I was a volunteer teacher in Africa from 1988-91.

I would write letter from my village, and it would take one month to get to my family in Canada. They would write a response, and it would take one month to get back to my village. That was just the reality.

Now the village I lived in has a cell phone tower in the middle of it. I haven’t been back, but I am willing to bet that a lot has changed.

Mr Leahy in The Trailer Park Boys. If you enjoy TV about idiots getting drunk and high and trying get-rich-quick schemes, then this is your show! One of those shows that is far more popular with men and women.

I’m in Malaysia right now, which is a majority Muslim country. Restaurants and convenience stores sell beer and other alcohol, but I have seen signs in the convenience stores covering the front of coolers saying that Muslims cannot buy alcohol.

I’m not sure how strictly that is enforced, most of the store clerks and waiters don’t seem to care.

Just audio. But it is presented in a way that helps you to learn, rather than just remember. If you give it a try, I promise that you will be shocked at how you can retain the knowledge.

It isn’t enough on its own, however. You need to reinforce the lessons by speaking to people, reading, and/or TV and movies.

I have found Duolingo much, much less useful for language learning than Language Transfer. The latter actually helps you learn to think in another language rather than memorize things (which is still useful, but not nearly as much).

Short if total immersion, I have found nothing better than LT.

• Visit the house where Martin Luther lived
• Buy a Perry Rhodan hefte (an SF pulp serial magazine that has been published weekly since 1961) at a newsstand after not reading one for over 40 years
• Eat my first currywurst since I arrived in Germany three days ago

As does peanut butter and bacon.

That’s exactly right. The proof is quite simple and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taught instead of just getting students to accept magic rules.

I went through engineering school, and 20 years of work (not as an engineer), before finding a calculus text that explained why the derivative of x^2 is 2x. Along with many practical applications of calculus.

That book was Calculus Made Simple, published in 1914. Thanks, Project Gutenberg!

Edit: derivative of x^2 is 2x. Got my differentiation and integration confused!

In theory there is little difference between practice and theory. In practice there is.

I know someone who works in a university group related to privacy issues. He refuses to have a smartphone because of the ease which which almost anyone can track you and your activities. I think he has an old flip phone.

“Whatabout…”

But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?

There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.

I guess if you can’t rely on human intelligence, you have to hope that artificial intelligence can do the job.

Lovely troll!

They have also announced that if they have to reduce or stop production because of the current tariffs, they will continue to pay all of their employees.

All of their ice cream is also made in nut free factories, so that people with nut allergies can safely eat it. I’m not sure, but that may be the only ice cream that makes such a guarantee.

When I go into a Costco, I take a minute to look at the board showing the pictures names of long-time employees. At my local one, they have about 15 people who have been working there for over 30 years.

Met a woman who had been a Costco employee for 25 years. In addition to everything else, she got 6 weeks of paid holidays a year. How many other retail employers come anywhere close to that?

It’s incumbent upon every member of society to protect the weakest and most powerless, or else you are complicit in wielding the boot.

Isn’t the money from selling microsoft products enough?

“Enough money” is a phrase that simply doesn’t make sense for a lot of people, especially the sociopaths that run companies.

When I was in grade 9, in 1977, my science teacher told us about his solar panels. He was projecting that they would pay off the investment in about 20 years. How much better must that be now (and we are talking about Ontario, Canada, hardly the best place for solar power)?