The best person I ever worked with, understood that their soft skills were infinitely more important then their technical skills. They brought brilliant coding, architectural, and system design skills to the table. They were an amazing mentor - none of that was important.
This individual, inherently understood that the method with which they communicate, could be different for different individuals. As a result they changed their messaging, their body language, their wording, depending on with whom they communicated. They still said the same thing(s), but it was how.
My personal security tolerance means that I have multiple levels of firewalls and blockers: network, dns, device, and browser. It's also why I find myself scanning my DNS traffic (pihole), and running OpenSnitch.
Whether malicious or not, to me isn't the point. The point is that I, as an individual deserve the illusion of control over my data and communication. I have neither the time, nor inclination to read all release notes. Furthermore, as someone who has spent enough time writing code - I recognize that humans make mistakes and don't always update them with salient details. All the automation in the world, and AI (yes, I've tried AI for release notes) just doesn't help.
Keeping in theme, Ozempic specifically has already been marketed off label as an appetite suppressant, rather than a pure weight loss drug. That's a more modern construct in its brief history.
In 2004, we used this approach to drive QT to dynamically generate a UI for a (in retrospect) needlessly complex software installer. InstallShield use to make these horrifically difficult to maintain installers, combined with how visuals were stored in the MSI files. So, we then interpreted the XML back down to InstallShield dialogs, widgets, and their components. We extended the same to running pure QT on other platforms (Windows, at the time was problematic).
Using this approach (pre QT designer working this way), we were able to give the UX team the ability to move widget around in the installer, colour things, add images.. it actually worked incredibly well, to everyone's shock. I still remember the nightmare of dynamic signal and slot lookups.
As someone with diagnosed ADHD. I fully agree. There's some background thread that says "you, now, eat". It's almost impossible to shut off.
That being the case, the same behaviours have led me to a compulsive need to plan meals. Doing so has helped me lessen (not eliminate) food noise. Anecdotally, I've noticed with others as well, that this is the way. Prep - be fine. Don't prep - eat a small village.
Also ADHD here, and same thing for me. Hyperfixating on meal planning and strength training has pretty much saved me. It's hard, and I still have to fight food noise daily, but having everything pre-prepped means I have easy, friction free healthy choices instead of reaching for a bag of chips and downing the entire thing while sitting at my desk, or not having the executive function necessary to cook an un-prepped, unplanned dinner and just eating a whole pizza instead.
I also used to binge, and meal planning and pre has also helped with that, as I tend to have periods of either really high food drive, or almost no food drive at all leading to not eating for an entire day, then downing 3000+ calories in one meal.
ADHD sucks. It's often trivialized in pop culture, but it makes life so difficult, and those real difficulties are almost never talked about.
I am a strong believer that the biggest "thing" in ADHD is the challenge with sustained goal-focused behavior. And that is in large part due to how fucking hard it is to stay on task when you have ADHD. It's not uncommon to hear people like you who are able to keep control by focusing on the few things that make the most sense and are the most motivating. And even with a perfect target for behavior, it's a battle to keep at it. That is why I think a lot of people get adult-onset ADHD diagnoses—because they are burned out from spending 2x the energy to keep their life and behavior on track.
> And Saskatchewan. Which the site notes is "a bit of a mystery".
There's no mystery. This is rubbish research. In parts of Manitoba we also use all-dressed for the same purpose (and of course chips). The unifying factor is French culture. The Riel Rebellion helped bring tremendous franocphones, and French culture out west. There are areas like St. Boniface in Winnipeg where s some people speak only French. The Metis are in both Manitoba and Quebec...
It's been a long time now, but from what I remember from school, a critical part of the notability of Gabrielle Roy[1] was that she wrote from the perspective of francophones living in the prairies.
I appreciate the DHCP-3 is not a monolithic work, but to have both authorship and editorial oversight of a corpus that presents itself as a rigorous treatise of Canadianisms demonstrate either broad ignorance of, or reckless disregard for a significant portion of our heritage is just baffling to me. What's the point if one is not going to be ruthlessly thorough?
Manitoba was founded by French speakers (the Metis) and about 2000 Metis were supposed to get most of what is now downtown Winnipeg. Their culture was eventually suppressed by Ontario.
I think there's a reality for (visiting) consumers, Schengen has more value than the currency union, at least if you're not a user of cash.
My experiences in non-Euro, Schengen countries is that all payment terminals offer me the choice to pay in Euro or the local currency. In many cases in tourist areas (of Czechia, Poland, and Bulgaria) I only encountered terminals that asked for payment in Euro.
Schengen is incredibly useful, especially if you have to transit through several countries. It's also true that the decrease in cash usage has reduced the benefit of the euro.
