ForestBoard

Well, I for one happen to unironically enjoy the taste of fluoride, as long as it's in small amounts. That aside, fluoridated water doesn't taste that much different (we've had it before, it was only removed a few years ago), and it's better for dental health. I'd much rather have accessible dental care, but that's not an option right now, so I'll take what I can get.

Cameroi wrote:

what needs to be put in the water is something to lower the human birthrate.

There's people around that believe adding fluoride to the water again will actively kill babies, so depending on who you ask, fluoridation is the answer.

Forest Virginia wrote:

Well water is full of natural vitamins and and minerals. Municipal water is essentially recycled sewage with chemicals added... Sorry to ruin your next glass of water!

I'm going to have to strongly disagree, having been to facilities that both treat drinking water and waste water (admittedly, the waste water was a lot less in depth, we more just saw the end product than the process itself). Our water treatment plants draw water directly from rivers, with no possibility of sewage water getting in, treated or otherwise. Even then, waste water goes through a minimum of five filtration steps, all completely different, before it is cleared to either rejoin the river system or be used in biofuel/fertilizer production. It's much cleaner than water you could find in the wild (not that wells are "in the wild").

As for the natural vitamins and minerals vs added chemicals, they're the exact same. There is no nutritional difference between calcium that's "naturally occurring" and calcium that's "added chemicals". The only difference is treated water has some degree of control over the chemicals they actually add, and they're monitoring amounts of it in the water, so they can consult nutritionists to make sure there's a healthy amount of the stuff. That, and the water doesn't have contaminants.

There is an argument to be made about well water being able to help your body consume things that are less clean, but I think such arguments are nonsense. I'd rather just not have contaminants in things than expose myself to them to be able to resist them, and most well owners agree. Water from wells is usually treated to some extent, but usually just with a filter, so I trust the municipal treatment plants a more. That aside, I've had quite a bit of well water and I've never had any issues, so anecdotally, it's not really a good argument either.

Rivienland wrote:

Random update, but my roommate is buying a house and I'm going to be living long term with them. We're both excited cause we are planning to do so many outdoor hobbies and green projects to the house: gardening, composting, solar panels (still need to do research into that), zero waste, and more.

I've been following this activist recently, Rob Greenfield, and he makes a lot of good points on living a more sustainable lifestyle. Guess I just wanted to share that with everyone. Hope everyone is doing well!

- Rivienland

That sounds really cool! I am not old enough to own my own (ha) apartment, let along a house, but when I eventually get my own house/apartment I certainly want to do all that. My family composts and we have a good amount of plants inside and out, but I've wanted for a while to get solar panels, a garden, hydroponics even. Unfortunately because of where the trees are positioned in our yard (I live in a very sylvan area) getting solar panels would be kinda useless since for so much of the day they'd be blocked by the trees, and I do not have much of a green thumb, and hydroponics/vertical farms are expensive, but I still hold out hope.

But first I suppose I have to settle whether I'd rather live in a city or a town, and whether I'd eventually want to live in a standalone house or nice apartments or a non-standalone house

depends on climate and soil, lettuce wouldn't grow worth anything where i furst ever had a garden. cabages did, and root crops.
peaches, pears, appricots, and wild blackberries in abundance. no luck with tomatoes there either. that was up in the sierras in acid pine soil.
down in the valley tomatoes and tea roses grew like crazy, and strawberries. up in oregon it was thimbal and salmon berries. different places all different. need a good reference book for what grows best where. can't rely on what to expect somewhere else. most kitchen herbs are weeds though, that grow like them, things like rosemarry and mint and thime. need to be grown isolated to not take over from everything else.

Ruinenlust wrote:

I wonder what an age spread of the RL people behind the nations of Forest would look like, but I'd suspect that it's more similar to real life than most regions. I think it's awesome that we have such a spread of people. It makes us closer to a real, organic community to have a wide range of age groups.

I sometimes wonder if I'll ever make it to 73, haha. It's a long way from 28, and a lot can happen in the world and to me in the intervening years...

I'm also curious! I like Kepler-0085's idea of a poll!

Edit before posting:

I know, I share too much of negativity as of lately and the following post is the next part of my previous chapters of rant. But it all outrages and saddens me a lot and I feel to share it with more rational people that reside here in Forest rather than the ones who usually inhabit the places around me IRL. However, today’s topic is about a more controversial, sensitive matter. Please note, I don’t intend to offend anyone’s religious feelings except for those who abuse their faith themselves.

Today the satanic bible was labelled extremist in Russia and therefore everyone who shares/publicly quotes/defends/discusses it has a legal reason to be fined or imprisoned. Some random woman applied to a court being deeply insulted by this book’s content so the state which claims to be non-affiliated with any religion now once again stands with Christians and their dictate. Most of the haters haven’t even read anything about the book.

So, all this happening during active misogynic activity by mentioned early “male state” and their widespread supporters. And in spite of all of it that woman asks to ban a book which promotes her rights for independence instead of applying to ban a movement which literally fights to get her rights abandoned at the rate of 100%.

Doesn’t she feel insulted by this massive social movement that calls her “a property of men” whose only purpose is “to give birth to men’s children” and “cook dinners”? No. Does she feel insulted by chapters that promote sexual freedom and personal space, ban murderings (including animals) and disrespect, and just rephrase general humanist theories and worldviews? Yes. The Satanic bible is a piece of non-religious banter philosophy and a set of views on social matters, its author openly admits that his books are written in this quasi-religious form on a very simple purpose: to attract more attention. It’s harsh yet humanistic rationalism made to look like a scripture.

