Myth. Vanilla extracts either come from low grade vanilla pods or cloves. It may have been but not today.

So, in essence, this, but with added marketing steps.

Not universal yet but heading that way. MBWay is gaining momentum as well and the eEuro could be a thing.

Off the top of my head I can name one banking institution that solely exists through a mobile application and more and more banks are moving in the same direction, making their conventional websites less functional.

You want gold? Tons of it? Go mine the asteroid belt. But if it is to become plentiful what value will it hold?

Will cheap gold plated circuitry be back?

I’m in Portugal.

I’ve asked if such devices could be supplied and I was given pretty much the same explanation I supplied here.

Strangely enough, vehicles can be legally tracked, in real time, yet the company I work at has some union agreement that prevents such installation in the work vehicles.

It’s a mess.

It’s strange. Apparently it is one of those situations where the possibilty of something very useful being easily abused by companies to spy on their people is too great.

Meanwhile, I often work with immediate risk of death or injury and, by law, I can not be equipped with a panic button for rescue purposes, as it is deemed unlawful surveillance of the worker.

I am supposed to warn in advance what work I will be doing and agree on a reasonable time window for it to be done safely, before having to call in again to say I am not yet dead and if the task is done or not.

The issue with the systems being proposed and already in place in Europe is that the money flows directly between accounts. Banks don’t have a way to know what is being payed for.

And there is even another system, where blocks of payment references can be bough from a slew of independent entities (all must be registered as financial entities at central banks) and used to transfer money that way. The issuer either charges a token value for each reference, a % on the payment value or both. Money flows directly between accounts, instantly.

The all-mighty PayPal uses a third party payment reference provider for people who want to use their service but don’t want to put their card into it.

You’re describing the same system behind Wero and MBWay. We can just use cellphone numbers to move money from account to account, regardless of the banks at each end of the transaction.

My own country too.

Now allow me too share a conviniently forgotten fact about most far right governments of the last century: they all were very at ease with having sex workers.

My own very catholic and repressive country had a very detailed law on prostitutes, which mandatory registration, regular medical exams and visits, etc. It’s a good way too pacify populations.

The current hunt on independent adult themed art/entertainment/etc is more about good old fashioned religious zealotry than anything else. Pornography gets some flak but it’s a lot harder to successfully target.

This isabout forcing people into conventional set roles and definitions and closing minds and shutting down free independent thinking. And stopping people from being or becoming humane.

The eEU is supposed to be one, itself. And even if it fails Wero and MBWay are growing, which are direct money transfer systems.

The Nederlands, Germany, Spain, if I’m not wrong, France and Italy have prostitution as legal. My own country abstains from legislating on it, instead opting to criminalizing procuring and the facilitation of prostitution, as well as human traffic for such end.

Europe has a well established culture of sex work, with a good number of organizations lobbying - openly, through open public debate - in the way of making sex workers being recognized as any other worker and increasing their social relevance and recognition.

If you inform yourself a bit, in my country, you can legally establish yourself as an escort, under a very specific tax code, and pay taxes according to the money you make and have tax deductions and social benefits.

Currently, we already have a direct payment and transfer system, called MBWay, that through your phone number, allows for transfering, paying and collecting money, from one account to another.

No fintech, no middle agents, no shit: direct transfers from one account to another.

The Digital Euro takes this a step further. And even if the eEuro never takes place, this system is to be widened to all EU and abroad, to run against AliPay, Visa, MasterCard and others.

Bankers want money.

American bankers should spit out the “holy” book they have stuck up their arses.

It has its moments.

Let the Digital Euro become a thing. It will wreck havoc on the current payment ecosystem.

And the Digital Euro is not a crypto. It will be a digital currency, backed by the ECB, at a one to one exchange rate with standard euro currency.

Because they can.

I can’t read a single word of german but I’m glad to randomly stumble on a german post.

Makes the fediverse more pluralist.

Have you considered applying for a sales representative at the company? The best pitch comes from the person that knows the product, inside out.

There is the cultural difference I can’t get past: yes, cooking may very well be a chore but I would more quickly change my entire diet than resort to substituion mixes.

Nothing replaces the contact with real food items. The smells, the textures, the colours, the flavours. The pleasure that comes from it.

I can be very pragmatic and utilitarian towards what I eat, borderline spartan, but a mix is not food and not even very sick I will consider it as such. It’s fuel, sustenance, not food. I could live off it but, again, I would hate every moment of it.

I sincerely admire your apparent indiference towards relying on that mix. I would rely on it to keep me alive, in a serious emergency, sure. But as a means to get to an end, not the end itself.

I’m glad to know you lived a fullfilling life at the time and it is obvious after your reply it wasn’t about you or those like you I was thinking about.

Although I still lack the capacity to view Soilent as a good name for a brand…

Besides some cultural differences, I respect your view. It made your life easier (still does, if I’m understanding correctly), you don’t seem a person who enjoys cooking that much (fair enough) and it freed time for things you had higher in your list of priorities.

I can’t do that. If need be, I would, but I’d hate every single moment of it.

I still licked lead pain in the craddle, ate too many food preservatives and artificial colorants, ate too much red meat, too much fat, got micro plastics poisoning…

And all I have to tell is bad breath, flatulence that could strip paint off the walls and a stupid sense of humour.

Bourdain was a genius. Controversial but they all tend to be as such.

I agree with you. But please take a moment to consider this as well: people need time to eat. And by extension, to live. Something we are colectively slowly being drained of, through “work ethics”, “fashion trends”, “healthy life styles”, etc.

We need to live. To eat. To sleep. To be together. To get angry with each other and make amends afterwards. And we are being robbed of our humanity by not having it.