What’s your source on the reverify thing? I use matrix a lot, and this hasn’t been an issue I ever experienced anymore since they introduced cross-signing a couple years ago.

Same goes for the common clients such as element. It has been clunky in the past, but after the past major overhauls ( also years ago now) everything has been silky smooth for me, if not better than others. The one thing left I prefer from Signal is the one-time photo share.

Matrix is great, clients are great too, only the server part still is annoyingly complicated and messy. Would only recommend that for tinkerers, on that case it’s a great path to learning about the complexity of addressing lots of security concerns that others gloss over.

Edit: to add - there’s a reason why the French government and the German military decided to build their secure internal IM infrastructure on Matrix. Obviously they are hosting their own private network, but if the concept is good enough for European government and military, it is an indicator for quality especially in terms of security and privacy.

How do you deal with all the pee splatter? Or do you piss on the sink? Or are you a dwarf?

Pissing while standing is only ok when a proper urinal is available. Pissing in toilet while standing imparts too much kinetic energy on the pee, causing violent splashing. Yes, even if you aim at an angle. And aim will always falter at the end anyway with decreasing water pressure…

And getting rid of the unfair preferential terms is good for the EU as a whole, because it will reduce resentment in all other current and potential future member nations.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe Brexit hurt everyone in Europe and I can’t wait to welcome UK back into the Union, but make it on equal terms. It’s a very small silver lining to the whole fiasco. I just hope it doesn’t take too long for UK to find a leader string enough to say “I think we made a mistake, we should reapply”. Make a new referendum while the populace still realizes the connection between Brexit and the current misery before some populist schmuck finds a new scapegoat.

I do. I do not understand why this tiny delivery bears mentioning compared to all the other, much larger deliveries.

And I want to highlight how little all the billions of aid will mean if the West now just stops delivering, simply because the public is bored of the war. War is expensive, but sometimes there’s no alternative. And cynical at it may be, supporting a proxy to fight for you on their ground is still hell of a lot cheaper than your own people dying on your soil.

250 artillery shells, wow. That’s gonna last a whole three days.

That’s like telling depressed people “just don’t be so down”. It shows a lack of empathy as well as medical ignorance.

Almost all western leaders have condemned Israel blocking vital supplies and the forced indiscriminate expulsion of civilians from north Gaza, as far as I know. Just like they condemn the atrocities of indiscriminate murder and kidnapping of civilians committed by Hamas. International aid is still being sent to Palestine, except where Israel blocks it. And the international community rightfully complains that this blockade is not in accordance with humanitarian laws and applies diplomatic pressure to get it through.

“The West” is neither accepting Israels logic blindly, nor does it excuse Hamas transgressions. But it mostly does it with words for fear of escalation. This also applies to nearby Arabian countries, by the way. Egypt refuses to accept Palestinian refugees for fear of Hamas establishing a base in Egypt Sinai and firing rockets from there, which would risk a much larger conflict. Nobody except Hamas, Hisbollah and Iran - and Russia, because it distracts from Ukraine - wants the conflict to escalate.

The even better part: this leads to colleagues bring similarly motivated, making teamwork a joy.

Sure, very rarely a new guy tries to exploit the trust and slacks off too much, but even with this little oversight, people notice and they get kicked swiftly. Nobody wants dead weight on their team.

I find it odd and oppressive how important this detailed oversight and control seems to be to employers. Home Office compatible jobs are mostly computer and thus “brain work”, and here productivity never has related linearly correlated with “time staring at monitor”. In office there would be plenty of smell talk, coffee breaks, diddling with smartphones and other ways to relax in between. These breaks are an important part of the productivity cycle, giving the mind a chance to process ideas and problems. In other countries/cultures there’s more reliance on the concept of good faith: I work at a company that uses home office contracts by default. I can go to the office if I want, but I don’t have to. Last time I’ve been there is five years ago, long before COVID. The company does not track our computer activity ( illegal here anyway) or working hours at all. Obviously it is still my duty to task the hours I spent working for clients for billing reasons, but that’s it. The bosses expect that we spend our time in a manner that is beneficial to the company. If one runs out of work, it is expected to notify one’s boss so be take can be found and assigned. Of course they still keep an eye out for slackers, but the metric never is working hours or office hours, it’s “what have you spent your time on and how has it benefitted the company?” This approach leads to us employees reciprocating the trust shown. This is the first job I never minded putting in extra hours at critical days, because I know I’ll just plan on more off hours or even off days during calmer weeks, giving myself to balance the hours. And no, I don’t have to get approval from my employer to do that, as it is expected I schedule my time offs in a manner that is least disruptive. This means I just ask a colleague working on the same or similar projects if he’s gonna be there so clients have a point of contact in case of emergency. I don’t think I ever can work for a conservative, controlling employer again after having enjoyed this level of mutual trust and maturity in the working environment. It’s almost as if I’m self-employed, but with all the benefits of being salaried.

