And it is a terrible thing for science and contributes greatly to the crisis of irreproducibility plaguing multiple fields.

If 1000 researchers study the same thing, and 950 of them find insignificant results and don’t publish, and 50 of them publish their significant (95% confidence) results - we have collectively deluded ourselves into accepting spurious conclusions.

This is a massive problem that is rarely acknowledged and even more rarely discussed.

Plants naturally pick up heavy metals from the soil they grow in, generally these are rather small amounts and both humans and animals can process them. There is almost no danger in consuming plants unless the soil is dangerously contaminated (generally an industrial source, or occasionally a fluke a geography).

The problem comes with the concentrated protein supplements, as it also concentrates the contaminants. Protein supplements are generally sourced from the fruit of the plant, e.g. the bean from soy or the pea from pea. This is also where much of the soil nutrients bioaccumulate, as the plant is sending a bunch of water to the fruit in order to make it grow. When millions of soybeans are then ground up and concentrated into protein powder, the lead/cadmium/arsenic/Mercury remain behind in the powder - still in low amounts, but enough that if someone is using large amounts of the supplement daily they can be ingesting a lot more heavy metals than they are aware of.

With animal-sourced proteins, contamination is generally lower (although plenty of brands still have concerning levels) simply because the protein is sourced from places where heavy metals don’t preferentially accumulate. E.g. lead bioaccumulates in bones and teeth, cow-sources protein is generally whey (from milk) or more rarely from the muscles - both places naturally lower in lead Owing to the cow’s biochemistry.

For the record, I am a vegetarian (vegan + eggs) and use vegan protein supplements. I buy from brands which publish third party testing results on heavy metals contamination by lot to help control this exposure risk.

UN votes are largely symbolic, they have no actual policy function in almost all cases - member states must create and ratify separate treaties for that.

Removing the veto just leads to the veto-holders even more flagrantly undermining the UN’s authority.

Liberal Democratic Party is the name of the party, they are conservative in Japanese politics.

‘liberal’ in general political discourse doesn’t mean ‘left-wing trending towards communist’ as it is used in American communication, it is simply the historical opposing view to absolutism (e.g. Absolute monarchy). Liberal thought centers around individual freedoms; modern-day conservatives advocate for permissive individual freedoms by limiting government’s role in as many facets of life as possible (in theory, real parties and platforms have little to do with their marketing). Modern-day liberals advocate for positively identfying and enforcing freedoms through law. Illiberal thought is common in the west, and advocates for limiting individual freedoms for one reason or another - Germany’s prohibitions against Nazi speech, and the US’s restrictions on recreational drugs are examples of illiberal policies.