This one is great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffè_sospeso

In many ways it’s more restrictive than before, albeit better for the intended use case.

I had to scroll way too far down for someone to point that out.

There will be a lot of people facing problems like yours with actual family members living abroad, and others will face issues with sharing with friends abroad or friends that used to change often or paid sharing that changed often.

I am a cynic so I think it is mostly done to hinder paid sharing and sharing with friends and family abroad is collateral damage.

A second use is probably that child protection is now pushed away from Steam and more towards the parents. I think that was necessary because European countries and maybe others were putting Valve under pressure and they do not want to implement a real age verification (they should imho). Now they can just say: “Kids should not have free access to a PC to be able to make an account, parents need to do that for them and restrict access age appropriate, it is not our concern anymore!” I have my doubt that will be enough for the EU though, but might buy them time.

I think many people haven’t realized the downsides of this yet and only see where it benefits them. We will have complaints about the one year cooldown soon.

If you buy Backpack Battles you can get a copy of Slay the Spire for free … just sayin’. I mean I am totally not hoping for a lot of people to hop on Backpack Battles, so I will have a lot of people to play against forever. 😏 It has a demo, so no blind buying necessary. It is Early Access but worth every Cent in my eyes.

You admit that anything to do with gender dysphoria is more important than a minor transgression. You are right, it is more important than a tattoo, because the stakes are higher if you refuse help.

• Delaying puberty does not lead to lifelong regrets, it avoids them.
• Gender dysphoria is a life-threatening condition that can lead to lifelong mental health problems, self-hatred, self-harm, severe depression and suicide, and going through the wrong puberty makes it extremely worse.
• To even be considered for the medication you need:

a long-standing and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria emerged or worsened with the onset of puberty.
Coexisting psychological, medical or social problems, if any, are stable enough to begin treatment.
The adolescent has given informed consent.

Many health professionals and, where possible, parents are involved in the process.

Delaying puberty does not mean that the child has to change gender, it means giving them more time to think about it until they are of age, giving them the time to live as their preferred gender and find out if it is the right one or if they want to stay with their birth gender. At any time the child can decide to stop taking the medication and will go through puberty like any other child, just a bit late (which happens naturally for some children).

It is exactly the opposite of what you say it is. It avoids the damage of a false puberty, gives time for decision making and time to “grasp the choice and consequences” and gives them time to grow up and make the permanent decision later. Everything you say is basically pro puberty blocker.

Permitting them to permanently mess with their physiology in such a critical phase of development seems wildly irresponsible to me.

And do you think all these scientists and doctors haven’t thought about all the problems and side effects and why it might still be necessary before they think about giving children a drug like this? Do you think it is not being closely monitored? We have many years of experience with this, not only with children with gender dysphoria.

All you see is “messing with their physiology at such a critical stage of development”, what you don’t see is the “mess” of watching a child go through the wrong kind of puberty and the damage it does for a lifetime, and you haven’t confronted yourself with that or the corpses of young people who have killed themselves because they just couldn’t take it any more.

This is something that requires knowledge, not emotion. I understand that you are uncomfortable with this process, nobody can take that away from you. Either do not think about it and leave it to the specialists, or get the knowledge to understand what you are talking about.

To take away a life-saving drug because some people who are not affected by it, do not want to face the damage and loss of life, or do not want to learn about the procedure, feel uncomfortable, is the stupidest and most evil thing I can think of. Guess who I think ist the irresponsible person here.

To be fair I am also concerned about children’s safety in Alabama, for a multitude of reasons and non has to to with transgender people.

I am too old to sail the seas. Either I get it legally and convenient or I just stop watching and read a book instead. Not saying others shouldn’t, I had my fair share of years out there, but it’s not for me anymore.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-tariffs-eu-colorful-cards-2018-7

Being able to and wanting to, being practised in reading and actually understanding what you read are probably very different things. Some people decided that colorful flash cards work best with him. The news articles about him not reading his briefing materials but looking at the pictures are also out there. I think he reads everything that comes in the size of a flash card or a tweet, much longer than that and I have my doubts.

If you don’t go to the gym you don’t have to lift any weights

My body weight contradicts this. If I went to the gym regularly, I would probably have to lift less weight overall.

Me: “I would like to uninstall Edge and use Firefox for everything!”
Netflix: “With Firefox I won’t give you best quality even if you pay for it! Use Edge!”
So Edge stays my video streaming browser for now, but only that.

Increasing water efficiency is likely to result in reduced demand for water, with less water therefore flowing through drains and sewers. Some parties have suggested that this could lead to blockages, drainage problems and homes flooding due to backed up sewerage systems.

In Germany our toilets usually have two buttons, one for the yellow which flushes but with a lower amount of water and the bigger button for the big brown business and maximum water flow.

