News like these are the reason why I don’t visit authoritarian or corrupt countries. Well, that and because I’m broke.

No, it’s because they are particularly dangerous to children.

If you peruse statistics of pedestrian deaths, you will find both children and seniors are the most frequent victims. Look it up.

Hey, hey! That’s an unfair take. They also kill adults, seniors in particular.

It is called the “unmatched count technique” or “list experiment.” It has a wider error range, so you need to poll more people, but you get honest answers.

I can lend money to others without them as middlemen

Private banks are highly regulated businesses to avoid fraud and maintain the trust and stability of the financial system. They also play a key role in the creation of money supply. Banks literally create money when they issue a loan, something no other business can do.

and at the same time they seem to suggest that having money in banks is not risk-free

Because it isn’t 100% risk free: your bank can default and if your cash balance exceeds the amount that is insured by the government you can lose that excess.

The central bank cannot go bankrupt because it issues its own currency. You could experience the effects of inflation, but you would be protected from bankruptcy.

That’s why authorities are concerned about allowing citizens to hold their savings in central bank accounts.

Bugs gone in two days represents the experience of the only two independent instances where people I know had to deal with bedbugs. Your experience may be different and I respect that.

In both instances the professionals wanted to spray insecticide as I described, too.

No offense

L-O-L

☮️✌️

You do you. A professional will ask you to move all your furniture, spray insecticide everywhere, come back two weeks later to repeat the same process again to kill the newly hatched eggs, and tell you that it is quite likely that the bugs will come back, so further rounds may be needed.

Diatomaceous earth pops up on every discussion because it works. Bugs gone in a couple of days, because D.E. sticks around to kill any larvae that hatch over the following weeks.

Diatomaceous earth kills the little bastards and it is non-hazardous to humans, as long as you don’t snort the stuff.

Apparently for them is like walking on broken glass and they bleed do death, so to speak.

My sister had an infestation long ago and it was very effective. You can find the stuff online easily.

This is the key worry of governments with cryptocurrencies, and was the main selling point of them initially, before the whole crypto tech bro hype.

Yep. Arguably Bitcoin arose from the 2008 financial crisis and the following bailouts.

What I’ve never understood about it is that it seems so unlikely that it would ever replace a national currency, for two simple reasons. First, because taxes owed in a country can only be repaid in the national currency. Second, because government contracts will only ever pay in the national currency, from macroprojects, to maintenance contracts, to millions of civil servants. This creates both a ton of demand and a ton of supply for the national currency.

And that doesn’t even take into account the role of the central bank and private banks in the money supply. Being highly regulated, there’s zero chance that a private currency would ever be legally allowed to take hold there either.

Central bank digital currencies appear to have very little to do with crypto currencies like Bitcoin. Rather, they appear to be a mechanism to surgically induce economic stimulus when and where desired, like a more controlled version of the stimulus checks that we saw in many countries during COVID.

For example, they could directly credit your digital currency account with a certain amount of money that you are only allowed to spend on certain goods and services and for a limited amount of time. This would ensure that the money is spent and stimulates certain economic aress rather than being hoarded or invested.

“Nothing happened! See, it is not such a big deal.”

Somebody who doesn’t understand that the effect is cumulative. Just like a heavy rainstorm one day may be manageable but if it happens every day you have a flood.

We need to do better.

in theory a lot or europeans are still living comfortably off of the horrific crimes they committed

in practice i doubt this money would come from those most responsible

A few Europeans from a few countries committed horrific crimes over half a century ago. Leopold III of Belgium in the 1950s during the independence of the Congo being the most modern example I’m aware of, and he died forty years ago.

If we are talking about the slave trade bound to the US, that ended a century and a half ago. Not that things turned instantly great for the freed slaves, of course.

So how much should we chastize people who were not even born when these things happened, and how much reparation needs to be paid to people who were not even born when it happened either? Because the way things work in the real world, I fear that in the end it will be middle class folks who will be paying “reparations” that will do nothing but fill the pockets of a few corrupt politicians from the receiving countries.

I wish private vehicles were taxed yearly based on the damage they do to the roads divided by the average number of passengers based on vehicle type. Road damage scales with vehicle weight to the fourth power.

It also doesn’t take into consideration that, as far as I know, US-bound slaves were bought in west Africa, meaning that locals were responsible for capturing and selling their neighbors as slaves, and thus profited from slave trade themselves.

What a terrible day to be literate. Why am I not surprised to read that he is a conservative 🙄

We need any help we can get to net zero carbon emissions, and lab-grown meat is one of the many things that moves the needle in the right direction. Not everybody is going to ride a bicycle and switch to a vegan diet, so the more low-carbon alternatives we make available, the better.

Selling smoke.

Violence against elected officials is not compatible with democracy. To those cheering at this act of violence: you are as violent and authoritarian as the people you loathe. Shame on you.

They are more representative for the spanish people than junts or pnv or eh bildu ever will be

Except for, you know, the fact that Spaniards voted for them.

Again, that is how a parliamentary system works.

Thank you for providing additional context. It sounds pretty reasonable.