I like both of them myself, albeit Starfield more.

After having invaded, is Russia more powerful, secure, and wealthy or less so than it was prior to the invasion?

They did.

Fallout 76, a multiplayer game, predates Starfield, a single-player game.

kagis

Hmm.

It sounds like the water shortage thing isn’t a recent issue on the island, but has been a long-standing problem stemming from a rapidly expanding population that’s just been exacerbated by the cyclone:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/19/climate/mayotte-water-crisis-drought-climate/index.html

The island is grappling with its worst drought since 1997. Its two water reservoirs have reached a “critical level of decline” – one is at 7% of capacity and the other at 6%, according to the most recent estimates, and they are on the verge of drying up.

It has led to drastic water cuts. Residents only have access to water for around 18 hours at a time every couple of days, according to a schedule published by the Prefecture, the local subdivision of the French government. Many say what little water they have is often contaminated and undrinkable.

I don’t think that shipping in bottled water is probably an economic long-term solution compared to doing desalination locally.

kagis

According to this, it looks like they’re building a desalination plant. If it keeps to schedule, it’s supposed to be operational in a year.

https://www.stereau.com/en/press-releases/stereau-to-supply-mayotte-with-10000-m3-of-drinking-water-a-day/

Stereau to supply Mayotte with 10,000 m3 of drinking water a day

The contract awarded to Stereau amounts to €36 million excluding tax. The project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, will significantly improve the supply of drinking water on the island and reduce water shortages. The operation of the plant will be managed by Saur France for an initial period of three years, with the option to renew the contract for an additional two years, in one-year increments.

It sounds like a lot of the issue is that life in Mayotte, while maybe not fantastic compared to mainland France, is a hell of a lot more appealing than in a lot of nearby countries, so people from nearby poorer countries show up there, and the infrastructure hasn’t been built out quickly enough to keep pace with population growth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayotte

The issue of illegal immigration became very important in local political life in the 2010s and 2020s which led France to organize Operation Wuambushu.

In 2019, with an annual population growth of 3.8%, half the current population was less than 17 years old. In addition, 48% of the population were foreign nationals. Most of the immigrants come from neighboring Island state of Comoros, many illegally. Despite being France’s poorest department, Mayotte is much richer than other neighboring East African countries and has developed French infrastructure and welfare system, making it a tempting destination for Comorans and other East Africans living in poverty in the region. The department faces enormous challenges.

According to an Institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques (National Institute of Economic Statistics Studies of France - INSEE) report published in 2018, 84% of the population live under the poverty line according to French standards, compared to 16% in metropolitan France, 40% of dwellings are corrugated sheet metal shacks, 29% of households have no running water, and 34% of the inhabitants between the age of 15 and 64 do not have a job. These difficult living conditions mainly concern the large population of illegal migrants who crowd into shanty towns.

Lately he cought me in the office eating sweets and started to educate me how bad sugar is.

I mean, people do tend to eat more sugar than they probably should, but the main artificial sweetener that I see used in candies is xylitol, which is, unfortunately, also a laxative. Eat more than a few xylitol-sweetened candies at one sitting, and one’s in for diarrhea.

I assume that we don’t have an artificial sweetener in 2024 that both avoids having a laxative effect and has the appropriate properties to subsititute for sugar in candies. I’d be delighted if someone would manage to develop one, though.

What flesh?

I expect that they’re referencing this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_smoking_for_weight_loss

Cigarette smoking for weight loss is a weight control method whereby one consumes tobacco, often in the form of cigarettes, to decrease one’s appetite. The practice dates to early knowledge of nicotine as an appetite suppressant.

Tobacco smoking was associated with appetite suppression among Pre-Columbian indigenous Americans and Old World Europeans.[1] For decades, tobacco companies have employed these connections between slimness and smoking in their advertisements, mainly in brands and advertisements targeting women.

A good reason to try to avoid being deeply dependent on a product that a single company controls that’s hard to transition away from. Even if you’re happy with that company, someone else might manage to get control of them.

https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/sei_29455926-d11d.jpg

Lucky Strike cigarettes

Your Throat Protection – against irritation – against cough.