Depending where you live and depending on drought being a thing in your place of the world, using less water can have unwanted side effects:

• backed sewerage systems
• not enough water can lead to environmental problems if the sewage isn’t watered down enough for your sewage treatment plant to deal with it or if it goes straight to a river it is worse than with more water (that one is always really bad but definitely extremely worse with less water)

In the past I had to upgrade my PC every 4 years (my first PC run on Windows 3.1), but my last one just works and even the GPU only fell out of minimum requirements of the newest and graphical shiny games end of last year (it even managed to run Starfield although it looked bad and lagged in cities terribly), but my backlog is huge, so I don’t care and if I care I can use Geforce Now or Game Pass for PC and stream that one game I can not play on my rig directly anymore.

Our planet is on fire and consuming less is the only actual solution to that. Everything got more expensive. I literally don’t want to spent a lot of money on a PC that I do not need, because the one I have plays the games I want to play just fine (currently Dave the Diver) and on top throw a perfectly fine machine away, add to CO2 production and need to cut back on other needs I have because everything is so expensive.

My machine is an i7-6700K 4GHz with a GTX 970 and 16 GB DDR 4. And the only reason this is not working with Windows 11 is the CPU and upgrading that would need a new board and at that point I need a new PC. Oh and I tested it at the beginning when Windows 11 came out, I can circumvent the restriction and install Windows 11 anyway, it’s just not guaranteed it will stay working and getting upgrades can be a hassle, but at least for the time I tried it I did get automated updates.

I do not hate Windows, I tried to get Windows 11, I just don’t want to accept that a security feature for businesses makes my consumer PC invalid for it. I am a gamer and I would like to stay with Windows, but I am not buying a new PC unless a vital part of my old one breaks. I rather stay with an unpatched system and do anything that needs security on my phone/tablet on android. And no, I am 58 y.o. and I am not learning Linux, maybe if I were interested in the Steam handheld it would make sense, but I am not.

I got my first library card at 6 y.o., so 52 years of library card ownership. Glad you can experience the library and I wish you a lot of fun with everything yours has to offer!

The NBC article is not telling you this:

Klarna brags to businesses that offering their app will increase the average store order by 45%. That means that the average shopper is spending 45% more—for things they can’t afford—all because they don’t have to pay for it all at once. That’s messed up!

Source: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/debt/klarna

It is NOT about people who can’t afford food, it is about psychologically manipulating you into overspending and it works on so many people that the handful who it doesen’t work on are just the tiny exception.

And that in a world that can only survive if we consume less.

so that students from poorer families don’t feel othered by rich kids that can afford all of the latest and greatest brands

and then the rich kid has the better phone, the cool shoes and I could go on. On top often there are different quality levels of clothes that cost different amounts of money and you can see that even if the color is the same and then you have the poorest kid that has to wear the used uniform. On top the rich kid has ten of them, so if they get dirty there is always a fresh one, the kids who had only two pants were called the “dirt kids” and stumbling and ripping your trousers - they get stitched together because buying new ones isn’t going to happen until next month when Mom gets paid. You suddenly grow a lot - gratulations, now you have to wear pants that are too short for some time.

If bullying because of money vs no money is a problem at your school you will not change that by trying to make everyone look samy at a surface level, because the problem is way deeper and mostly starts with the parents and they do not wear a school uniform.

Also it is not just gender it is also body shape. I was always fatter than others. In a school uniform, skirt or pants, I was looking terrible, the joke was already made, the kids just had to laugh.

I think German Trump supporters in Germany take the crown: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/world/europe/germany-trump-far-right.html

I don’t think the Darwin Awards apply here if it wasn’t the decision of the deceased (child) to do the stupid thing, but of the parent(s). I would rather consider a “murder your child / make them handicapped for life” award in the form of a trial and imprisonment for endangering your child.

I am handicapped and in early retirement. I had a hard time going on walks, got tired fast, there was always the fear of stumbling/falling again and carrying a bag was painful using a backpack made me getting tired faster.

I bought an expensive walking helper /walker with 4 wheels (not something you sit on and drive, but walk behind), a seat and a big bag for shopping. I feel like superwoman now when I am on a walk, because I can walk longer, buy stuff and just put it on the thing and it is so easy to get even heavy stuff home and whenever I get tired and no matter where I am, I just sit down, relax, power comes back and I can keep going.

The best thing I have ever bought in my whole life.

I was told this is only for very old people and that it looks ridiculous at my age and that I would not need it by everyone, fuck them. It is pure quality of life and increases my power to over 9000! I have been more outside in the last 12 months, than in the 5 years before that because of it.

Thank you for your explanation. Google gave me a lot of insight into a lot of things and none had to do with this problem. :D

Microsoft has clarified that it wants its games to be experienced across various devices

Microsoft, please give me streaming with keyboard and mouse. It is not rocket surgery ™ to do that and it is promised now for so long.