy the flavanols, whereas if you use a temperature that’s too low they may not dissolve into the water as readily necessitating a longer steeping time.

Since giving waterboarding a go I’ve found myself disgusted by any government that allows the use of waterboarding on anybody - governments that encourage it are even worse, and the way the Americans handled Gitmo is fucking disgraceful.

New Zealand!

Nah, New Zealand. Got plenty in common though - we still share a king and all that!

Ugh can’t even come to lemmy to escape real life - spent most of Monday morning denaturing/counteracting PPO in my uni food science lab!

Polyphenol oxidase is the enzyme responsible for browning in shit like apples and potatoes when cut and exposed to air.

I haven’t read the study linked in the OP yet (and I’m far too sad and intoxicated for it right now) but in other fruits/vegetables it’s pretty easy to deactivate PPO through application of some combination of Vitamin C (converts quinones back to their phenol form and reacts with oxygen before it can get to the PPO) and heat (which actually denatures the PPO enzymes).

When we were denaturing PPO in potatoes in a lab setting we simply blanched the sliced potatoes in 90°C water for 5 minutes before placing it in an ice bath until cool.

I used to think that until I tried going without my prescribed cbd oil and I definitely noticed that I was a bit more anxious and had more unwanted side effects from the flower that I’m also prescribed!