Father of three here. I also enjoy very much this moment of the day, the calm before the storm. It was a real motivation to wake up a bit earlier.
One day, I decided to stop coffee for some weeks. My motivation to wake up before my kids vanished in a few days. I was quite surprised since it used to be a real pleasure. I guess the ritual part was much less important than the coffee chemical role.
Did you just remove the warm drink part of the ritual or did you replace the coffee with another warm drink? This could be the big difference you were missing.
As an illustration of it: I have been working for two years on a new national project for the french state. Le Référentiel National des Bâtiments (for National Buildings Registry) which aim at creating and distributing a id key to every building in the country.
The goal is to make databases about buildings much more interoperable.
One key aspect is to have a precise list of all buildings includings recent constructions and demolition. It gets interesting because we recognize nobody in the country has the perfect list of buildings so we radically open the data to let governement agencies, cities, companies, citizens write directly in the registry. Think OSM or Wikipédia but for an official dataset.
This approach is very experimental for the french state and we are encouraged to test it and disseminate our learnings in other state branches.
That's a lovely idea. I have been working for large open data projects and secretive private data collections and they both fail in their own ways. Maybe the open-source gathering with a proper authority to lock down and shepherd data in case of dispute or vandalism is the golden middle way. Sort of like the BDFL concept: open for all, ultimately vetoed by a benevolent entity.
Since OSM is, among other things, a list of building, will there be exchanges between the two projects? Are the licenses of the two projects compatible?
Well, we have some connections with the community and we are discussing how to incorporate our buildings IDs in OSM. The other way around (OSM to national registry) seems more complicated for license reasons.
Last summer we tested the open approch by doing a "RNB Summer game". Basically, anyone could come on the map and send some error reporting, we had a score per player, per territory and a shared global score. The OSM community absolutely rolled ont the game :)
I have no clue about space technology but many comments point the difficulty to cool anything in space. If Starcloud had an innovative solution to this problem, why on Earth (sic) focus on data centers when they could help the entire space industry? It does not smell good.
Well, to me, he used to represent technological ambition, impossible achievements made real. Now he represents foreign interference, social violence and neo fascism. And we, European (and especially French people), have a very very low tolerance for social violence and fascism.
As someone who lived in the sud-ouest during the yellow vests protests, "very very low tolerance for social violence" is...not my general impression of the French people.
(Low tolerance for fascism, yes, obviously. But "social violence" is pretty much what passes for entertainment on a Saturday morning)
Social violence describes the gutting of social security, healthcare systems etc to the detriment of primarily the most vulnerable. Not the fact that people protest, however violently. It's just not the right vocabulary.
It's the law of the land. Just like in "Islamic Republic of Iran" where you hail from, "it is the law of the land" of strictly secular France that students must adhere to a very strict dress code. So secularism vs theocracy. Horses for courses. Except of course the French will not shoot buckshot at the school girls violating the "dress code" and blind them.
National culture and character is not a "political" matter. It has nothing to do with "democracy". The national symbol of France is a woman leading a secular-masonic revolution with her tits hanging out, for God's sake.
I don't know if that's entirely fair. France is staunchly secular, more so than most of its European counterparts. I could be wrong, but I don't think you can wear a crucifix or other religious symbol in French schools either.
To be fair, whether you disagree with it or not, this is the spirit of the law: ostensible religious symbols are not allowed in public schools (and more generally in republican institutions). So yes, one symbol is more visible than others, and that makes it somewhat unfair, but the "visible" portion is realistic. You can't ask teachers to check under student's clothes for them.
I will agree though that France has also been very reactionary towards its Muslim population and laicity has been a convenient tool to bash them. But that doesn't invalidate the purpose of the original principle.
Are you kidding me? I moved three years ago, from the US, to France, and I am still to hear one single "god bless you", in a conversation or media, let alone the religious comments of all sorts, at work, in political speeches, among folks at home and in the neighborhood, at the daily rate I used to have to ingurgitate, in the land of the free [evangelists].
> Societies always have a taste for fascism/authoritarianism.
But so too can religious and parental belief systems, so a balance must be struck. Children belong to neither parents nor society, they are simply different guardians and stakeholders of them at different points in their lives.
I think this attitude is exactly why the birth rates are down so much. Humans are intelligent, and do things for a reason. Including having, or not having, children.
There used to be reasons for having children in the west. They were your pension, and they were the financial success of both you personally, your village, even your country.
