Hard to say. It mostly depends how much people are willing to purchase those useless goods and, then, how many people are willing to provide them an easy way to purchase those at the cheapest cost. If it’s not China, it could be some other place. Think fashion if you want to understand how I consider the issue: it’s a huge business with little sense to it when you think about it. Most people own way too much clothes already, more then what they would need in their lifetime but it’s still not enough and they keep on buying more following trends and fashions, spending good money on something they don’t need and they happily completely disregard the many environmental issues as well as the human ones (modern day slavery, child labor and so on). Because it’s what they like and what they want an,d because it’s so easy to buy a new pair of jeans or a skirt.

Most people are lazy and they like simplicity above anything else. Simplicity helps them stay lazy. They like that even above saving money or protecting their fundamentals rights as citizens (or to keeping breathable the air and the water they need to stay alive), they like it more than getting a better (but more demanding) education, and so on. We’re lazy everywhere, most of us at least. And I mean everywhere, including here when commenting: I got two comments, including yours, to my message while a majority of people silently downvoted it. The thing is their clicking of a button won’t help anyone (certainly not me) understand why my comment may or may not have deserved to be downvoted but writing and explaining their point of view, or their reasoning, instead of simply clicking that button is already too much work for them.

So, yeah I may be wrong that’s a sure thing but I don’t think a tax will change much in the amount of waste we create. Alas, it will be produced (and purchased) from some other place, end of the story.

isn’t that the case for every country to favour national buyers over foreigners? It’s a real question (even though I’m French ;)

and making it easier to set up new businesses.

Send all the simplification you can to France, we need it. Badly.

I have trouble understanding what people are actually programming if it isn’t their job. Like, you go to your computer and start working on…what?

I’ve written some simple shell scripting to ease repetitive tasks, that’s about it (like play random video/audio files in MPV media player, resize & convert images I post on my website, and so on). Does that count as programing? ;)

If they do that (it’s your hypothesis) it could also be for a similar reason people ask AI to do the thinking and do the writing for them.

My main point (the second one was kind of ironic, something online don’t play nice with alas I tend to forget about that) is still that it should be to anyone to decide what they should and should not do ;)

I think so ;)

What laws, rules and regulations are they designed to circumvent?

Well, obviously, this to begin with:

My issue with AirBnB properties is that people buy places to rent via AirBnB which means that locals don’t have access to such places for living. I definitely feel there should be legislation that requires people to prove they live in the properties they list on AirBnB.

Which is a real major issue in my humble opinion. And then, those doing that not being submitted to the same taxes/rules/insurances requirement and so on than, say, traditional hotels and other places like that. As I was saying, it’s built as a way to circumvent all of those and that should not be legal no matter how useful it may be.

trump wants relocation of manufacturing but how many Americans or Europeans want to work in a factory making 20 cent trinkets all day?

None, true that.

The thing is that most of those ‘MAGA’ or ‘MEUGA’ jobs will be automatized/robotized and even less people will be happy about not having a job at all than having a poorly paid one. But it’s coming whether we want it or not. The only unknown is how fast?

I can try to answer your question, if you ask one.

I didn’t mean to come off as disagreeing with you

You did not, sorry if I made you think so ;)

My point was that I think there can be such a thing as a “perfect relationship”, as long as we have a realistic idea of what that entails.

The second part of your sentence make it so we can fully agree.

I definitely agree that the idea of a “perfect relationship” that a lot of media tries to sell us is completely unrealistic though.

It’s so toxic. It was already a thing when I was a teen but it was nothing compared to what it has morphed into since the last 20-15 years or so. Today, I see so many young people not just completely lost, they’re afraid to even try to live something, anything. More and more of them are also completely destroyed, crushed by that relentless bombardment of ‘perfection’ everywhere. Our society is killing humanity in its young, what kind of society is OK with doing that?

I’m not that old myself (in my 50s) but I’m old enough to not worry much about the impact of that trend on my own existence but I feel so sorry, and angry, for those younger generations as they have absolutely no idea what have been stolen from them. They have no idea what they’re giving away in exchange of nothing but a mirage on a shiny screen.

A bit like with porn becoming the new normal way young people experiment with sex. I mean, I’m fine with people fapping at whatever they fancy but what’s going on is more than just fapping. It’s an over consumption of… human meat. And that over-consumption is depriving them of something much more precious. Making love was never about fucking someone or fantasizing about such or such anatomical detail or some fetish or another. Here again, I’m sad for them because they’re the ones losing out. Badly… I was tempted to say “they’re the one being screwed” but I thought maybe that would not be OK :p

Your english is great btw :)

Thx :)

+1 to Spain.

I don’t care how simple and satisfying it’s to use, Airbnb is devised as a way to circumvent laws, local rules and regulations and it should be ended in its actual form.

As long as we accept that no realistic relationship is completely without conflict, I would say that a “perfect relationship” involves being able to work through the issues that inevitably show up. It’s something you build together, not something you just have.

Isn’t it what I just wrote? Real question (my English is lacking so…)

Taxing to death is not the answer. Even Trump with its ‘liberation day’ knows what’s needed is to re-localize the actual production and that taxing importation to death is only a mean to that end. Save in the EU, I suppose…

It’s so tiring.

Made some sewing… and miserably failed at it ;)

Wanted to make some kind of portable & foldable file folder I designed last week but the end result ended up being meh. The idea I sketched is still excellent. So, today I hope I’ll be able to scratch something out of thick cardboard, some fabric and glue. No needle and thread involved this time :p

Must delete?

I’m not much into must do, this or that. Thx.

Or if we are to tell people what they should do: why not trash the phone itself? Uber is but one minor symptom of much deeper issues, all related to phone usage and ownership. Get rid of the main cause, not of a symptom ;)

Not sure to understand the question? How could you not know?

If you’re thinking about finding the ‘perfect’ partner, forget about that. It’s a lie. It’s something fabricated to sell ads, page views and subscriptions to shitty services. Nobody (including you and me), nobody is perfect. So, no relationship can be perfect.

My spouse and I have been together for 25+ years and counting. It was quite obvious very early on we’re fitting together nicely but that was far from being a perfect match and we had a few rough times and, all those years later, we can still have. But we’ve quickly realized how lucky we were to have found each other, and we valued that enough to get over any difficulty or hardship. And we still do.

So, to me that’s a ‘right relationship’, just not ‘the’ right one as we could as easily have both been as happy with someone else if things had been different ;)

Why is this page not exposed more to the normal visitors

Maybe it’s because most ‘normal’ visitors are just readers that aren’t looking to republish anything?

A good question, though. That made me realize I had no mention of copyright/Free usage on my tiny (and uninteresting) website. Maybe something I should change. But I will not add that under each page, it will be listed in the About ;)

None. It’s in my messenger bag, or sometimes in a small belt bag of some sort. Why? Because I don’t need constantly access my phone as I seldom use it ;)

Thinking about it, I tend to keep nothing in my pockets.

You should tell us what type of lighting you wanted to achieve and with what gear, so we may tell if you managed to do it.

Like mentioned already, getting the right amount of light in the shadows can be tricky, even more so with reflective subjects, but that’s just a matter of experimentation. You may also want to consider what matters the most to you between shutter speed and noise/sharpness? With that kind of picture, I doubt you need to focus that much on shutter speed, so you may consider lowering lower your ISO and use a much longer exposure (less noise in the image, for the same amount of light). That being said, it looks like you’re on a promising path :)

Silly suggestion: if you can’t hide it, have you tried using the sewing thingy (sorry, I don’t know the English word) that’s visible on the fabric as a legit part of your composition? It could help drive the viewer’s attention exactly where you want them to look.