There’s an interesting argument that honey can be vegan, by that criteria.

A bee colony is not generally trapped in a hive. They are capable of leaving, if it’s not to their standards, or they find somewhere between. The catch is that artificial bee hives are amazing for bees, compared to natural locations. The only catch is the “rent” taken by the eldritch creatures. They never take too much however, only taking excess the hive doesn’t need.

Basically bees could be argued to be paying rent, in honey, for high quality accommodation.

Very rarely, if ever.

The only time it is justifiable is if it’s either pre-agreed or if there is a threat to the child.

If there is reason to think they are being groomed, or used in some way, then yes. E.g. a room search after getting information that they are holding drugs for a dealer. They should be treated like a police search. Only done when there is real reason, rather than just fishing.

If it’s pre-agreed that a device isn’t private, then the rules change slightly. A younger child’s phone or computer should be subject to respectful monitoring. It should also be part of an open and equitable discussion on boundaries and rules. Even here, the goal should be to protect the child from dangers, not to snoop on what they are chatting with friends about beyond that.

Privacy, is an important thing for children. It needs to be provided with guard rails initially, but should be respected as best you can.

Wars have a weird amount of holding back. Going after civilian infrastructure is often seen as “ungentlemanly”, basically bad PR. Most Ukraine attacks like this seem to be to prove they can, not to cause significant civilian damage.

Basically, Russia has a number of nasty options, currently unused. Ukraine is also unusually dependent of foreign help, and so it is vulnerable to the world opinion changing. Ukraine is mostly proving its threats are viable.

I always knew he was an arsehole, but I thought he was at least a like minded arsehole, when it came to saving the planet.

The trapped kids incident also the first proper crack I noticed in his image. Now, I wouldn’t touch anything of his with a 40’ pole.

While Putin was likely acting on their interests, the current situation has gone completely pear shaped on that front. Putin is stuck. If he backs down, he’s dead, if he doesn’t win, he’s dead. He’s currently riding the limbo between those situations, hoping for a 3rd option.

If he died, the powers behind him would likely take the chance to disengage. The current situation is bad for business, and plans need to be re-thought. It wouldn’t fix things long term, but short term, they would likely back down.

I’ve not tried reflashing, but the os seems mostly vanilla android. I’ve had a couple of OS updates since I got my phone, so it’s not just fire and forget. I’m not sure about long term however. You might also have issues with the thermal camera, if you reflash. I don’t know how it’s wired internally, and whether a non custom app will play nice.

They seem to be aiming at builders/workmen as a rugged phone with long battery life. They also seem to be trying to build a proper brand, not just a throw away one. Hopefully that means they will at least do security updates for quite a while. But that’s speculation.

Oh, and it’s a brick, weight wise. I personally like that, but it’s quite polarising when people try it.

I got fed up with this and ran across ulefone. Some of their phones are downright ridiculous but I’m happy with mine.

It’s a waterproof brick with good grip and a 10,000mAh battery. Good for up to 4 days. It’s also got rubberised grips and takes a beating. Oh, it also has a headphone port, and thermal imaging.

Vitamin D helps if you are dealing with S.A.D (seasonal affective disorder). Basically, our brain gets to go into a state akin to hibernation. Unfortunately, modern life isn’t compatible with this. The effect is tiredness and low mood.

SAD seems to be triggered by low vitamin D, low exposure to sunlight, and the cold. The exact trigger levels vary from person to person.

If you’ve not tried it yet, a daylight lamp could help a lot, combined with the Vitamin D, it trucks the brain into thinking it’s still warm and bright outside. You want a hot in the morning, as well as one in the mid to late afternoon.

Failing that, accept your need to hibernate, and plan it in. It’s not ideal, but not fighting it will also help your mood.

It’s not a true fractal, so the length has some finite bounding. It’s just stupidly large, since you are tracing the atomic structure.

Steam’s main thing is that they have recognised that killing the golden goose is a bad thing for everybody. They have consistently played for long term growth and profits, over purely short term gains.

Steam has made mistakes, but their demonstrated values have been shown to be mostly compatible with mine. I can work with that.

Also, them being privately owned means that they are less have seagull investors swooping in and demanding short term gains now now now.

Adopting a rescue dog has various home checks and interviews and welfare checks. Leaving hospital with a baby: “Do you have a car seat for them?”, “Yes…”, “You’re all good to go then!”, “…”

I’ll take compatible.

Most people game on windows. It’s monolithic nature also means that they will mostly encounter the same bugs.

Linux has a wider base of functionality. A bug might only show up on Debian, not Ubuntu.

End result, they spend 60% of their effort solving bugs, for 2% of their base. That’s not cost viable.

Compatibility means they just have to focus on 1 base of code. All we ask is that they don’t actively break the compatibility. This is far less effort, and a lot easier to sell to the bean counters.

Once Linux has a decent share, we can work on better universal standards. We likely need at least 10% to even get a chance there.

