Umami is just a Japanese neologism for savoury. In my food science course at uni the two terms are used interchangeably.

Nope, the anise/liquorice flavour mostly comes from anisole being detected by scent receptors in the nose/mouth, not by taste receptors. The 6th taste that the article is discussing is triggered by ammonium chloride and would probably best be described as an ammonium taste - kinda like how savoury taste mostly comes from the activation of nucleotide and glutamate taste receptors.

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!

Yeah but my pleasure is more important than the environment

Nah g holocaust deniers, nazis, tankies, homophobes, and all authoritarian capitalists can get fucked. The way that countries like Canada, the USSR, the UK, and the USA protected “useful” Nazis after WW2 is disgraceful, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with modern Switzerland shutting down homophobic neo-nazis.

Doesn’t Thailand have a military coup every few years? When I visited back in 2014 there were signs all over the airport telling tourists not to join the protests against the latest military coup or you’ll end up in a Thai jail!

NZCTU is a good place to start if you’re a kiwi.

I’m a member of the E Tū union which is currently negotiating an industry-wide Fair Pay Agreement on behalf of all commercial cleaners in the country!

Hopefully they don’t just replace the USD with a different flavour of the same shit!

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.

Wasn’t Google Photos super racist a few years back?

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?

Eh the authoritarian capitalists who love the CCP generally seem to embrace the fact that China is authoritarian - they see it as a good thing!

That’s likely one of the factors, but far from the only one; the internet makes it easier to expose the bad shit their government is doing, which has coincided with a rise in religious extremism and nationalism.

If you look at news coverage of the Americans over the past 20 or so years you’ll see a similar trend despite them supposedly being our allies.

Eh a decent number of those holy Indian cows end up as exported leather…

So you’d be chill with a bunch of white bogans moving to China then marching down the street while chanting crap about how they want a Christian nation? You’re fine with the USA assassinating foreigners who say stuff they dont like? Are you on board with the Bush/Trump era anti-islamic oppression?