Caveman

Down votes probably because they’re less of a problem than expected they would be 15 years ago but still problematic. Very large regions in Africa/Asia still deal with overpopulation and poverty although India and China have made some massive progress in the last 15 years. For semaglutide it’s still early days, nobody expected there to be an actual general drug against obesity but more long term studies are still needed.

And that’s a surprise to… absolutely no one

Yeah, they’re all having their shocked pikachu face on when people don’t have babies. If anybody would take a random sample of women and check whether they would have a baby in their position the answer would almost always be no. Now it feels like only people that are dead set on having babies that go for them when the replacement rate needs plenty of people having 3+ to make up for single kid and people who struggle making one or can’t find a partner.

So to fix it we only need better economy, minimum wage, median wage, housing affordability, generous parental leave, day care and kindergarten heavily subsidised, schooling subsidised up to uni and 30h week with unpaid overtime illegal. I really don’t see this happening with increasing pension and healthcare cost for the elderly.

That’s a valid reason and all but I’d also add that life is just very expensive, both parents need to work to make ends meet and lack of time available for child care. If you add housework imbalance you get South Korea level fertility.

There is a pent up demand for kids when looking at “How many do you want?” vs “How many do you have?” but having them is irrational for most people. It takes a long while for parents to become financially secure, usually comes at 30+ years and then you ask one of the parents to take a massive career hit and add 3h of work per day to the schedule.

If the gov really wants babies we really need to reduce work hours to 30/week for both parents.

*shocked pikachu

Wasps and bees are closely related to ants, ants really go crazy for honey.

I speak/understand Spanish, Icelandic, Dutch, Arabic and German but I ended up listening to Estonian music for a bit and they have some bangers there.

🇪🇪 Alüspukse by 5MIINUST

🇪🇪 push it by nublu

🇪🇪 kanuu by säm

Also, fun note, for a country og 400k Iceland has 3 entries here.

They’re a functional monopoly in my case since I’m on Linux. GOG is the main competitor for my money.

I’m funded my Big Small that is trying to sell more less

I think it’s an improvement though. You never part with your money unless you know exactly what you’ll get.

It’s basically individualised offers in the form of boxes.

Just like anything else, it’s worth what people are willing to pay for it vs what people are willing to buy it for.

Currently bitcoin is just a digital commodity with a finite supply which makes it a good store of value if people continue to use it.

The thing is, there’s nothing preventing bitcoin from tanking and becoming essentially worthless besides people buying it because the price is low.

If in a hypothetical future the bitcoin price becomes stable then it will become a valuable commodity. It’s value is wholly derived from it’s users and nothing else.

It’s not very convinent for governments or large institutions to hold it in it’s current form since it’s too easy to steal without leaving a trace. For government use there is going to be needed some development to allow for government or Central banks to have complete control over the currency without giving that control away which I think might be possible. In that case settling international transactions in bitcoin as opposed to the dollar for BRICS countries might be an option which doesn’t use the US dollar.

All the other uses IMO are pretty much fluff such as paying in bitcoin.

I like my stuff hidden anyway so I don’t care all to much. I disable leds usually because they are distracting but keep one solid led to indicate whether the system is on or not.

Spain even got an opt-out lol

Mark Rutte used to be the Dutch PM and his part in NATO is to advance the collective security of Europe, now by keeping the US on board. It’s a something for nothing.

The 5% is not binding, it’s just words on a paper, not even the US spends 5%.

Trump is getting played because of his fragile ego. Him sharing a message of a person stroking his ego is evidence of it working.

Renaissance exterior of building. Carvings in concrete. Stone block buildings. Gargoyles. Corner decorations on ceilings.

I like Canada 🇨🇦, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 and Bhutan 🇧🇹

🇮🇸

If you want to get into openings I recommend getting a set of openings for yourself for white and black.

White: 1. d4 and then London System is easy to play and works most times to get a good setup. Super easy way to have you prepared almost 50% of the time. I personally don’t play it though, I’m an 1. e4 player.

Black:

Don’t start with Sicialian. It’s good but it’ll take a long time to learn enough lines to handle whatever the opponent throws at you since they almost decide which variation you play.

Against 1. d4… King’s Indian defence allows you a straight forward path to casting and develop 2 pieces. Then strike in the center. For a more spicy option there’s the Benoni which has traps for people who blindly go London System.

Against 1. e4… French defence is pretty straight forward since you end up doing the same stuff every game. Attack the pawn on d4. You could also go for 1. … e5 but since it’s the most common move you can get opening knowledge advantage way faster by playing French or Scandinavian. You’ll have to know both if you decide to play 1. e4 at some point and play Italian or Ruy Lopez which IMO are more fun to play.

After learning the main move order for the first 4 or 5 moves then watch some videos on each of your defence. Remote chess academy is a very fun channel on YouTube for learning openings.

Good at tactics?

Try some gambits. You sacrifice a pawn and come out guns blazing. If people don’t know the gambit you’re playing they’ll have to spend a lot of time calculating. You force them to thread the needle or at the minimum lose a piece.

If you want to know how it looks like check out some games with Paul Morphy. He’s winning against players that would 2200+ FIDE rating with the King’s gambit. That opening develops wicked fast but has the King naked.

Use a filter and remove everything dedicated to US politics and Reddit to reduce the quantity by 80%