Aviation fuel is taxed lightly but still train fares in france seem to be very expensive, the train in Ireland is far cheaper (even though most things in Ireland are more expensive).
I flew from Ireland to France recently and then caught two trains to my ultimate destination about 100 km from the airport.
The train fares worked out at double the cost of the flight despite being one fifteenth the distance.
I used to subscribe to Sky Sports. It had everything I was really interested as well as lots that I never watched.
Then the market fragmented and rights to certain sports were distributed among three broadcasters. Suddenly I could no longer watch many of the games I was interested in, I'd have needed three subscriptions instead of one. The fact that Sky didn't reduce their price didn't help. I ended up dropping Sky and taking out a subscription with an overseas service that had all the games and I could watch via a vpn. Then they tightened that up and the vpn method no longer worked.
Now I just pirate the games I want to see.
It feels like the same thing is happening to Netflix with Disney, Hulu, Amazon etc.
More and more I find I'm using gmail for my store of knowledge.
It is just so easy to find stuff and it's something I have open all the time anyway.
Big files or folder systems just aren't as searchable.
I suppose your blog is searchable via google though.
It's also become my diary via snoozed emails.
For example, the instructions for renewing my let's encrypt cert pop up in my inbox every 2 months in an email reminding me to do it.
If I order something online I snooze the confirmed order email to some date in the future to remind me I should have received it, etc.
Since the start of the pandemic, two years, I've used cash a handful of times.
People who use cash now stand out as suspicious almost.
The rest of us are an open book.
Privacy is dead unless we get a truly untraceable cryptocurrency that is in general use.
Privacy is a right and shouldn't be taken away to supposedly make it harder for the minority to get away with crime. It doesn't because what they'll do is use mules and proxies to mask themselves creating a new layer of victims in the process.
As with anti-laundering legislation, the law-abiding are the ones punished by their lives being made more difficult.
Yes, writing a note is a debriefing session for what you were doing/thinking about. And like a debriefing the sooner you can do it afterwards, the more valuable it can be.
I agree.
Emails (especially if you email yourself notes)and the internet automatically handle the vast majority of filing and search makes it the fastest retrieval system available.
Car key fobs that fail silently on cars that have no (visible) door keyhole and no ignition one. The first time it happens is an education you could do without.
In that (more realistic) market, persistent undervaluing based on anything other than the actual house for sale is taking money out of the home owners pocket from the sale. If this happens because of race, then this is obviously an issue.
Well it's an issue for the seller but a boon for the buyer who also would be likely to be from the same race.
Similar trends exist in the buyer’s market. Research has found that homes in Black and Latino neighborhoods are persistently undervalued by appraisers, further widening the racial wealth gap.
That sounds nonsensical to me.
Isn't something only worth what people are prepared to pay for it.
Appraisers take local past sale prices into account when calculating a valuation.
If properties are undervalued by appraisers then they will attract more potential buyers. They will bid the prices for the area up, which will then be reflected in later appraisals unless the appraisers want to go out of business.
Yes that is fair enough but that is an issue to be sorted between the people of Taiwan and China. It's no concern of anyone else. It is a divided China and one side is not content to leave it divided juat as the USA was not content to allow the confederacy to leave the USA.
That's a less accurate analogy in my view, because Canada was never a part of the United States while Taiwan was a part of China.
It's more like the losing side in a war within the USA, militarily taking over florida and declaring itself the government of the USA only to later drop that pretension and declare Florida an independent country instead. Would you be happy for China to meddle and arm the Floridians in that situation?
The nationalists in Taiwan at one time claimed sovereignty over all of China, I believe.
The USA would not tolerate a state wishing wishing to go independent and definitely would not allow outside interference promoting that.
This is a China Taiwan issue. USA, or anyone else, should not be involving themselves.
My daughter has always needed her sleep, ever since she was a tot she'd get incredibly ratty and would be out of sorts the next day if she didn't get her full eight hours of undisturbed sleep. I on the other hand have always been able to get away with only a short night's sleep even staying up all night when necessary. My totally subjective opinion is that you only have so many awake hours in your life and I'm running through my ration more quickly and will have a shorter lifespan as a result
It is possible to qualify as a doctor and be unsure if the abbreviation for prescription is Px or Rx
Now you can just check on the internet but back in the day it's something that's apparently so basic and assumed that you could be too embarrassed to ask.
Very good! That actually reminds me of a similar story from a very well known sportscaster in my country who specialty was, say, rugby. One night he was on duty when a call came in from someone trying to settle a argument about soccer, something like which team had won the most soccer league titles A or B.
He replied that he wasn't an expert but he was pretty sure it was team A. Silence on the line, then the voice came back asking Is that Joe Bloggs?, he replied that it was and then the voice said and what the fuck would you know about it? and hung up.
That's fascinating. I can remember pre-internet days being resigned to not knowing stuff.
For example albums in my country generally didn't include the lyrics. Every time it came on the radio, I asked people what was the singer saying over and over in REM's "The sidewinder sleeps tonight". Nobody knew. Another was a foreign language pop song I remembered from when I was on holiday abroad as a teenager. I searched fruitlessly for it in record shops at home.
Decades later, on a whim I found it by googling and then the original video on youtube (I'd only heard it on juke boxes)
I once made a fruitless suggestion that financial emergiencies should be treated the same as all others, ie diall911/999.
When the operator would answer you'd say I've got a financial emergency and you'd be redirected appropriately.
Further, I suggested that one's account should be deemed protected from the moment one dialled 911.
That way, no matter how plausible the scammer sounded , everyone wouold know that a simple foolproof course of action was available, dial 911.
Food costs so little of an average western income.
I'd pay a lot more for butter than I do, for all animal products actually, in the hope it would mean better animal welfare.
They've done pretty good studies with rats and mice I believe.
I think that htey discovered that the best foods to make them obese were the ones that are recommended for a healthy diet for humans!