I'm pretty sure that this does not happen in Vanuatu.

By reducing the value of the Ruble 66%, the Ruble value of the Russian economy increased 66%. 50% of which went to pay for his Sochii boondogle, harem of gymnasts, assassinations of journalists and advocates of justice, etc.

Amen, Brother.

Every major government does it. It's still evil, and only by educating the public about the foreign agents subverting public discourse can we avoid the consequences of a malign deception. Education without which democracy fails.

Glad to see that Airplane! had a beneficial effect on air safety rules.

There was no warning from Al Qaeda before 9/11, that doesn't stop it being terrorism.

I'm not sure a terrorist who had control of a plane and didn't mind killing themselves would just dive into a mountain. Why not turn round and crash into the airport? Surely you'd be bound to cause more death, destruction and disruption?

Indeed, and in some places of work (notably government) they still give 10-20 "ATV-dagen" (workweek reduction days) on top of the contractual amount of holidays. But keep in mind that wages have been decreased accordingly as well.

Sounds like an expensive way of getting drunk to me.

Exactly. And I see the same happening over here with teaching "critical thinking". It's important, but it got turned into the idea that questioning everything makes one a critical thinker. A college professor in history once told me he gave a guest lecture at a high school. The kids kept challenging him on points during his lecture, and at the end of class, the regular teacher proudly noted how critical the children were and didn't take everything from an authority figure at face value. To which the professor replied: "Yes, but it's a shame they know bugger all about history".

Some of this attitude carries over when these kids graduate and get a job. They're highly vocal and opinionated, but they are equally noisy on topics they have no knowledge on as they are within their own area of expertise. Thankfully, most of them quickly learn better, but sadly some of them are perceived as "strong decision-makers" (whatever the hell that means) and promoted to management, where their unfounded opinions actually do damage.

We tried this in the Netherlands in the 80s, and it didn't work. Only a handful of jobs were created; instead productivity was increased by 20% (let people work less but keep their workload the same, and don't pay overtime...over time, employers and employees figured out how to do the same job in less time) The effects of a shorter work week probably vary a lot between industries. In services, you may see hardly any increase, also because a lot of the work is knowledge work and communications, and adding extra people to the team to make up for lost hours will certainly decrease productivity. In manufacturing however, it may be easy to slot in extra workers working shorter hours, while increasing productivity is not something easily done.

And GP is right: hiring 5 guys at 80% instead of 4 full time guys may well increase overall cost, because of the effects of tax and wage regulations.

A coupe of examples:
- Light recipes. Especially in the living room where there are many lights all around the room, including some Philips Hue bulbs that can change color. Instead of having to set all of them for dinner, sitting around or movie night or whatever, 1 button does it all. And it works with the media player, put that on pause and the lights dim up a bit
- Heating in certain rooms is turned off when not in use, and turned on automatically when someone is there. This saves a little on the heating bill.
- Irrigation in the greenhouse is fully automatic.
- If I go to bed, I get a warning if there are still doors unlocked.
- When leaving the house, 1 button switches of all lights, heating and airco.
- Notifications on my smart phone in case a smoke detector or flood sensor is tripped. The smoke detectors will also trip all lights.
Stuff like that. Nothing life-changing, but those little conveniences do add up and if the hub is offline for whatever reason, we start missing them...

Yeah, fight the fucking power bro.

Thankyou, some of the posters above were making it sound like you were being given a full cavity body search at gunpoint.

They'll have to pry that receipt from your cold, dead fingers.