Odd things that continue to worry me

I get the feeling I have mentioned one or more of these before, but just have had an urge to repeat them:

*   I am forever puzzled by the "too low to make sense to me" cost of carrots.  Is it is a sign of something wrong with how agriculture works in Australia?   I would not have these thoughts if they were, say, double the cost.  Perhaps I should offer to pay more at the check out?   I'm sure that's a conversation which wouldn't be awkward at all.

*  A significant reduction in CO2 emissions will not be possible until we outlaw Pringles, or imitation Pringles.  I mean, just slice and fry potatoes for a nice snack - don't expend all that energy on drying and powdering them, only to reconstitute it to bake them again.   It's ridiculous.

*  Elon Musk enjoys, I suspect, his Twitter avatar of his Starship looking rather pointy-phallic:  

*   OK, this one is serious:   just how much unnecessary crap do governments think we can put into orbit before it becomes so full of dangerous shards of debris that we can't do anything important there?:

China is ramping up plans for government-sponsored satellites to beam internet from space, taking on U.S. rivals like SpaceX and Amazon in the race to own the next frontier of connectivity.

Why it matters: There's growing concern that China is trying to enter the space internet market with the same strategy it used on earth with Huawei and 5G — use a state-backed company to undercut competitors and spread global influence.

What's happening: China is attempting to launch its own network to rival global competitors.

• China's "StarNet" would launch 10,000 satellites in the next 5 to 10 years, according to an Asia Times report that cites a publication run by the official China News Service.
• China intends to build a space infrastructure system for communications, navigation and remote sensing with global coverage as part of its latest five-year plan.

*   Speaking of China:   as far as I can tell, they have become good enough at rocketry, but still can't put together a decent airliner.  (And I think their military jets are all based on other nation's designs and tech, too.)   Doesn't that seem a little odd?   Maybe your basic rocket is relatively simple compared to a 777, and you don't have to worry about using it twice, so I guess it makes sense.   [And I have read that airline manufacture requires so many components that they all inevitably have input from other nations, even if it is a Boeing or (obviously) an Airbus.]   Is this technological barrier a reason to doubt China is genuinely in a position to take over the world - that if you can't put together a decent fighter or passenger jet in your nation, because other nations don't want to help you do it, you're not as powerful as you think you are?   

And toilets - based on a couple of Youtube videos, it seems Chinese toilets are, outside of your decent big city hotels, routinely horrendous.   Again, perhaps this is a measure of international power -  you are not a country ready to take over the world while ever a significant number of your toilets are holes in the ground.  But wait - maybe we only 10 years left!:

A “Toilet Revolution” was launched in China five years ago. The aim was to eliminate epidemics such as the deadly Covid-19 outbreak, which has so far claimed more than 1,800 lives and infected at least 72,000 people.

Geared to upgrade hygiene and sanitation in urban and rural parts of the world’s second-largest economy, up to 68,000 toilets were built or refurbished between 2015 and 2019.

By the end of this year, an additional 64,000 will come online as part of the ultimate goal to have a 100% “civilized” toilet culture by 2030.

“The toilet issue is not a small issue. It is an important part of civilized construction in both urban and rural areas,” President Xi Jinping said at the launch of his ambitious building program.

*  Radical African Islam - I mean, seriously, how do these people ever think they will be popular enough to actually really run a country.  In Mozambique, for example:

A leading aid agency says that children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province.

One mother told Save the Children she had to watch her 12-year-old son killed in this way close to where she was hiding with her other children.

More than 2,500 people have been killed and 700,000 have fled their homes since the insurgency began in 2017.

Militants linked to the Islamic State (IS) group are behind a conflict in the province....

The insurgents are known locally as al-Shabab, which means The Youth in Arabic. This reflects that it receives its support mostly from young unemployed people in the predominantly Muslim region of Cabo Delgado.

A group with a similar name has existed in Somalia for more than a decade. It is affiliated to al-Qaeda, unlike the Mozambican group which allied itself with the rival IS movement in 2019.

IS sees the insurgents as being part of what it calls its Central Africa Province. It released images last year showing fighters in Cabo Delgado with AK-47 rifles and rocket propelled grenades....

Mr Briggs told the BBC World Service it was difficult to determine their exact motivations as they did not have a manifesto.

"They co-opt young people in to joining them as conscripts and if they refuse they are killed and sometimes beheaded. It's really hard to see what is the end game."

After visiting Cabo Delgado's capital Pemba last year, a delegation from the South African Bishop's Conference said that "almost everyone spoken to agrees that the war is about multinational corporations gaining control of the province's mineral and gas resources".

I don't know - but youth beheading even younger youth seems a, shall we say, very indirect way of dealing with too much control by multinational corporations.