In central Europe:

Alza is a great alternative for a reasonably wide range of products. Started as electronics and computer hardware so that’s the majority, but have hugely expanded over the years.

Nothing is marketplace so it’s all handled by them afaik. (Which is a huge plus imo). Which means they don’t have quite the insane variety.

I know them from when I was in CZ, but now they have expanded to Germany I use them here. I think they also do Austria and Slovakia.

Generally speaking, I strongly disagree with the idea of complete one stop shops. But for sort of generic household/adjacent consumer goods it’s fine.

The problem is that nurses and doctors aren’t having “easy days” and if they are understaffed because of something that is not plannable, eg illness or mass casualty events, then it is critically important that they are not expected to be overworked.

Healthcare staff are already (for the most part) being pushed to their absolute limits, with very high rates of burnout.

I think the point of the OP is not to advocate taking away people’s healthcare, but rather asking for society to be more understanding of healthcare professionals when delays are necessary to save other people’s lives.

Remember that we generally as a society are fighting an uphill battle to even pay decent wages to the few staff we do have, let alone expand staffing. So while we should fight for adequate staffing, that requires people to be prepared to pay for it (through healthcare cost or increased taxes/insurance fees), and in the meantime, don’t blame doctors and nurses when they don’t have time in their 12 hour+ days for every elective procedure because someone in the unit got sick.

Kneecap have been getting massive publicity because of their pro-palestine/anti-genocide stance. I haven’t listened to much to their latest stuff, but I should re-explore them.

Sometimes yes, sometimes it is correct to use murder.

But I was just using it as well known an example of how even a short sentence can have implicit bias while appearing to be simply factual. Not referring to anything specific.

Sometimes using killed is the most factual, sometimes it isn’t. Saying someone died is often factual as well. It’s really dependent on context what word to choose and they can create a very different narrative.

It also can simply be passive versus active voice in sentence structure.

There was an interesting case where Reuters headline was about police in South Africa killed protesting miners. They had a headline video that showed the police opening fire and an officer getting them to stop shooting. And a second “uncut” video on their RSS feed that wasn’t published in any headline that showed the miners were actually a giant mob carrying machetes, sticks, clubs and a few had guns which were fired into the air. The mob started charging the police line and when they opened fire the mob scattered. There was no mention of the police officer that had been beaten to death in the same area the night before by the protesters.

Both were completely factual reports, but they lacked context, and were subsequently widely used to demonise the police.

(Now, don’t get me wrong, cops are usually at fault, and the wider situation of why did those miners need to protest etc is a different topic. But in that specific instance there was a lot of context missing to the individual actions)

Since they generally report in a shorter format, they tend to not provide much context.

On the one hand, one could say this tends towards less bias, but on the other, context is absolutely critical to assessing a situation.

I think they have their place in the news cycle, and they are a useful source. I think that if they report an event you can be confident it has occurred, BUT they are very, very good at putting spin in only a few words, e.g. “murdered” vs “killed”. They also leave out extremely important context when it doesn’t fit their narrative/bias/click farming.

I am extremely critical of Reuters. But if they are one source amongst many they are useful. Particularly if you look at local news sources or other Reuters news snippets for context around the event.

The others have put good descriptions of why calories are an accurate measurement for food energy.

However, you are absolutely correct that calories are not a perfect measurement, and different types of foods are not one to one replaceable. 1500 calories of sugar is NOT the same as 1500 calories of protein!

Burning the food produces a reasonable and useful approximation of the available energy.

Does the human body burn food? Of course not. We transform food into useful components and then pump them around the body to be used by cells.

If you eat 1500 calories of protein, your body will use some of those calories simply as proteins, rather than breaking them down into energy (via sugar). Which means you will have less food-energy in your system and are more likely to run a deficit.

Again with protein, the transformation of protein into sugars which can be used as energy takes energy, so you end up with a smaller amount of calories actually being available.

TL;DR Calories are not perfectly interchangeable. However, they are our best, and most useful, quick way of approximating energy intake from food.

Oh for sure, effective rehab programs need a decent chunk of funding. And they are expensive until they start paying for themselves years or even decades down the line. And their benefits are typically indirect so they are very hard to actually measure their success.

But it’s shown time and time again that the current system doesn’t work. And I would rather we spend what little money we have getting rapists longer sentences than thieves and vandals.

Prisons don’t really do much to deter crimes with short sentences anyway. And they often result in people just getting more damaged and more likely to commit more crime.

Most crimes which carry short sentences should be handled through probation and social support (not financial obviously).

Community service is a classic punishment which I think makes good sense for nonviolent crime.

A bigger problem is the inability to sentence violent offenders to lengthy stays in prisons. And of course the lack of rehabilitation in those prisons.

It really depends on your personal financial situation.

For me, I only need around 50k per year (before tax) to maintain my lifestyle and save a bit. That includes a pension (as if that will make a difference lol).

So going from 70k to 55k would be … Uncomfortable (I get you with the stability anxiety), but rationally, if my mental and physical health were suffering. Those extra 20 % is really not worth being miserable.

You only have one life. Make sure to enjoy it.

Having said that, if it was going from 55k to 45k, I would have to have a close look at my finances and lifestyle to see what would be worth cutting. The end question is: are the things you need to cut to make do worth the extra suffering you are currently enduring?

Everything has a cost, whether that is paying with your time, your health, sanity, or choosing to spend time with one person instead of another. Only you can answer if it’s worth it for you.

Those are a common type of biscuit. Not devious at all. You can even see how thin they are on the images on the front

Sleep Token

Absolutely incredible band

For me the main thing would be airflow there, and the type of work. I’ve done full days in 35+ machining but windows and doors were open so there was a breeze which made it bearable (not pleasant days mind you)

Everything has a cost. Usually of the same type as what you are buying.

You can usually reword security/stability as a type of freedom. The freedom to have a guaranteed income usually costs some of the freedom to choose where/when/how you work. For example.

You might say that you will pay for the freedom to not have school shootings with the freedom to have free access to guns. You lose one freedom to gain another.

You are correct that to some degree they are antonyms, but I would say that it’s freedom vs stability. It’s just that security is a type of stability.

If you break them down more mathematically freedom is represented as infinite possible trajectories, which is in other words a very unstable position. In order to increase stability you must reduce the possible trajectories.

Lots of great software already posted, but with some complaints about windows inefficiencies I can’t believe no one has posted:

Microsoft PowerToys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

Basically, it’s a suite of tools that windows devs have made to make their lives easier while working in windows. Some features have made it into actual windows releases over the years, but most not.

It has an always on top, batch rename, customisable window snapping, better search, keyboard key remapper, mouse across multiple devices, colour eyedropper, and many many more.

Absolute must have for anyone that uses windows regularly.

I’ve been using the term “post-developed” for a while now, mostly as a crude joke. However, unfortunately I think as time is going on it is becoming more and more apt to describe certain western economies.

Perhaps something along the lines of “when a society shifts from long-term investment to short-term cost saving, it is at risk of becoming a post-developed economy.”

So much of the UK’s decision making seems centred around how “we are so great” (cough EU is stopping us from achieving our potential cough) rather than “we need to invest to be able to compete.”

Even Thatcherism, as toxic and awful as that was, was centred around pushing the economy forward to a new level of (horribly misguided) development.

Of course, I’ll caveat that I am severely under-educated on these topics, but it is a running theme I’m starting to see emerge.