I really expected it to say colonial for some reason

I mean before the invasion Russia was building walls and moving them forward overnight to slowly take territory. It’s not entirely off base about Russia.

The battery life is definitely worse because of it but it doesn’t bother me much

Taiwan is a natural fortress as well. Even if the mainland invaded the guerilla fighting in the mountains would be a new Afghanistan for the occupying force.

All for the political victory of “we did it!”

Taiwan has few natural resources that China doesn’t already have. They mostly have high tech industry… Which would be annihilated by an invasion. No way chip fabs survive: either they get bombed while softening up a landing or they get sabotaged as a spoiling action.

Note: the latest pixel fold is about the same size and weight as the pixel 9 pro.

It’s actually kinda incredible that it is that light and thin while folding.

This is a good thing why you trying to spin it as bad?

Arbitration has always favored companies.

That’s pretty normal for financial charts like this though.

Nearest convenience store is 200m Chain supermarket is 200m Bus stop is 150m Library is 50m Park is 500m Train station is 800m

NYC makes everything easy

I honestly think that difference in opinion speaks highly of Banks as an author - the books speak to us differently and he wrote diverse enough stories that they capture each person separately.

Big disagree on the best - Use of Weapons, Surface Detail and Consider Phlebas are the favorites of my partner and me.

Not that the 3 listed are bad just that I like my 3 more :)

I was definitely in a similar position but at a younger age. So I’m not sure how applicable my experience is to you at 40+

For me what helped most was 3fold:

1. Bupropion. I can’t state how much this antidepressant/ADHD combo medicine helped me chill out, function, and relax about social situations.

2. A major cognitive shift from “I must make friends” to “I’m totally happy alone, friends just make things better”

3. Learning to always assume the best. People aren’t out to get me, nor do they hate me. They’re generally busy, almost certainly have a small clique of friends they like to spend time with, and I’m not in that group. And that’s totally fine.

It took from age 23 until 26 for me to get that all straight in my head. I spent almost a year of that pulling back from all social responsibilities and taking time to be alone and heal.

Reading through your comments here reminds me of myself before that process and I’ll give you the same advice that a dear friend gave me - you need to go talk to a psychiatrist. Your mental state is unhealthy.

You don’t heal a broken leg by walking on it. You shouldn’t try to heal a broken mind by force of will. Medication is a modern wonder, and I’d seek it out every time in your position.

Interact with them just the same as before. they’re still friendly people, they’re just friendly people who didn’t come to an optional social event.

How many optional social events do you say no to? Personally I will decline dozens of invites to do things every year for various reasons including: nah I don’t feel like it.

It’s not that I don’t like the people doing the inviting: it’s that I have a limited social battery, limited free time and a lot of things I want to do.

And in the meantime: become even closer with the 5 who showed.

It all works because it’s fantasy my friend

They’re scum for the grift but flappy bird doesn’t deserve a trademark. US IP laws are draconian enough.

Not op - as far as I can tell they weren’t particularly warcrimey for WW2.

They killed a bunch of German POWs during the invasion of Sicily and killed 20 civilians while burning down a town for a supposed civilian killing a commander (turned out it was an enemy combatant).

Both deeply abhorrent but not “inventing new crimes”

Ayn Rand here ain’t black

Ok.

Say the N word then.

Go yell it at people.

Do it.

Go on.

The larger the wind turbine the better an investment it is.

For better or worse our green transition is primarily capitalist. That matters a lot here.

Wind speeds are significantly higher every meter you get above the ground. The larger the blade the better it performs. Windmills can’t cluster together too closely since they induce turbulence…

It all means that bigger is better here.

Is it a home you own or rental? Apartment?

If it’s a single family home you should seriously consider the pricey upgrades to insulation. It could cut hundreds off your bill.

But it could also be a better investment to get solar panels in that case.

Oh I’m 1000% in agreement with you. I think Copilot for programming is more expensive than it’s worth right now, both for my employer and for Microsoft.

OpenAI et al have done nothing to address the fundamental issue of hallucinations. In code hallucinations are pretty quickly evident: your IDE immediately throws up error highlights whenever the code complete fucks up.

The latest open AI model is to chain together a computational centipede to try and create reasoning structures out of stochastic processes. It takes longer and still doesn’t fix the issues. In their own demo video there are clear bugs with the “code” their 4o model writes.