Last year, a house near me had a hotdog cooker going. It was an absolute hit with the kids (and parents!)

That’s exactly what I do. I also have IoT devices that are still trucking along a decade later. I fully expect them to likely do a decade more.

Both Tasmota and ESPhome provide open source firmware for many IoT devices. They throw up a local API interface that other systems can talk to. Providing legacy support is as hard as using HTML put and get commands.

I suspect Russia is worried about how well their nukes will work. The small tactical ones (battlefield nukes) are the most complex and so most at risk of a maintenance failure.

Russia’s worst fear is deploying a nuke, only to have it fizzle. At this point it’s strategic or nothing. Deploying a strategic nuke would cause massive political fallout. Far more than Russia could cope with. No-one, including China and India, want that genie back out of the bottle.

Just hard a read through, and there are a lot of problematic flaws in your concept.

In the first section, corruption will be a HUGE issue. The groups deciding on pay rates will have insane power, which will attract bribes etc. E.g the powerful pushing down wages in their field of interest for short/medium terms profits.

On top of that is the inefficiency problem. Very few jobs are equal. E.g. a sawmill worker, working on the outskirts of a big down will want different compensation to one working completely out in the sticks. There’s also no system to adjust for changing demand. If you’ve not got enough builders, tough shit, no pay increase to pull in talent.

Trying to cover these will create an insanely complex and problematic bureaucracy, that will grow rapidly out of control. It’s basically a version of what the USSR and communist China did. Reading up on how they failed could be enlightening to you.

On to the second point. You’ve again got massive inefficiencies. Often the blemished bananas etc don’t go to waste. They are used to make things like banana ice-cream or banana bread etc. You also jumped straight to processed foods. There is no accounting for making something better from cheaper, but higher quality ingredients.

It’s a LOT more efficient to just work out the cost of feeding a person (in a particular location). If it costs $X to feed a person for a month, then just give them each $X. They can decide how to most efficiently use that money. Some will buy basic meals, others will cook using higher quality ingredients, still others will add to it to cover take away each night. All get fed, and efficiencies get maximised on a local level.

As for taxation. It’s a good idea in principle, but would have problems in implementation. It’s already a problem that unphotogenic causes get underfunded. Your idea would be equivalent to America using “Go fund me” to cover medical costs. It works, ish, but is horribly unfair.

A better solution might be a donation match system. You pay $Y and the government diverts $Y of your taxes (up to how much you paid) to a cause of your choice. The UK government does something like it already. Gift aid allows UK tax payers to donate to a charity. The charity can then claim 25% of the amount from the government. E.g. a £100 donation becomes £125 to the charity.

Your ideas are a good leaping off point. A few useful bits of advice.

Check to see how an idea can be corrupted.

Check if it’s been done before, and how it worked/failed. Also look at how inefficient your idea is.

A large amount of inefficiency can be worse than unfairness. A split where some get $300 while others get $100 looks unfair. However, if the fix leaves everyone with $80 then the unfair version still wins overall (everything else being equal).

That would effectively create a planned economy. In theory it could work. Unfortunately, the human element cripples it. How do you rank the value of doctors against cleaners? How do you rank bananas against bread? The core elements were tried with communism, and found to fall severely short.

What has been found, in Africa, with micro loans/grants is that people are a LOT more efficient at maximising value locally than a lot of applied rules. Giving them money (e.g. to start a business) is a lot more effective than giving them resources directly. It uses capitalism to optimise on the local scale.

One of the key things with UBI is letting people and businesses sort things out on the small scale. While capitalism has massive issues, it’s VERY good at sorting this sort of problem.

My personal preference would be a closed loop tax based system. Basically, a fixed percentage of money earned (e.g. 15%) is taxed on everyone. That is then distributed on a per capita basis. There would be a cutoff point where you pay more than you receive. The big advantage is that it’s dynamic to the economy. If the economy shrinks, then UBI shrinks with it, encouraging people to work more to compensate. It provides a floor of income, letting people negotiate working conditions, without the fear of homelessness. It also channels money from the rich, where it moves slowly, to the poor, where it has a far higher velocity.

No sane UBI plan will do this. The goal is to cover Basic needs, not replace working. What it does attempt to do away with is the requirement to work yourself to the bone to barely survive. Working to pay for things more than the basics is still expected.

A useful side effect is to rebalance the power dynamics between larger companies and their employees. It’s a lot harder to abuse someone if they won’t be homeless within 3 months if they quit.

It’s more the power that can be applied. Most people capable of getting a pedal bike up to those speeds also know how to read the road for safety. Even then, bikes can basically disintegrate in a (initially) minor accident.

A powered bike is capable of destroying itself if misused.

That’s a trick many/most breeds of dog can pull off. It’s amazing how well a wet nose, and a slobbery smile shoved in your face can break a bad cycle.

There’s a reason they are used as emotional support animals so often. They can guard us from ourselves almost as well as this dog did the sheep from coyotes.