Unrelated: why do you use “þ” instead of “th”? I’ve seen a few of your comments and it always trips me up.

I mostly agree with what you’re saying. But it’s really easy to make an argument for why an alternative works perfectly when you say “you don’t actually need that” every time something comes up that doesn’t work.

How? The point is to show the average windows gamer what the experience might be like to switch to Linux. They did that.

That’s not true. Some of the original libertarians were socialists. I had a libertarian phase once upon a time. One thing that was very apparent was that nobody could agree on what libertarianism meant. The only thing they seemed to agree on was that the government should be smaller. The maga movement has adopted the libertarian label for some reason. Despite the government, especially the authoritarian elements being expanded. In the current climate, anybody that proudly claims to be libertarian is either pretending the meaning hasn’t changed, or is a maga idiot. Even Penn Jillette, one of the most outspoken libertarians, has since shed the label.

There are often nation-wide or region-wide advertising campaigns that proudly display a price. If individual cities have different sales taxes, that would make it hard. Personally, I still don’t find this to be a good reason. Just charge a single amount anyway and eat the costs in the high tax area. Price it in.

Edit: now that I’m thinking about it, many chain businesses are franchised. So each McDonald’s (for example) is independently owned. So they couldn’t just eat the cost in those areas.

Much of the battery’s energy is recovered through regenerative braking. This means the main thing limiting range is drag. That’s why EVs typically have much more emphasis on being aerodynamic and are more efficient in cities. An ICE car has all of the energy dumped into heat in the brakes. But that’s ok because it’s easy to just make the tank bigger. That’s why ICE cars are more efficient on the highway where they never brake.

I doubt it’s torque delivery. Rubber compound and alignment make a big difference in tire life. Since EVs are much more limited by inefficiencies, I would bet it came with harder tires and a straighter alignment.

My weather app uses that for weather data. I’ve found it more reliable than other people’s apps.

The single largest producer of micro plastics is car tires. The second largest is lint from synthetic clothing. I agree that it’s probably green washing but it’s still probably better than using leather.

Even if leather is a byproduct of meat production, it’s not given away. It’s sold. At best, leather is subsidizing the meat industry. Leather helps make animal suffering more profitable. Therefore it happens more.

“this one house has perfectly consistent power usage. That’s suspicious”

That’s like 3 beers worth. I’m not saying you can’t burn significant calories by exercising but the effort needed is way more than simply not drinking 3 beers. Also most exercise isn’t going to burn 800+ calories. The only way an average person is hitting those kind of numbers is if they have an intense manual labor job.

Having a calorie deficit is the only way to lose weight. Everybody knows that. Exercise actually burns very few calories. There are many other health benefits to exercising but weight loss isn’t really one of them.

In my experience, a calorie deficit is much easier if you eat better foods, rather than try to eat smaller portions of unhealthy foods. More fiber keeps you feeling full for longer. Find ways to incorporate lots more vegetables in your diet. I keep apples around for when I want a snack. I make bean tacos instead of chorizo (maybe I’ll mix a little chorizo in), etc. Find sauces and ways to spice up veggies. Don’t worry if your sauces and dressings are the most healthy. Just getting the vegetables is the most important.

Also cut back on drinking of you do that a lot. Lots more calories in alcohol than people realize.

I use mint that I haven’t updated in years because one time I tried and it failed so I stopped trying. It’s my old work Thinkpad that I now use exclusively to run weekly events. It’s old and heavy and I needed a more lightweight OS than windows.

Brics is basically an alignment against the west, rather than for something. Each of the members has ambitions that are, at best, completely different from one another, and in some cases, contradictory. It reminds me of the cold war era non-aligned movement.

My follow up questions:

1. Do unhealthy food options lead to obesity, or do lifestyles drive demand for food options (or some mix of the two)?
2. Regarding the income relationship: does income drive lifestyle or are unhealthy foods cheaper to offer?

I personally believe the first option in both of these questions, though I’d love to see some formal research on it.

They are also spending big on domestic arms production. France will be a big winner out of this since they’ve long valued independent military arms production and the rest of Europe will want to buy French stuff (yes along with American stuff) while they get their arms production up and running. South Korea is also a big arms supplier internationally.

The reduction in US support for NATO is largely part of a pivot to focusing on Taiwan and China. The US military industry would love it if the US focused on both and kept cozy relations with europe. I’m sure they’re happy with the whole world increasing defense spending amid rising tensions, but they aren’t happy about the US scaring away customers. I hate how involved the US military is globally but acting like Trump is some mastermind of American imperialism is reductive and giving him too much credit. The thought that Europe shouldn’t be worried about Russia (the ones currently invading a European country) is bonkers.

Same except I supplement with Gmaps. Transit is fantastic if you know your destination but Gmaps is way better at looking around for restaurants for example

This new agreement, with NATO signatories needing to commit 5% of their GDP, feels like a grift for the benefit of U.S. defense contractors. The U.S. cannot be trusted to actually honor their agreements anymore, so why pay more into their alliance? Is Europe really that scared of further Russian aggression?

They’re massively investing in European defense industry, not just buying more from the US. They are scared of Russian aggression and they are scared the US will not honor NATO agreements which is why they’re committing so hard to defense spending. Also, I believe it’s 3.5% for military and 1.5% for infrastructure.

Same

Preparing for the worst is not a bad idea. If the situation turned sour, I’d love to be in a big group of people prepared for that. But if I did show up like that, I would’ve been 1 of a small handful with that level of preparedness. It wouldn’t have mattered. By far, the most important thing for these protests to be successful is for people to show up in huge numbers. If people feel like they need to be ready for war, they won’t show up and the protest won’t be as impactful. I’d rather have 10s of thousands showing up in funny costumes carrying instruments and noisemakers than a couple hundred with gas masks.