Spyke

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news

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Airbnb bookings dry up in New York as new short-stay rules are introduced

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So many people forget this origin. Air mattress in your spare room (in SF), iirc.

As much as I, personally, prefer a house when away - either with the family or as a couple - this is one of the drivers behind the crunch in housing. People can’t possibly afford to by a place to live when the competition is a wanna-be property “entrepreneur” who is going to get 2-4x market rent by doing short term rentals.

memes

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Here's a quick project that anyone can do in their garage.

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Me: Should I buy a prebuilt 3D printer?

Reddit 3D printing sub: Oh, heck no. I put mine together for $18.22 plus some spare parts from seven printers I got of craigslist for $1 from some widow. Only took me three weekends to do it, plus a couple hundred hours to update the firmware to match the parts and troubleshoot it.

Me: Uh, so does it print better than the one I could just buy?

Reddit: Well, I'm still tuning it for all my filaments. I've been through about 40kg, and I've got a trashcan full of benchys though. The last few have been pretty good.

climate

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We’re over-freezing our food. Turning up the temperature slightly could avoid 17 Mt of CO2

How often do you want to get food poisoning? That’s the trade off. Each degree increased is shifting the statistical curve on which the tail end is food poisoning occurrences.

If Google didn’t just lie to me 17MT of CO2 is the equivalent of taking 19 private jets out of service for one year. You’ll excuse me if I choose to lower my chance for food poisoning by making some rich dude fly commercial.

videos

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EU votes to mandate removable batteries in smartphones in a landslide; no more glued together junk!

Next: I would like them to prohibit software limitations on hardware shipped in products so that if you ship a product with a hardware which is enabled on any device, you may not disable that hardware on different models. Ex - putting a 60kWh battery pack in all of your cars but limiting the usage in software based on pricing, or installing heaters which are enabled in some models but not in others.

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Student project consumes 17% of energy of traditional desalination plants

Current techniques appear to use around 1.8-2kWh/m3 for desalination. That would imply that this uses only 350-400Wh. You’d think you could her better production from 9m2 just going up a few solar panels and putting a conventional plant. I presume the author has no fucking clue how desalination of solar heating and distillation works and/or hasn’t even read the patent to find out how this works.

Good on the student team for thinking creatively, but they seem to have only two engineers but four managers on the team. And not a single coherent description from those four managers, who seem very proud of taking credit for the students’ work.

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how can I develop a thick skin?

Lots of advice here, some of it good, some of it questionable.

Two things I’ll amplify from other comments: there’s a reason your therapist missed. It’s could be anything from messing up in their calendar app to a pet or a family member being injured it passing unexpectedly. This falls into the “shit happens” category. You’re allowed to be angry, upset, disappointed, or any combination - your time was wasted. There are generally two outcomes - 1) the miss was unintentional or unavoidable or 2) the therapist is unreliable. Until you find out that it’s case 2, recognize that a couple of wasted hours - in the course of your life- is small potatoes (perspective).

Another is the concept of “agency”. There are things you can affect in your life, in your relationships, and in the world. There are things you cannot. Nobody can force you to allow yourself to ignore the latter. They will always get under your skin. However, if you find yourself dwelling on those items, try and take a step back and identify things in your life you control or which you can alter/adjust. Finding those areas where you have agency allows you to impart your will, to be a positive force in your life trajectory.

I won’t even begin to tell you this is easy. It is a process and a way of interacting. Here’s an example - recognize your disappointment with your therapist but take the initiative to reschedule. Taking it a step further, the day before your next meeting, confirm the appointment. It can be a text or email - simple, low contact. If you don’t get a response, escalate near the end if the work day (or first thing the morning of the appointment) with a call. These are things you can do to manage your therapist and your collective schedules. Most professionals (I am one fwiw) will not be offended in the least with good (but not excessive) communication. If they are, or if the therapist still flakes out on you - well, we’re back to case (2) above and you’re on the troublesome path of finding a new / another therapist. BUT - you’ve done all you can in your power to make this a success. Recognize your initiative as a positive, personal attribute you will continue to leverage in your life.

I wish you the best!

ukraine

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"The first photo shows my grandchildren hiding from Russian terrorists' missiles... we evacuated them to Israel... In the second photo, the same people are hiding from Hamas terrorists' missiles."

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It’s my understanding the British put these two peoples in

It was more the Americans - factions within Britain warned that this would be an untenable situation.

an impossible situation

And there's the rub. There are no considerations where land appropriated by the west from a (non-Russian, non-German) current population for a long-since displaced population as some sort of reparation for Russian and German aggression will somehow come to a stable peace.

All that said, the actions of Israel in isolating Palestinians into a ghetto where control is by fiat and without any consideration for self-determination and independence is not just ironic but also a source of constant and mounting friction and discontent within the repressed population. There may not be a way to resolve the condition, but the current attitude by Israel is actively aggravating it.

Note: I'm a second generation descendent of Russian Jews. I still see the entire Israeli/Palestinian condition as untenable.