IMO, if you like a service/subscription and it's your choice to support them and thier content I wouldn't think twice.
My only paid subscription is MS office, because I've used Xcel almost my entire career (almost 30+ years use?) and have never paid for it until a couple years ago.
So I like the content, I use the service and pricer per annum is good for me (only a few more years and I'm done, so it still works out for me).
The grapes of wrath.
I hate read that in about 5 days in HSchool and still cannot stand it. The other books we were assigned I enjoyed...but this motherfucker, nope.
I'm sorry you misunderstood my point of view as an American who has emigrated out of the US (lived overseas in various places throughout my career but have finally been able to land in one spot to call home).
I have, however, lived in some very large international cities which skew perspective because they have shops open 24/7.
The town we live in all the large markets are open on Sunday in the summer, but that's out of necessity because we go from about 65k residents to 350k. They are open shorter hours, but man it's busy.
I live in a country like this and believe me, it's refreshing. Yes it's an inconvenience some times, but the alternative is 24/7 hell: once the expectation is that you can get anything you want, whenever you want then you start to compromise the lives of everyone because someone has to work those shifts, and if companies have to man those shifts they damn well will make profit-which is usually at the cost of staff pay. And then when you're in line at 2am getting peanut butter and packing foam you realize the Karen in front of you yelling at the cashier because they don't have chocolate croissants, is a product of this cycle.
Hard to say, most of my books are historical fiction, which would be horrible-living with a huge conflict during times of war and strife, or science fiction, which would be horrible for the same reasons.
But I guess I would choose Spider Robinsons The Callahan Chronicles (Cross Time Saloon) because it's a few good stories, where the only conflict is personal...and there is plenty of beer.
I'm not so sure we're on opposite sides here because you're argument is that most people are actively for the war and I'm saying that if they're not actively for the war (apathetic, stoic) then they are supporting it as well?
Toss in an analogy here and there about the last 20+year war and Israel, and we might as well go for UAE in Yemen and Syria's proxy war and we got a stew going!
Plenty of people out there ready to listen to you up there on your soap box that actually are worth the time and effort.
500,000,000 USD is 47,426,915,583.93 Rubles.
Also, the boomer generation is already indoctrinated from the old Soviet era, which is why they're so entrenched in their stoicism.
I am blissfully unaware of the differences, and since I'm playing the steam deck on my TV the only HDMI cable I rummaged around for and found in our pile of obsolete cables is doing the job.
I find it intrusive that when I have a reservation on my app for my business, Google need to tell me the same information, first-but incorrectly... it's ok I get the reservation, I do not need you to tell me the same information but wrong.
Besides the champagne every morning, this chef was one of the first to emphasize mentoring young cooks.
"You may be born to cook, but you must learn to roast."
Point was a large man, and he liked to eat. It is said that he rose early every day and ordered all the food that would be required from his regular purveyors (he forbade the recycling of leftovers from the previous day; "Every morning the chef must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove," he wrote. "That is what real cuisine is all about") and then sat down to a solitary breakfast — a light snack, like two or three roast chickens — accompanied by a bottle or two of Champagne. For his 50th birthday, on Feb 25, 1947, he cooked a modest dinner for his friends (and himself): foie gras parfait, warm woodcock pâté, a mousse of trout from the Rhône with crayfish sauce, cardoons with truffles, beef à la royale (stuffed with ham and truffles, garnished with cockscombs and more truffles), aspic-glazed cold truffled Bresse capon, Saint-Marcellin goat cheese, a marjolaine (invented by Point, this now famous cake is an elaboration of the classic merinque-and-buttercream confection called the dacquoise), lemon sorbet, and assorted fresh fruit, all irrigated with Dom Pérignon, Château Grillet 1945, and Hospices de Beaune Cuvée Brunet 1937.
He was generous with others as well as himself. In an era of obsessively secretive chefs, he shared his knowledge freely. He loved serving large portions to his customers, and roamed the dining room making sure that everyone was satisfied. He assigned young chefs to work side-by-side with their most experienced colleagues. "It is the duty of a good chef," he wrote in Ma Gastronomie, "to hand down to the next generation all that he has learned and experienced."
At this point the Kremlin propaganda machine is working overtime to capitalize on the Israeli war,and everyone is taking the bait thinking Fatboy is going to give 2 shits and really show those Dems!
IMO, if you like a service/subscription and it's your choice to support them and thier content I wouldn't think twice.
My only paid subscription is MS office, because I've used Xcel almost my entire career (almost 30+ years use?) and have never paid for it until a couple years ago.
So I like the content, I use the service and pricer per annum is good for me (only a few more years and I'm done, so it still works out for me).