also they were completed during a time of much less housing density and eminent domain laws were more powerful - even getting a railroad setup nowadays costs billions because of land purchasing
I have hearing aids and literally only wear over the ear headphones for this reason - I also feel that in the ear buds can cause worse hearing loss due to that very tight fit
Why would Lossless Audio require a wired connection in 2026 - do they realize high bitrate Bluetooth formats exist already? My QC Ultra's claim to have lossless over Bluetooth
Well, lossless over Bluetooth is a mess currently.
Only 1 codec is capable of that — aptX Lossless. Then, your transmitting device, phone / laptop / etc., needs to be compatible with it, and that's often not the case. Samsung and Apple don't support it.
I bought USB-C Bluetooth dongle that I use with my iPhone for that exact reason. It looks janky, but I think it's worth it.
"When I was a kid, when we shrunk a 200x200 image down to 100x100 we lost information forever, and we liked it that way. It was a simple time. A predictable time."
Until you're a professional designer and they ask you to "scale up this part" or something. Then you realize that your actual intention is having the original layer currently rendered at that size and did not actually intend to permanently modify the original so you can't go back.
Once you export it is, of course, actually downscaled.
Same idea behind masks and modifiers and the like. Most modern creation tools try to give ample opportunity for non-destructive modification to simpler, immutable primitive layers.
I think anyone with tens of millions of dollars would find it hard to compete in the business world - they should stay in their garden with their rare plants
Probably not the case for some modern pure nicotine products (gum, patches). Vaping is harder to say due to lack of data and clear cases of addiction in young people, but pure nicotine is definitely a different animal than the classical delivery forms. See my response to GP.
I wonder if the issue with vapes isn't the sweeteners they put in them. I sometimes vape a specific liquid, which has never given me any cravings. I'll just stop after my bottle is done for multiple months until I remember to buy some more. I never carry my vape with me when I leave home (not to the office, not for multi-week holidays, nothing). It's not difficult to go without, I don't even think about it when I don't have it.
But the other day I ended up vaping some melon-flavored liquid. When it was empty, I was going crazy for a few hours, I absolutely had to have more. And it didn't even have more nicotine than what I usually vape. It was just the sweet taste that had me wanting more, exactly like back in my college days when I was eating Snickers bars like no tomorrow. Now that was a habit that was tough to break. And most people I see vaping out in the street seem to be vaping those ultra-sweet smelling liquids.
I've seen multiple friends that could give up an addiction: until after a while and then they couldn't.
For many people, addictions are not that addictive until they are.
Be careful generalizing from your own experiences. Try and learn from the mistakes your (often older) peers have been taught the hardest way.
I've seen it with drinking, vaping, smoking, meth, bad partner, gambling; my friends that weren't hooked, could take it or leave it, and then one day they find they are hooked.
An interesting thought, I myself have met at least a couple people that tried to break an addiction by switching to vape products that were essentially just flavour (no nicotine, no THC; THC vapes are common and legal in Canada) and somehow stayed just as addicted to the flavour / oral stimulation. So that sounds at least plausible to me.
they are horrendously addicting though which is the huge difference between nicotine and caffeine. Even though I love caffeine I can go days without it no problem (besides being slightly more tired). Habitual nicotine users tend to need to re-up every hour or so
I quit zyns a year ago and still crave them daily. Sooooo good and addictive and they don’t have that “it’s killing you” imperative to quit like cigarettes do
I'm not sure it is actually all that clear that pure nicotine products really are so addictive as people believe. E.g. most studies claiming such addictiveness may simply be because those that get addicted to patches / gum were already addicted to cigarettes (or other classic tobacco product) prior. See e.g. Gwern's notes on the topic.
Both of these links go to self-reported data about how addicted people feel themselves to be, which I don't think is credible at all. It's very common for addicts to falsely believe that they're not addicted and could quit whenever they want.
> Both of these links go to self-reported data about how addicted people feel themselves to be
This is an incredible and outright lie.
Actually try reading the page I linked, there are plenty of links to scientific studies, scientific reviews, and high-quality resources, as well as lots of careful notes about serious confounds in the usual studies. This includes in exactly the sections I linked.
By all means still be cautious and not careless about using the stuff, that is a perfectly sane position. But I think it is very clear that e.g. patches and gum are highly unlikely to have anything even approaching the risk profile of classic tobacco products.
I haven't followed it all that closely but didn't he end up being charged for libel/slander? That lady was a complete batshit lunatic. Just watch her interview with Anderson Cooper; it's objectively cringeworthy.
I recently bought Premium because I realized 80% of my media consumptions is from it. Compare that to Hulu plus or cable and even at 14 a month its a great deal
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