linuskendall

As we increasingly live/love/marry across nationalities, being very conscious about immigration rules has to become something “normal people” care about and think about.

Rather than blaming the victim it’s a hard truth. Now, I would personally love for this to be different BUT as long as rules on immigration are what they are in many places of the world, we need to consider it when we move/marry/have kids.

For instance, one important piece of advice to people thinking about studies abroad (especially PhD) is to also consider what their particular opportunities for work and permanent residence is in the place they go to. Chance are after many years in a place, you may meet someone or you may want to stay. If you choose a place (say UK a few years ago) that is unlikely to let you stick around, well you may need to be prepared for disappointment.

Furthermore, unless you live in a country where you clearly have an idea of how to get PR then you always need live with the understanding that you may at any point have to pack up and move. This is a reality, and sucks to take in but is the truth. Nothing worse than building a life some place and then 10 years down the line get rejected during your semi annual “visa renewal”.

Engels pre-dates Stalin by a considerable period of time and we can assume Stalin has read Engels. Safe to say its Stalin just paraphrasing Engels.

That’s not true for the most part in South Asia. Here we have dog populations that are basically native and have lived alongside humans for a long time. So these dog population are not stray pet dogs.

UK researchers can participate in larger Horizon projects if UK is a Horizon members. Much more easy to have joint research projects if the budget can be shared across the project, rather than split up with research outcomes/outputs having to be accounted for across UK/Horizon boundaries. In reality many UK institutions that were part of Horizon projects simply left them or didn't join as partners on applications.

In Sweden there are usually stands where you can pick up sims for free, in airport outside shops etc.

Blue Tokai (and the other specialty roasters - must be at least 5-10 now) is certainly an improvement in the diversity of coffee we get, though pricing is quite high.

However, there has been a good option for coffee beans (and ground if you prefer) for many, many years and that’s Devans in Delhi. Used to be mostly available at INA market but they also started online a few years ago. They are much cheaper than Blue Tokai etc and will provide reasonably freshly roasted beans and ground coffee. No chicory.

We were taught to avoid white mushrooms, as in our area the poisionous ones you might mistake for edible ones are white.

Where I am from (Sweden) many, many people make mushroom picking a regular habit. However, most who do are aware of what mushrooms are safe, which ones to take extra care in identifying (definitely all white ones) and which ones to never pick. Wild mushrooms are perfectly safe as long as you have some knowledge about it. We were taught by parents and on school trips.

Isn't Liu his family name?

For consumers India's banking system has seen a large number of fast online payment systems. Yes, they have problems especially in rural areas but for the people that would be target group of Libra they are well served in India. In fact, India and (as far as I know) many African countries have far more advanced digital payments systems for consumers than many European countries.

International transfers are still an issue (at least from India to abroad) but this is largely a regulatory issue on foreign remittance than a technological one.

In this way Belgium is much better in my experience. Especially in Brussels people are really tolerant of poor French (presumably due to the two language situation).

It is really no difference between setting up Wireguard on a local network or via Internet as long as one of the hosts can listen to a public UDP port. If one of your clients are behind a NAT you may need to enable the keep alive option in the client's config

Though it is also true that we right now produce above 5000 kcal per capita according to FAO. Well above individual calorie needs. "To support our consumption" may be, but the configuration of our current consumption itself is problematic.

First step is to be acquainted with their previous research. Understand the direction they are taking and what their interests are. Find advisors whose work you think you can build on through your PhD. Write down what you are interested in working on and how it relates/expands/builds on your potential advisor's. Then contact them sharing just that and start having a conversation - they will surely have feedback and ideas for directions that your research could take.

In this way it almost seems appropriate to rely on country statistics - sure there may be political motivations to label certain places a certain way, but they are also more likely to capture local variations as to what is considered urban and not. I live in a place that is semi-rural by Indian standards but which definitely qualify as urban by EU standards.

From building a mostly mud building in a hot humid climate, it seems that the best you can usually do is "not less comfortable than outside". Basically a large reflective (say straw) roof/shade without walls is the ideal dwelling type, open to prevailing south breezes. Humidity can be regulated a bit using appropriate partitions, but nothing too much as far as I have found.

In the end as long as there is enough of a breeze conditions can be kept "moderately comfortable" without AC for most of the year in our location. Though, it does really ask for there to be a nap in the middle of the day.

I feel great jealousy for all the creative solutions that can be used in dry climates, including convective and evaporative!