However, the benefits of a single currency go beyond cash. It's also about understanding prices. You see a sign for coffee and it's 1199 Hungarian Forint -- or it's 14.99 Polish złoty. It's not clear at all what those numbers mean. Sure it's possible to pull out a currency calculator app to see what the rate is today and what it means in euros. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is bigger than a mere inconvenience. It's constant friction on not really understanding what's going on. If those coffee prices were instead 2.99 € vs 3.53 €, you would immediately see that the Polish coffee is 20% more expensive.
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As for the payment terminals offering to pay in Euro, as others have already noted, that's a scam. There is a hidden fee, usually around 3.5% - 5.0% of your total, that you get charged for this "convenience". Refusing this and paying in the listed currency will mean that your own bank will do the conversion, which is basically always going to be far cheaper.
Unfortunately this currency conversion scam is so lucrative that even big brands engage in it. Amazon for example asks what currency your card is in. If you select some currency other than what this sepecific Amazon's listed prices are in, well, you're in for another juicy hidden fee, this time to Amazon.
This isn't my experience, so I think people should pay attention to their specific situation.
Granted, I haven't recently been to any EU country without the Euro, but my main bank charges extortionate conversion fees, 2.sth%, with a ridiculous minimum per transaction.
A few months ago, I've ordered something off Amazon UK (while in the UK) and the conversion they offered was very close to the official GBP / EUR exchange rate, way below my bank's minimum. The price wasn't high, either, on the order of 10 €.
My experience is similar to yours. Banks and credit cards here, love to charge a 7% (total) currency conversion fee. I happily allow Amazon (1%), and basically everyone else to do this as it is much, much cheaper.
There are different financial experiences in different countries.
Non-Schengen EU Passports are basically the same thing for e.g. inter-railing or other journeys involving multiple border crossings.
Also in Europe people use the likes of Revolut to set up virtual native currency accounts on the fly (with IBAN) with FX free transactions up to a certain level per month dependent on tier.
> Non-Schengen EU Passports are basically the same thing
It's not about passports, it's about border controls within the area. Before Schengen you would have to wait for hours and hours in a queue at the border. Now that border check doesn't exist anymore. The check doesn't exist regardless of what passport you have, there's just nobody there.
It's usually better to pay in the local currency than Euro. The currency still has to be exchanged somewhere, and the banks usually have better rates than the terminal operators.
I’ve even had my credit card provider message me to warn me before after putting a couple of transactions through! Hardly an unbiased source, but their rates are much much better
Hm I always wondered about what this choice actually translates to, what’s the underlying logic determining how what I pay in -> where conversion gets made?
It's called DCC and you are legally required to be offered a choice. If you choose the local currency, your home bank does the exchange and the rate is basically always better. If you choose your home currency, the terminal operator does the exchange at a terrible rate and often slaps on a hefty fee for the "convenience".
To make things more complicated: it's not necessarily your home bank making the exchange, it can also be your card scheme (e.g. MasterCard/Visa/...). However, this is something you don't get a choice in. Your bank has an agreement with the scheme which foreign currencies are handled by whom. In any case, the rates used by the schemes are generally also pretty good.
The lack of direct documentation/instructions or link in the terminals to official rules strikes me as horrible ux. You basically just have to be in the know or know who to ask?
It is horrible UX and one might argue intentional. The terminals are provided by the acquirer, i.e. the same party that stands to make extra money if you let them handle the currency exchange.
In Germany, there was a sliver of time where stores essentially taped a piece of paper to terminals with instructions and big red arrows to select a specific scheme because that would benefit the store (and not cost the consumer extra). It didn't really stick, however. I suspect because it was two extra button presses and the consumer wouldn't notice either way.
Payment terminals can offer whatever currency exchanges they want, but usually it's just a way to fleece you on the spread, nobody is doing you any favors, it's just that whoever in the chain gets to perform the exchange gets to set the fees and the spread and most people get confused by currency exchange so it's in every middle man of the chain's interest to be the one to perform it and get the spread themselves.
If you use your bank's rate by paying in foreign currency then this is usually fair, at most they will add a 1% foreign currency transaction fee.
When it comes to exchanging cash, avoid currency exchanges at places like airports, tourist hotspots, etc. as they will usually offer worse rates than elsewhere.
I find this particularly fascinating, given the post email world I live in now. I haven't had an email from a contact in over two years. It sounds like a sales tool, in a world where the goal is to distance from that availability.
In my country, e-mail is now used purely as a sales tool. Notifications from government and schools are also delivered via SMS, and either WhatsApp or Telegram. So.. yeah, block everyone.
Turns out the second you do this you eliminate 100% of the spam in your life. Honestly, if I ever lived in North America again, I think I'd also just stop reading e-mail.
Please do not assume that professional email is used differently. Plenty of companies here simply black hole inbound email unless it's from the same domain or known applications. Frankly, it's refreshing.
This individual, inherently understood that the method with which they communicate, could be different for different individuals. As a result they changed their messaging, their body language, their wording, depending on with whom they communicated. They still said the same thing(s), but it was how.