NO. Not a fan of the current or former CCP or the former Soviet Union

First time I landed in Australia on the Gold Coast I followeed a bin chicken for 20 minutes with a camera trying to get the perfect picture like it was some rare exotic bird. I’m sure the locals were sremoveding or openly laughing behind my back, I dont blame them

We dont have much in the way of animals but we have birds. The Tui is common in suburban gardens here, but they are beautiful and even as a local I still like seeing them. Pukekos are everywhere but for those from the UK/ Europe/ USA they’re prett exotic. Down South, Wekas are absolutely everywhere outside the cities and will walk right into people’s homes - I once experienced coitus interruptus when a Weka jumped up on the bed I was in with a guy.

When I was in South Africa I was super excited to see baboons, locally considered something of a nuisance. And in Queensland, Australia, the first time I saw an Australian white ibis, locally known as a bin chicken, the locals must have been very amused to see me chasing it with a camera getting photos

Glycine

Thanks for this tip, I dont have trouble sleeping generally but my partner does, will look into this for him

I put the heaviest and least breakable things first in line so they end up at the bottom of the bag(s). Canned food, stuff in plastic bottles, then all the cold/ frozen stuff altogether, light and delicate things like bread, chips etc last

I joined on here a bit over 9 months ago after I was permabanned from reddit for ??? reason after I posted a Google Streetview link of a layby. This happened to coincide with the third party API fuckup and several other irrational and counterproductive changes so I arrived here right in the middle of a period of huge growth. I havent left since then per se but have had periods of reduced activity. Have started another profile on reddit (which was stupidly easy) as there are still a number of niche communities there that have no activity on their equivalent communities here. Am settled, and will likely gradually spend more time here as reddit management continue to find more feet to shoot themselves in

This Stihl Vacuum shredder/blower. Like a leafblower, but instead of just blowing the leaves pointlessly around it sucks them up, shreds them a bit and dumps them in a big bag - and its electric. Terrific piece of kit, quiet and effective and oh so satisfying to use, I go over the driveway and garden with it every day or two (we have a lot of trees surrounding our place which constantly drop masses of leaves)

This! I remember putting one on a site I built way back then

Yes, we’ve got an Epson Ecotank too, its been great, and super economical on ink. Bought in the first covid lockdown when our HP shat the bed, still going strong. And its not made in China so another plus

How did this ballroom get hired at such short notice?

Well I upvoted because this is an excellent question that has applications and relevance far beyond just the current Hamas atrocities.

Facing up to and dealing with the fact that a small percentage of any population is psychopathic (which is a rough clinical descriptor/ analogue for what the man in the street would call evil -lacking in conscience, empathy or morality) is something we do not do well, at least in the Western world, and it is something which we do need to grapple with. And when evil men gain power and set the social and cultural norms - as in 1930’s Germany - the larger population can be persuaded or at least coerced into doing evil. We’ve seen this before, from the Armenian genocide, the Nazi regime, Rwanda and now this

That is a fantastic idea. America has such a terrible health system

Its a fair question. I think the best approach actually is not to make it illegal for deeply unsuitable individuals to reproduce, but to incentivise them not to. Make contraception freely and easily available, and actually pay them not to have kids. Using a carrot rather than a stick approach like this will be far easier to get across the line and will present less enforcement challenges

Damn… you lucky. I need heavy sedation just to get my anxiety under control, or at least tamped down

I would have thought that in the instance of rape the burden of punishment would fall entirely upon the perpetrator, i.e. the rapist. Fair point about divorce though

Currently in most of the Western world we have very stringent standards that have to be met in order to adopt a child (and quite rightly too in my view). But in order to conceive a child naturally? Nothing, nada, zilch. Full blown neo-nazi? Meth addict? Huge track record of violence? Rapist? Paedophile? All of the above? Find a partner of the opposite sex and you’re good to go! This is a massive inconsistency that I can see we will have to face up to sooner or later, maybe not to the extent you propose, but some sort of minimum standard needs to be put in place for being able to reproduce, for the sake of those children that will otherwise be brought up in horrific, abusive nightmare environments if nothing else.

Partner has Netflix which we all use (in same house), I have Deezer. We get good usage from both, not cancelling either one

Lack of resources, poverty, disease, stress, aggression, pollution. There isnt really a problem out there that overpopulation doesnt make worse

This is what puts me off going, the poverty. Pity because I’d love to go for all the great vegetarian food, but I can get a lot of that here

Having not been there I dont really know enough to form an opinion of such a huge country that contains such a diversity of cultures, but it does seem to be struggling with severe overpopulation which is at the root of many of its isssues