That’s what I wanted to hint at in my third sentence, but yes, it wasn’t my main point. So thanks for picking up on this even more central aspect.

Your explanation is rightfully more verbose. Herd immunity should not be a difficult concept, but it definitely can’t be explained often enough.

I would agree if this decision would only affect themselves. But vaccination against infectious diseases works best if the majority is vaccinated. Then you can actually stop it from spreading. Which is important for all those that cannot be vaccinated for legitimate health reasons. Some vaccines are dangerous for specific subsets of the population. And usually it’s the same subset that would be most affected by an actual infection of the diseases we vaccinate against. Small children, pregnant people, any immunocompromised people… Vaccinating is an act of solidarity and community.

It’s interesting how different the quality of schooltime can be, and how perception of said time can differ for school kids as well. I was in a “full day” school starting from age 9 in a country where regular schools end at lunch time. Our school had the same curriculum to go through as every other, but lots more time to do it. The extra time was filled with dedicated self-learn time ( basically to do homework, but you have your classmates around to talk and help each other and can reach out to teachers if you really struggle with something) and elective extracurricular activities. It was mandatory, but you had free choice between all the offers. Teachers had to offer something, and usually offered their personal passion activities/hobbies. This led to these activities being the highlight of every kid’s week, because there was enough variety to choose from to find something you liked. Kinda like club activities in US schools, but much less codified and without competitive objectives. Some examples are photography, pottery, soap box car building, school beautification ( we literally were allowed and encouraged to graffiti/mural the school walls :D ), gardening, natural science ( basically constantly doing fun physics and chemistry experiments without boring theory), electronics etc. . This was intentionally kept separate from sports or music, which also were partially elective: you had to do sports and music, and some basics were mandatory for all, but you could opt for specializations. All this semi-forced mingling served well to prevent the formation of strong clique boundaries, without inhibiting kids from pursuing their talents and passions.

All that had huge advantages. Kids from troubled families had a much easier time of keeping up with everyone else, as help from home was hardly necessary. Lunch was provided by the school. Wasn’t stellar, wasn’t horrible. But it was available to all students for free, and that can be very important to some as well. It took me a long time, often only after visiting school friends for the first time or even after schooltime was over entirely, to realize how crazy rich or poor some of my friends’ families actually were, or what difficulties they sometimes faced at home and that there was a reason we never were invited to visit them. At school, it simply didn’t matter to us. Sure, some wore more brand clothes than others, but nobody thought of using this as a measure of personal quality. Class cohesion also was usually strong. Sure, kids still were assholes and bullies like everywhere else, but it usually got solved internally quickly, because it was harder to keep it up for full days with plenty of “forced” social time, and you ended up being more confronted with the damage and hurt you caused. And in really bad cases the proximity to school made it much easier for teachers to pick up on any developments in their students and classes and react quickly. There also were some mandatory “social skill” classes to teach everyone basic conflict solving and mediating. It was only one or two sessions per year, but I think it actually helped, even if we kids usually scoffed at it at the time. It was very clear the school philosophy was not to push through a curriculum, but to use the extra time to help explore and form personalities that later will hopefully enmesh well in society. And yes, our school had a bit more teaching personnel than other schools to fill all the time slots and extra activities, but we still had 25-35 students per class, it was not some utopian dream.

We kids loved the full day spent at school as well. No homework, and what’s better than spending the entire day with your friends? The school was far from my home, so I left the house at 6:30 and usually got back around 18:00, with about 40min of train commute plus 30min of walking (one way). Only Friday ended at lunch. Still never felt that I was lacking “me” time.

Tl;Dr : It matters a lot how the time at school is used.