PonyOfWar

I see it (or at least some form of it) as a realistic possibility. Let's say that consciousness is a completely physical thing, a certain set of chemicals, cells and molecules in my brain that define what is "me". That would mean that given infinite time, something that possesses "my" consciousness would eventually appear again.

I explicitly said “we should disincentivize (via fees or increased property tax) those who don’t properly renovate their buildings”, so… such people would just have to pay fees or more taxes (realistically and depending on fee/tax amount, they would take a loan instead or do the exact same thing they would have to do if renovations were needed for whatever other external reason such as aging of the building, fire, flood, etc.).

The problem is that a large portion of those people you talk about aren't renovating because they can't. Renovation already makes financial sense in many cases, but it requires a huge initial investment. You think for example an older retiree can just take out a loan? Haha, no. Fires, floods etc leave many people destitute unless they have a good insurance, which wouldn't apply to this situation.

You keep arguing against the proposal of incentives, which is fair enough. I can understand the argument that you don't want to finance people's private property. But what I take issue with is your idea of increasing the financial burden on those people with increased taxes and fines. I don't think you've presented a good argument as to how this would improve the situation in any way.

Does it say somwhere the tax cuts are for low income oeners only?

Not that I know of, but that is beside the point as it's not what you originally suggested. Restricting the tax cuts to low-income people would be a much more reasonable idea.

If you can’t afford to own a house (or car, or anything else) you’ll have to sell it.

From what you suggested, you want to actively price people out of their houses. So non-rich people in rural areas etc won't be able to keep their homes anymore and have to rent. Their houses will either get bought by rich people or real estate companies who can afford to do the renovations or they'll be left abandoned. People who are already rich can afford the renovations and won't be affected by the penalties. Is that really a desirable outcome to you?

To give a concrete example, a policy like you suggested might make my mom homeless. She's not rich, my parents were both social workers and paying off the house took decades. The house is from the 1920s, so it needs a lot of renovations to be up to modern standards. Currently, she can slowly save up some money and do them one at a time. You'd place an additional financial burden on her, which would make her unable to save money for the renovations and possibly cause her to lose her house.

So making people pay who currently can't afford a renovation? That way you'll get even fewer renovations and raise inequality in the process.

Plenty of stuff like this or this or this

Again, those are all pushes for legislation. None of which are implemented at this point. The EU is, for better and for worse, a bureaucratic monster. Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn't have the option for much secrecy. National governments are quite a different story.

The app is just a map to see the hotspots, you don't need it to connect to them.

But those are all publicly available pieces of legislation. It's quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they'll secretly and illegally spy on you through public wifi networks, without any law allowing them to do so. Besides, if they have no problem doing that, why would internet through your European ISP be any safer?

My ringtone is a station jingle from Tokyo's Yamanote line. Rarely hear it though, as my phone is usually on silent.

Depends on how much brain capacity I need. When I need to actually think, it has to be instrumental. So game soundtracks, classical music etc. Stellaris is one soundtrack I quite like for thinking. When it's something I have to think really hard about, it's music off though.

Otherwise, when I'm working on a repetitive, brainless task, it's whatever I'm in the mood for. Metal, country, j-pop, post-punk... could be anything really.

My parents were pretty opposed to violent media. As a younger child, I wasn't really allowed to play anything that had explicit violence. Once instance I remember is when I was about 8 and we got a new PC that came bundled with Age of Empires 2. I was initially allowed to play it, but my dad took the CD away when he saw how much warfare it involved. Generally, they usually kept to the official age recommendations on the boxes. They relaxed their rules significantly from when I was around 12 though. That was also when I got my own PC and a Steam Account and they didn't really check what I bought on there. Even got my mom to buy me GTA San Andreas (which has a 16+ recommendation here) when I was around 14. They never really approved necessarily, especially my dad, but they let me make my own decisions when they felt I was old enough.

I can. Never properly learned it, but spent so much time on my computer that it became second nature I guess. Can even do it on my phone with maybe about 90% accuracy.

I like full-size mechanical keyboards with red switches. Currently using a Ducky One 3.

I don't think there's much you can do, nor would there be much of a point to it. It doesn't look like the cables are currently blocking the airflow and you're not going to get the inside of this case look aesthetically pleasing anyway. Presumably the side panel isn't glass either, so you'll basically never see it. Personally I'd just close it up and forget about it.