My wife and I usually plan big vacations about a year in advance so that we can follow flight prices and whatnot to get a good deal. We also book a few days at a cabin for our anniversary every year, so we just book the next year's reservation while we're there, since reservations can fill up even several months in advance.
Only planning a week in advance seems stressful to me - we planned a last-minute (for us) road trip vacation earlier this month for the long 4th of July weekend, and it was tough to find cheap places to stay that weren't super grungy.
They're pretty nice if you're looking for consistent slice sizes. Otherwise they're a bit of a pain, since you want to make sure you have exactly the right amount of dough in there.
Nice! The recipe might have wanted a pullman loaf pan, but it looks like you did just fine with a standard pan. Definitely went better than my first loaf.
I'm not trying to claim superiority for never having dropped a phone - I understand that different people have different needs, and one of them is a phone that can survive frequent falls. However, I also recognize that features that myself and others use regularly are often removed from models that emphasize durability, whether or not their removal is actually helping, or just cutting costs. So I don't want to push phone manufacturers to focus so much on that one feature - that is important to some, but not to others - that they end up removing features that are equally important to certain people.
That's exactly my point. Different people have different needs, so while OP is right that there should be phones for themselves and yourself that address the fact that a significant portion of the population drop their phones regularly, my own needs follow a different hierarchy that benefits from a separate set of features.
The fact that phones are all kinda just the same, with any changes made to one model frequently rippling through to other models from other manufacturers in time, is an issue. The customization to phones shouldn't only apply to external features like cases and dongles.
I got my first cell phone in middle school, and I knew that if it broke I wasn't getting another one, so I made sure to hold it securely when using it, since I didn't want to drop and break it. When I eventually upgraded to a smartphone a few years after they started getting popular, I held it even more securely, since it was even more expensive, and even more fragile. At this point it's just second nature to me to handle phones like I'm transporting fine china.
I agree that the features are possible while still making the phone sturdier, which I wholeheartedly support, but I also understand that capitalism doesn't usually let us have upgrades, only tradeoffs, and usually bad ones.
I agree that there should be phones that prioritize sturdiness for clumsy people, but I see things like sturdiness and waterproof capabilities used as an excuse to get rid of useful features, and I don't like it. I've had cell phones for over 2 decades, and I've never dropped one; having an SD card slot and headphone jack is much more important to me than durability, since I rarely hold it over water, and always make sure to keep a solid grip regardless of the circumstances.
Well, yes, but that's kinda my point. If you don't patent, you get exploited, like how the discoverers of insulin synthesis decided not to patent, so companies patented similar, but not exact methods, and now it's incredibly expensive. But, as you said, if you do patent, there is still a risk of exploitation if the patent holder sells to an exploitative company. However, that exploitation is still less likely than when not patenting, so I support the practice so long as patenting is still possible.
I worked at a small nonprofit back when genes were still able to be patented; we mostly studied the condition Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum, and held the patents to a few of the genes associated with it. However, we still allowed people to research them freely - we only patented them to prevent a company like Myriad Genetics, who had been patenting genes so that they could sell expensive genetic tests, from patenting it instead. We celebrated when genes were no longer able to be patented; I imagine that the researchers working with golden rice will do the same if we're ever lucky enough for GMO's to no longer be able to be patented.
I wholeheartedly agree. I was working for a small genetics nonprofit when they removed the ability to patent genes, and the whole office had a party to celebrate. It was mostly a celebration about freedom to research and test, but we were also very excited to no longer have to deal with having a bunch of patents. Even though we let people research the genes freely, we still had a bunch of paperwork that needed to be done any time someone wanted to do so.
Selection technically isn't modification, since the modification had to have already occurred for it to be selected for. However, modification certainly did occur, and all crops are genetically modified. Indeed, all living creatures are genetically modified, as without modification, evolution can't occur.
The public fear of GMO's is largely due to Monsanto, who aggressively protect their GMO crop patents to the point where farmers who just happened to have some seeds blow into their fields have been sued.
The issue with GMO's isn't the modification, it's the lax patent laws that allow companies like Monsanto to exploit people for profit, giving a bad name to the field as a whole, in spite of the immense potential good it can do, for which Golden Rice is a prime example.
The huge difference is who holds the patent. The example you gave involves Monsanto, the patent holder for several GMO crops, and a terrible company that does everything in its power to make money by exploiting people. Golden Rice, however, is patented by the scientists who designed it, who likely only patented it so that a company like Monsanto couldn't just make some similar GMO and patent it instead, using it to exploit people even more.
This same thing happened back when genes themselves were able to be patented; some companies like Myriad Genetics would patent genes like the BRCA gene, a common source of inherited breast cancer predisposition, so that they could charge an arm and a leg for testing. So, researchers and non-profits would patent genes that they found just ensure they could be fairly studied and tested for.
Negative change worms it's way in through small defeats. The first DLC's were a small price for a lot of content, the first YouTube ads were only a single ad that was just a few seconds long, the first video game preorders came with amazing rewards, etc. When you allow for 2 seconds, then what's 3 seconds? What's 4, 5, 6? What's 30 seconds? What's 2 minutes? We've seen examples of this all throughout capitalism's history; to ignore them is, well, ignorant.
They've never needed pictures before, and they don't need pictures now. Hell, even the iconic meme picture is taken from a video of a woman speaking normally - they just used an unflattering frame to discredit her. This isn't a ploy to get a photo op of the left being mad, it's another small push of the republican boundaries. Enough "joke" bills about overbearing punishments for minor offenses made by people their party doesn't like, and they'll be primed enough to fully support the real thing. We're already there for a large portion of the republican base.
