comrade1

They weren't flying in salt water fish to North Dakota in 1905. And so their sushi was probAbly local fresh water fish.

They probably all got worms, or maybe even had worms to begin with. The freshwater clam lifecycle is one of the more complicated life cycles and interesting.

If you don't mind the moral implications, try the self destructing cookies plugin.

There's a richest person that dies every time after the last richest person died. The idea that he was the richest person in history sounds very euro-centric.

Whenever I'm in the u.s. I think people look bizarre with their super-white teeth. I mean, my teeth aren't yellow or anything, but they don't glow in the dark either.

There are some things that don't transfer so easily between where I live (switzerland, but I think germanic europe in general) and the u.s.: super white teeth, visible tattoos, and piercings. (although I'll see a small nose piercing on women every now and then)

(and if you're German, you should probably leave your puma track suit and aviator glasses at home when you go to the u.s.)

I was writing about vat. That's basically sales tax. It looks like it's 8% now.

There's at least one piece of Germany inside of Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCsingen_am_Hochrhein

There are a few others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enclaves_and_exclaves

Based solely on stock value. Which, I guess if you had to take a measurement based on something it may as well be that. Assuming we're not in a bubble.

The last two crashes the stock value dropped 50%. Does that mean Silicon Valley productivity drops 50%?

I don't mean to derail the discussion, but the Indian Nepalese and Bhutanese people are so beautiful.

I know that they're discriminated against in India. One would hope India would have a higher regard for all of their citizens (not just based on beauty of course).

They were lucky to not get invaded by the Germans but they totally expected to be invaded and built a defense strategy based on this belief that lasted until the 1990s.

Twice the Germans started the process of putting together a Swiss invasion and gave up early because they realized they would have lost.

Taxes in Switzerland are quite low. Federal around 2 or 3 %, and at the state level, from 7% to 22%.

Wealth tax is usually less than 1%.

But it is always a level society.

Income taxes.

As for sales tax, it's 7% here. Lower than most of Europe, and lower than some parts of the u.s., but not all parts of the u.s. But the low taxes more than make up for it. (about 1/2 compared to the u.s., but depends on your income level)

Happy Swiss National Day Switzerland!

You've been a democracy since 1292(?). Good luck and hopefully you'll be independent and free for another 800 years.

$120K is pretty average in Switzerland.

As for getting a job here, I know a handful of people from 'third-world' countries here although the term doesn't mean as much these days (India, China, and Brazil) and they all have MDs or PHDs.

The only other way is as a refugee, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Switzerland does give a small benefit to Americans and Canadians - we get our C permit after just five years. But that's all as far as the benefits go. The system is quiet rule based.

They provided a place for the jews in nazi germany to move their money outside of germany. But if I was Jewish and in Nazi Germany I would have done the same, as my Catholic great-grandparents did by moving their money from Germany to Switzerland when the Nazis came to power.

It's unfortunate that most of their Jewish customers were killed by the Nazis. They also accepted deposits from the Nazis, but I can understand their attitude of not taking sides. In the end you want a neutral party like that, no matter what side you're on.

The Swiss attitude is that many countries, including the u.s., are corrupt with corrupt governments and it is your responsibility to put your money someplace safe and out of hands of that corruption.

Interesting note - switzerland has workers councils too.

Switzerland has considerably lower taxes than the u.s. (I'm an american living in switzerland)

The news article and my comments are about purchasing housing.

And we have permanent residence and are able to use our pensions but chose not to, other than pillar 3 which one does to get a tax advantage. Most people only use pillar 3 since the bank discourages using pillar 2. (basically, you funnel money through pillar 3 to the bank and get the tax break)

Saving taxes in Switzerland doesn't help us much though since we have to pay the difference to the u.s.

I think you may want to take a deep breath and go outside for awhile.

In order to keep things on topic I'll ignore most of what you wrote and just talk about purchasing housing here. My wife and I just bought an apartment in Zürich and found it very different than the u.s. One must put down a minimum of 20% always, but we ended up having to put down 30% because the bank calculates your payments on a much higher interest rate than reality as well as higher maintenance fees than reality. We also had to have life insurance.

Switzerland

If I had to give advice to a young person in the u.s. now it would be to not act responsibly when it comes to their finances because the government will bail you out.

I was responsible but it's put me at a disadvantage. I would have been better off buying a home that I couldn't afford with no downpayment, and once the market adjusted using this government bailout to adjust the mortgage.

I no longer live in the u.s. though and am much happier to be someplace where it's impossible to act irresponsible in that way due to minimum standards with the banks.

Wow. I remember this is exactly what happened in 2001 and 2007. Maybe things are different this time.

I have no idea what this has to do with the character gatsby, unless the author is referring to the sandwich instead - it makes about as much sense.

I didn't see the recent movie(s), but from the previews it looked like it was mostly about lavish parties and not so much pain - so the author went to some lavish parties in India I guess. But the character he describes is hardly gatsby.

I've jokingly referred to Wikipedia moderators as autistic for, for example, diligently reversing changes to articles even when done by experts in that field. I guess I'll try to come up with something else...

How do you read that quote as a positive thing? The first half merely says it was successful in collecting data and the second half uses weasel words "could improve".

I've worked on projects in the past where we collected a ton of data like this, gave it to some poor graduate student or post-doc to do a bunch of data wanking with it, only to produce throw-away papers in bad journals because even. Though it was a huge amount of data it wasn't good data.

How often does a google car go past a location? I always assumed it was less than once a year based on how often they update street view where I live.

Plus, you have no idea what time of day the car will be passing through a location.

So you can't compare the data points over time - they're not taken the same time of day. And I'm not sure if you can even compare different regions - your data may tell you that one part of the city has cleaner air than another, but it's only because one part of the city was measured in the morning and another part of the city in the afternoon.

Why not just, I don't know, install a permanent sensor. This doesn't seem very useful unless these cars are driving the same route every day.

Can't operate in vacuum. Can't operate underwater for more than 3 minutes. Can only operate in a very narrow temperature range. Needs to shut down 8 hours a day.

I see articles here every other week talking about the end of cash and I don't know where they're coming from. This article finally takes a more realistic approach.

The other articles don't match the reality of where I live (Switzerland). I don't think they match the reality of Germany and Austria either, and much of Europe.

People here still pay for their cars in cash. I'm going to my bank on Monday to take out chf 7k to pay for my wife and mine yearly train passes.

Is this just a u.s. And UK phenomena?

Am I in a time warp? Germany is on the Euro and hasn't been on the Mark for almost 15 years. And the Berlin wall has been gone for 25 years!