Yes, consumerism probably influences expectations and lifestyles. But many of the things I mentioned are not just superficial manifestations of consumerism - they are structural economic and social changes.

When people say they "cannot afford" more children, they usually do not mean literal starvation or inability to keep a child alive. They mean they cannot afford the living standard that modern society effectively requires or expects for a family with multiple children.

I mentioned, in Poland when I was growing up, it was normal for 3 kids to share a small apartment and for grandparents to help raise children. Today, many young adults had to move to larger cities for education and work, far away from their families. That removes a major support system.

Now both parents usually need to work, which creates additional costs: larger housing near jobs, childcare, kindergarten, transportation, often even a second car. These are not just luxury consumerist indulgences but practical requirements of modern urban life.

> Materially, we're the wealthiest we've ever been in human history.

But wealth being higher on average does not mean family formation became easier for the middle class. Housing costs in major cities relative to income are a huge factor, especially for people who are not poor enough to qualify for assistance and not rich enough to comfortably absorb the costs.

Standard and expectation also increased and even thought I grew up with 2 siblings in 2 bedroom apartment in Poland today nobody would want that - or good luck finding a partner that want that. You would expect to have house or at least 3-4 bedroom apartment to raise 3 kids.

Today also probably you need 2 cars instead of 1 family car because your partner also have to work. You probably also need extra money for babysitter or kinder garden because again your partner is working and probably less likely your parents nearby to help since most young people had to move to big cities to get a job.

Well glass that has half of water is still better that glass fully empty. Poland didn't get any war reparations and after being more destroyed during the war than germany (warsaw burned to the ground) and pretty much occupied for many decades after the war then how polish companies supposed to compete with any western economy including germany?

It is not true for the entire EU budget: the 2014–2020 MFF allowed up to €959.99bn in commitments, so Poland’s €77.6bn cohesion allocation was about 8.1% of the whole EU long-term budget.

For context this is like 0.7% of yearly German overall public expenditure go to Poland. And this money per year is also like 5% of state budget spending.

a big share of this money goes back to foreign companies in form of sales and contracts.

Examples of significant shareholders include:

* Permira Advisers LLP (UK) * Cinven Group Ltd. (UK) * BlackRock (US) * Vanguard (US)

ASIC LLM?

inference inside SSD?

bigger 1-bit trained models?

better MoE so we don't have to load all experts?

My smart vacuum is more dump than me when wiping floor and much slower than be but still greatly useful.

I still use it but I barely used their agent event though I had subscription for lenny bundle. They should also invest in some good quality onboarding tutorial video but please keep your CEO out of this last time I checked 1 year ago - he might be good CEO but not good at job of teaching his product.

Many argue this uprising is nothing to be proud of and the crime of the leadership with devastating results: ~200k civilians went with this bang, and city completely wiped out.

The aftermath [1] was that ~220k Poles died and out of that 150-200k civilians, often with mass execution - later on a lot of warsaw population was sometimes bitter toward the uprising’s leadership.

To put it in context: within 2 months 200k people died, similar number like in Hiroshima but almost nobody wordwide know about warsaw uprising.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising#Aftermath

Some government (will) make mandatory: social accounts (so also IM apps like IG, WA, X, messanger), banks, buying simcard, internet, buying alcohol, cigarettes, energy drinks).

Some companies will make it mandatory implicitly or explicitly just for profit: selling your consumption data, analytics for themselves. E.g. in poland it's harder and harder to pay with cash because reduced stuff and huge queues - they force your use self checking. The pricing changed also that you have to use their loyalty apps if you don't want to be ripped - otherwise you will be paying 50% more.

> I would much prefer hotels would have a scanner which just transmits the bare minimum of identifiable information from the ID instead of it being completely normalized in many countries/hotels that they take your ID card and scan the full thing.

I don't like it either the problem is right now you mostly this being abused only in some hotels. Whats misleading that that this digital id won't allow tracking because you supposed to "trasmitting the bare minimum of identifiable information"

Imagine if suddenly every grocery, pharmacy, petrol station, parking place, restaurant, bar etc. now would ask you for your ID AND would snap a picture and store in their database - you wouldn't be happy about it.