There's a better way to use a standing desk
[...] some research suggests that even regular exercise—as much as 60 minutes per day—is not enough to offset the effects of sedentary workdays.
A standing desk, seems like a great way to combat this problem, since it's unlikely that computer use will decrease anytime soon. But turns out that when you do the opposite of sitting—standing for incredibly long periods of the day—well, that's bad for you, too. A highly-cited study out last year in the Journal of Epidemiology on 7,000 office workers found that, "Occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting."
Alan Taylor, a physiology expert at Nottingham University, told the Chicago Tribune that the expansion and popularity of standing desks has been largely driven not by scientific evidence, but rather by popularity and profit.
Welcome to medical science.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:05PM
In other words, small farmers can't compete with industrial-scale farmers in commodity crops that have vast economies of scale. The answer is to not do that. Marijuana, opium, etc are so valuable for small farmers precisely because they don't have those vast economies of scale (such large farms would be easier to lose than a ton of small, hidden farms). But they're not the only crops like that. There are a bunch of small crops out there that one can do well by. For example, niche crops like cacao, heirloom crops, spices and herbs (saffron and hops), etc.
Also crops that can be vertically integrated can generate more profit overall. For example, instead of selling grapes, sell wine; instead of selling fruit, sell jams and jellies; instead of selling alfalfa, sell beef; etc. In other words, don't compete head-to-head with farms that are orders of magnitude larger. Grow what they can't be bothered to grow.