50% of the value for a “byproduct” is a lot, isn’t it?

I guess my main point is that we do not need to push the soy cake through guts of animals cramped in industrial farms, losing around 90% of the energy captured by soy and creating public health dangers. If used the soy directly as a food source, we wouldn’t need all the expansion. Even the soy cake can be used for totally healthy and tasty products, such as soy milk or meat alternatives. It would, anyway, reduce the stress on land use substantially. Simply because so much energy is lost in the whole feeding, caging, killing process of factory farming.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/protein-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Interesting point!

In line with the uses of soy globally (Figure 3), the greatest driver underlying the production increase in South America is most likely the pig and poultry industry’s demand for soy cake, although it is given additional impetus by concurrent increases in the demand for soy oil by the food manufacturing and biofuel industries (see section 3).

https://www.tabledebates.org/building-blocks/soy-food-feed-and-land-use-change#SOYBB3

Most of the calories from soy go into the fodder. This is unlike other plants used for oils. I doubt so much soy would be used for oil if not for the profits from “byproducts”.

And most of the soy ends up in livestock feed…

Thanks, this is much more insightful than the headlines. If we take PMI as the indicator, then for Germany and the Eurozone it has been bad for last three years, and this year actually have seen an improvement in form of a smaller contraction,

https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/manufacturing-pmi https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/manufacturing-pmi

For US and China it looks like within the random range for last three years.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/manufacturing-pmi https://tradingeconomics.com/china/manufacturing-pmi

This is so horrible. A country in Europe subsidizes a company working on a technology for the future, but gets not real stakes in it. They build infrastructure in Europe. The government changes, stops subsidies, the management goes berserk (or turns out to just want to make moneys, no morals, what a surprise) in the meanwhile. No restructuring (or - it goes through a US “restructuring” protocol). Then it gets sold to Americans, with the infrastructure.

“Stays” on Gotogate redirect you to Booking.com. Similarly, most listing from HomeToGo are just cross-links from Booking

Booking.com is owned by American Booking Holdings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings

You can cross-post (https://lemmy.world/post/1067695)

It seems to be complicated (surprise, EU law is complicated). I found this article about agreements with Mercosur and Canada. In the latter case, it seems ratification is peneding - it should be ratified by all EU states. But most of the deal with Canada is in place and working, as it has been “provisionally applied”.

https://www.blg.com/en/insights/2025/06/finding-a-ratification-solution-in-the-eu-mercosur-trade-deal

From European Comission’s website

Between signing and ratifying the deal, parts of the agreement can be ‘provisionally applied’ – put into effect before ratification – if the Council decides to do so.

Provisional application usually only takes effect once the European Parliament has given its consent.

https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/making-trade-policy_en

Sources are conflicting on this one, so i throw it up. EU Made Simple agrees with you, but BBC writes that specific countries need to accept the agreement. We need an expert in EU law (and this is a very high qualification…)

The political agreement of 27 July 2025 is not legally binding. Beyond taking the immediate actions committed, the EU and the US will further negotiate, in line with their relevant internal procedures, to fully implement the political agreement.

Let’s see what happens next. The member states need to agree, right?

Oh, that’s gonna be a shitshow. I blame the “EU Made Simple” channel for saying veto is not needed. But BBC also says the approval is needed, and it just makes more sense. My knowledge in law is insufficient to confirm.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2xylk3d07o

I don’t think they can veto a trade deal

Got it. But China did it one year before the end of the term, much smarter…

What happens when the inevitable failure is realised? Perhaps the EU is hoping for the same outcome as China did with the first trade war with Trump in 2019.

Can somebody brief me what happened in 2019, and what was the deal with China?

How will selling to China work now? I think we had decreasing exports to China for a while now, how will that change?

I got to know about this only from this article (I send Wikipedia’s take on the info, since it is more accurate):

Since 2009, Weidel has been in a lesbian relationship with Sarah Bossard, a Sri Lankan-born film producer who was adopted as a child by a Swiss couple. Since 2019 the pair have lived with their two adopted sons in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Weidel works in Berlin and says her official residence is in her electoral district in Überlingen, on the German side of the German-Swiss border, allowing her to avoid Swiss taxation.[100][101][102][103]

In terms of religion, Weidel identifies herself as an agnostic.[104]

She represents so well many far-right voters who simply vote against themselves, thinking that they are “special” and even if they do the same things they despise, they will be spared from the prosecution.

Russia accounted for 39% of allegations

I wish…

We have 999 problems and migrants ain’t one