luckys

Sure, seeing well-to-do foreigners live an easy life when one struggles in one's own country can feel bitter but the issues in Portugal are structural and predate the 1926 dictatorship. Have you noticed the same handful of families have glided gracefully through the different political regimes? This is not a culture that fosters entrepeneurship or thinking outside the box, and being physically on the tail of Europe does not help. Corruption is endemic and considered part of everyday life, as is "it matters who you know to get ahead." People have become subjugated by this environment to the point they might not even consider it can change.

They'll probably start making them with sim card and modem at some point. I can picture it now on a future ebay listing: faraday cage for your tv - only 99.99!

Yep. For contrast, I loved the elbow room in US flyover country.

It's a book that challenges some established views. If that makes it anti-science... It's up to a person whether they judge a book based only on a superficial understanding of it and without having read it.

I recommend it. I can't promise you will like it or find it interesting or agree with any of it. I find it important enough to recommend to people when this type of subject comes up.

What about the impact of EMF pollution? The book "the invisible rainbow' goes into that, though I don't expect this type of position to be well received in HN. I find it very healthy that this type of "invisible" pollution gets at least some discussion, however. We have to start somewhere.

My favorite scene in Life of Brian

Maybe it would be a good idea for Microsoft to split Windows into a version for business that supports all the cruft that has accumulated and is needed, and another version where they start from scratch. Something that is lightweight and respects the user. A man can dream.

There is a funny, deep observation made by The Good Place character Michael (a non-human) that has stuck with me since. He says that humans took ice cream, which was perfect, and "ruined it a little" to invent frozen yogurt, just so they could have more of it. There's supposedly a 'guilt' angle there somewhere but I never felt guilty for eating "too much" ice cream so can't relate.

Still, this "making something worse so you can have more of it" shows up pretty much everywhere in human experience. Sometimes it's depressing, other times amazing to see what was achieved with that mentality, and it seems AI is just accelerating it.

Love it! Bookmarked :-)

More bad faith interpretations.

Here is at least something tangible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surface_temperature#Glo...

On this page can be found the following graphic https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/EP...

On that graphic -- under the heading 'Ice cores (from 800,000 years before present)' in case the link gets truncated -- one can observe regular peaks in temperature that took place before the current one. I'm happy to be explained what caused them, as it could not have been human industrial activity.

That's it. I'm open to dialogue but won't entertain any more lazy dismissals and unfair characterization.

Happy to be shown where I can learn more about this different rate of change and trend which sets our current climate change apart from the rest of Earth's history.

GHG are a matter of life or death

That's what I hear from mainstream media all the time. Do you have some information or argument that will help me see things differently?

Of course you live in a 1st world country and it likely won't kill you, just cost you tons of money

A little presumptuous to assume my living conditions

It's not about "take better care of the planet", whatever you think that means

Now that's just snarky and done in bad faith. If I didn't care would I have posted it, already antecipating the downvotes?

We humans got where we are much due to technology, but we have to start thinking seriously where we go from here or there won't be land or water (or air?) that isn't polluted by something the planet is not well equiped to process. Have you read on the kind of places that microplastics have been found already? In the human body?

Because this is HN, (in Allo Allo's Michelle Dubois voice...) "I shall say this only wonce": If you're curious, have a look at Earth's historical temperature and co2 data going back millions of years. What you'll notice is that there's always been oscillations, like a more or less predictable wave. Human activity is polluting the Earth, yes, but this fixation on co2 and other gases (cow farts, really?) is unhealthy to put it mildly.

I'd like to see the same attention being given to plastics (so much single-use crap and how much of it can be recycled?), synthetic clothing, and all kinds of other chemicals including the ones we put in ourselves (pharma, food) and the environment, like fertilizers or the byproducts of mining today's fashionable minerals like lithium. Not to mention the explosion in electromagnetic frequencies activity, which somehow is taken as normal and ok by the same scientific establishment which accepts thousands(?) of fake papers every year for publication. You just have to love the irony when something like Science is deemed 'settled'-- in that regard, it's almost as if we went back a few centuries.

There's certainly a lot to be said for humans needing to take better care of the planet. Co2 just gets a little too much attention for my taste. And don't take from this that I love oil. I find fracking to be abominable and another big factor in polluting the land and the water tables.

I guess so, could also your provider. Have you tried accessing with a vpn?

You make a good point. Getting decent customer/tax payer service is becoming increasingly rare in the name of metrics/efficiency/profit.

I feel fortunate I did not yet have to deal with the particular brand of madness you describe.

https://annas-archive.li/ works and there's a few alternatives listed at the bottom of the page

https://archive.is/2kKhG

OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute." I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.

Where is your contract with Ovo Energy? Companies cannot just go charge random people willy-nilly like that.

The end goal of this line of thinking is tracking every molecule in the universe. Exagerated I know, but we're moving in that direction.

The speedy success of Germany invading France in 1940 had more to do with their use of radios and giving commanders on the field some latitude on how to accomplish objectives than with the consequences of the Versailles treaty on the population. The French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were more stuck in a WWI style of command from the top that proved vulnerable to speed. But it wasn't clear cut as the "fast attack" plan was initially rejected by the German top brass, themselves still stuck in the past.

An alternative, because the use of dice is to effectively decide an outcome: for example, Knight (Player1) fights Troll. Have both players agree on a short set of possible outcomes. For this example:

1-Knight defeats Troll 2-Troll defeats Knight 3-Troll is wounded but escapes 4-Knight is wounded but escapes 5-Another character or party comes into scene

Then Player2 decides which outcomes are assigned to which numbers (1-5), keeping them a secret and Player1 picks a number not knowing the outcome it stands for.

It's quicker and within reach of us, mere mortals.

That long article on the second link was really good, thank you.

I use Fedora Workstation. It's boring and less customizable than other distros out of the box, but I like it like that. I pretty much just add the extension 'dash to panel' and call it a day.

Microsoft has their own plans for where they want to go with Windows and it certainly is not catering to their users. The same could be said from most big companies I guess -- all about lock-in, value extraction, planned obsolescence. I see Valve/Steam as one of the few exceptions, probably because they are not publicly traded.

There's a lot of good food places in Lisbon that you might not be familiar with yet. Enjoy your stay

In Portugal you can have one or more last names, but the very last one will be from the father's side. Unless both parents have the same double-barreled name? Never seen that here.

Great name. Names can be so generic but this hits the nail on the head

https://anycrap.shop/product/a-pi-sided-die

The Pi Sided Die is a mathematical novelty designed by mathematicians who dared to defy probability. This six-sided die appears to have six sides, but only five faces display numbers between one and six – the sixth face reveals a cryptic message related to pi's decimal places when rolled correctly.

When spun onto a flat surface, the die subtly reconfigures into seven distinct orientations, granting users temporary access to advanced statistical insights unavailable through traditional dice-based calculations. Users claim solving complex equations becomes easier after interacting with our unique Pi Sided Dice; however, these benefits typically fade within hours unless reinforced by additional rolls.

The site's too fun not to come back to, so I guess I'm buying the author a coffee

We should thank you for the laughs! Re: costs - put some ads on the page, problem solved :-P

I 100% agree with the right to privacy but the keyword there is arbitrary - if everyone's comms get intercepted that would not be in contravence of the Declaration, as it would be done systematically, i.e. not arbitrarily.

The spirit of the laws is all fine and good but combing through them it's not uncommon to find these little loopholes.