So, we have been informing and will continue to inform the Armenian sponsors — conditionally speaking, the Soros people in Washington —

“Soros people”? Azerbaijan?

kagis

Hmmm.

https://eurasianet.org/there-is-a-specter-haunting-azerbaijan-the-specter-of-george-soros

There is a Specter Haunting Azerbaijan, the Specter of George Soros

Bradley Jardine Sep 11, 2017

In response to a recent string of corruption allegations and international criticism, Azerbaijan’s authorities have identified a scapegoat: billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Last week, investigative reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed a secret $2.9 billion slush fund linked to Azerbaijan’s ruling family. The fund was reportedly used from 2012 to 2014 as a means of bribing European politicians for political leverage.

The investigation has sparked severe backlash from Azerbaijan’s authorities, and they are blaming a traditional enemy – an ill-defined “Armenian lobby” – along with a relatively new bugaboo, Soros.

In a remarkable statement from the press service of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, Soros is alleged to have worked in collusion with Armenian activists to smear Baku’s government:

We know that it is George Soros and his henchmen – who have an international reputation of cheaters, tricksters, frauds and liars in relation to Azerbaijan and its leadership – that are behind the campaign. The Armenian lobby, which acts in concert with him, carries out a dirty campaign against the President of Azerbaijan and his family.

failed state

Not really specific to this story, but people massively overuse the term “failed state”. A failed state isn’t a state with some issue or a poor executive, authoritarian government, or the like. It’s the kind of situation you might see around, say, a civil war where the government no longer really operates and nobody’s in control any more. You likely have local warlords with limited local control of bits of territory. Something like Haiti might be a present-day example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state

A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and outside the state are much more likely to occur.

I’m not familiar with the ticketing system, but I think that it’d be reasonable for the ticket to simply be used to ensure that there is a seat somewhere, but not a specific seat.

If you go to a restaurant and reserve a table, the table doesn’t need to be a specific one…just means that the restaurant will make sure that one is open.

I’m generally fine with Amazon. The main things I’d like to see changed:

• Their determined nagging to subscribe to Amazon Prime. I don’t have a good fix there.

• Perishable food. Walmart.com does a better job here IME, uses their existing infrastructure and delivery network to provide perishables in a tight time window.

• Limited product classification for searches. For electronics, Newegg does a better job of having a database with many aspects of products being searchable. In general, specialty rather than general-purpose stores seem to do a better job on this.

• Limited selection. Amazon is pretty darn good on this, but for some really esoteric stuff, Google Shopping can win, since it’ll index the inventory of many retailers. If I can’t find something on Amazon, that’s my next stop. It can also search for numeric ranges (“3…25”) as I recall, which can be useful for some items.

If you want an alternative for some reason, OP, you probably want to list what it is that you’d like done differently, as that kinda determines what alternatives make sense.

Part of it is also just structural.

The US can tax people in the US. So it’s easy for the federal authorities to have everyone chip in.

There is no analog in Europe in 2024.

The EU does not presently have the authority to tax. So it’s not easy to do the same.

National security is an example of a public good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good) is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Use by one person neither prevents access by other people, nor does it reduce availability to others.

Public goods include knowledge, official statistics, national security, common languages, law enforcement, broadcast radio, flood control systems, aids to navigation, and street lighting.

The critical property is that a public good is non-excludable. That is, if you don’t pay for it, you still benefit from it.

In a situation where you have a non-excludable good like national defense, you will normally see underinvestment in the thing relative to the benefit it provides to everyone in aggregate.

That’s because people make decisions based on the benefit to them. If they reduce spending on a non-excludable good, they get 100% of the benefit of the money they now aren’t spending, but their access to the public good is only reduced proportionally to the amount of the good they were paying for. Since it’s that price information that leads to decisions, this produces market failure, inefficient allocation of resources.

