garfaagel

I don't expect a conservative backlash, on the contrary Francis's Pontificate has weakened the conservative wing considerably. Given that 80% of the voting cardinals were appointed by Pope Francis, I would expect them to elect a successor that continues in the same direction, perhaps even a more radical one.

During his pontificate Francis also made a lot of efforts to bring in new groups into the corridors of power. Not only by his appointment of cardinals, but also e.g. by reforming the Curia with Praedicate evangelium.

All fun and games until it happens with nazism instead of slime.

See also Magna Carta (An Embroidery). It's an 1.5 m × 13 m embroidery of the entire Wikipedia article on Magna Carta.

When I first heard about it, it seemed like an absurd waste of time, but it turned out to be quite neat. The documentary video explains the project pretty well (07:39 long).

cal≠kcal

1 gallon gasoline contains 31 million small calories, while the human caloric requirements are given in large calories. 1000 small calories = 1 large calorie. So the calculations are off by a factor of 1000. The confusion stems from the fact that both are commonly referred to as "calories", for some stupid reason.

So in reality you would have to drink another gallon in just 2-3 weeks.

The figure 80% needs to be nuanced a bit. The reason for such a drastic decrease is that there is a lot of forest land in Sweden. In 1990, the emissions were 71,6 Mt CO2eq, while the absorption was 51,39 Mt CO2eq. In 2023, the emissions were 44,22 Mt CO2eq and the absorption 41,22 Mt CO2eq. The net emissions did indeed decrease >80%, but that was because forests made them low in the first place. If we look the emissions only, they only decreased 40%, which is still a good achievement, especially since the population has grown, but far from 80%. Source, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency

So to a large extent the amazing figure is due to geographic luck. It's not very easy for other countries to copy this solution unless they also are lucky enough to have lots of forests.

It might also be worth noting that if you look at Sweden's consumption based-emissions instead, they are about twice as high as the emissions withing Swedish borders. Ourworldindata publishes consumption-based emissions for all countries, and by that measure Swedish emissions are low by European standards, but many countries have lower emissions and Sweden is by no means an outlier. (Note, numbers don't agree with those from Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, probably due to different methodology.)

Just to be clear, the story about the couch does not appear to be true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jd-vance-couch-cushions/

TL;DR Far-right on the rise more or less everywhere based on the estimates, green parties on the decline. Let's just hope it will not get too dire consequences in the five years to come.

I found this map of dominant tree species in Germany while investigating it:

https://atlas.thuenen.de/layers/geonode:Dominant_Species_Class

Indeed, there is are significant difference between the maps. Perhaps most notably in Baden-Würtemberg where there seems to be a lot of fir. But I also think there is a a clear correlation between the maps. I also find it interesting to see the correlation between the suitable habitat for oakwood and the absence of forests.

The original ElectroBoom?

The graphical abstract is even better than the title:

I use an addon called Chameleon that creates a random user agent that changes periodically.

Cervantes did it first: