>>I try to keep 150-200 miles of spare range on my vehicle when I am in that kind of country. That is hard to do on a typical EV.

Plus the additional anxiety of trying to figure out if dropping temperatures will add massive downside variance to your initial range estimate.

I just drove 100mi in freezing temps (around 25F) at mostly interstate speeds (70+) mph. I completed my trip around 95% of EPA. Maybe a function of the quality of your EV.

Not having a highscool diploma or GED can limit one's future career options; an example is the US armed forces[1].

[1] https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements

This reason alone is unlikely to provide sufficient motivation to keep grinding away. Language acquisition can be a slog even though it's (eventually) super rewarding.

Let's put the question differently: let's imagine we already know Chinese. How much will we be potentially be able to capitalize on that knowledge in the coming years?

How much do you capitalize on reading papers that are written in English right now?

> let's imagine we already know Chinese

This is the case for many people. What else do you bring to the table?

Let's look at an example of a pretty closely related skill: imagine we're already literate. What's that worth?

I would argue even for scientific collaboration the gains will be minimal. The LLMs are more or less capable of translating content in natural sciences biderectionally, and most researchers already have a passing knowledge of English. On the contrary I would not expect this to be applicable in humanities, since translating (for example) psychology material is much more nuanced.

On the other hand, IMO this would be quite influential in finding contacts for business or manufacturing.

I was looking through stuffs on vacuum tubes the other day. And all the interesting ones were already in the ever so slightly arcane versions of the language I'm most familiar with... that felt weird. But I also learned that ITO on glass was a common thing for a long time.

Assuming you could afford it, would the new iPhone Air be a consideration in your ultralight base load going forward?

Potentially? I have an iPhone 15 Pro now, which I got both because it was lighter than previous equivalents, and was the first (?) with direct-to-satellite, which I definitely value. I know I can get ~5 days of navigation (but not reading) out of it, which is one of the reasons I don't take a backup battery (the solar panel isn't a single point of failure; but of course the phone still is for nav, so still need a minimal paper map and a compass). I only spend a couple weeks a year backpacking so I wouldn't choose a phone purely based on that; but if I were in the market for an update this cycle I'd consider it.

Edit: Looks like the Air is 165 g, vs 187 g for the 15 Pro; not even an ounce difference. A bit more compared to the 17 Pro (206 g); but I probably just hold on until Russia collapses into a new metastable state and we can get bulk titanium again.

Ericsson is a Swedish company with headquarters in Stockholm. They (and everybody else) have lost and continue to lose market share to Huawei short of these types of overt government interventions/market interventions.

Maybe not 'exclusively' slept, but koalas[1] sleep for a majority of the day (16-20 hours) in order to digest highly toxic eucalyptus leaves which constitute the main portion of their diet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koala

Maybe I should really lean into that nap after eating..

Or quit eating poison :P

Fascinating. I wonder whether they'd sleep less if fed a less toxic, more easily digestible diet.

Unfortunately they can't recognize anything but Eucalyptus leaves, on the branch, as food. A pile of the leaves isn't food to them, they won't eat it.

Weird niche to corner! Exclusively eat the poison nobody else wants to the exclusion of anything else.

But that's a case of requiring additional sleep for a specific purpose

>>That's why I don't invest in bonds or any investment that is denoted in dollars.

Most investments seem to eventually (?) denominate into USD equivalents, especially if you live in the US. Do you mean hard(er) assets like real estate or commodities (which also leaves me puzzled because they’re still typically denoted in an underlying fiat currency and especially USD if they’re domestic assets).

Being "denoted in dollars" means the returns are a specified number of dollars. Stocks, on the other hand, are "denoted in shares of the company" and the returns are the change in value of the company.

The share value is price x shares, so there’s an effective dollar numeraire.

It’s easy to imagine a well performing stock that neverless loses due to a currency shock. Indeed this is why one would typically hedge currency risk if trading a name outside of accounting currency

>>Small dogs maybe.

A judge in Brooklyn recently ruled[1] that dogs are (now) classified as "immediate family members". I wonder if the this might push the Central Park Conservancy to step up considerations for eradication of the coyotes to avoid potential emotional damages in light of the ruling if such a situation were to occur.

[1] https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/dogs-family-members/

if we're lucky maybe the coyotes will take out this judge?

I agree with you, but the trade off is real for most people. It's unfortunately a binary choice: 'privacy ⊕ social community', instead of 'privacy & social' community.

It's interesting how opensource Zulip[1] hasn't been able to garner as much of a following or usage amongst the gamer crowd compared to Discord.

[1] https://zulip.com/

These two apps are not comparable. My guess is that 90%+ of people using Discord are doing so for the low-latency voice conversations with optional screen/game sharing.

Zulip does not have first-party voice chat. You would be more likely to get gamers to switch to a Teamspeak server.