But they will not become unaffordable to me, as I have a terminal illness and have a year or less to live.
Sorry to hear that - though prognoses / progression timelines are not always accurate. Either way, I hope it's painless...
(not from the US myself, so I guess that last goes without saying)
Seriously though, I'll miss reading your comments!
... The rest of us get in the death tube.
Hmm, are you sure about that?
When I travel, I get on a plane, on a train, on a boat, or on a bus. Oddly though, I get in my car, but on my bike - well, that last one is, perhaps, not too surprising.
What's really strange however, now I'm thinking about it, is that I might get on or in a minibus.
It appears my mind, for whatever reason (presumably spoken language or socialisation based) makes the transition between the two 'means' of boarding transport based on its size, and the transition point is about the size of a minibus. Though there may be other language flow related issues too, as, while I would definitively get into a van, or even a lorry, when it comes to loading said lorry I might put stuff on the lorry or in it.
Just don't ask me whether it was a red lorry or a yellow lorry...
"Clean plastic." Recycling fans expect me to wash my garbage. I think not.
There are no easy answers, however, for people's ignorance and apathy...
Glass is great for reuse, but that takes a lot more effort and organization than chucking it into a common bin. Glass recycling is just about as energy intensive as making new glass, and it's not like there's any shortage of raw material. Aluminum, cardboard, and precious metals are the only things that make sense to recycle with current technology and economics.
This is (almost certainly) not correct.
Quite apart from the fact that recycling glass saves on raw materials, the broken up 'old' glass, known in the industry as cullet, reduces the energy required to melt those raw materials by lowering their melting point, resulting in energy and cost savings of ~40%. It also has the added advantage that, for all bar 'speciality' glass, the chemical composition already matches that of the finished product. There are, for sure, efficiencies of scale when it comes to the sourcing, transporting, and sorting of bulk raw materials as opposed to collection, cleaning, and transportation of used glass, but this is generally counterbalanced by the fact that the used product tends to be much closer to the manufacturing facilities.
The main problem, as I see it anyway, is that most people either don't give a shit or pay, at best, lip service, to the idea of recycling. Where I live I frequently see that people have thrown out out old (plastic) milk containers still half full of spoiled milk - while the instructions for plastic recycling clearly state clean plastic. There are no easy answers, however, for people's ignorance and apathy...
That is the regulatory change I think we need. Platforms can control their content but they do need to specify to the user why, what the statement was and tie it back to the TOS and have a standard for appeals.
On a not totally unrelated subject: I was browsing fb this morning when my account got suspended. Why? Apparently, according to the page that loaded anyway, their algorithm determined I might not be a real person. If I want to regain access I need to upload a video of my face, turning it to present various profiles to the camera, to prove I am, in fact, a real person...
Ah well, looks like I am going to, finally, be able to avoid those random time-wasting doom-scrolling sessions in future.
That's an interesting assertion, given your failure to produce the IRB waiver that you claim -- with no evidence whatsoever -- exists. Perhaps you could fabricate some other, different, less feeble justification to support your attempt to excuse this unethical conduct.
Well, it really wasn't too hard to find an, appositely Swiss, reference to support their assertion:
"Waiver of the consent requirement may be applied in certain circumstances where no foreseeable harm is expected to result from the study or when permitted by law, federal regulations, or if an ethical review committee has approved the non-disclosure of certain information."
Personally I find it hilarious that "impairments to reasoning and judgment that may preclude informed consent include intellectual or emotional immaturity" are just a few of the reasons given for why informed consent might not be obtainable from the subjects, when considered in juxtaposition with the fact that people on a debate forum on Reddit are, apparently, up in arms over having their minds changed by a bot. Very emotionally mature!
It's not just the right. On the left, people say that gender is a preference rather than biology
I scrolled past the first time you posted this, but couldn't resist a second time...
There are different definitions of gender, but pretty much all of them include the fact that it's a social / cultural construct. Given that in gendered languages objects have genders but clearly aren't biologically male of female I fear you're looking at this from an unduly blinkered perspective.
Gender
and forget why men aren't allowed to play on women's teams--because they have a _physical_ advantage that is not diminished by the emotional preferences of the athlete.
Yeah, the vocal minority definitely shot themselves in the foot on this one, and the liberal left left on open goal by not pushing back against this vocal extreme. They forgot that fairness is not viewed from one side only. However, this isn't typical of the left as a whole, just a subsection of it.
However there's clearly more to it than just fairness, at least on the right. After all, a libertarian believes in personal liberty, right? If someone wants to mutilate their body (*cough* sorry, engage in extreme cosmetic surgery) surely that's entirely their right, their prerogative. What does it matter to you?
Or they tilt the scales in favor of specific minority groups in the name of eliminating inequality.
There's no doubt in my mind that positive discrimination has gone too far, but it's difficult to balance the scales without overshooting a little bit. I'd encourage everyone to maintain a bit of perspective, rather than just take everything back off one side of them though. Historically, they most certainly were not balanced, and that legacy still creates certain disparities in opportunity.
(These are just as abhorrent to those on the right, as mistreatment of immigrants is abhorrent to those on the left.
