Romance language are the low hanging fruit. Learn one and if you are good at languages and the rest are fairly simple to grasp as well. I am fluent in Portuguese. I was raised by lingual and live in both Brazil and the US growing up. And as an adult. I also and studied French for 5 years, going to France once. As a result I am about 80% fluent in Spanish too. About the same I am in French. I can read Italian pretty well but orally understand only about 50%. If it works as advertised, the tech is pretty impressive. The google translate app has done live translations in those languages reasonable well. At least well enough to understand the main points most of the time. However it is awful with Japanese. It can do words and three to five word phrases. But anything longer it is pretty much useless. My wife in Japanese and I have tried it over there years when visiting Japan. My Japanese has improved much faster than the translation software. You have to start somewhere and French, Spanish, and Portuguese covers many hundreds of millions of people. So good for them, I guess.

Nice! I’ve cycled in snow and ice with a full suspension mountain bike with studded tires in -40 F weather. It’s fun. However, it clearly isn’t a for everyone, That said, I do recommend it.

I’ve got 250 gallon heating oil tank at my house here in Philadelphia. There is no natural gas line on my street. It is more expensive than natural gas, but it actually burns cleaner. So no, it isn’t crazy at all. Though if I’m being completely forthright, I also have two wood fireplaces I use one or the other periodically during the winter too. Mostly on weekends. So I imagine that negates any cleaner air on my part. But I’d use the fireplaces if I had a gas line going to my house too, so maybe not? A cozy family night by the fire is quite pleasant.

If you commute only a few miles to workmaybe ride a bike? Most able bodied adults can easily walk between 3-4 miles an hour. An e-bike or e-scooter would also be better choices than a car. That until it rains or snows. Then a car is clearly the better choice. But it doesn’t rain or snow in most places every day. The best choice is to have a car and only take it out in inclement weather.

An island nation should harness the tides and ocean currents for power. Yes, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. But there are lots of smart people over there and elsewhere which huge budgets. Figure it out.

Sure you could spend $300 on luggage. You could also spend $60 on a shirt. Or you could send half that amount and it would very likely still last a little longer. Electronics like the PlayStation, Switch, etc will cost the same and be of the same quality. There are definitely items they sell which will be the same as you can find elsewhere. But you are rarely getting a lower price of those items. However a lot TVs, massagers, bikes, camping equipment, etc do in fact have lower quality Wal-Mart versions branded with the same company logos as the regular versions. That is often why they cost less. It’s worth checking the model number online before you buy something like that at Wal-Mart.

Well, mostly it is mostly uneducated people who shop at Wal-Mart. So why not let an algorithm tell them what poorly made garbage that will fall apart in six to twelve months they should waste their money on. Spend a little more money on a better made product and you only have to buy it once. Or at least significantly less often. Which means you’ll end up saving money in the long run. If it isn’t food or soap and don’t you have more money, wait until you do. You don’t have the object now. What is another couple weeks or month? Wal-Mart is poster child for how poor people stay poor.

I mean, I am pretty much what everyone still called it. Might as well.

I want some for my deck. I’m about to replace some boards with cedar, but if this is as good as they say I’d pay twice as much for it to be stronger and last longer.

If the president can ignore laws and court orders. So can the states and cities.

I often choose audiobooks for three reasons. The content, the author, and the narrator/narrators. I’m not going to pay for any AI narrators. I’d rather just read the book myself. If the majority of books are read by AI, I will just listen to a lot less audio books. I hope the rest of you reject this as well.

They keep saying Nigeria’s population will grow that big. I don’t see it happening. Their government barely functions and resources, including education, are poorly allocated. They have children like an agrarian society while the majority of people are urban. I mean, India certainly kept growing and they are about as dysfunctional. But they at least have a history of science and engineering among the upper classes. I know it sounds like it, but I am not disparaging individual Nigerians. Given the opportunity they can obviously be just as capable as any one else. What I am saying is only a tiny percentage of the population will ever have that opportunity. If they keep having so many children with major changes they are going to be poorer for as a nation. Not richer.

Now you can be the Walled Garden!

When I was in school I would sell my essays to underclassmen who would then rewrite it in their voice and likely sell it to another student after they were done with the class. This is just technology removing that economy. The bots are taking the jobs of poor college students.

And the AI will be instructed to go after middle class earners and small businesses while largely ignoring the wealthy and large corporations. While making it easily to target political opponents. There will be no whistle blowers, because there will be no one outside of management with access to the code to blow the whistle.