If we dial into any number of our "higher level behaviors", you can often go all the way back to "survival". Play is an important part of skill acquisition, and the easiest way to incentivize it is to make it "fun". Naturally, having fun as an evolved trait will lead to behaviors that don't necessarily have an obvious survival benefit.
I'd be more surprised to see a mammal that doesn't at all engage in behaviors purely out of enjoyment.
Watch any number of animal documentaries. Animals (particularly mammals) of all kinds engage in play, whether children or adults. I find it odd that anybody questions the idea.
What graphics card and which drivers? It's especially problematic with older GPUs, but with modern ones it's largely fine and none of these issues show up as much as they apparently did for you.
I'm disappointed that the study focused on over-60's. I've felt extremely lonely since the pandemic started that I've only recently been able to counteract with in-person meeting with friends. Online contact doesn't make up for a lack of real-world social contacts in my experience. I was in a severe depression for much of the pandemic and I'm 30.
Since the pandemic started, I've switched from hitting the gym to buying dumbbells so I can train at home. I've made huge strides in muscle mass and strength. Even just 30kg in plates can last you months if you haven't lifted before and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I'm not sure what you mean with the last part though. Weightlifting isn't just something you do for a few months and then you're done. It's by its nature a long-term process. After a few weeks without training, you start losing muscle mass and strength.
As climate change affects more and more of Africa and the Middle East, we're going to see the EU drift towards more of a cohesive nation state by necessity. Just a few million refugees from Syria sparked a tide of far-right movements across Europe. Just wait 'til tens or hundreds of millions stand at the gates, representing an existential threat. It's almost an inevitability.
I'm not talking about tomorrow or next year. More on a timeline of 20-40 years when we start seeing more profound global upheavals. The nature of the EU will change too.
> “ Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video, and pick something to see. It’s almost always a disappointment.”
... how can he use this the basis for his argument? Every day, I curl up in front of my PC, look through some Reddit threads about movies and find a handful of incredible movies that I'm thankful for that people pointed out. What should the title of my article be?
Are you forgetting the recent post about how kids these days don't even have any concept of files? You're over-estimating most people in their technical competence and the required level of understanding and patience needed to do anything with SFTP. You say "drag and drop" and I think of the hours of troubleshooting and explaining (and re-explaining) I'd have to do if I were to try to implement this with family.
I think the environmental impact is overstated. There's a healthy second hand market that thrives because of companies buying laptops and eventually selling them. I've gotten plenty of great laptops at great discounted prices over the years that probably wouldn't be possible otherwise.
> 1. Old control panels: Drivers may overlay or modify the window, so you can't really change them (don't forget: Windows supports many obscure devices like DAWs and heavy machinery, many things Linux users have never even considered connecting to a PC, and all of those have custom drivers from the device manufacturer that Microsoft doesn't control)
The bigger issue is that a fuckload of native Windows settings can only be changed through the old Control Panel dialogs. I hate the new Settings app, but they need to make up their minds about what they want to do instead of arbitrarily splitting everything up between the new shitty hotness and the old dialogs.
You can say the same thing about the internet. Avoid the toxic sites. Go to the good sites. But you'd have a hard time arguing that the internet isn't a useful tool.
I'm not aware of any better site to find information on special interests. Just avoid the toxic subreddits. Reddit is way too useful a resource to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Unless there were any known reasons at the time as to why CureVac wouldn't be able to create a functioning vaccine, I'm not sure how it's any use to anybody to take this position. There are no sure bets. There are going to be failures. That shouldn't be reason to stop funding companies like this if they otherwise show they're capable. I'd say Germany has more issues around being too conservative and playing it too safe than taking too many risky bets.
> Chrome has the biggest market share (outside of iOS) because it has the more features
Most users don't care. Chrome is the dominant browser because Google anti-competitively used their monopoly in search engines (and eventually their market power in phones). They're no better than Microsoft in using Windows to push IE/Edge on users. They're just far more successful at it.
> Am I paranoid to think that this sounds like a continuation of the ANOM project... selling a supposedly secure, home brew and private device to the gullible who desperately want a secure channel?
The difference being that the point of the PinePhone is that the whole stack, from the hardware up to everything software, is open source or runs on open source firmware.
The Anom was a completely closed-source solution which required a large amount of trust in a single entity. The Pinephone (and by extension every other Linux phone, whether it exists yet or not) leverages the strengths of the Linux community and is in no way comparable.
I'd be more surprised to see a mammal that doesn't at all engage in behaviors purely out of enjoyment.