Let’s say that I don’t want to pay taxes to pay for the US military, so I stop. I get all of my tax money back. But, since almost everyone else in the US is still paying for the military – maybe there is one-three-hundred-millionth reduction, as there are about 300 million people in the country – I see virtually no reduction in the military service being provided.

The problem is that if everyone else makes the same assessment – where on an individual level, it is to their benefit to not pay the tax, so they stop – then there is no military, and suddenly everyone is impacted.

Normally, the way to solve that us to make the decision-making for such non-excludable goods done in aggregate. So we all decide how much to spend collectively – the government makes one decision for all. Hence, a tax or commitment to pay a certain amount or such.

The phenomenon is the same among countries. Luxembourg is only a small portion of NATO’s total spending. If Luxembourg has no military, then it will save all the money it spends, and it could hope, as long as everyone else still has a military and their interests are more-or-less aligned, that its security situation won’t change much. But if everyone follows the same logic, then there is underinvestment.

The misincentive becomes stronger the smaller the proportion of the non-excludable good one is paying for.

If one country is paying 100% of the costs, then there is no misincentive.

If one country is paying 50% of the costs, then if they stop spending, they get 100% of their money back, but still get 50% of the military benefit.

If one country is paying 1% of the costs, then if they stop spending, they get 100% of their money back, but still get 99% of the military benefits.

The US pays a large share of the percentage of military spending in NATO, so it has a (relatively) small misincentive to underspend. The smaller the country in terms of aggregate spending, the greater the misincentive. Because the military spending decisions are made at a state level in the EU, and at a central level in the US, the misincentive to underspend at the decision-making level is stronger in Europe. If the US made military spending decisions at a state level, it would see similarly-greater misincentives.

Ideally, you would want to have an aggregate decision made for the aggregate to avoid misincentives. The “2% of GDP spending floor” commitment in NATO is basically that – making a spending decision at the aggregate level.

It’s rather like the tragedy of the commons, except that in that scenario, the goods are rivalrous – the pasture can be used up by overgrazing – and in this case, it cannot. But in both cases, the good is non-excludable, and because of that, there will tend to be underinvestment in the good.

Unfortunately, Europe’s leaders are weak and distracted by their problems at home. Instead of standing up they are more likely to bury their heads deeper in the sand.

I kind of feel like, of all publications, The Economist could be expected to give a better analysis of why this is occurring than the above text.

I think that driverless busses are probably much less of a dramatic change than driverless cars.

If you have one person in a car driving to work and the car is fully-self-driving, then you free up one person’s time. You potentially change where parking is practical. You may permit people who cannot drive a car to use one, like young or elderly.

With a bus, the passengers are already free to do what they want. You’re saving labor costs on a bus driver, maybe getting a safer vehicle. But I’d call that an evolutionary change.

https://proxy.parisjc.edu:8293/statistics/300887/number-of-buses-in-use-by-region-uk/

In 2020/21, the number of buses amounted to 37800 in Great Britain.

Those probably get heavier use than cars. But you want scale, since driverless vehicle costs are mostly fixed, and driver labor costs variable. You’re talking about not having maybe 38k people driving. You need to cover all of your costs out of that. That’s not nothing, but…okay, how many tractor-trailers are out there?

https://www.statista.com/topics/5280/heavy-goods-vehicles-in-the-uk/

Heavy goods vehicle registrations bounced back above their pre-pandemic levels in 2021, reaching 504,600 vehicles in circulation.

If you have driverless trucks, that’s an order-of-magnitude difference in vehicle count from busses in the UK.

I’m not saying that there aren’t wins possible with self-driving busses. But it doesn’t seem to me to be the vehicle type with the greatest potential improvement from being self-driving.

I haven’t been that excited about the Framework laptops, because despite liking expandability and modularity, the actual modules offered for expansion didn’t really provide functionality that I’d actually wanted to swap in. A larger battery, a trackpad with physical buttons, those are things that I would want to upgrade. I just didn’t need an LED matrix on the side of my keyboard, and the external ports on most laptops were at least reasonable.

But being able to add more M.2 slots is legitimately something that I could use.

