You only have to show your boarding pass for the tax breaks that come with traveling internationally.

It’s all tied to the old military thinking.

Russian soldiers are not fighting for Russia. Russian soldiers are fighting for their generals. Similar to how Roman armies worked, or… well, really like any army worked until we got to the nationalism level that eventually lead to WWI. One of the most effective ways the generals got their troops to follow them was allowing them the “spoils of war”. Good ol’ raping and pillaging.

By comparison the Ukrainian army is unified in their fight for Ukraine. They’re not fighting for a person, they’re fighting for their people. All the fighting happening inside Russian borders isn’t to secure loot, it’s to end the war so they can go home.

Converting miles to kilometers and vice versa is a fun exercise to do in your head

The Fibonacci sequence (where every number in the sequence is a sum of the previous 2 numbers) has a ratio of Fib(n)/Fib(n-1) converging to the golden ratio phi (~1.618) as n approaches infinity.

A mile is 1.609 kilometers, so the ratio of phi is an extremely close approximation of that.

What this means is you can easily use the Fibonacci sequence to quickly convert from miles to kilometers using adjacent numbers in the sequence

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, …

So you can quickly see something like 5 (or 50, or 500) miles is approximately 8 ( or 80, or 800) kilometers.

Also, yiu can quickly do easy multiplication or division to figure out other approximate distance.

Say, for 6 miles. 3 miles ( * 2) = 5km ( * 2) = 10km.

For 11 miles, 55 miles * 2 = 110 miles / 10 = 11 miles, and 89 km * 2 = ~180 km / 10 = 18 km [actual conversion is 17.703 km, so, pretty close]

You can do similar approximations by using other multiples.

This is going to be the tastiest war ever

I do it every Christopher Nolan movie. There was an interview with him after Interstellar released and they read him some of viewer reviews. One of them was just “it’s pretty loud”, and he just laughed…

Love most of his work, but I’m not losing my hearing over it. They’re not that good.

*Traitour

Is there an epidemic of mental illness?

Yes, but unfortunately no doctors to diagnose it.

Unfortunately that’s exactly what Nationalism Socialism was all about. Great socialist policies to support and bolster the in crowd. Unfortunately those policies aren’t extended to the out crowd. And the out crowd is pretty easily defined when you’ve got “Nationalism” in your political party’s name.

It has been a noticeable phenomena in East Asia for about 2 decades longer than the West. They’ve been studying it longer/have more data.

Yeah, it does, and yet hardly any young voters showed up to the polls when the torries wanted to flush the kids futures down the toilet with the Brexit vote. So they’ve got lots of historical data to suggest young voters don’t matter.

My guess on #2 is Europe is increasing posturing against Russia as they continue to escalate the situation in Ukraine, so this accomplishes:

• signaling to Russia that the UK is not a passive nation
• Will be popular with the mid to late life Midlands voters who don’t really have anything to be proud of in their life other than “we used to be an empire”, without having to actually shoulder the burden.
• Will be unpopular among the 18-35 year old voters, who are historically the lowest turnout demographic, and will actually have to shoulder the burden.

For what it’s worth, I actually think forced conscription (with alternatives) is actually an idea that can work well and help build a better more cohesive society where all people despite their differences participate in their “citizenly duties”, but it has to be done right: military service can be an option, as well as community service in things like fire departments, Emergency medical services, even working in government services like the NHS or community centers that have options for mentor programs, etc. Basically anything that teaches young adults to give back to their community which can hopefully turn into a lifelong habit. But you can’t start the policy as some bullshit military posturing. It has to come from a place of “we’re doing this to make our community better”. Also, you can’t make day 1 implementation only start with the current young adult generation and have everyone older than them grandfathered out. EVERYONE shoulders this. Anyone voting for it needs to know they’re all going to be participating in this (pro-rated based on age up to 65 or 70, but still those above should be encouraged to participate despite no obligation). But that probably sounds like communism or something.

Great stuff. Thanks!

Do you need to run the Intel cards with an Intel CPU to get the quick sync benefits? I upgraded my desktop last year and am going to convert my old Ryzen 5600x system to … something. Not sure what yet though. Just working on my options.

The real answer?

Data is transmitted in packets. Each packet has a packet header, and a packet payload. The total data transmitted is the header + payload.

If you’re transmitting smaller packet sizes, it means your header is a larger percentage of the total packet size.

Measuring in megabits is the ISP telling you “look, your connection is good for X amount of data. How you choose to use that data is up to you. If you want more of it going to your packet headers instead of your payload, fine.” A bit is a bit is a bit to your ISP.

said it would hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons

That explains why they had everyone dig into the radioactive soil around Chernobyl and get radiation poisoning. Gotta simulate that nuclear fallout environment “for practice”

I think Phantom Menace is the best of the 3, but the thing I always find surprising when watching the other two is how freaking engaged I am when Obi-wan is on screen. Seriously, Ewan McGregor so freaking good that I’m just whisked away on whatever exploration of this foreign universe he’s doing. Then Anakin speaks and rips me right back to reality.

If Liam Neeson carries TPM, Ewan McGregor should be crowned Mr. Universe for carrying AOTC and ROTS

Well if climate change keeps up, it sounds like they’ll be a pseudo-city on the rain forest instead.

He’s not doing much inside Russia one way or another. At least a pardon gives him a way out. And if he gets sent to a gulag, that’s not on whoever pardoned him. That’s on whoever sent him to the gulag.

If the options are “pardon” and “not pardon”, “not pardon” just means he stays in that exact same precarious situation. At least a pardon stands to change it, with the added benefit of being morally correct.

What happens when the pantry goes empty?