If mistreatment of people isn't abhorrent to you, or at least to 'those on the right', then I'd suggest we have a problem. After all, "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights..."
Perhaps we could all do with remembering this, and trying to apply it in our interpersonal relations.
I mean, it will collapse
You just won't see the final outcome likely for several decades.
That's a good point, though I wasn't really referring to the demographics in my previous response.
Of course, one might need a strict definition of 'collapse' vs 'decline' or 'shrink' to be sure, but, to an extent, that's just splitting hairs.
...as luxury items especially increase in cost.
I never realised that clothes counted as a luxury item.
Or the parts needed to repair your car, your washing machine, your fridge, your gas boiler.
"When the philosopher said 'May you live in interesting times' he didn't say it was going to be such hard work, or so damn cold!"
China's economy will collapse?
China's economy, of which ~1.5% is attributable to the US, is going to collapse because of these tariffs?
China's economy, which is growing by ~5% per year, is going to collapse because one country has decided to tax imports from there?
China, which already restricts global exports of numerous 'critical' minerals, but could at any time relax these rules to any country or countries it chooses to, is going to experience economic collapse because one man is confused about how supply chains and the global economy works?
I think you might be suffering from a misconception, however I might be missing something 'obvious'. Could you expand upon your theory a little - explain it in simple terms for me...
NO US ENEMY SHOULD HAVE CONTROL OVER 20% OF US IMPORTS!
You do know that there are numerous 'shades' between friend and enemy, right?
Personally I'd term them the US's main economic and geopolitical rival, but maybe that's just me.
Of course, there's still time for the actions, or any further actions perhaps, taken by the current administration to turn that rivalry into something more than a trade war...
Population density doesn't seem like a very useful measure in it's simplest form. Look at Canada, or Russia for that matter. The populations are concentrated in small areas, and the vast majority of the country(s) is just rocks and trees. Aren't we looking for arable land?
I think you should take the amount of arable land and divide by the population and you'd get a more accurate picture of the problem.
In fairness that's a good point, but I wonder if you're not mistaking how much food can be sustainably taken from forests, let alone the sea. Or, unfortunately, the point that much current arable land was once forested. To my mind a large part of the problem is in treating 'efficiency', particularly economic efficiency, as the preeminent concern, or allowing corporations, domestic or multinationals, to do this. It's this that's led to the industrialisation of fishing and farming, and the widespread destruction (as in the particular case we're discussing here) of vast swathes of land to produce monocultures of 'staple' food crops. Whether it be rice paddies or palm oil plantations, the wholesale destruction of rainforests so we can introduce industrial farming practices is something we should be trying to avoid.
Of course, there is a flip side. It is the introduction of industrial agriculture that enabled the incredible growth in global populations over the last (half) century, and the concomitant changes in society and demographics that that enabled. I am not some naïve fool who thinks we can just 'turn back the clock' or radically change how we farm without creating the worst humanitarian disaster in recorded history.
But there has to be some balance, some wisdom applied. On the grand scale (~100 to 1000 years), a slow catastrophe isn't really an improvement over a rapid one, except for those few people who get to live out their lives at the top of the slide.
very few people posting here are in any position to criticise Indonesia or Indonesians in ecological terms. Corporatism / Capitalism and our conspicuous consumption are far more 'worthy' targets for that.
Sorry but it's socialism that has done the worst ecological disasters. The Aral Sea is now the Aral Desert, the rivers that provided Central Asia fertile steppes are now small polluted streams, and the land is too salty for any productive use.
Quite apart from the fact that there are a multiple economic paradigms besides a binary choice between capitalism and socialism, you've omitted the hole in the ozone layer, the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and others), the widespread use of leaded petrol, global ice-melt, plus dozens of others, from your list of the 'worst' ecological disasters. None of which are down to socialism, but instead are because of ignorance, greed, corporatism and unregulated global capitalism.
But hey, you carry on wearing those blinkers and being scared of the big bad bogey man of 'socialism'...
Then work to reduce your population. 281 million for a country the size and natural conditions of Indonesia is insane and is an ecological disaster by itself.
In terms of population density, Indonesia ranks 84th in the world. In fact its population density is just over half that of the UK (150 people / km^2 as opposed to 286 people / km^2), and considerably less than, for example, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Israel, Singapore...
In fact, given the nature of the country, it's probably more capable of feeding itself, a la bounty of the sea, than many others. And, I strongly suspect, very few people posting here are in any position to criticise Indonesia or Indonesians in ecological terms. Corporatism / Capitalism and our conspicuous consumption are far more 'worthy' targets for that.
Same for Bangladesh, Nigeria and many, many other countries.
Can't really argue about Bangladesh, but Nigeria isn't exactly an outlier either (255 people / km^2).
And, given the subject under discussion, never a truer word was written...
"3.3
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?"
"An operating system," replied the programmer.
The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system," he said.
"Not so," said the programmer, "When designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design."
The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well, but which is easier to debug?"
The programmer made no reply."
Their idea of an offer you can't refuse is an offer... and you'd better not refuse.
