In German: E-Mail, URL, CD-ROM, and Jeans are usually feminine, for example.
Basically, whenever a noun (or the core of a compound noun) has a direct (or close) translation to a frequently used noun in German, then it's quite common for its gender to "bleed" over into the English loanword.
So in the examples above, Mail → Post, URL → Verbindung, CD-ROM → Platte, Jeans → Hose, etc.
Though its owners may sometimes crash there, it's not really a "residential" structure, per se. The primary purpose it serves is as a sophisticated portfolio diversification instrument -- or (for offshore title holders), a convenient money laundering device:
I totally agree about making price levels reflect true resource costs, ending bad incentivization systems, etc. (Meant to edit my first post to mention that, but got distracted).
It's highly misleading to suggest that the net impact of cycling a gallon of agricultural water (including irrigation + rainfall) is equal to that of a dumping a gallon of drinking water (packaged and delivered to your door, no less!) down the drain, of course.
Also, while the water footprint of almonds (and pistachios, cashews, etc) isn't great, if you aren't comparing it to that of other high-impact foods (in terms of water use by weight of end product) like say, dried tomatoes, butter, or most four-legged meat products -- not only per gram of end product, but per recommended serving (which for nut products is comparatively modest) -- then you're not only not helping us understand how we got into this mess (and how to get out); you're just pushing people's buttons, basically.
Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. “So hit me with a fine. We can afford it.”
In which Dimon lucidly articulates for us why fines will never be sufficient -- and that these people won't start behaving themselves unless they start facing the same penalty that the rest of face for (in general) much lesser transgressions -- namely, jail time, and outright expropriation of their holdings.
It seems you're plainly misreading what I was saying. Not only did I not say you shouldn't go to parties, I specifically said you should go to parties, at that age. My only point was you should go there to socialize, and not for the alcohol.
And I attribute everything I have to the nights I spent not in front of the books, but in front of the crowd, dancing with a lampshade on my head.
That's fine for you, I guess. Something tells me what might have thought the other a bit "square", and hence avoided each other, in that life phase. Which is also fine.
But again, I never said you should trade parties and friend for books; only that you should definitely trade alcohol for books, by and large, during those years. And I for one am definitely very, very grateful for those nights spent in front of books, and not on someone's back porch getting wasted, when I was 14-21.
The only other point I'd like to clarify is that while I definitely do advocate becoming intimate with your local university library (and yes, spending more than the occasional Friday or Saturday night there), at one point or another -- the best time for that is probably when you're in high school, not college. During HS most parties suck anyway -- as do most of your so-called "friends" -- so you might as well be an outcast, and do something constructive with all of those precious hours (in front of a laptop, on a keyboard/drumkit -- or in the book stacks).
My own advice would be: don't bother with alcohol until you're well beyond drinking age. And definitely don't bother with heavy drinking of any sort, in those years.
A lot of this has to with the observation being a student really is a 24x7 game, in those years (if you've chosen to go the student route, that is). While I definitely wasn't a "grind", I have to say that the only reason I made through the system as far as I did was that, aside from a healthy amount of distraction (movies, shows; and parties for the sake of socialization -- not for the alcohol) I really was studying, or thinking about the content of my studies, pretty much all the time. It was really all about being "always on" and intellectually focused, all the time.
And getting hammered on anything like a regular basis -- which is pretty much what the college drinking scene is like, these days -- really claws a huge chunk out of that dedicated focus. I'm just not sure I would have made it that far if I had taken up the interest in casual drinking in my mid- to late 20s.
It also, BTW, claws a huge chunk out of your wallet. $5 for a lager is nothing when you have a regular "adult" job, but (scaled up to rounds of 3-4 every few nights) it's a lot when you're on a student budget. There's only a certain period of your life when you can meaningfully benefit from the kind of ascetic detachment from the temptations and corruptions of a fat, "adult" paycheck. Later on, when you're more or less forced to go the high-paycheck route, you can indulge in the comfort-distraction that goes with it.
This is the time of life when you should be getting intimate with the local university library; reading Feynman or GEB or any of the other books mentioned on the bus; learning to draw or to play an instrument (just to show yourself that you can); and spending your last dime on that Godot flick and, perchance, a can of tomato sauce to heat up in fleabag apartment you and 4 others share downtown.
But beer? You'll have plenty of time for that, later.
It's great to have deep focus (especially if you're in science and tech), but all the other stuff -- especially any creative arts you can actually perform with your own lung, lips, muscles and tongue -- can bring great benefits also; not just intellectually, but in terms of building and sustaining a basic, intrinsic sense of self-worth and confidence in a world that seems hell-bent on tearing it down every turn.
Is there any evidence the Dog is actually aware that he's "texting (or otherwise sending) a selfie" -- or even knows what a selfie is -- in any meaningful sense?
"How I taught my dog to thwack his paw on a big red button in response to a keyword signal" might be a better title.
Is it possible we could use enough sand collected from the seabed to offset this sea rise?
Even current levels of seabed mining are considered deeply problematic for the oceans' ecosystems (already under heavy attack from overfishing, ship traffic, waste dispersal, and species transportation). And any effort that would make a dent in rising sea levels would be orders of magnitude greater.