It sounds like this may not actually be Assad:

https://www.twz.com/air/the-mystery-of-the-syrian-il-76-cargo-jet-that-went-missing-as-assad-fled

The statement said to have been from Assad was posted through a channel on the Telegram social media network linked to the now-defunct Syrian regime earlier today, but it is unclear whether or not he actually drafted it and/or put it online. The deposed Syrian dictator has not been seen publicly in more than a week, despite Russian officials saying they have offered him asylum.

https://www.crayola.com/faq/science/can-you-provide-information-about-the-science-of-crayola-crayons/

Crayola® Crayons are made primarily from paraffin wax and color pigment.

Lot of people munching on paraffin wax out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum

Although chewing gum can be traced back to civilizations worldwide, the modernization and commercialization of this product mainly took place in the United States. The American Indians chewed resin made from the sap of spruce trees.[11] The New England settlers picked up this practice, and in 1848, John B. Curtis developed and sold the first commercial chewing gum called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. In this way, the industrializing West, having forgotten about tree gums, rediscovered chewing gum through the First Americans. Around 1850 a gum made from paraffin wax, a petroleum product, was developed and soon exceeded the spruce gum in popularity.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-paraffin-wax-1807043

Paraffin Wax in Food

Food-grade paraffin wax is considered edible. It is composed of vegetable oils, palm oil derivatives, and synthetic resins, plus other materials that pass through the body undigested and contain no nutritional value. Some paraffin, such as the scented variety sold for candle-making and beauty treatments, should never be ingested.

Shiny Coating for Chocolate

Paraffin wax has both cosmetic and functional purposes when used with chocolate. Adding paraffin wax to melted chocolate gives it a glossy finish when it hardens. It also helps the chocolate remain solid at room temperature. Paraffin appears as an additive in some brands of candy bars to keep them from melting in your hand. It is also the main ingredient in chocolate coatings such as those found on ice cream or chocolate-dipped cookies.

Recipes for treats that are popular during the holiday season might call for paraffin wax as well, such as chocolate-covered cherry mice, ideal for Halloween as well as Christmas.

Shiny Preservative for Fruits

Paraffin wax may be sprayed on fruits and vegetables to add shine and make them more appealing. It also helps extend the shelf life by retaining moisture. Some fruits, such as apples, produce a natural wax, which can easily be washed away with water and a little gentle rubbing; additional synthetic wax sometimes augments this natural coating, making it more difficult to remove. Generally, a quick soak in vinegar or lemon juice-enhanced water makes it easier to wipe the wax away.

Organic fruit producers cannot use petroleum-based wax on their product. They can, however, use some forms of naturally derived wax, such as carnauba, and still be compliant with the organic designation.

Other Uses

Paraffin wax shows up in some surprising places, like sausages, and is used to coat cured sausage links to give them luster. Maybe not so surprising is that paraffin is part of the novelty candies shaped wax lips, mustaches, and miniature soda bottles filled with flavored liquid.

Assad emphasized his intent to continue fighting Syria’s civil war

You might want to clear that with the Kremlin. Starting conflicts with State A while in asylum under the protection of State B is the sort of thing that tends to create friction between State A and State B.

I expect that the Kremlin isn’t going to want you doing that out of Russia unless you’ve a pretty solid chance of success.

good d pad

D-pads are the one aspect of a controller that I wouldn’t worry about much. I’ve only ever had one controller that had a D-pad that I wasn’t happy with, a Logitech in the mid-1990s that had a screw-in mini joystick on the D-pad. That rolled to the diagonal too easily.

thinks

Maybe the old NES controllers, which had a relatively-hard, non-rounded D-pad and could be tough on the fingers for long sessions.

I guess one could prefer the PlayStation-style or XBox-style D-pad position, though I’ve never had issue with either.

Do you have something in particular that you’re concerned about regarding D-pads? I’d expect pretty much anything out there to be fine, myself.

This has nothing to do with supply-side versus demand-side economics.

EDIT: Actually, I take that back. It does to the extent that it is aiming to provide an incentive on the demand side, which is the opposite of what you’re complaining about.