This is entirely regional though. The further you are from the equator, the more seasonal variation there is in sunlight levels, and heating/cooling loads. Around here our solar production is minimized during the season when our energy needs are maximized. We also don’t have variable rate billing, though we only get partial credit for excess generation, so battery storage will never pay for itself until something changes.
My utility gives a 50% credit on excess generation. Thing there is the utility is still the one taking responsibility for having the capacity and scalability to respond to variation in demand and production. When I was getting quotes, adding storage would have doubled the cost of the system for a day or two worth of storage. Probably would cost double again to have a system that would keep up through the winter.
I’d be technically impractical, but I’ve always thought there should be a system for weighing of individual users feedback. I follow a lot of trade related communities and 100% see a lot of issues where bad, wrong, and sometimes just plain dangerous advice gets a flood of upvotes from the amateur community while the handful of downvotes from qualified individuals gets drowned out. I think OP’s idea of making upvotes easy and downvotes difficult exacerbates this kind of issue.
I can also see the issue where a mod team simply blesses the users that they agree with and it just reinforces the echo chamber effect that is already an issue in some communities.
Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
I guess that works. There’s also Soda-Stream( and other carbonation systems) that just directly injects CO2 into a bottle. Then you can add whatever flavourings you like. Personally, I like doing something like 50/50 heavily carbonated water and fruit juice of choice.
While that’s true for taxes alone, there are income gaps where a small increase of income can result in a loss of various benefits that were worth more than the increase. This can be things like food stamps, subsidized rent/childcare, etc… People end up stuck because while they could potentially earn significant advancement and increased wages over a 4-7 year period, they’d have to weather a significant deficit through intervening years.
Ideally there should be no cliffs, and all these social programs should have a sliding scale of benefits so a person can always benefit from increased income. Part of the problem is they’re managed across multiple levels of government that don’t always play well together, and a sliding scale might mean more benefits paid out to people that don’t currently qualify. That’s probably actually a good thing, but gets spun politically as undesirable.
The bike thing is real. So often I hit my bell or call out “on your left” when about to pass people from behind. About 50% of the time those people immediately move to the left, which is why I always try to indicate far enough in advance for them to get in my way, realize their mistake and move back before I catch up to them .
I used to have the opposite issue. It was always the wire right near the jack that would wear out from having my phone in my pocket so my wired ear pods would always wear out in less than a year. Then I got a set of Bluetooth earbuds that had a wire between them. They lasted 2-3 years before the wire wore out. Now I’ve got a set of fully wireless buds and they’ve so far lasted longer than any other ones I’ve had.
Plus the methodology. There’s an idea of actively seeking out research contrary to one’s hypothesis, this helps circumvent the confirmation bias of only looking for things that support a hypothesis and ignoring anything contradictory. It can be healthy to find and consider dissenting opinions.
Another fundamental issue is people using different meanings for similar words. Someone with a strong understanding of scientific method will say things like “I believe” or “studies show”, while someone else will say things like “This is” or “we know”. Colloquially the latter is stronger language conveying more confidence, but the former is more likely to be evidence based. “Theory” is used colloquially the way a scientist would use “hypothesis”. People will say “I have a theory”, that’s only a few sentences and doesn’t make any reliable predictions, the put down an actual theory backed by years of supporting evidence and peer review as “just a theory”.
Even in places where they have to use the actual ingredients, there’s a lot of tricks to making it look different in photos. That burger might only be partially cooked to reduce shrinkage, then the burger and bun are frozen so they hold shape for the photo. Vegetables carefully picked out and arranged, tomato/pickles blotted dry, and the sauce applied with an eye dropper to provide visual balance after the rest of the burger is stacked.
I will say from my experience, that tends to apply to advertising photography for large franchises. If we’re taking about food photography associated with a high profile event or restaurant where food is actually served, there’s minimal difference between the photo plate and what’s actually served. Sometimes the photo plate is just one picked out while producing the ones being served, sometimes it’s the first/last plate and a person takes a minute to pick out the best looking of ingredients from the same container that was used to serve the rest. Sometimes it’s just an extra minute arranging the plate nicely compared to the last 150 that were done quickly to keep up with service. Often the photographer then gets to eat the plate they’ve just photographed.
Canadian here, I guess offer directions to the airport so they can get a flight to British Columbia?