Today such systems survive: certain factions expect to win through children, and see it both as a way to attack and an exploit "against the west" (an exploit against human rights regulations). The most egregious example of that is in Palestine. There, if you have a kid and they attack "the enemy", mostly their mother and father get money for life. The more "enemies" killed, the more money. Paid with UN money.
(note that the wikipedia article is not accurate. In the description of the fund on the PA website it does NOT say "violence against Israel". It does not even say "Violence against Israeli", although it does refer to persons. Another inaccuracy is that the fund was ended. It was not. It was renamed and the conditions changed, slightly, as discussed here:
I don't view political organization as violence, I view it as a healthy democracy - even if the country or people don't agree with the conclusions of that group of people. It is healthy that they feel comfortable expressing their wants and needs to the people with power to change it.
What Elon is doing in the US isn't organizing or demanding the system to be better; it's taking control of the system and saying he can do better.
To be clear, the french regularly engage in violence, of which the yellow vest riots are an excellent example. Damage to property and injury to persons is not “political organization”, it is definitionally violence.
The French are the European experts on social violence (and I am French)...
In fact OP's comment somewhat shows the often noxious atmosphere in France. Here in the UK I see Teslas everywhere and people don't say or do anything (maybe they comment on the neighbour's new Tesla at home but they are polite in public in a very British way, and criminal damage is a serious crime...) In France I can believe that a Tesla owner may fear that their car will be vandalised or that some random people might throw insults at them in the street if Tesla is labeled the wrong way...
Edit: TBH, I wouldn't even say that there is a low tolerance for fascism because historically and to this day, economic interventionism, strong state, strong leader, political violence, tendency towards authoritarism, social conservatism have been big part of the culture. That is balanced by a tendency towards anarchism at the same time...
People who hate nazi’s are putting swastikas everywhere. It’s on the level of gluing yourself somewhere or throwing paint on works of art when protesting.
Worst part (or best) the left will take an L on their beloved cars while selling them to right.
A car needs a working supply chain to stay on the road. If no one's buying new Teslas the longevity/viability of existing ones changes from owning a popular car to owning a Fisker. Get out while the resale value is still decent.
What's factory service going to look like when new sales are down even further in Europe and the stores are struggling? I definitely wouldn't be buying from a manufacturer where that has to be a consideration which then adds to a vicious cycle for Tesla. Is Tesla going to keep stores open that aren't selling any vehicles just to provide service?
At least in the UK the license plate lets you know when the car was registered, so it's simple to tell if they bought the Tesla before Elon went off the cliff fully. I'm not going to begrudge anyone who doesn't sell their car, my judgement is reserved for the people buying them now
It's harmless, it's a 6 month window. Number plate:
XX24 - registered between 1 Mar 2024 - 31 Aug 2024
XX74 - registered between 1 Sep 2024 - 28 Feb 2025
XX25 - registered between 1 Mar 2025 - 31 Aug 2025
etc
The first two letters of a number plate identifies the location where the vehicle was registered. For example, LA – LY covers London and MA – MY covers Manchester and Merseyside. Nothing personally identifying whatsoever.
If you're truly paranoid about such things you can always buy a car registered hundreds of miles from your residence, and in practice with an abundance of second-hand (used) cars in the marketplace from across all the UK, there's always a huge variety of registration letters driving about anyway!
This has been exactly my take on the situation. 2 years ago, I followed his exploits and his companies. Now I skim articles about him at best mostly shaking my head. He went from a fellow tech bro to to tech no.
Yep, freedoms of speech, of association, and to bear arms are seriously jeapordized by nearly every ruling European regime. It’s a shame America doesn’t stand up for our values and punish Europe until she quits oppressing her citizens.
Working on the french national building registry. We record every single building in the country, attach a unique number and distribute this number in many databases (public and private) as a pivot key. The goal is to create new analysis using data spread in different databases.
Since nobody has a perfect database and no algo can detect everything, we are opening the database so any public structure, private company and citizen can participate to the content (think OpenStreetMap for an official state database).
The url : https://rnb.beta.gouv.fr (in french)
It let you draw and decorate the world around you (think r/place on a map). So far people seem to like it and are making some nice little drawings in their neighbourhood. I have seen some funny projects like the Star Wars Rebel Alliance logo in east of Paris, some cute ninja turle, a "Kamala" on 5th Avenue in NYC (no politics here, it is just fun for me seeing people claiming some territory on my game).
One day, I decided to stop coffee for some weeks. My motivation to wake up before my kids vanished in a few days. I was quite surprised since it used to be a real pleasure. I guess the ritual part was much less important than the coffee chemical role.
I got back to coffe quite rapidly.