For comparison, in Australia, gas and induction are at price parity (a budget 4-hotplate setup costs about $200-300 either way). You can buy a single-plate induction cooker for $50 that plugs into the wall and has a temperature configurable from 60-200 C.

Edit: Stopped markdown converting Centigrate to Copyright symbol

PS: Also, electricity is cheaper than gas in Australia, because we have so much rooftop solar, electricity is soon going to be free during the midday peak.

Induction is better for both the global and indoor environment. In some countries landlords aren’t allowed to install gas appliances anymore because of the long term effects on the tenants’ lungs.

Also some newer ones have temp sensors so you can keep a thing at the exact temp you need.

I swear by induction cooking (for both soapmaking and food) for this reason - precise temperature control, even low temperatures that aren’t even possible to get on a gas stove.

• Setting the heater to exactly 40C means you can melt chocolate reliably, without the hassle of a bain marie
• At 60C you can combine cetostearyl alcohol and vegetable oil for moisturizer without boiling off your glycerine
• At 80C you can cook soap to trace without overcooking it and making it lumpy
• At 100C you can evaporate moisture and reduce a sauce with minimal effect on other ingredients
• At 100-160C you can cook a sugar syrup to a precisely desired level of concentration (as the boiling point goes up as the concentration increases) for making different types of candy

Aluminium for instance doesn’t work.

A lot of cheap pans I’ve seen at (AU) Kmart, Big W, Ikea etc are aluminum with a teflon-esque coating, but with a carbon-steel circle attached to the bottom that makes it induction compatible.

Would a cast iron skillet work on one of those?

Definitely, you just need pans with a ferromagnetic bottom, so cast iron works very well.

The outer material doesn’t matter - only the base. Many cheap induction-compatible pans are made mostly of aluminum with a non-stick coating, but containing a layer of ferromagnetic material in the base that will heat up on an induction stove.

If you’re not from Australia - there is a lot of opposition from farming and rural communities in general to renewable energy infrastructure. We’ve had lots of issues with rural groups organising misinformation-fuelled intimidation of people building renewables. There is a need to counter that with more information about how climate change is going to be a lot worse for farming and the rural landscape.

Some background in this article from our ABC: Dangerous anti-renewables rhetoric, bullying and intimidation creates growing chasm in rural communities

There is more background to the comparison in Australia. There is a lot of opposition from farming and rural communities in general to renewable energy infrastructure. We’ve had lots of issues with rural groups organising misinformation-fuelled intimidation of people building renewables.

Another article from our ABC: Dangerous anti-renewables rhetoric, bullying and intimidation creates growing chasm in rural communities:

Hostility towards farmers hosting renewable energy projects is increasing, fracturing rural communities.

A Senate inquiry received submissions detailing threats of intimidation and violence amid worsening rhetoric.

Protest homepage: https://www.risingtide.org.au/

“Worlds largest coal port” should be specific enough, surely.

It’s not the direct effect of delaying a few ships for a day, it’s the media coverage. Rising Tide has become a well known protest in Australia and it gets international news every year.

Also - possibly most important - it helps get on board the people who complain about climate protests disrupting “ordinary people” instead of the fossil fuel corporations directly. It’s much better PR to be seen to inconvenience the conglomerates.

In the 2025 summer, Climate change-driven summer heat caused 16,500 additional deaths across Europe, study estimates

The rapid analysis found that climate change was responsible for around 68% of the 24,400 estimated heat-related deaths this summer. Warmer conditions, amplified by human-driven climate change, increased daily temperatures by an average of 2.2°C, with peaks of up to 3.6°C.

The report highlights how even small increases in temperature can result in thousands of avoidable deaths – with older adults particularly vulnerable. People aged 65 and over made up 85% of the estimated deaths.

The formal report: Summer heat deaths in 854 European cities more than tripled due to climate change

“Tomato” seems to be a component of a food bank logistics system called “Rootable” which may be fork of an older project called “Food Rescue Robot” (gitlab, github).

The purpose of these (and other projects like MEANS database) is to match up donors with recipients and schedule deliveries when they and the volunteer delivery are all available. This way food donations can be transferred quickly without having to have a warehouse full of almost expired food.

The tomato name collision is probably coincidental.

This seems to be a component of a system called “Rootable” and would be better to link directly to that.

https://rootable.org/

The best bit, about a third of the way through:

… and so we end up sounding like a nineties era sociology textbook and there’s this trope of like toxic masculinity. And every time you hear the word masculinity among people on the left, it’s usually. It usually comes with that toxic trope. Now, if there’s not another option about a non-toxic masculinity, then at some point you’re basically condemning a whole group of people. And if you don’t offer them anything, why is it surprising that they’re gonna go in a different direction?

AFAIK (I’m not a botanist) it’s true of many larger trees that they use more oxygen than they produce and emit more CO2 than they consume. It’s the biosphere that the large trees support that does a lot of the carbon sinking - mosses, ferns, vines, etc.

As a rule of thumb, the greater the ratio of woody mass to leafy mass the more the ratio tilts away from being a carbon sink, as the whole lifeform has to undergo aerobic respiration but only the leaves participate in photosynthesis.

The word “farmers” is widely used to refer to Kulaks (people who own farm land, but employ others to do most of the hands-on work of farming it) as well as the farm workers themselves.

The Resistance? Air Purifiers? Carbon Commandos? Pollution Patrol?