tal

This distrust is especially strong among those who voted for Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC), with 32 percent expressing no trust, as well as voters for BBB (28 percent) and PVV (26 percent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Social_Contract

In foreign policy, NSC aspires to continue intensive cooperation within Europe. The idea is that by working together, the Netherlands gets a better grip on cross-border problems such as migration, CO2 emissions and the power of big tech. Nevertheless, NSC also sees the need to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of European legislation and calls for the European Union to be more transparent and accountable to European citizens. According to its party manifesto, European decision-making must become more transparent and be more focused on upholding the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. Ultimately, Omtzigt has vowed for a firm stance from the Netherlands in Europe, without creeping transfers of budgets and powers eroding national sovereignty and democratic control, and argues that the Netherlands should protect its interests on the European stage. The party also calls for no more Dutch participation in Eurozone bailouts, less EU influence on Dutch taxation policies and for the Netherlands to opt-out of EU agreements it deems contradictory to Dutch interests. NSC supports Dutch NATO membership and argues for the Netherlands to meet the standard of at least 2% of GDP on defense.[37]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom

PVV's main issues are migration and critique of Islam. The PVV has proposed banning the Quran and shutting down all mosques in the Netherlands.[7] The party is Eurosceptic[8][9] and favoured withdrawal from the EU until 2024.[10]

So I take it that this is something of a "I voted for either less or no EU and a Netherlands for the Dutch and yet the government hasn't done any of that!"

Oh, that's a good point. The time doesn't work out.

I'm assuming that it's some sort of component from the air conditioner, but damned if I know what it is. Looks like power plugs on it, and someone else mentioned "caps", so maybe a capacitor, though I wasn't aware that there was some kind of plug standard for large removable capacitors.

kagis

Yeah, this capacitor looks similar.

collapsed inline media

EDIT: Apparently air conditioners can use large capacitors:

https://www.amazon.com/Capacitor-Conditioner-Multi-Purpose-Capacitor-5-Warranty/dp/B092ZQ3Y3N

Capacitor for Air Conditioner 5 uf MFD 370 or 440 Volt VAC, Multi-Purpose Round Capacitor for AC Motor Run or Fan Motor Start or Condenser Straight

EDIT2: Oh, I bet I know what it's for, given the "Fan Motor Start" and what I assume is a misspelled "Condenser Start" text on the Amazon listing. Some hardware will draw a lot of juice when starting up. Laser printers are prone to this, for example. The references above are to mechanical things, moving components, and maybe one need extra power to overcome static friction, to get the parts in motion initially; once moving, they face (lesser) kinetic friction. One option is to just draw a ton of power from the line, but then that increases the peak power demands of a device. Another option, gentler on whatever circuit or external power source is providing the power, is to charge a capacitor for a bit and that'll let you create a big surge of available power for a moment without having to have higher peak demands on the external power source. Adds to device cost, but limits its peak draw.

About 18 months ago, the defense secretary’s office floated the idea to the services

Presumably Hegseth had some idea, since it's his office that pushed the idea. Also, since he personally has been an Army reservist, I kind of imagine that this is a personal Pete Hegseth idea.

German and English both belong to the Germanic language family and have a shared history. This means that there are many “cognates” (words that are historically related and therefore similar). These are often easy to guess for English speakers, particularly once you are familiar with some of the patterns.

However, my experience of teaching German at British universities has shown me that German is much more accessible to English speakers than some might think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages

The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages.

I bet West Frisian's easier!

EDIT:

https://old.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/6k4a5k/has_anyone_really_learned_frisian_because_it_was/djj8q0o/

Has anyone really learned Frisian because it was the closest to english?

Not exactly what you're asking for, but actor/comedian Eddie Izzard, who had studied Old English, decided to find out whether Old English and Frisian were as close as linguists said they were. He went to an area where Frisian was spoken and tried to negotiate the purchase of a brown cow, speaking Old English to a farmer who spoke only Frisian. Here's the video; it's pretty entertaining if you're into languages.

as someone who only speaks German and English, this is fucking hilarious.

In fairness, rural America probably didn't entirely understand the implications of said vote.

As I've pointed out on here before, I feel like a lot of people in mostly-Republican-voting rural American are going to be even more disappointed when they discover agricultural subsidies ending, healthcare subsidies ending that disproportionately benefit poorer, rural areas, illegal immigrant agricultural workers that farms rely on becoming unavailable, counter-tariffs that tend to target agricultural output from rural areas, etc.

https://apnews.com/article/tetris-win-kill-screen-blue-scuti-willis-gibson-df9325c62d42292e854cadb54d8f4cb3

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The falling-block video game Tetris has met its match in 13-year-old Willis Gibson, who has become the first player to officially “beat” the original Nintendo version of the game — by breaking it.

