It’s not 2007. Devices are everywhere now, smartphones, TV’s etc. The social dimension (social pressure) and implications are very different now. Their power increases, amount of people caught in the loop is immense now. 2007 was all still fun and games.

Some things you should only eat when they’re in season near you…

Because a lot of pension plans are very disappointing. They for example offer a ‘guaranteed’ minimum intrest of up to 2 % per year, but don’t forget the ‘management costs’ they charge. That’s very very low compared to regular inflation. Pension funds exist to make pension fund managers, traders and banks rich (now, not later) and so that the government can point at them and say “it was your own responsibility!” instead of offering ALL weak and old people enough to cover basic needs. And that’s to “motivate” as many people as possible to work as much as possible. If relatively young right now: you’re probably better off putting money away in time deposits with higher guaranteed intrest than putting it in pension funds. Or ETF/random stock picking for those who feel lucky. The state subsidies to choose pension fund instead of time deposit or direct market investments is in many cases also misleading: you get tax cuts when depositing into the pension funds, but you get taxed when you get paid out at pension age. All differs a lot in different countries, but the core of it is pretty similar all over I think.

plenty of herb alpert and his tijuana brass band here too :D

When I had more time than I do now, at a few of the local shops like that I went through a lot of the mess. The good thing: most of it barely moves. So now, a few years later, when I go there, I still notice pretty easily when a new batch got added. They tend to add it to the front of easy to reach shelves…

Of course the response is to just start of with high speed rail connecting major cities in high mobility demand, high population areas. You got plenty of those. Looking at population density of the entire country to decide on the feasibility of better passenger rail in the most densely populated regions is dumb.

Putting zebra crossing on 4 or 5 lanes is sending people to certain deaths

New records are ridiculously priced! There are jewels hidden in thrift store bins or in some of the more “messy” looking record stores for very reasonable prices. Digging through the pictures and the names you may or may not know, to select albums based on their title and cover: there’s an incredible charm to that. I visit a lot of record stores, the ones that look too neatly organised and every single record is in a sealed shrink wrap, are the ones I leave rather quickly. I want my record store to look and feel like an old attic :)

Don’t forget obligated resting times!

Because I fail to configure wake-on-lan and such and I sometimes want remote access to it. I do have cron put it to sleep in low-hours and wake up next day…

Almost everyone with a playstation 1 I knew, had the ‘special’ version with a custom chip so you could play copied discs…

Same with pc games, copying was very common and not even looked down upon by others, more sort of admired (“can you copy this one for me??”)

yeah, same :')

I think I agree! Are we talking about the same? I was talking about e-bicycles (regular looking bicycle with battery and motor, which doesn’t help you anymore above that cut-off speedlimit), not e-scooters (the one with tiny wheels, stand-up while riding, no pedalling at all). The e-scooters can just all have licenses and license plates imo, it’s a normal motorised vehicle, has nothing at all in common with a bicycle)

No idea unfortunately

have you tried “cycling” on stronger electric bikes with the support mode set to “sport” or “highest”? Moving the pedals is pretty damn symbolic on these vehicles, less than 10% of the actual energy needed to move is provided by the legs, it’s almost all motor. It’s like they moved the throttle control to the pedals.

As a cyclist, I’m all for e-bikes requiring a license.

As a cyclist, I disagree. For traffic, we only need licensing on e-bikes that support people to go faster than ±20 km/h whithout pedalling to such speed by their own body strength. Basically: treat e-bike like the motorcycles they are. But ± 20km/h is a speed a normal healthy person on a normal non-electric bicycle can also easily achieve. It’s a generally safe speed in most situations. If it isn’t, it’s a mental health or sociopath behavior of the driver / very poor street infrastructure problem, but the light e-bike shouldn’t have to take the blame.

On mountainbike trails (and on hiking trails!!!) i’m more in favor of something getting close a complete ban for anything motorised.

Who is still looking for “early” signs in this patient?

I think many staple crops are often more prone to drought issues than not getting enough sunlight. Many crops can thrive pretty well with only 4-5 hours of direct sunlight and for the rest of the day just enough general brightness. A bit less direct sunlight can help reduce water usage.

Evolution is going towards semi-transparant solar panels (solar windows) for various use cases, agrivoltaics among them.

It’s also not unfeasible to have a herd of sheep or goats roaming around solar panels.

Tho it’s true it’s a challenge to successfully combine large scale solar and agriculture, I think the future ahead is looking very bright for this combo. Around here (south Germany) it is by now very uncommon to see stables and warehouses without an enormous solar roof, for example…

The front was a plastic and the body was metal…

The sun moves.

When I looked in to it on one of my parents’ sides, it’s like 15 generations/450 years of almost no mobility on a ±30km² area of 4 small villages around the same river… Only 2 generations ago did some break away from the area, mainly to larger cities nearby and for all the hundreds of others in the tree I researched I found only 1 older move to a big city about 150y ago. I’m assuming the no-mobility tree (tho sources end in middle ages) continues like that to Roman times and even further back. Before trains and cars, many people didn’t leave their birth area at all during their entire life.