Water is very common. Others might or might not work. Most ofthe others are rare. (Amonia is not rare, I have no idea how useful it might be)

Water is extreemly common in the universe. It also enables a lot of useful chemistry that complex molecules need. In turn it is reasonable to expect water is part of all life - not a given but most of the other options rely on something far less likely to occure.

This assumes there is life. Not a debate I’m touching. Although if there is physics is against us ever discovering it. Even if earth is an extreem outlier in taking so long to develop intelligent life and every other star has it in a few hundred years few will never detect another lifeform

Sure, but in return you have your car when you get there. If the destination is a car centric place this saves a pile of money. you also can go where you want, see what you want…

note that I live in the us we get one train per day at 100km/h - the car is faster and cheaper. Is still use the train but it isn’t anything what you are thinking of. At least we can sleep on the train.

Why would you think that? Ukraine is doing okay now but they have a lot of ground to win. Russia has made it clear they don’t care about the cost to then and so they will grind on so long as they have any land, and maybe longer

I’m not against it. However if you need a car when you get there you may as well drive. By contrast if you can not drive near home sometimes you won’t (like if your car breaks), and the better the local system is the more likely you are to use it

though the bad options most of us have is one reason not to use it.

If the bread is good you don’t need any of those additives

I mostly make sourdough - instant yeast really is instant when that is your compare.

Not between cities - within a city. If I can’t get around without a car once I’m there I’m going to drive my own car. Besides most trips are within a metro, if people only drove between metro areas that would be a big difference.

You really have bought into the echo chamber if you believe that.

There are bad people on both the right and left wing. However the majority on either side are not bad. Most (on both sides) have not thought deeply about the effects of if their ideas really were done in the real world. (A few have and have decided the downsides are worth accepting, but if you are not aware of the downsides and intentionally accepting of those as the least bad compromise you are part of the problem) We can disagree on which downsides are not bad enough to ignore - but everything has downsides.

I didn’t realize that about clients. (apparently since I last checked some instances have an algorithm as well). That makes downvotes from just annoying and demotivating to active censorship. There is a large number of people who will downvote anything they disagree with, and if clients or instances use that as a signal it really is harming discussions.

Bikes are already at the limit. We need transport options for longer distances that are not a lot worse than a car.

Problem is you are now in an echo chamber of left wing hate. Oi course the hate of the left wing is different form right wing - but just at evil

There is no algorithyn. There needs to be but the cultrure is opposed and has made downvote not a useful signal. Downvote here means ‘I disagree with this insightful comment’. Most other places downvote means ‘this is trash just one step above so bad the mods should delete it’

some of the mods (.ml) are famious for their delete anything they desagree with.

most homes don’t run their computers in multi-user mode. Even when they do most kids will learn the admin password because parents don’t select good passwords.

Kids are not stupid. Even if some are, there are many kids in school and so any bypass will spread kid to kid fast. For each of the following reread this paraghraph to remind yourself all kids will know this.

kids can install linux /bsd on a raspberry pi or old/cheap computer - this is something I want to encourage. that of course means they are root and can claim whatever age. They can likewise do it in a vm.

if there is any security flaw kids can use it to change their age.

many programs will not check when they should. Kids will install/use these instead. this is a likely exploit vector of actors (in foriegn counties) that target kids - release a new program that does what the kids wants while also doing what they want. (Websites have done bitcoin in javascript while you read them)

who will check? onlyfans probably will, but small web sites spring up all the time, and they won’t bother - many are already illegal (either copyright or illegal content).

Meanwhile many programs that we want kids to use won’t bother to check. why would things autocad check - they target professionals but kids can use them and may even have to.

the above is not a complete list!

Age is useful for ‘buy cigerettes’ that is illegal for kids in some way.

However most of what parents care about isn’t automatically bad and I know plenty of panents who are frusterated because we can’t controll things how we need to without being a helicopter parent (bad). Playing video games is fine in moderation - AFTER YOUR HOMEWORK IS DONE - but we don’t get an easy way to enforce that. My teens are old enough to stay home alone and do homework - but they will not do their homework when they can do something else (this problem has been around since school)

my kids phones have parental controls that I turn on. However they lack a way to enforce homework vs play vs sleep time. There is likely more, this is just what frusterated me yesterday. some things are not gated - my kids have got up at 3am, and connected their school device (under school control not me) to their phone hotspot (turned on who knows when - I can’t block that at all) to play a game that the school will block next week when they figure out it is one kids are playing but they shouldn’t.

people are proposing age verification because they have no idea what else they can do and are frusterated at how bad things are.

There are nearly 9000 hours in a year. Performance after only 2000 isn’t a useful metric. I know there are people who can give better numbers

Glad I bought and EV for trips too far for my bike. My local power is 100% renewable wind (I’m sure there is some hand waving in there for when the wind isn’t blowing). Most people could easially do the same - they won’t, but they could.

I was taught basic programming in school - by people who clearly had no clue. (it was clear to 11 year old me, and in hindsight I was far to kind in my evaluation of their knowledge) I was also taught on the then very modern apple IIgs - I wouldn’t be surprised if you have never heard of that, but all you need to know is nothing I was taught is relevant anyway - if you were taught on windows 7 a lot of what you learned has changed anyway.

Point is we need to teach people to teach themselves because things change.

I have all the parental controls I can enabled - but hotspot is one soften requested feature I can’t block. I can block chrome completely but I can’t unblock it for my kids online piano lesson because they are on youtube which means every video is unblocked despite only one channel of interest. Next thing I know they have been watching youtube shorts slop.

i also can’t control the school issued device which they have do some homework on. Often homework includes watch an educational video on youtube

I have never supported mandatory age verification on devices - it cannot work.

i want the same things people who are for is want - but I want a system that works in the real world. I don’t know what that system is. I know parents and schools are hurting because we don’t have a useful solution.

Unfortunately downvote is the standard response to ‘i disagree to this insightful comment’. They really should just track total votes as a ‘this is how important others feel your coment is’. There is value in downvote for ‘not bad enough for a reasonable mod to delete but still bad’. (.ml is not a reasonable mod - they delete anything)