So, while there are direct threats to certain groups of people in this country (including women, Asians, and gays), the state justice discusses philosophy book as a national threat and approves as such, on a serious note. Not to mention that mass pop culture has presented the followers of LaVey’s devil as blood-hungry monsters and thus it inspired pathetic fanatics to enjoy this dark and rather “cooler” image of dark magic instead of leaning towards a boring, disappointing book that literally says “you can’t sacrifice anyone, and don’t you ever dare to touch a child or an innocent animal”. “Who needs that, right? The TV knows it better”. It’s easier to be against this image instead of trying to learn what you are fighting against.

I find the Satanic Bible a precious example of 20th century’s philosophy. You can clearly see the influence of cultural changes in [American] society, the first moves towards freedom and acceptance in the world where you can still hear the echoes of WW2. The changes LaVey is talking about and the old, outdated social ideas he mercilessly condemns are direct indicators of the general mood of the time. He describes the times he wishes to come without knowing that they are that close. He has influenced mass culture and thinking, whether you like it or not.

Banning such books is banning the history. On the top of it: you don’t see the book on local store shelves. It’s not on sale, it’s not officially published anymore. It doesn’t appear here and there and people don’t get tired of annoying presence of this philosophy. Why this bothers so many fragile souls? There are two important thoughts of the same idea:

• A person of a strong faith won’t be freaked out by something that could possibly weaken one’s beliefs;

• As well as self-confident men won’t be afraid of gays because their own strategic bottom part of the body is secure and safe.

People are tired. I often hear it in public places that this witch-hunt is something they don’t believe in anymore. The justifications don’t work (either religious or socio-political). Hatred doesn’t inspire the general public. The pandemic is cruel and harsh, the economy is falling apart, and there are way many more actual problems. Then why do we get distracted by such extremely unnecessary wars against iffy “threats”? Don’t we all have other things to do?

Einswenn wrote:

Does your government host lotteries among newly-vaccinated people to win valuable prizes?

For three months, we had monthly lotteries on a provincial level for $1.000.000 CAD. Actually found out about it from my anti-vax parents who figured I should at least get a chance to win money from the actions they disagree with. The government is also giving $100 to every new person who gets vaccinated, but that didn't actually increase vaccination rate by too much. It mostly had the opposite effect of making people even more suspicious of the vaccine, because they think that because our healthcare is free, having more people in ICUs from COVID doesn't cost the government a lot of money I guess.

We also have a vaccine passport program that's gone into effect. To go to a lot of places, you need to either be vaccinated or have a negative COVID test from within the past 72 hours, specifically a rapid test, which runs about $40 apiece because only private businesses offer them. If a company doesn't want to do this program, they have to follow all of the mask on at all times, social distancing, and so forth regulations. So most restaurants and in-office companies are following this program now. So you can either get vaccinated and get $100, or pay $80 a week to be able to go to work. Surprisingly, that's not good enough an incentive.

Einswenn wrote:

Does your government host lotteries among newly-vaccinated people to win valuable prizes?

We have a vaccination lottery for $1 million AUD that will be drawn in early November. To register, you have to have your second dose by the draw date (which means you can register even if the second dose is only booked). Everyone in that draw is also registered for a daily lottery of a $1000 AUD gift card (to where? Honestly don't know) for the day they register. It'd be pretty cool if I won, but not getting my hopes up.

Einswenn wrote:

Speaking of which, would you be comfortable If your victory becomes a public information so everyone knows your name and that you won the money?

I think that outing myself as a sudden millionaire would be inadvisable, as difficult as it would be to tell basically no one about it. I can only imagine how many people I barely or even don't know would suddenly want to be my friend...

Kepler-0085 wrote:

I stand to my opinion, united Russia shouldn't really exist.

Do you mean the ruling party?

Hey everyone. Sorry about the lack of updates, things have been super busy.
I'll try to post something by Saturday

Northern Wood wrote:

I appreciate you taking the time to post all of that, and have generally enjoyed reading most of your viewpoints about your country that you've previously posted to the RMB. I am a great admirer of Russian culture, though lack any real nuance of the day-to-day lives and feelings of those "on the street" today. It genuinely saddens me to hear the state of things.

Oh, that’s nice to know, thank you. Actually, even with my constant rant and rage about many things caused by the local mentality I can also name various advantages or nice parts of living in this country. Your response led me to thoughts to post something positive to balance my general complaints one day later.

Ziotah and Riverside wrote:

Any idea of what we are doing for Z-Day this year? Same as usual? Going to be a challenge again like last year without lockdown capability I imagine.

I think we can actually password the region (unless you know something I don't, which is very possible), but that doesn't mean we should. We handled things pretty well last year with open borders, and I don't see why we shouldn't go for it again. That said, I also wouldn't be opposed to having everyone embrace and becoming a vessel by which plague spreads, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Whatever we do, I'm on board, and I might bring some puppets along for the ride. I know a lot of people don't like puppets, so I'll not do a huge chain, but I'm still debating whether or not to bring a few so I can rapidfire cure missiles. It definitely benefits the region stat-wise, but I don't want to impede on other's fun.