toothbrush

You are right that by existing we are consuming precious resources. In fact, life (i believe) feeds off of some other death, somewhere, in the grand scheme of things. That said, i don't think we'll convince many people to stop existing for environmentalist causes. We'll have to find a compromise. One of those, i believe, is living a life with a small footprint (cycle don't drive, avoid air travel, go veggie where possible, eat local produce as much as possible). However, and i can't go into as much detail here as i'd like, it's not always practical to convince people to become vegos, only cycle, etc. I suggest interested people read the 98% Environmentalist [1], an essay i thought quite insightful.

However, regarding your second point, i think it is a misconception that an urbanite lifestyle is more wasteful of resources than a rural one. In fact, if we as a species are to become less environmentally impactful, i believe (perhaps mistakenly) that we should live in cities as much as possible: this allows us to use public transport (as opposed to wasteful single occupancy ICE cars), work from home or cycle to work, live more densely (= easier to centralise recycling, insulation and heating of buildings is more efficient in apartment buildings, etc.). As opposed to the rural existence where one is probably forced to drive to a nearby city for supplies one cannot grow (building materials perhaps).

Of course, i may be completely wrong. I encourage everyone to live as mindfully of the environment as possible, in their own way, without claiming to have a one-size-fits-all answer. I hope we don't, however, stick our heads into the sand and hammer the final nail into the climate's coffin during our lifetimes – i worry it may already be a lost battle [2].

1. still looking for the link :( help me HN?

2. https://xkcd.com/1732/

Because heaven forbid we provide free education, vocational or otherwise. /s

EDIT: Sorry, that was snarky. But i agree with a sibling post that apparently Norway is doing alright with their approach. I'd rather see someone going to prison as a failing of society, and consider the cost of incarceration one that society should bear as a result, with the hope of re-integrating the person.

But i do understand your sentiment, i agree with the incentive misalignment.

FWIW i've had consistently low success with finding friends at bars. Mostly i find people i chat to aren't there with an open mind to getting to know people, at most it'll be a quip here and a joke there, but ultimately they're with "their crowd". YMMV.

> Just don't give up, we don't need hundreds of good friends just a few. Even one or two are better than none.

I totally agree with this sentiment, though.

> checkNoKillMode(str). "Look, all my tests pass. We have 100% coverage".

> Yeah, except when str == '', in which case it evals to false. Of course, there's no test case for that.

So much this.

Curious, why wouldn't you use Tramp mode for that? I've found that to be a much more satisfying experience than the whole fire up terminal -> ssh somewhere -> poke around with cd -> fire up a vanilla vim song-and-dance. Instead, simply open the remote file with your entire editing environment still available, plus potentially even the superior Helm or Projectile or whatever you use available instead of manual file-finding.

> the first LAN I worked on was 10mbps

Is that what counts as old timer these days? wags cane

That, to me, is the real tragedy/travesty. There should be some eco-EU-law or something against that, a bit like the micro USB charger standardisation. I say this typing from a 2008 (or was it 2009?) MacBook on which i've been able to replace the RAM (8GB), disk drive (SSD, single biggest improvement) and battery (lasts longer than when new from factory now), and all of those upgrades weren't expensive at all. Of course i run Linux and XMonad and pretty much the only graphical app is Firefox with NoScript, but still, i can't see myself forking out hard $$$ for a non-maintainable machine. The upgradability isn't even the big deal for me, because as someone else pointed out these days computers are "fast enough", it's the fact that certain components are just going to fail (especially the battery). And it absolutely sends sickly shivers down my spine that people are being forced to landfill perfectly okay hardware because of a battery becoming worn out. Seriously Apple, where have your holistic eco-friendly principles gone?

    >> "we did have school provided milk"
    >
    > Shows your age. That's a seventies thing.

Just the thought of all the plastic and other waste that'll probably float around for another few hundred years makes me sad. Humans really aren't such good stewards of the planet :(.

Ha, that reminds me of sac in the north of France versus poche (the word northerners would use for the thing in their trousers) as used in the south(-west?) to designate a plastic bag in a supermarket...

Admittedly, that sounds a bit old-fashioned.