Technically, Willis — aka “blue scuti” in the gaming world — made it to what gamers call a “kill screen,” a point where the Tetris code glitches, crashing the game. That might not sound like much of a victory to anyone thinking that only high scores count, but it’s a highly coveted achievement in the world of video games, where records involve pushing hardware and software to their limits. And beyond.

Also, if you don't have adequate parking space in an area, it results in cars spilling out into the nearest street parking.

That being said, if you want to increase housing density and you want available parking, you either gotta convert some low-rise buildings into parking and some into higher-density housing, or you gotta build parking garages, which cost substantially more than ground parking.

kagis

https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/

The cost per space varies based on the location and design of the parking garage.

1. A surface lot is $1,500-$10,000 per space (economical).
2. An above ground garage is $25,000-$35,000 per space (balanced).
3. An underground garage is $35,000-$50,000 per space (expensive from excavation).
4. Automated parking garages can vary greatly, but typically fall within the range of above-ground garages.

Any parking mandate adds to the cost of the housing. That being said, I generally think that that's worthwhile (and frankly, my experience has been that parking mandates generally aren't high enough for existing apartments). If you have a one-parking-slot-per-apartment mandate, you also have a number of people in those apartments who have multiple cars.

considers

I do kind of wonder how much it would cost to do low-rise parking garages. Usually when I see them, they're in high-value areas, downtowns and stuff, and very tall.

https://f.hubspotusercontent20.net/hubfs/9476621/2021%20Parking%20Structure%20Cost%20Outlook.pdf

This has multistory parking garage construction costs for different locations. It looks like parking garage construction cost in San Francisco is about 50% higher than a lot of the country. I wouldn't expect materials cost to vary much from state to state. Some of that is maybe earthquake code compliance. Some probably labor cost.

EDIT: One other point I'd add is that if you have one parking spot, it's also possible to fit multiple motorcycles/mopeds in it. I know one person who was in an apartment who kept her motorcycle and another one in her parking space. Some places in (arid parts of) California are pretty amenable to motorcycle use.

EDIT2: If you figure, back of the napkin, that housing has an expected 10% ROI and the price difference between a surface parking slot and a multistory parking garage parking slot is maybe $25k, then it's gonna increase annual rent for an apartment by maybe $2,500 or $208/mo, which I kinda suspect is gonna be rather outweighed by potential decrease in rent from more supply of housing being available; the price difference between "high demand area" housing and "low demand area" housing is a lot more than that.

https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-with-the-most-expensive-rents

The top four most-expensive US cities median rental price for a 1-bedroom apartment rental here are all in California: San Jose ($3,223), San Francisco ($2,705), San Diego ($2,534), and Los Angeles ($2,358).

The four least expensive cities are St. Louis, MO ($1,059), Cleveland, OH ($1,046), Oklahoma City, OK ($1,010), and Tulsa, OK ($994).

That's a lot of difference there to work with.

If you already have a larger Linux laptop that you're otherwise happy with, have you considered just throwing it in a padded laptop backpack?

Why should the Pacific Ocean be named "the Pacific Ocean" when it could be "the American Ocean"?

I mean, he's some random 19-year-old who worked for Elon before. I doubt that he's personally done anything especially reprehensible at DOGE. The problem isn't so much him as it is other people placing him in the role he was placed in.

If you went to work at American Airlines as a high level executive and hired a 19-year-old who worked for you at some Burger King outlet as a pilot because he's a good guy and you know him and you think that he can learn on the job, the problem here isn't really the 19-year-old. It's you being wildly irresponsible with your hiring.

I wouldn't support beating up on those people for bad decisions on the part of others.

What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

I don't know what the internal mechanics are like, haven't read material about it. From a user standpoint, I have just a list of positive and negative factors impacting my hit chance, so less information about my hit chance. I guess I'd vaguely prefer the percentage

I generally am not a huge fan of games that have the player rely on mechanics trying to hide the details of those mechanics

but it's nice to know what inputs are present. It hasn't been a huge factor to me one way or the other, honestly; I mean, I feel like I've got a solid-enough idea of roughly what the chances are.

even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

Yeah, I don't know of other things that have the strategic aspect. For the squad-based tactical turn-based combat, there are some options that I've liked playing in the past.

While Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 aren't quite the same thing

they're closer to Fallout 1 and 2, as Wasteland 1 was a major inspiration for them

the squad-based, turn-based tactical combat system is somewhat similar, and if you're hunting for games that have that, you might also enjoy that.

I also played Silent Storm and enjoyed it, though it's now pretty long in the tooth (well, so is Jagged Alliance 2...). Even more of a combat focus. Feels lower budget, slightly unfinished.

And there's X-Com. I didn't like the new ones, which are glitzy, lots of time spent doing dramatic animations and stuff, but maybe I should go back and give them another chance.