Free shipping is only banned on books in France. So Amazon charges €0.01 shipping on books with Prime (vs €6.99 without), everything else still has free shipping with Prime.

After checking with my relatives in Essex, properly seasoned wood is between 135 and 145 a load (1.6 cubic meter). This is higher than normal, there's a bit of a shortage right now.

My original point is still valid, the big box store (or the fuel station) are the worst place to buy wood short of an emergency... especially in 25dm3 bags for $8 a piece. That's effectively paying $320 per m3.

That's the price at the big box store, which is probably the worst place to buy it. I'm going through 6 to 8 cubic meters of wood through the year as I'm using a wood cooking stove through the winter and on cold spring/autumn days. The cost of properly seasoned wood around me (North-East France) is €40 per cubic meter, sawn to 33cm, delivered and stacked. It is cheaper in 1m sizes, and even cheaper unseasoned. I'm also collecting and drying wood from my property, so I'm thinking about setting up a solar kiln in a corner of the garden... that could be used for both logs and flitches.

Q is literally a n.zi cult lightly rebranded for 21st century America.

Then:A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

The N.zis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. N.zi “storm troopers” (“storm detachment” – Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power.

Now: A secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world. Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American Presidency under the Clintons and Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a “Deep State” financed by Jews, including George Soros, and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights, and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race.

QAnon true believers think Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of “The Storm,” supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed.

Two or three years ago, I ran the numbers on BTC mining using working pull S7 ASICs. Even with free electricity, the break-even point was too far in the future to bite the bullet, as they weren't exactly the most reliable pieces of equipment. Without electricity, it would have taken over 3 months to pay back the ASIC... with electricity factored in, it was well over a year. Financially, buying BTC to sell 6 to 12 months down the line would have had a better use of the money.

At the current BTC price and hashrate difficulty, one T19 ASIC (around $2118 new) will generate about $5232 worth of bitcoin over 12 months. Assuming $0.12 KW/h electricity ($3265 of electricity over 12 months), you're making a loss in the first year. You're roughly spending 0.115 BTC to mine 0.11 BTC in a year. In this simplified example, you'll carry the 0.005 BTC residual cost of the ASIC to the second year and should generate 0.039 BTC in profit in year 2 (and 0.044 BTC year 3 onwards). Except... the hashrate difficulty increases on a daily basis, and each increase takes a bite in your planned profit.

You say that like there is any meaningful difference between "imbeciles" and "professionals". 10 years or so ago, I had found several thousands public-facing unprotected JMX consoles through a simple google search. Those included servers at the JPL. For fun, I tried again 5 year ago and there were still plenty. I wonder how many are left in 2020. I do know there are companies out there still running older jboss configurations (they either never upgraded from 4.x days or carried over the configurations from 4.x days), with jboss running as root.

You're missing some of the bits that came out in the last 24 hours, like the fact that panic buttons had reportedly been torn out from offices before the terrorists got in the building. Source

The EU took the UK in on its third attempt. Which required some pressure from West Germany, and it wouldn't have worked if De Gaulle hadn't stepped down. In hindsight, it turns out that De Gaulle was correct on his assessment of the UK ("a number of aspects of Britain's economy, from working practices to agriculture have made Britain incompatible with Europe" and "Britain harbours a deep-seated hostility to any pan-European project"). At this point, I don't think there's any political will to let the UK back in. That would also require the 27 members to agree, which will be harder to muster compared to the 6 countries required when they originally joined.

Mazda has the MX-30, which sort of sucks... I wish they had made an EV MX-5, with a decent enough range, I'd buy it immediately. Instead, they have a small SUV with a sub-124 miles range. In theory 124 miles would be just enough to let me commute to work and back, if there's no problem on the road. A battery larger than 35.5 Kwh would be nice, but not an option.

It costs the exact same price as a Leaf+, which has a 62Kwh battery. It costs more than a Renault Zoe, which comes with a 52Kwh battery.

At my last place of employment, we had quarterly "pseudonymous" polls where corporate would ask us about our opinion on management (5 questions on global level, 3 questions on division level and 2 questions on direct manager) and our global job satisfaction. Corporate insisted on honest feedback as they "wanted to improve the company" (thinly veiled "rank and yank" for management).

As a manager, being in the poll analysis meetings was physically painful. The local management would receive the aggregate results for their employees and proceed to interpret any feedback on the managers below 5 stars as "self-identified issues of employees". The employees didn't give 5 stars to managers on ethical issues? All hands below exec level are signed up for a mandatory ethics class happening outside business hours. The employees didn't give 5 stars to managers on communication? All hands below exec level are signed up for a mandatory communication workshop happening outside business hours. You get the idea.

We're in full agreement. In my last role, I was working on IT regulatory compliance for a company whose largest market was the EU. Getting them to comply with EU regulations was an uphill battle, getting them to comply with UK-specific regulations isn't likely to happen.

There's a huge difference between "our elites like to fuck kids" and "A secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world. Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American Presidency under the Clintons and Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a 'Deep State' financed by Jews, including George Soros, and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights, and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race. Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of 'The Storm,' supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed.".

That myth should be familiar to anybody who studied history, it's a modernized rehash of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Specifically "the Blood Libel", which was a core story of the N party and was spread through their newspaper "Der Stürmer". It is now a core story of the Republican party, with multiple QAnon supporters running for congress in 2020 and the Texas Republican Party changing its slogan to "We are the Storm".