Yet, GMO as a technology is in many ways inherently associated with an agricultural system dominated by large multinational actors who excert a great deal of power. This is for me the greatest problem with GMO - not any possible health implications (for which there is scant negative evidence). Greater reliance on seed that can't be reproduced locally and on highly specialised chemicals and packages of practice is a huge threat to many farmers (especially where I work - India).

I had very serious pollen allergy which was greatly alleviated by immunotherapy. Nearly 5 years of regular shots though (initially weekly after that eventually biweekly, then finally booster shots at less regular intervals). Since some pollen and food allergies seem to cross-react it also impacted the severity of my food allergies.

Presently we produce something like 5500 kcal per person on earth. Much of it to feed animals. Producing enough nutrition is not the issue - distribution and patterns of consumption are (and these are more political barriers than physical ones).

Replacing the 'z' with 's' is not a typo, though.

The theory of Kondratiev waves link closely to this idea, though the link between Nazi German and radios might be a somewhat too simplified model. There were quite few other historical antecedents that can be linked to rise of Nazi Germany.

Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population (ie. random)?

Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.

... and yet the world produces on average more than 5000 calories per person. Is "increased productivity" really what we require?

There is also the issue that the idea of greater productivity is highly geographical and seems to be valid in the context of European and North American monocropping agricultural systems. Other farming systems may produce a lot more overall nutrients - it is not at all clear that systems fueled by synthetic fertilisers are more productive as far as overall ecnomic/livelihood benefit or nutrients are concerned in East Asian and African agriculture. Results got from research done in Europe and North America (greater productivity in monocropping non-organic systems) are often suggested as valid in the context of "ensuring sufficient food production Africa / East Asia" which at least from what I know of Bengal seem to be a truth which requires substantial modification (see for example a relatively conservative discussion in [1]).

Further, Rodal Institute's longitudinal study[1] seem to suggest that organic practices can indeed match conventional.

Finally - hunger and starvation is generally not an issue of too little food production as Amartya Sen's nobel prize winning research on Bengal famines highlighted.

[0] http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/ac116e/ac116e05.htm [1] http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/farming-systems-trial/

Windows version works perfectly well under Wine, though you won't get official browser extension to work for autofill.

Curiously for use abroad ICA banken (affiliated with the grocery store of the same name) turns out to be really beneficial, free withdrawals anywhere in the world and completely aligned with remote customer service (as they don't in fact have any branches that they can ask you to visit..).

It works well, you initiate a bank account transfer from one country (denominated in say USD) and in a few days your recipient receives it as a deposit in their bank account in their local currency. In between TransferWise keeps you updated with status via e-mail and on the website.

Since transfers are bank account to bank account, this would mean somebody abroad (say in Europe) would have USD denominated bank account? As far as I know TransferWise does require your recipient to have a bank account in the location where they want to receive the money, meaning usually transfers between accounts denominated in different currencies.

If its within EU there is of course no point in using TransferWise as EUR-EUR transactions are practically free.

I have used TransferWise for both USD and SEK/EUR transfers to INR. Works perfectly, their time estimates are spot on (usually I receive it on the day or one day early) and the exchange fees are very competitive (and I've probably compared most other forms of transfers - including Bitcoin/Localcoin).

Calling it humor is generally a pretty good cover for both racism and sexism.

Have you worked extensively with the "unconnected"?

Sometimes, people might not be as unconnected as you think. To give you an example from the urban environment, I've seen download kiosks where somebody with a computer will download music videos and songs and then install them on memory cards for squatters, street vendors (living next to/in their stalls) and others that might nominally be seen as unconnected.

In other instances, "connection to the Internet" might look very different than one would assume. For many of the rural residents of the 4.3 bn you mention, the Internet is meaningless unless there are the types of applications that these people are interested in and/or in need of. They are not blessed with the potential for leisurely media consumption nor are they skilled to access information and / or modalities of use provided primarily for literate audiences.

I hope when you speak of connecting the unconnected you are not thinking of providing pipes of bandwidth or even new consumer devices? That has been tried and is clearly not the way forward. Rather building services that specifically target the needs as well as limitations faced by "the unconnected" seem a much more viable proposition - perhaps working with (and not reinventing or innovating around) the modalities already being developed, such as the "download kiosks" mentioned above.

First and foremost, though, I hope you are spending plenty of time with the unconnected when developing this idea.