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Polish is a Slavic language written out using Latin letters.

I feel like there is some context to this meme that I am missing.

I did not like the constant tonal shifts between silly magic frat boys and depressing magical apocalypse.

Those are still half height cube walls. It is a bit more privacy, but still has noise isolation issues. I miss head height cubes.

Not even the Google search team. You can no longer negate search terms in Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo. Any suggestions for a better search engine?

Serious question, why not? Do they produce some harmful flicker or something?

I know (and have discussed it with) plenty of people who lived in the former USSR. Everyone I spoke to agreed that it was a mess.

Of course, there is clear selection bias in who I spoke to (they are people I am friendly with and most of them reside outside of Eastern Europe) and all of them only experienced the Soviet system after it had gone through Stalin.

My wife always gets mad when I point out that the dog sits around all day, demands the food off of her plate, and constantly interrupts her when he is bored or wants attention, but she spends hours doting over him and praising him. I, on the other hand, work all day to sustain our lifestyle, spend a lot of my “leisure” time doing chores around the house, and am mindful to be polite, but I barely get a hug and “I love you”.

…

For anyone who is in doubt, I mean it in jest. I don’t need constant reassurance and reward to keep being a responsible adult. Also, though she will not admit it, she knows the dog is much cuter than me.

I hate capitalism, I just don’t know of a better alternative. Nordic socialism is just capitalism with a big government. Soviet socialism failed miserably (it turns out, it is very hard to plan an economy). I have never heard a solid plan for communism that works on a national scale, never mind a plan for transitioning to such a society.

On the other hand, capitalism works reasonably well most of the time and we can just fix issues with it when they crop up (and we have a big backlog of issues to fix).

The rice growing is not Harvest Moon-style “plant your crops, water them every day, and harvest after five days”. You need to monitor the water level of your field, the water temperature (and air temperature), crop spacing (it is not grid based), the nutrient ratios, the field aeration, etc. Your first couple of years are going to be a rough until you level up and unlock actual numbers for these instead of having to guestimate.

My wife and I enjoy shows like House Hunters occasionally. We like watching house tours plus they discussed the pros and cons of each home and how they would renovate or remodel the home. Plus, you get to see one of the houses redecorated (even if it was just staging).

Sure, the buyers and agent might be actors, but the houses are almost certainly real (it seems much cheaper to just rent and stage a couple of houses to film in than to build multiple rooms just to get 10 minutes of footage).

Also, reality shows have inspired some amazing progress in documentary editing. I don’t think shows like Last Chance U and Drive to Survive would have been half as good without it (even if they are not educational or totally accurate).

I have heard that some people like to have part of their income in a ROTH account as a mega purchase account. The reasoning goes: if you are planning to make a very large one time withdrawal (for example, to make a down payment on a second home), taking that money out of a traditional 401k will be taxed as income and may put you in a high tax bracket, while if you are paying with ROTH money, you already paid taxes, at whatever your tax rate was while working.

There is also a ROTH 401k. Same tax benefits, but with higher limits and all of the 401k benefits.

In general, a 401k, 403b, or other employer sponsored retirement plan is going to be a better deal than an IRA. With a401k, your employer is paying for your account; with an IRA, you are paying for the plan out of your returns (via fees, lower interest, etc.). Also, it is common for employer sponsored plans to match part of the money you put in.

You can also have both a 401k and IRA to double dip on investment limits, but only if you are in a particular income bracket (you cannot contribute to an IRA if you have a high income and you are not likely to be able to max out a 401k if you have a low income).

Also, from what I have read, there are income limits to contribute to a ROTH IRA. So, you would have to be making a moderate income but still have plenty left over to invest (so very low cost of living).

IRAs (ROTH or regular) are meant for people who don’t have an employer sponsored retirement plan.

The average amount of food I buy should be, on average, the same as the amount of food I consume, but the amount of food purchased during a given shopping trip varies, especially in the amount spent on nonperishables. I am likely to buy a lot of a given item, store the extras for when I need them, and buy more when I run out.

If I am wandering around the store, I may see an item (like a snack) that I am interested in trying and pick some up. In doing so, I am slightly delaying the next time I need to buy more, but it is an overall gain for the store since they are getting my money earlier and the future stock up trip may be from a different store.

On average, whether over a large enough population or a long enough time, people are living better and better.

Literacy rates are improving and information is becoming easier to access.

Medicine is always innovating. Medical care is becoming more and more available. Many deadly diseases are either wiped out or easily treatable.

For much (most?) of the world, nutritious food, clean water, and sanitation is available (if not always affordable).

Sure, some where in the world there is natural disaster, but we are constantly getting better at predicting them and buildings are being built to better handle them. There is still violence and unjust governments, but both are trending down.

That is not to say that we cannot do much much better nor that there are not easy things that we could do to improve. It is likely that your current situation has gotten worse in some way or another. But we are averaging ten steps forward for every step back (no matter how big and unnecessary that step back is).

What else is there that is not Chromium/Webkit based?

Mozilla browser was great.