The details the article covers are interesting, but not one mention of what is causing record droughts and how the industrial cattle industry contributed to the climate crisis. The end of the article made it seem like a return to normal for the cattle industry is inevitable, but it really is not a sustainable feature of our culture.

Agreed, I use the gestures all the time. They may not have all the top of the line specs, but they are also a hell of a lot cheaper than top of the line phones

Those tend to owe a lot of back taxes and need significant renovations

Killing invasive plants. It’s very satisfying to see the results and makes a difference for biodiversity. Pulling ~10ft tall buckthorn or bush honeysuckle out by its roots with a Weed Wrench is good exercise too. Check if your area has a local Weed Warriors group

My area has a two stream recycling system: one for paper/cardboard, and another for “co-mingled” "plastic, glass, metal. It’s all picked up the same as garbage every week. The biggest problem with zero sort recycling is that it’s hard to separate paper and plastics with automated machines based on their physical properties. So our central recycling facility has two independent factory lines to sort the components of each stream. The co-mingled line also has more humans who help make things easier for the machines and visually identify materials.

Ultimately, you need to have the materials purified as much as possible to be attractive to buyers who will then turn the sorted recycling into new products. Package it up on pallets and then it can be shipped by train or truck to the production factory.

Our central facility also has manual drop off for e-waste, appliances, bulk metal, and hazardous materials that have their unique recycling streams.

There is/was an effort to create a Great Green Wall on the southern side of the Sahara to re-green a 15km-wide band of land all across the continent. It’s run into funding, civil unrest and political leadership challenges

I treat my yard like a room as in I like to spend time out there and make it nice for that purpose. But at the same time, I’m doing my best to maximize native biodiversity and natural darkness.

Highly recommend Prairie Moon Nursery for your online native plant needs.

Agreed. OP is really asking: do my problems rise to the level of needing to see some sort of medical professional? The answer is yes, OP is describing medical problems that interfere with their daily living. There’s no way strangers over the Internet can tell what’s going on here. If you don’t think one medical professional is taking your symptoms seriously, get another opinion.

The SiFi movie “In Time” staring Justin Timberlake is meh quality wise, but the premise is really interesting… That the currency of that universe is the time someone has left to live. They do an interesting job playing with how wealth inequality changes behavior of people with and without time to spare

Yo dawg, I heard you like old memes, so I put an older meme in your old meme

Agreed. Sure there were some freshman level courses that were pretty basic and lectures that were skippable. But all of the Junior and Senior level courses were much more challenging and I really needed to understand everything for science lab work to not just be a pile of burnt crap. There were also the exams that were so hard they let us have open textbooks, just studying alone at home wouldn’t have gotten through those exams.

The non-Goodwill thrift stores around me are still affordable and they support local nonprofits

Find a supportive and fulfilling community that is trying to make things better locally. I’ve found this at my Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. UU’s don’t believe in a shared religious text, instead they have a core set of shared values. During World War 2, UUs helped Jewish people and other oppressed peoples escape the Nazis to other countries with a system of safe houses and creating travel documents. They identified safe houses with a flaming oil chalice in the window, which is now the main symbol of UUism.

My church has people who identify as atheist, Christian, several types of pagan, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, etc. We celebrate religious holidays from all of them as well as secular holidays like Trans Day of Visibility and Earth day. The focus is on being together and trying to make the world a better place. There’s active volunteer groups for hunger relief, housing support, the environment, and LGBTQ support. I also really like the music program. There’s a handy website to find a congregation near you, many stream services on Zoom so you can test them out before going in person. They can vary a lot based on the members of each congregation.

If you smoke, quitting is the number one thing you can do to improve your physical and mental health. In the US you can call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visit Lung.org for free evidence-based resources to help with quitting.

On to the OP question, inhaling smoke of any kind exposes you to carcinogens. In tobacco smoke, the most abundant by mass is Benzo[a]pyrene, which is created by the process of burning. It is absorbed into your bloodstream in the lungs and damages DNA in every cell it touches. If the DNA damage occurs in the wrong gene, that can kick off a decades long process of more mutations that ultimately lead to uncontrolled cell grow. Inflammation, also caused by inhaling smoke, encourages cells to grow more and amplifies cancerous mutations.

Quitting stops the exposure to new DNA damage and inflammation, but there has already been some damage done.

Edit, adding an alcohol answer: Heavy alcohol use also takes a toll on your body. A big cause of this is that alcohol is fairly quickly metabolised into acetaldehyde by the liver. However, the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme can be limiting to detoxify the acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is an aldehyde, much like formaldehyde, and thus highly reactive with proteins and DNA. So it can damage those as well. Acetaldehyde is also the chemical mostly responsible for feelings of being hung over (in addition to general dehydration).

A local bank once did a mailed ad campaign that went along the lines of:

“Tired of living with your parents? Check out our mortgage rates” and stuff along the lines of your parents won’t be doing your laundry anymore.

Like have they never heard of renting?

I want more on this too. Amazon’s monopoly has made it so hard to find alternative online stores to buy a lot of stuff, particularly if I don’t already know the name of a trusted manufacturer off the top of my head. Even competitor companies like Target and Walmart often offer less selection with higher prices and slower shipping. Also why is it that online retailers seem so scammy these days? Most brands seem to be new/disposable Chinese company names I’ve never heard of and reviews seem inflated/bot generated.

It seems like my local thrift store has the best quality to price for a lot of stuff, but they don’t always have something I’m looking for

The new Slate mini pick up trucks are expected to be in production this year and come in around $20k new. Used EVs already come in under $20k and are good enough for daily commuting in that price range, perhaps not long distance road trips at that price

And/or public transit!

Propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.

Solar panels are the cheapest source of electricity now. Batteries have dropped in price by more than 90% in the past decade, and are now viable for grid-scale storage, addressing the main issue with renewable energy. EVs are competitive with combustion cars, and in some ways superior. Heat pumps are now superior to furnaces in many locations. The solar punk future is now! But you wouldn’t know any of this by listening to the public discourse, mainstream media, and many politicians.

Relevant video from Technology Connections

Los Angeles uses plastic balls to cover their drinking water reservoir… At least solar panels provide energy too