The good old says were when there were about 60 million people on the internet and it was new and unknown.

I think it wasn't social media that changed it for the worse, at least not perse, it was the internet-connected phone.

I considered moving there in the 90s. I worked at bell labs at the time, partially in Europe, partially in the US (Massachusets).
It looked attractive back then, but already "risky", (I had a wife and 2 very small kids, and heard of issues with health insurance from colleagues).

Then we considered Canada, which shared some of the risk, but less of the benefits (low taxes, high standard of living). I visited it looking for work and finding out how live there would be, and I found it totally dissapointing.

Instead we remained in Europe, and I am so happy about that now.
I would never set a foot in the USA as long as it remains so aggressive and hostile to anyone who does not "share the values" i.e. who does not become a fascistoid capitalist. The arrogance and loudness have become unbearable.

Government colluding with profit oriented firms is one of the defining characteristics of fascism.
From the article on the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...:

Fascism had a complex relationship with capitalism, both supporting and opposing different aspects of it at different times and in different countries. In general, fascists held an instrumental view of capitalism, regarding it as a tool that may be useful or not, depending on circumstances.[311][312] Fascist governments typically established close connections between big business and the state, and business was expected to serve the interests of the government.[311][312] Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.[313]

Camp Mystic had flooded before, this wasn't the first time. And the area in question had decided that flood warning was "too costly" in the past.

I agree with you, in principal, if they've had floods before and that wasn't enough to scare them in to paying attention then I don't think that there is any direct solution to the problem. It's the families that sent their kids that I feel like we could help with. Maybe insurance should be denied after flooding, we already spend tons of money insuring people that live in areas prone to disaster and we've rebuilt some of them multiple times. I'm not sure, but if and when you send your kid off to camp, there is absolutely an implied expectation that various safety protocols are taken seriously: they background check the people working with the kids, there are life guards where they swim, the food is cooked properly, etc.

Darwin can be mean.

That is not true.

Quality home batteries that can be bought now, e.g. from "Sonnen" (https://sonnen.de/stromspeicher/), are guaranteed for 10 years and should have 10000 cycles, i.e. that is 30 years long a daily full cycle.

I don't know why so many people keep painting such a bad picture of various alternative energy aspects, and alsmost seem to wish that no realistic alternatives for the current energy system can exist. Vested interests? Childish longing for fast and loud cars? Fatatism?

In most European countries you pay a tax on some products to pay for their (free) recycling,
because otherwise it would not happen.
The vendor needs to collect that tax and then is forced to take back products and recycle them.
In Switzerland it is called the "vorgezogene recycling gebühr".

This seems quite similar and not unreasable at all, and one of the few solutions to the problem of the commons.
I cannot think of a more ethical system that actually works.

Real communism doesn't seem to work due to human nature. Therefore all attempts have degenerated into dictatorships. Regardless of the origin and ideological justification, most dictatorships are effectively the same evil. The USA, if the slow motion coup d'etat of the republicans succeeds, will be just as bad as China already is.

I just came home from a road trip, 2000km, through north-western europe with a new tesla model 3.
I left 95% charged from home. The std. wall charger delivers up to 11kW (from solar panels).
22kW is usually not possible here, because of the electricity company restrictions, except at very high costs.

I only used tesla superchargers during the trip.
I forgot my type-2 cable, but there would not have been much reason for other networks in this case:
All superchargers were almost empty or at most half full, and available at convenient spots during the trip.
They have been open to other brands here since a few months, but I have seen only one other car at a tesla supercharger.

Mostly we had a meal or a snack/coffee during the charging, with a bit of planning (if there are no queues, hope it remains like that) you don't loose much time, maybe a bit less than when filling up gas.
One negative point: a few superchargers were up to 5km detour (we avoided those with longer detours and overrode tesla's route planning in one case).

There are no superchargers directly along the autobahn yet. I think that being exclusive to a brand would not be allowed if you want to get a spot along the autobahn. I assume it works the same way with filling/charging stations along the highway in the USA. I think that might be part of the reason that Tesla is opening up their charging network (apart from profit, hope they dont get too greedy).

In parking lots I have seen other brands being charged at 11kW with a type 2 cable. I think the rates are mostly higher than those of tesla.
I did not observe any Tesla being charged at a 3rd party charger.
But as backup during the next trip, I have now registered an app from a germanhy energy comnpany, for 3rd party networks that should work throughout europe. In rare cases it might come in handy to add a few extra kWh to avoid an extra supercharger stop later.

at every job I have had as a programmer since 1990.
Part of this is to avoid complexity like the plague.
I don't want to get support phone calls when on holiday.

And to make yourself employable by creating a dependency on yourself: it is unethical, it requires lying which is a drain on your mental resources and will make you unhappy. If you have happy bosses, new work will usually come.

If not, others will be waiting for your skills to make robust and simple solutions that keep working.

Getting a chip made IS the big hurdle. Soldering the chip is trivial by comparison.

After their 100 year history of propaganda and hardship through totalitarism they should already have known better.
I fear there is something in the russian mentality, that made them bullying their neigbours for the last 400 years.
I hope this country collapses so hard that it will vanish as a nation.

In Switzerland we just had the warmest new year, 17 degrees Celcius yesterday. The 0-degree height was 3700 meters at midnight, never happend.

Climat change puts more energy in the athmosphere, the extremes get bigger, and the average keeps climbing bit by bit.

You can still run your own rss reader, e.g. https://tt-rss.org/
Google news still sends rss updates. I read google news, amongst others through my own tt-rss instance.
It has a web ui and there are ios and androis apps.