When I previously donated blood at the DRK, not only did I always get a Bockwurst&Brötchen along with a selection of beverages (water, cola, coffee, tea, etc.) but also a little gift bag containing a variety of little food and drink items, like a banana, an apple, little bottles/packets of fruit juice, (fruit/chocolate/etc.) joghurt cups, all in all maybe ~5-7€ worth.
Over the last few years here in Germany many, many food products have gained a little note next to the "MHD" (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum, [1]) which says something like "oft länger gut" ("often viable for longer") or "ansehen, riechen, probieren" ("Look, smell, try").
And IIRC the EU is also debating the removal of MHD from staple foods that are shelf-stable for years, like dried pasta, uncooked rice etc. Normal sugar already doesn't have an MHD, although jam sugar is marked with the year of manufacture since they have other compounds in them as well beside the sugar itself.
Where i work all all the food that's simply past its MHD gets collected every morning by the Red Cross for food banks ("Die Tafel"). Obviously if a foods container is damaged or it's rotted fruits/veg or it would be unsafe to consume for another reason [2], that stuff gets thrown out (into bins collected for biomass processing).
[1]: pretty sure it's the same as "best (if used) by date" since products from abroad are sometimes marked "BBD <date>" instead of "MHD <date>" (at least on the transport packaging).
[2]: like lazy customers not putting frozen or cooled foods back but leaving them elsewhere in the warm store, something which REALLY aggravates me.
I am not against gambling. I enjoy it myself on occasion, and I would not ban it. But still idea of gambling for money without chance to win money back... That just feels next step exploitation.
I do understand the dopamine process of demo games on casino sites, but still. Allowing people to pay for that...
From my understanding, the part that triggers the addiction is the possibility of winning money, so removing that seems to remove entirely the incentive.
Still have the three BOFH Omnibus volumes in my Kindle app, bought originally from Simon, who has since discontinued their sale on Amazon for some reason, IIRC Amazon fees/taxes/something like that which would actually lose him money from having it for sale there.
I've reread all three volumes quite a few times over the years, currently on Volume I, year 2000 #24 again, since I mainly read a few stories every time I'm on my 30 minute (lunch) break at work.
If Simon reads this, thank you for your work amusing your readers, me among them.
> No more books. At one point I was selling the BOFH 'books' on Amazon, but it got to be a royal pain. Every month or so I'd get some warning about the book quality from Amazon that I'd have to address and every year I'd have to fill in a US tax form - not big annoyances, but annoying enough to make it not worth the time... Amazon still reminds me every 6 months or so, but there's no turning back now!
So in my recollection I apparently mixed together the different parts: "having to periodically fill in US tax forms even though he's residing in NZ" and "annoyance not being worth his time". It apparently wasn't a direct tax/fee amount issue, but more one of annoyance and sales of these (e)books on Amazon probably not being substantial enough to offset that hassle.
Sadly I can't edit my GP comment anymore to correct that.
> In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.
In Germany, that's called "Betriebsrat" (something like "company council") with pretty much the same purpose.
And then there's the "Gewerkschaft", which are unions not for one company but for entire sectors of the economy who - through their numbers of members - are able to do collective bargaining for the employees of their fields of various companies. E.g. "IG Metall" being the industrial union of metalworkers, which considering Germanys large manufacturing background is the largest union in the country.
I think that the standard translation into UK English of “Betriebsrat” is “Works Council” [1].
I’ve never been highly convinced by these organs, since they seem to be colonised by folks who want to become Very Difficult to Fire, and who ultimately fold to any poorly thought-through management decision that impacts the lives of employees.
I’ve come to that both as an individual contributor and as a senior manager, but YMMV.
Even if you have tarnished silver things, like silver(-plated) cutlery etc. the "un-tarnishing" is stupid easy and cheap to do:
- take some container and put warm/hot water and a large helping of (table) salt into it
- put some scrunched up Al foil into the water
- submerge the objects to be untarnished in the water so that the silver touches the Al foil
- leave for a while in a well ventilated area (since it will smell of rotten eggs)
- rinse well
- done.
recipe from a kid's chemistry set I had a looooong while ago, used it successfully quite a few times on my parents' silver-plated cutlery they've had and used regularly since their wedding decades ago.
As someone who had cataracts and even after the corrective operations still has the significant sensitivity to glare, dark mode is not just a nice-to-have, but an absolute necessity for me.
I.e. it's an accessibility issue to some people, so don't laugh it off as "just a preference" or try to beat down any disagreeing voices with studies on only healthy eyes.
https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat