FWIW, here is the US, the ground wire is often completely exposed. As in, no colored jacket, just the bare copper throughout the entire run. Attached to ground at the breaker box, and attached to any grounding ports or metal boxes throughout the building.

Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.

Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn’t tracked anywhere that I know of

How close are these surrounding towns? What’s the population, particularly for the demographics you would appeal to?

Often, it’s not worthwhile to bring your favorite culture to your home. Just go to the culture where it already exists. Often, these quiet, boring places are populated by people that WANT to live in a place that’s quiet and boring. It doesn’t make much sense for anyone to move there if they don’t.

I’ve never used it, but Crossover Office was developed largely to get MS Office working on Linux. It looks like it’s still maintained.

It’s at least worth looking into.

If the locals - as a whole, not just some prominent extremists - dislike Starbucks being there, then the location will fail.

To add to this, imagine the reverse. Can you imagine if they passed up better opportunities, just so that it could happen on a specific date on the calendar?

Sounds absurd, right?

I think you’re approaching the wrong aspect. While that could be a scam where a man is impersonating a woman, there are plenty where it’s actually a woman running the scam. There are plenty of red flags here, and those don’t change.

The problem is that I’m sure your friend is aware of those red flags. He’s also choosing to ignore them. I suspect he doesn’t do well with women IRL, and this at least gives him hope.

Assuming that’s all true, this is way above the pay grade of random people on the Internet.

Even at stores that have this feature, I rarely see people use it. It’s clearly not an experience that people flock to.

OTOH, on the rare occasion I’ve visited a Walmart in the past 10 years, I have a 100% rate of checkout taking an absurdly long time. Everyone there just seems to accept it like they have no choice.

As long as it’s advertised openly, I don’t see a big problem with it. It would probably be sold as a discount for shopping at slower times, though. It’s a tried-and-true method of smoothing congestion.

Assuming a store with 9a-9p hours (every day), a 9-5 worker can shop 44 hours in a week, vs 40 they cannot. But that doesn’t particularly line up with the busy hours. Around here, after 7 on weekdays and 5 on weekends tend to get pretty slow.

Economies of scale affects the costs to the manufacturer. Competition/demand affect the price to the consumer.

To extend this, consider your own safety throughout. Unless the police arrest them and they remain in custody, you have a potential serious threat. Avoid situations where you/others could be vulnerable, such as alone or at night. You may want to setup visible surveillance cameras, alter your routines, etc.

The police will be there after anything happens, but that may be too late for you.

“Hackers” (rather, malicious actors) rarely look to take down IT resources as their goal. Instead, they want to access it for their own purposes. The closest example would be ransomware, where it gets taken down as part of the threat/punishment. But if the victim pays, their resources must be restored.

Plus, I would be surprised if Crowd Strike doesn’t have any protections on its own files. I also expect there will be additional verification checks (hash/etc) on their updates going forward.

From the article:

“…nearly $1.1 billion in grants to convert existing plants to build electric vehicles and components…”

“…grants to help fund the conversion of 11 “at risk” plants in eight states to enable the production of 1 million EVs annually, help retain 15,000 existing jobs, and create 3,000 new positions…”

These are grants to upgrade specific factories in the US.

This isn’t true, at least in the US. The vast majority of dog food is safe for human consumption, albeit not recommended.

The surprise shouldn’t be that you’re about to propose. The surprise should be in how you choose to propose.

Unless the ring’s details are part of the surprise (which they could be, if it’s meaningful to the couple), clear and open communication should be preferred

Most people are on multiple platforms. Find them now, while you still can. Save whatever contact info you can for them. You don’t know when you’ll need it, nor why.

It says EV battery (because politics), rather than a traditional 12v car battery. The latter is usually lead acid, while the former is usually lithium-ion (LiFePO4 or Li-NMC)

It’s also at an age when your libido is essentially unlimited. Were the opportunity to present itself, these people could adequately perform for 15 different partners in a row.

Desensitization takes time. By the time it sets in, most people are past the age of unlimited libido. There are also different forms of sensitivity (and thus, desensitization). OP referred to physical, but mental seems to be a more common issue.

There are people that were circumcized after becoming sexually active who can (and do) report exactly that.

Separately, we can simply ask people that have foreskins to describe the sensations they feel from that body part.

The only part that we can’t say with confidence is how the neutral pathways develop (i.e. how we perceive the sensations) when it’s the only way we’ve ever experienced.

While I agree that it’s not exactly the same, there is a lot of overlap. It’s also more complicated than the OP presented.

Since everyone here is refusing to do even a basic search, here is one on the first page of Google results.

An individual’s response to natural rewards, such as sex, is largely regulated by the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, which receives excitatory and inhibitory input from other limbic structures and the prefrontal cortex [64]. Erections are dependent upon activation of dopaminergic neurons in VTA and dopamine receptors in the NAc [65,66]. Excitatory glutamate inputs from other limbic structures (amygdala, hippocampus) and the prefrontal cortex facilitate dopaminergic activity in the VTA and NAc [62]. Reward responsive dopamine neurons also project into the dorsal striatum, a region activated during sexual arousal and penile tumescence [67]. Dopamine agonists, such as apomorphine, have been shown to induce erection in men with both normal and impaired erectile function [68]. Thus, dopamine signaling in the reward system and hypothalamus plays a central role in sexual arousal, sexual motivation and penile erections [65,66,69].

We propose that chronic Internet pornography use resulted in erectile dysfunction and delayed ejaculation in our servicemen reported above. We hypothesize an etiology arising in part from Internet pornography-induced alterations in the circuits governing sexual desire and penile erections. Both hyper-reactivity to Internet pornography cues via glutamate inputs and downregulation of the reward system’s response to normal rewards may be involved. These two brain changes are consistent with chronic overconsumption of both natural rewards and drugs of abuse, and are mediated by dopamine surges in the reward system [70,71,72].

[…]partnered sex no longer met their conditioned expectations and no longer triggered the release of sufficient dopamine to produce and sustain erections

The word dopamine appears 54 times in this article, and overall seems to agree with the OP.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039517/