bastardchild

I'm wondering why you think that would happen. Like, really, why do you expect that?

The goverment in Germany is fighting tooth and nail to keep Telegram and Signal from having actual end-to-end-encryption, trying to ensure that the government has some kind of side channel that makes it possible for them to decrypt everything in case of federal investigations.

So I'd love that but what is your reason to believe in actual federal instant messaging of any kind?

Especially if your primary goal is the social factor and the "having a schedule for a few hours a day"-thing (which I completely understand) and getting some money out of it is secondary, I guess a lot of people in that demographic might just opt for volunteering.

True, it completely fails to pay any bills, but depending on what you do, you might get some everyday benefits out of it and it's a lot less annoying and exhausting than many jobs you could do elsewhere. Plus, nobody bats an eye if you decide to go from one volunteering gig to another after a few months, after all you're doing it for free. Switching jobs is more of a hassle.

As far as I can see, this kind of working hours isn't accounted for in these charts and I see that group as prime candidates for deciding that none-paying but nice, meaningful work is better than pushing numbers for another few years when you could make do without it.

I see a lot of claims in there that sound reasonable, but with others I just don't know how to take them.

We won't have a problem with growing crops because we don't have now? That's a nice idea you got there, but we fail at distributing food as needed right now. Why would we get any better at it when growing it as before is getting harder?

I'm also not sure where these estimates of growing food supply are coming from. I mean, maybe? But certainly not by growing the same kind of crops in the same regions as now, cause at least in central Europe we are feeling the issues with that already. The last summers and falls just grew continuously worse with last year being an utter disaster. If we don't want to continue artificially watering everything, I guess we have to set for crops that need less water and more sun.

One obstacle here (Germany) is, that young girls learn, how to handle their period during sex ed. And often even young sex ed teachers just don't know about cups. They teach what they were taught which is tampons and pads. And menstrual cups come with a lot more questions than those. Applying them requires some experimentation and you actually have to kind of explore what your vagina looks like. Best case in sex ed: You are not actively prepared that you might have to do that. Usual case: You see a plastic model of a vagina that is shaped nothing like yours and get the vague feeling that it's bad/dirty to touch a real one.

In urban areas where you have younger teachers and more conversation about these taboo topics, cups are popular enough that you can buy them in every bigger drug store by now, but in rural areas it's as simple as nobody knows that this is an option.

Admittedly, the majority of women around me sticks to non-reusable solutions not because they don't know, but because they feel more comfortable with things they can just throw away when dirty.

That being said, I'm on the fence about believing this is more than a question of habit vs an actual thing that will bug you. After all, the average US woman seems to be completely thrown about how you can use a tampon without an applicator. In Europe if you ask for them, most people won't even know what you mean and I don't see what their appeal is, but if that is what you grew up with....

(edit) Just to clarify, I also use a cup and it has upsides and downsides, but overall to me it is a net win.