kubok

I have ridden BMW motorcycles for many years and made a point of using blinkers when needed. Cars have crumple zones; on a motorcycle, you are the crumple zone.

But yes, BMW cars are often driven by self-centered assholes.

We are actually considering replacing our windows entirely with triple layer panes and in-built UV filters. Our current windows are double-layered and ~30 years old.

The thing that bothers me most about office AC, is that the air is stale due to poor maintenance. Yes there are regulations against this, but those are not being enforced because that would cost money and hurr-durr stockholders and hurr-durr employers. Home ACs are just wasteful. I live in a neighbourhood that has many many gardens that are fully paved over. In order to counter the heat, each house has several AC units. Dumb fucks.

I installed solar panels 5 years ago. Back then, a home battery was ~€9000 , so not worth it. Currently, a home battery starts at ~€1500 but with pitifully low capacity. There’s currently no real incentive to install these. You may save a bit of money, but at its current rate you would look at a 15 year ROI.

Switching to an EV would be a nice idea for surplus energy, but our anti-environment government has made it very unattractive to buy one, but now I am going off-topic so I’ll save that for another rant.

As US-centric as the article is, here’s a perspective from the EU.

I have a strong opinion on air conditioning. I hate it as I have worked in too many poortly ventilated offices with the AC as its only source of slightly less stale air. There should be laws against poorly maintained office ACs. However, I am going to need it at home, even if I do not like it. I live in a temperate climate that is getting hotter in summers. Fast. The house I live in was never intended for extremely hot weather: flat roof, lots of glass, poor insulation. I did upgrade the insulation, but the huge glass facades of my house make it a greenhouse in the summer unless I take some measures like sun blinds and whatnot. Even then, our top floor gets uncomfortably hot.

I have installed solar panels that allow me to generate more electricity than I need. However, over the years our neoliberal and current far right government has made it very unattarctive to invest in this as they allowed the commercial energy businesses to impose tariffs on the surplus of generated electricity.

So now I am seriously considering installing AC to use on hot summer days. Not only do I get my house cooler, I also won’t be charged for generating too much electricity. What I am not going to do, is keep the AC running all day though.

Fuck this government and its predecessors.

This is the way. Also: my bathroom floor is heated for that extra bit of comfort in winter.

Don’t forget the morons who keep worshipping said pieces of shit. Even now, I run into Musk cultists regularly.

Same. I had a classmate who was JW (or rather, his parents were). He was an actual nice kid who was frendly to everybody, had a good sense of humor and was quite smart. One day, he fell in love with a girl outside of his community (i.e. not a JW). He got the choice of either being ostracized or breaking up with her. That’s not a choice I’d want to make in my late teens. Last I heard of him is that he made it out.

Boom!

Because the Gulf of Mexico has oil?

Serious answer: when my sister had jaw surgery, the simply threw stuff in the blender. Make pasta sauce, add pasta, throw in blender. You’ll feel like an old person for a few weeks, but you’ll be fed.

Even more serious answer: what do your medical peoples say about this?

Quit university and learn a proper job.

(in the end I did, but it took way too long for me to make that decision)

I think Alpine.

My wife has custom ear plugs with swappable filters. One type of filter is meant for concerts, whereas another type filters out wind noise. She uses the latter type on her motorcycle trips. This kind of ear plugs can be bought at audicians back here in Yurp. I am not sure about other contintents.

One reason I have not read yet: scapegoating. In my country, back in the early 2000s it was the “terrorists” who made it possible to enforce a few unpopular and unconstitutional policies. Nowadays, it is the “immigrants” who take our jobs (we have a job shortage), housing (which was sold off to investors) and health care (which was sold off to investors). Point to a group that cannot defend itself and people will vote in your favor.

Spoken from a European perspective: within a few decades, the US will lose its status as a superpower as it slides into isolationism. You simply cannot be both isolationist and a military and economic superpower. Add to it that much tech is still in the US, but people are waking up to the inherent vulnerability in that. Think government data being on US servers.

These developments will hurt the entire world in the short term and new superpowers will rise. Russia has had its day, but China and India will be the top dogs. I am not discounting Brazil either as a local superpower is South-America. We do probably not want it, but they have the people and the production capacity.

The next four years will accelerate all that. I have already read the first questions about F-35 warplanes being a wise choice as the US could potentially disable them remotely. That would turn them into expensive paperweights at the whim of the US. If the US themselves are less than stable, that would be a very precarious situation.

Core developer of an open source software suite here. We make money by doing the following things:

• We offer a free and open source community package that has the basics. However, we offer a number of professional packages that we offer yearly subscriptions for.
• We host our software. We charge by the number of active users.
• Custom development.
• Paid support like migrations or troubleshooting. Also helping external developers develop custom modules.

This allows us enough income to develop the community part of the software.

If you were ever here, how did you solve this?

Simple. Just stay friends. I left a job 15 years ago because the CEO was an asshole. However, our team was great and I still visit some of my old colleagues regularly.