Now, I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but I do have an interest in complete nutrition and going more plant-based. Looking into it I found that the "specific combinations" a pure vegan needs are not all that difficult. Examples of complete profiles: quinoa on its own, rice with beans, hummus and bread, in fact most combinations of something containing either rice or wheat with some kind of bean or lentil will get you there. If you don't mind shite-tasting ultra-processed stuff, Quorn is another one.
I don't consider that challenging, but of course everyone's palate is different. And to be fair, some of the "vegans" I know are actually just maniacally fussy eaters who use veganism as an excuse. The one I'm thinking of is basically exclusively eating vegan-rated fast food and until recently still ate tuna all the time. Those kinds of "vegans" are going to have a bit of a hard time avoiding malnutrition.

My family and I are on more of a "reduced meat" kind of diet (two young kids who are fairly fussy, and we live in an area full of very happy grass-fed dairy and beef cows), but my wife and I clearly already get a complete protein profile from just our veg without actively trying.

Yes, I actually like the look, and how useful it is *in spite* of that look. It's right up my street, to the point where I HOPE most people hate it after buying so I can get one cheap in about 5 years when my beat-up old Peugeot 307 breathes its last.

That's why most people in this boat call it "financial independence" instead of retirement. The word retirement just has too many negative connotations.

I own a 10-year old very efficient diesel by choice - a 1.6 Peugeot 307SW. That's not particularly small by EU standards, but it's not a big car either, and because it had 200.000km on the dial it was only €2000. I've put another 25k on it in the last six months, at an average of around 4L/100KM (around 60MPG). My wife and I have swapped to a much more "eco" lifestyle overall as well.

What we've both noticed though, even though we are very on-board with being sensible, eco-conscious and frugal, we are both attracted to giant stupid pick-up trucks. They make no economical or ergonomic sense, they cost about 20x what I paid for my current car, have *less* space for passengers (the Peugeot converts to a 7 seater if I want it, or I can take out the back seats in minutes to have a van), "official" MPG is almost twice as bad as our current real-world MPG, and in many places parking spots are already on the small side for my car (e.g. getting kids out of a car seat takes up a lot of space). But there is *something* about these things, whether that is the sheer "up-yours"-ness of having such a car, or the relentless marketing, something makes even otherwise vehemently anti-car-clown people like us drool over them.

If you only occasionally do those things, it's probably cheaper to rent a specialized vehicle for just those occasions. Or if you have a good network of friends and neighbours, swap cars for a few days.

There's another problem. Your dev employees are smart. They might prefer Windows (I hesitate to use the word "like" - it's just an OS, and fighting all it's phone-home and "I'm smarter than you" functionality is infuriating). If they see a marketing employee get a system that is more than twice as expensive as theirs for nebulous reasons, yet they have to fight for weeks just to convince the purchasing department that the on-board GFX card will NOT do for VR development just to save 50EUR off the price of an already pretty shit Lenovo, they are going to get annoyed. So one marketing dude getting a mac suddenly means the entire dev department "needing" new machines and the budget having a massive stroke.
I still think it's a good idea, happy devs will earn you that back fairly quickly if they are important in your organisation.

BTW, posting from a Dell XPS15, with a separate massive gaming keyboard attached because JUST SHOOT ME NOW if I have to use one of those tiny input devices masquerading as a keyboard with a "haha lol I'm moving your cursor and clicking randomly" pad where my wrists rest. Now get off my lawn.

Oh man, I'm going to have to watch Maggie. Reading the plot synopsis alone. The film that "The Girl With All the Gifts" should have been. I loved LAH, it always resonated with me as a commentary on the fictional lives we lead.

No, duh, you get the special hill cows and chickens that have shorter legs on one side.

Yeah, this. I've reluctantly got an Office365 license, partially to get access to some things I just can't get otherwise. I'm talking Outlook, Skype for Business and Teams, which are used by my clients for internal communication. It also helps to have the "official" version of Word or Excel or Powerpoint just in case they send me a document that Libreoffice can't quite get right. I also *always* keep Libreoffice around, and my own documents are always started there with a double-check in Word/Excel to verify that my client will see what I want them to see (or rendered to PDF).

I don't have the time and energy to manage my own Exchange, or fiddle around with bunch of Sysadmin stuff that is just not my forte. I want to do the work I can invoice. Office365 goes a long way for that, for a fairly minor and quite tax deductible cost.

I'm trying to dig it up but can't find it - be careful with the whole "pro-biotics" thing - they might actually *prevent* your own body from repopulating the gut-biome it's used to, by displacing it with a mono-culture or at the very least a culture that isn't what you need. Apparently this might be one of the reasons we have an appendix - it serves as a "safe haven" from where your gut can repopulate its own biome after a shock.

9 miles in the netherlands is also something you should be doing by bike, not car.

American or south UK pants?

We've already built a lot bigger than that - over 4 million.

This is something I don't get. I mean, I grew up in pinko commie Europe (Belgium), I nearly got a PhD (turns out, universities are a cesspool of nepotism and politics, and those are things I don't do!), and am currently an entrepreneur software engineer with all the success I need to live a happy, fulfilled life with my family.

On the flip-side of that, I love working with my hands on my off-time. The house I own (with no mortgage) is a 10-15 year project at least, and I've taught myself how to do basic plumbing, electrics, building, carpentry and decoration because it's just damn difficult to find anyone worth their salt to do these jobs for you, properly. If my software jobs dried up tomorrow, I'd just start a renovation business and probably do just fine for myself.

It reminds me of something that one of my favourite university professors once told me: "Look for the degrees and jobs that are unpopular but necessary". If you don't mind learning and doing the important jobs other people don't like, you're always going to be able to make a living.

Plus other confounding factors such as: PV isn't the only green source of energy (hydro, geo, wind energy), and maybe, just maybe, at some point we can turn our increasing energy usage around and actually start using *less* energy as efficiency increases instead of just going "yay, it's cheaper, let's use more of it". However, with an electric car boom on the horizon I'm really not that optimistic about that last part yet.