If you don't aspire to be a pro player and just want to have fun, you can compete in limited only. I have friends who do that. I myself chose phantom sealed deck tournaments on mtgo, which, provided you don't suck, are basically free.
That is only true for constructed (I've known people who made a living out of playing 8-4 drafts on mtgo). And even for constructed, it is only pay to win up to a point where everyone has access to all the cards (by either buying or borrowing), which is where most competitive constructed players are.
Only in constructed formats (where you build a deck out of your entire collection). In limited formats (which are hugely popular), you and people you play against build decks out of a common pool of cards. There is an entry fee and there are awards for finishing in top spots. So, in the long run, if your win rate is high enough, you can play for free or even make money, but if you suck, you're going to spend a lot.
That's one of the points of code reviews - as you get feedback on how you should improve tests in your commits, over time you learn what "well-tested" means.
I though it was a short way to make a clear point. Let me write a longer version then:
Is it barbaric? Maybe, but, whether we like it or not, the world has a defnite component of barbarism to it. There are wars going on as we speak, and there are threats of much bigger wars constantly hanging in the air.
It not impossible to eliminate physical danger out of our lives and to dismiss it (because one does not witness it first-hand at the moment) is not very mature. I'm not even mentioning the natural calamities, fires, car crashes etc., where there's room for heroism as well.
These are not battles. These are just people/companies having careers and making money. Even the researcher is usually forgoing the well paid job to do the research because the research is interesting to him - he's just trading off one for of payoff (money) for another (job satisfaction). Meanwhile, there's no payoff in volunteering to go to a war with a high chance of getting killed or maimed.
Re: battles. There are still real battles in the world (Ukraine, Syria) where there's plenty of heroes.
To sum up, I'd say that it's a blessing that a lot of the world is so peaceful now that the meaning of the word 'hero' is getting washed down to literally 'people doing their (maybe slighly unpleasant) jobs'.
There's a ton more variety in the US tech jobs. If you want to work in an interesting niche, such as computer vision, rendering, self-driving cars etc., I think US is the place to be. Not only there are many more positions, but they also pay decently (whereas in Europe if you want to do interesting stuff, you'll be making a third of what your Hadoop friends make).
A decision to start your adult life with borrowing large amount of money and spending it on studying an esoteric subject would be considered extremely irresponsible in most societies ( assuming the person does not have any assets or marketable skills to fall back on).
In my experience, the more expensive brands are no more reliable. Cotton t-shirt is a cotton t-shirt, there isn't much you can make to make it more durable. You could use a thicker fabric, but then it would not be the same t-shirt. The only option available that comes to my mind is using more resilient dyes.
> Some of the specific ideas for demonstrating high status included not moving your head when speaking, speaking and moving slowly, beginning statements with a long 'uhhhh' (a short 'uh' sound, however, demonstrated low status), and taking up space.
I hope this knowledge (regardless of whether it's true) does not spread - I'm sure there would be plenty of people who will try to "hack the system" and will act according to this list, which would be insufferable.
> Small business does not have the capital to pay employees properly. So really it should not exist in the way the economy is structured. So it won't exist if you take cheap labour out of the picture.
If the result is people renovating their houses left often or building smaller houses in general, then maybe it's a fair price to pay for more social cohesion?