Ok. The EPA estimates that the average American uses 82 gallons a day as of 2015, which comes out to 310L.

EPA link

By contrast, McGill University cites that the average Canadian uses around 329L a day.

McGill water usage page

Montreal, specifically as an unmetered water city, estimates 327L a day.

City of Montreal annual water usage report

I’ll grant you that Montreal does seem to have slightly higher usage per capita. But I’m not sure the extra pain in the ass of managing water meter infrastructure would be meaningful to reduce water usage to be in line with metered locations, when we’re talking about a difference of 17L a day.

That’s not empirically true. I pay for water as a flat rate in Quebec as part of my municipal taxes, as do all of my neighbors, and I don’t see people engaging in flagrant water wastage. Lawns routinely go yellow during the hottest parts of the summer, I rarely see people washing their cars, and low flush toilets are getting increasingly common.

Anecdotally, it would seem so.

I think it depends on the root of the hatred. An awful lot of hatred comes from ignorance, and when people dispell the ignorance, the hatred follows.

But sometimes the hatred is so fundamental to someone’s lived experiences that even if it’s obviously wrong, it’s absolutely true to them. In those cases, I suspect it would be harder to let go of it.

The recipe is sort of a mishmash of influences. It derives from an ancestral recipe, but the use of butter comes from Marcella Hazan, and the bouillon powder from Hong Kong influence. It’s a salt and MSG umami bomb, what’s not to like?

This takes me less time than to boil the pasta:

Half an onion, minced Knob of butter 1 L of a good passata Tablespoon of chicken bouillon powder Olive oil to taste Salt, pepper, chili flakes to taste

Sauté the onion in butter until translucent. Add in the passata and bouillon powder. Add olive oil and seasonings to taste. That’s it.

That can’t be universally true - you can buy meat from independent farms. Maybe you’re correct about logistics at scale, but at the individual farm level, you can definitely purchase meat.

Random link from Google.

That’s a really good question. Part of the problem, of course, is that the game is rigged: consider how difficult it is to buy food that doesn’t feed the Nestle war chest.

As a society, I think there are moves in the right direction - I just stumbled across something called Community Wealth Building, which is very cool, for example.

But as a private individual? That’s harder. I’d love it if there were an Amazon equivalent out there that sourced exclusively from worker owned co-ops, or at least unionized businesses, but as it is, I’m coming up dry…

A friend of mine, her father was a bagging clerk at a grocery store for literally his entire life. He was able to support two kids and a spouse on that salary, and retired maybe ten years ago.

Broadly speaking, yes, having a mentor is a good idea. However, finding a mentor, a good one, is pretty challenging.

I feel like the pragmatic solution is just to try and find a good team. A good team will provide a learning environment for all of the best practices and technical skills.

There are a few mentor sites, but honestly, I’ve had pretty hit or miss results with them. You’d likely have to do some trial and error before finding the right fit.