Olipop might have pretty high distribution, I see them in normal supermarkets and places like Target and Costco now. I don't live in either of the places you mention.
However, Olipop has sugar alcohols as a sweetener, which give me gastrointestinal distress after only two cans. Soiling yourself is a good disincentive for drinking a lot of soda.
Ehh those are a crutch, I'm talking zero sugar at all. It doesn't have to be bougie or artisanal, just a good variety of tea at affordable prices would be a good start. Making it "fancy" and expensive just defeats the purpose.
True, but I meant in South Africa, SA is the most used. Less so with RSA or ZAR. ZA is somewhat used but SA (I would say) dominates in conversation and in written text.
I don't know! I do know that before ~2007 a passport wasn't needed to travel within North America, and that some of the growth since then is because of the relatively new passport requirement ("Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative").
> As far as the "landscape" - the whole country is a giant meat factory swimming in cattle feces; the landscape was ruined centuries ago.
Love this comment so much. And it's true!
I grew up in Ireland and was immersed in the "everything in Ireland is the best" mentality. I think it was when I started regularly visiting the Hudson Valley in New York, which is mostly still wooded, that I really realized the "countryside" in Ireland is just manmade. It's not natural. The whole island was trees.
My understanding is that you've left Ireland; hope you're making your peace with the problems of the country now that you don't have to deal with them as much!
I live in the Netherlands, which has plenty of issues in its own right, but it's been a better place to raise kids. Finding a place to live here was easier, which is kind of insane considering how bad the housing crisis is in NL, and my kids can bike to school safely.
I really like Ireland. I think it's an amazing place. But it's really, really, really badly run. And it seems like most policymaking (like this, or rent control, or help to buy, etc) was built on vibes instead of logic.
The comment "With UBI, people can more easily move from expensive cities if housing is not affordable, and then rents and prices must adjust" suggested people leave expensive cities. In Ireland this generally means moving to rural areas and commuting, though there are also smaller towns you could commute from.
Using more energy is not itself "wasteful". For example, the US spends a bunch of extra energy on air conditioning, and as a result less older people die of heat deaths in the summer compared to Europe (and of course the population at large is generally more comfortable).
It’s actually a trend since 1980s. Things like deindustrialization and financialization, outsourcing (which collapsed the unions), deregulation (incentivizing externalities primarily felt by the working class - the 2008 collapse, environmental deregulation in Louisiana, etc), inflation (which benefits those with assets and harms those without), tax cuts for the wealthy. The wealth gap grows which means assets like housing shift to asset holders (the wealthy). This in turn allows asset holders to increase cashflows from the working class to the ownership class in a feedback loop.
E.g. https://drinkolipop.com/