stevesimmons

I sailed in a similar liner, originally the SS America, though renamed the SS Australis by the time my family took it in 1974 for the 5 week journey from UK via Cape Town to Australia.

The SS Australis passed through multiple owners until it ran aground while being towed near the Canary Islands and broke into two.

A sad end to a majestic ship.

One memory of the trip was the week in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Australia where the waves were so large the ship's dining rooms made the tablecloths wet to stop the plates sliding off as we tried to eat breakfast...

I have severe peanut allergy. If I have any exposure, my immune system stays hypersensitised for several weeks. During that period, even the smell of peanuts is enough for my throat to start swelling up. It won't develop into the full anaphylactic reaction but it is certainly bad enough to make me very unhappy.

Credit cards in many regions outside the US can do chargebacks at 1/6th that cost or less.

> Fundamentally 1-3% is actually a very competitive rate for organizing the easy transfer of money and handling fraud

This is a very US-centric take. In the UK, EU and Australia, interchange rates are capped at more like 0.2/0.3%.

Surely the rate of improvement in new LLM models is the equivalent mechanism?

Most runners I know wear running shoes nearly the whole time.

They run in their new shoes, then switch them over to casual use as the cushioning starts to go.

And if you're a really keen runner, you'll have different shoes for each type of training (track, tempo, long and slow) and racing (track, XC, trail, mid distance, half to full marathon). So you end up with a constant flow of "worn but not worn out" shoes. Which you wear when not running...

I got the X4 just before my summer holiday and put "War and Peace" from Project Gutenberg on it as my only ebook.

Five weeks later, I'd finished it, all 360 chapters, 1400 pages.

Apart from finding War and Peace a totally engrossing read, one of my favourite books of all time, I give the credit to the X4... I'd never have finished it if reading the physical book (too large to carry around) nor if reading on my phone (too many distractions).

So thank you xteink!

When we did a full renovation, we had the cabinet maker install an Ikea kitchen, with a custom non-Ikea worktop and a small amount of his expertise to adapt it for our non-Ikea dishwasher etc.

This was a massive cost saving on a fully custom kitchen, and let us shift the budget to custom built stairs/bedroom cupboards elsewhere.

Ten years on, it all still looks as good as new.

For sunbathing in particular, do what Australia does:

- large scale public health campaigns on dangers of skin cancer. With a catchy song and slogan ("slip, slop, slap... Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat")

- schools make it compulsory for kids to have hats in summer

- regulate tanning salons, promote fake tans in preference to sunbeds

- doctors check people for skin cancers during regular checkups

And over just a few years, being very brown quickly gets associated with being reckless and unhealthy.

In other words, regulate and educate

"Not illegal" doesn't mean we should passively accept it whether we encounter it professionally at work or personally as a customer.

Excluding people from services because you can't be bothered to handle their perfectly correct and validated email address is actually a form of discrimination.

My pet hate is my bank refusing to email me bank statement notifications to [email protected] ("not a personal address"), yet their password validation and marketing emails get through quite OK. Somehow they seem incapable of acknowledging that one department of the bank has made a technical decision in conflict with other departments...

> it is "spend considerable amount of time thinking about and planning your eating".

Nonsense. It doesn't take any more time. Just buy unprocessed, basic food, fruit and veg. When you open your cupboard, cook something tasty from what you have.

When you go to the supermarket, just don't walk into the aisles with snacks. Don't buy anything laden with sugar and fat.

Get into the habit of drinking black coffee instead of Starbucks' calorific drinks; it takes less than a week for your taste buds to adjust.

It's not rocket science. Just most people don't want to admit that every excess 100 calories they eat adds 11 grams of fat to their middle. Which adds up week by week, year by year.

To your point 4, we have lots of good reasons why people are gaining weight: they eat more. It's not exactly rocket science.

Obvious reasons include:

a) food is very cheap, especially processed food

b) portion sizes are comically large in the US

c) ubiquity of snacking and eating on the go, which is mostly high calorie

d) few people smoke now, and cigarettes are potent appetite suppressants

e) less social disapproval of being fat. To fair degree, being overweight is contagious

I agree completely with your last paragraph, at a society level. At an individual level, though, it's all on us to exercise self control for ourselves. Just most people don't want to.