Not sure if this is the same for the USA, but worker shortage is the main reason why self-checkout became popular here in Europe at least. Aging population, very low birthrate and higher educated people all contributed to this problem (although not for all countries in the EU).
At least in the US our unemployment rates have been very low. Higher demand for labor leads to higher labor costs which allows more expensive automation to be economical.
You can say "Well pay them more", but that doesn't get you out of a labor shortage. That just ensures you get the labor rather than someone else.
This is only true because of having to wait in line for the checkout personnel. Once you get to the person, if they're even reasonably skilled, they can check out your groceries faster than you can.
My local grocery store has something like 15 checkout aisles, and usually only have one or two open. If they manned each aisle, there would be no wait and self checkout would be pointless. But they are not going to staff properly because the CEO needs another yacht.
In Germany, the entire self-checkout section moves as fast as one human cashier (they're very skilled, this is no joke). And they have one human supervising it at all times. And it takes the space of two human cashier lines, so they double up one of the other lanes. At the end nothing is really gained except a little bit of privacy (but not really because the supervisor's terminal still shows everything you scan)
At least in The Netherlands, about 15 years ago when I was in high school, timetables where set for a whole semester, but absent teachers where quite normal meaning some lessons where canceled. Replacements where not always available and where usually only deployed when it was known a teacher was absent for extended time.
As a teen this was great because sometimes you could stay in bed longer, be out earlier and not having to carry the extra books (not sure if that still is a problem now).
edit: I just remember we even had call trees to call your classmates in the morning if classes got canceled. This was before the internet, making it not 15 years ago but at least 20, probably more. I'm getting old...
I went to school 20+ years ago in a school of 3000+ kids in the UK. There simply never were room changes for us. I don't get why you'd make the kids change rooms. Just set the timetable for the year, now the kids are going to be in those rooms at those times. Simple. Any changes, just make the teachers deal with it. In a system where the children outnumber the teachers ~30:1 and have smaller brains and smaller bodies this seems to make more sense to me.
As for cancelled lessons, I wish! That never happened. We had a substitute teacher every time. But the substitute came to the room we were already scheduled to be in.
The only reasons I can think for making the kids change is if there's a problem with the room itself or if the teachers are not interchangeable between rooms. But I would have thought teachers would find room changes easier now than back then, if anything (given the use of ubiquitous technology like projectors etc.).
I actually have both IKEA bulbs and Hue bulbs, but the appliance is different for both. I use the Hue bulbs where I want high quality lightning like the living room, kitchen, bathroom and office. I use the IKEA bulbs in places where I don't really care how good the lightning is; the hallways, toilet, garage etc. Automations for IKEA bulbs are in Home Assistant and for Hue they are in the Hue app.
IMO Home Assistant doesn't really do a good job with controlling the lights. It doesn't have the creative abilities to create or choose predefined "cool" scenes. Besides I don't want to know how much work I need to do in Home Assistant to re-configure the smart switches from Hue and their features.
In the end I can still control the Hue bulbs with Home Assistant if I want to. The Hue app doesn't prevent you from controlling the Hue bulbs from Home Assistant
The only fancy thing I need for my lights is what Apple calls "adaptive lighting", so that the colour temperature changes according to the time of day. The new IKEA Dirigera hub supports this too.
In the mornings and evenings all my lights are more yellow and bright white during the day.
The colour changing thing was cool for like 2 months, haven't touched it since (Except for my Hue Sync setup behind my TV)
This is why you don't lease anything for your house. For example in The Netherlands you can lease a central heating boiler. I even have a friend that leased a couch once. It's always more expensive and you will have problems with your house when you want or need to sell it (except for the couch of course, that's just stupid...).
Streetview shows this very nicely for Mexico City. I wonder if having so many trees in the city would make chopping down of few trees for some new public development less frowned upon by residents?
This is another amazing story (after MyQ) to follow where public support is the main driver. I love seeing this support in times where the internet primary existence seems to be monetization lately. I do hope Andre wins this and continues this effort, I would even be pretty sure he could open a successful crowd funding action for legal fees if it needs to come to this.
Yes, that's the main point, the stronger concrete. If you make stronger concrete it will last longer and you thus will need less of it in the long run.
Concrete production is very bad for environment, so the less we need to make the better.
And Australia: know for insane coffee
consumption (has to be freshly ground!)
and appartments with “concrete cancer” although that may not be solved by this.
Last week a Dutch research channel made an episode out of the PFAS coverup by a former Dupont factory in The Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3kzHc-eV88 It's a good video in English with some subtitled Dutch interviews containing a lot of official memo's and internal documents from Dupont and 3M. Funny thing is that they already started installing ground water cleaning installations in the 90's because they measured very high levels of PFAS in the ground, even larger than their factories in the US.
On a similar tack, there was a recent documentary by Vice on PFAS in Michigan and how it's shutting down farms, while the source emitters in the industrial space continue operating. https://youtu.be/X9GTa3a-tFo
The thing speculated in the video is the industrial emitter focused on in the video (Tribar) is depended on by the automotive industry (Ford, Chrysler) which would cause factories to pause (job loss, etc.) and such if immediately shut down.
Oh, taxes are very hard for natives as well. The whole tax system doesn't make any sense at all and several elected governments have promised to make it simpler for a long time now.
I'm having the exact same thing right now. If I reflect on what happend last year I think I burned out after a particular hard issue with my last employee; I had no help from my co-workers and was doing it all by myself. The client was constantly breathing down my neck to ask when it's done and why it's taking so long and eventually I finished it, reduced the bundle size of the website by almost 2/3 and was really happy with the result. The client tho wasn't happy because a performance number from Pagespeed didn't increase as much as they hoped and they where unhappy because it cost soo much time and money. I was done with this shit and left seeking happiness elsewhere.
Started at a new company almost half a year ago thinking a smaller company without clients, without time registration and with a single application to focus on would fix all my problems. It did for the first few months, but now I'm having the exact same issue where I really don't have the motivation to do stuff... I do have to say I also moved in to another home a few months ago and spend a lot of time fixing stuff in our new home, maybe overdoing it a bit there, so it can also be that I'm just a bit exhausted right now. Also, I notice that winter time here in Western Europe is a bitch, so getting longer days again would do my mood a lot of good.
I think I have had these moments in the past as well and I think eventually they will pass again. I'm going to take a bit more care of myself by doing some more physical training, eating healthier and seeing friends more. It just sucks for now...
