You don’t want to mess about with that democracy nonsense. We’ve had a monarchy that has worked decent for a millennium, and you want it replace it with some untested, newfangled system?

An increase in supply would reduce wages, unless it also increases demand. If you think about wages in cities vs rural areas, you’ll see that most of the time more people = more economic activity = higher wages.

Where this breaks down, is if there’s barriers of entry that prevent immigrants from participating in the economy fully. If immigrants aren’t allowed to legally work or start business (as happens with some asylum seekers or ‘illegal’ immigrants) then they are forced to compete over a small pool of off-book / cash-in-hand jobs, which could see a reduction in wages without a significant increase in overall economic activity.

Except it mostly isn’t.

That was really interesting. Thanks!

I also have difficulties sleeping, and if I don’t have access to my various strategies I can’t get to sleep because of over thinking, and waking frequently and immediately overthink and can’t get back to sleep.

My main ‘trick’ is finding the right audiobook and playing that as I go to sleep. It’s a bit of trial and error, to find something that works, but it gives me something to focus on as I try to fall asleep so I don’t think about my day or stress or start getting ideas for some project… And when I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn it back on and I fall back asleep in minutes.

Right book (or podcast or whatever) : for me it needs to be a story I know (so that I don’t care about hearing what happens next, and don’t get too confused if I miss sections by sleeping), not too distressing / dark (especially as I’m falling asleep I find violent descriptions can jar me awake), relaxing narration (no music or unexpected noises, nice voice, not too upbeat). Non fiction can also work really well.

Right method : what works for me is playing audiobook on an old phone that i keep under my pillow, with no other apps or WiFi, just the audiobook app and a redshift app (Twilight). To begin with I might listen to the book normally for a bit to get familiar, then I’ll gradually turn down the volume as I’m getting tired and as it gets quieter I have to keep still otherwise I can’t hear it over my rustling the bedsheets. If I feel like I’m too engaged and alert I adjust down the playback speed, so the Narrator gets slower and slower, and that usually makes me sleepier.

If you’re not used to it, I can imagine it taking a while to adjust, but it’s totally solved my issues, and now serves as a immediate sleep trigger for me. When I put on my book, I’m usually asleep within ten minutes. And it’s even faster at returning me to sleep in the middle of the night. And it’s something I’ve done now for years, so I’ve got loads more tips if anyone’s interested but this is already tldr…

Are you talking about the ancient practice of dog sacrifice?

I’m actually surprised it’s as high as that!

Tbh, almost all oven thermostats are not accurate for the actual temperature of the oven. Like, they probably are measuring 170 accuretly, but the thermostat is in the very back top corner and the temperature in the middle shelf is 15 degrees off.

People who are keen on baking, roasting meat etc where temperatures are important often recommend getting an oven thermometer so you can see the real temperature.

I guess it’d be interesting if you could measure the drop in undeclared income by seeing places that increased their turnover as electronic payments became common. Although because covid was a big driver for that in many places, and disrupted all the expectations for business, demand, costs etc it might be hard to pick apart.

No idea why someone down voted this comment. It’s pretty much all there is to it. Where ever you’re publishing / monetising can have your real name for financial and legal aspects. But the name you put as the author of the stories / books can be whatever you like (probably not the same as someone else who publishes in your field…)

Works fine for me on Boost

I thinknif you’ve lived in Britain that long most people would think of you as British, especially if you have a reasonably British accent. Where I live in Scotland, most people are happy to accept anyone who actually wants to live in Scotland as Scottish!

Hut there’s always going to be racist idiots. I’ve been told I’m “not really British” just because I’m from Scotland (by someone who obviously doesn’t understand the difference between England and Britain. And I’ve seem the whitest, pure Anglo-Saxon English people being called “not really British” because they wanted to stay in the EU. So, try to ignore the idiots!

Egg and dairy allergies are among the most common food allergies, so I’d guess that something like that might be the issue?

Yeah, I think challenge can be a bit motivator for adhd folks. Once I’ve completed the main part of something, I find it really hard to care about the details, to the extent that the unfinished parts sometimes spoil the bit I had completed.

I feel like it’s the dopamine of the chase is actually what’s motivating, and challenge is a version of that. I’ll get sucked into finding some obscure game and getting an emulator working to be able to play it and all the way I’m super engaged. Then I start playing this game I was so excited about and meh, don’t care.

Maybe you could think about ways to refocus that drive? A therapist told me once that adhd people don’t get satisfaction from completing things, but are excited about new things. So, instead of feeling proud of getting into college try and immediately find the new challenge (now I want to get a prostigious internship!) if you succeed at your fitness goals, maybe you can raise the stakes see if you can beat a friend or a record or something?

Are they? I have plans in both the UK and France, and I think they’re both unlimited sms. Not expensive plans, I think the UK one is £7 for unlimited sms, unlimited calls and 20gb of data. French one was 13€ for unlimited sms/calls, and 130gb data on 5g.

Sorry, genuinely trying to understand here. So are you saying “in movies, women who have strength of character are also shown as being ‘manly’ (big muscles, punches people, etc). Is that how it really is?”

If that’s what you’re asking, I don’t think it’s true. Some movies have women of very strong character, who are physically weak, pacifist, etc. And some movies have women that have strong characters and are physically strong, cabable of violence, etc. And some movies have women who are douchey, flawed characters who can be physically strong.

I’m not sure I see any correlation between strength of character and physical strength, or propensity to violence, for either men or women. It’s more of a genre thing - in action movies men and women are more likely to be physically tough, and in political dramas they’re more likely to be physically weak. And there will be a mix of people with “strong character” and people with flawed or weak characters.

Can you explain a bit more about why you feel it is easier to learn how to enjoy being alone than learn to enjoy being in a relationship?

I defintely struggled with giving up my independence, and still find it hard to be responsible for/to another person. But I finally ended up in a relationship with someone who was also independent and we were in a very casual relationship for five years before we started to admit that we were a couple and another few years before we realised how much we now loved each other. I guess all I’m saying is relationships don’t need to be one way. I have a friend who only dates people who live in other cities / countries, because that way they only see each other occasionally and at pre-arranged times, and that works for them.

But if you really feel you are happier on your own and it’s just internalised social pressure that makes you want a relationship then you could try developing “singleton pride”. Part of the reason gay people historically got into “gay pride” was to help the overcome their own internalised homophobia, because even if you don’t agree with something you still absorb it in your upbringing and it can be hard to get past it.

So, you could try directly telling people that you’re single for life and that your happy with that choice. If you’re worried that society will think you’re a failure for not having a relationship then confront that fear immediately and get it out the way. You’ll realise that most people don’t care, some people will actually be on your side, and the people who do actually think worse of you are wrong so you don’t need to care about their opinions. But if you’re not confident enough in your decision to proudly stand behind it, then of course doubts will sink in and you’ll repeat the loop again.

Don’t think so! Defintely much heavier and more solid than bbq charcoal. I don’t remember it being very smoky, weird less so than wood fires (which have a distinctive and pleasant smell) or peat fires, which were also common in my region but would trigger my asthma. But possibly it was just that I was used to coal? Maybe someone else would have found it gross?

Edit: Doing a bit of research, it seems like historically home fires would use bituminous coal, but by the time I was a child it was anthracite coal that was used. Which only releases 20% of the smoke of bituminous coal. But it’s still a fossil fuel, and not charcoal.

Yeah, defintely not a swifty, but down voted. I don’t know a lot about TS but the little I do she doesn’t seem noticeably goofy. Distinct lack of a case presented by op.

Use to have an open coal fire in my childhood home. Made many a coal fire. It’s very sooty on the hands!