I don't know about the USA, but in Europe "ordinary" people don't do investment portfolios. You can safely assume that if they don't have any savings, they most certainly won't have investment portfolios.
I find that hard to believe. Europeans don't have retirement investments? Even if it's just a pension they have some sort of portfolio even if it's not managed by the individual.
I don't know about Europe, but here in Uruguay and South America in general you have absolutely no say about what they do with your pension money.
There are even laws mandating the pension funds to invest in local Treasury bonds (which are fortunately reasonably safe and high-yield, Uruguay is among the most stable in the continent)
In Latin America in general pension funds are mismanaged and periodically raided by populist governments.
Pensions are managed by pension funds. Can't touch 'm until you're 67 (in the Netherlands). And even then you won't receive a lump sum, but a monthly allowance (that's how I see it). All employees take part in a pension fund, as mandated by law. It's one very important reason why I'm self employed. It's the only way to avoid this nonsense.
So don't hire them. Let a payrolling company officially hire them. The payrolling company sends you a monthly invoice and takes care of all the legal stuff.
I'm currently doing this in the Netherlands, and it's totally legal.
Wouldn't it be enough to set up a postal box office in the USA to create a US 'presence' for many saas companies based in Europe? Provided, of course, that you are available during US office hours for email and phone support?
And having a postal box office doesn't solve cashing a foreign check in the Netherlands.
So as a first step I recommend incorporating a US entity (Inc. in Delaware), setting up the PO box (we used Earth Class Mail), and getting a bank account (heard good things about first republic bank).
In the Netherlands, you're advised not to accept the inheritance before having investigated the legator's credit situation. If you do accept the inheritance, you WILL be hold accountable for all debts.
Computer languages are only very superficially similar to English. Like a whale is superficially similar to a fish. The syntax of ALL computer languages is completely unlike English. Computer languages don't have the phonology or morphology of English either (they don't have any phonology or morphology).
morphology I'm not so sure. looking at the evolution of keywords seems to suggest that the morphology is there. phonology, I'd have agreed with you a few years ago after I finished a minor in slavic linquistics, but now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure. In either event, the structure of the english language has heavily impacted the design of languages used to program computers. Not so drastic a difference as whale to fish, more whale to dolphin.
As an aside, I wonder if anyone has studied how learning an English-based (at least wrt keywords and such) programming language before learning English affects the latter.
From personal experience (I am a native Russian speaker), I have a feeling that it does, to some extent. To this day, for me, the primary meaning words like "loop" and "string" is that of programming - the first mental association with "string" is text, not an actual string, for example. Surely this has got to change perspective somewhat.
This also has an interesting side effect, in that code doesn't look like mutilated English - it just naturally reads and feels like, well, code. This is not the case when I'm reading a program that uses keywords in my native language (e.g. the 1C language - http://www.asd-dnepr.com/images/v8/two_variants_of_embedded_...) - those just look weird as hell, and very awkward/funny. I have often asked myself if that's what C and Python look like to native English speakers; and if so, then what difference does it make in how we code.
> To this day, for me, the primary meaning words like "loop" and "string" is that of programming
In my case (another non-native English speaker), I had come across 'a piece of string' and such before encountering programming, and so that's the immediate association string brings to mind. 'Loop', however, I hadn't come across before I learnt programming, so it's very strongly associated with that sense in my mind, even though now I know the "other" meaning.
> This is not the case when I'm reading a program that uses keywords in my native language [...] - those just look weird as hell, and very awkward/funny. I have often asked myself if that's what C and Python look like to native English speakers; and if so, then what difference does it make in how we code.
Yep, I too wondered the same thing after finding a programming language in my native language (https://github.com/Ezhil-Language-Foundation/Ezhil-Lang), and seeing how even keywords that are meant to sound natural for their usage get bent awkwardly out of shape by the thousand different contexts we use them in.
>> now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure.
Non-native speaker here. Why could this be understood as a cuckold joke? (My dictionary says this about cuckold: "The husband of an adulteress, often regarded as an object of derision.")
Because "Your home? I've found that they can make whatever I want..." suggests that _qhtn is in the habit of getting breakfast at douche's home (and can get "anything I want"!), and that douche doesn't know this.
No it's not just protectionism. If I buy Bleu d'Auvergne (it's a French cheese) in the Netherlands, I want to be sure I get the real deal, as a consumer.
exactly. the laws protect the customers from scam low quality product equivalents.
margarine is never labeled 'tastes like butter' here. same with Grana Padano. Sure everyone has the ability to produce knock off Parmesan. But when I want the real thing I know I'll get it.
In this particular case, as with the Champagne example, the name of the product indicates its origin. Bleu d'Auvergne means "Blue from Auvergne" (a region in France), where blue is short for "blue cheese".
If someone outside of France (Auvergne, more specifically) can concoct a product with similar quality, let them label and market it under their own name.
If you fork an open source project, wouldn't it be convenient to come up with a new name for your project?
But presumably there is more than one brand of Blue d'Avergne? I'm not suggesting one should be able to steal the trademarks of any of those brands.
And if someone from a different place makes a product that is compositionally identical then probably their ability to market it will depend on the customer's recognition that it is exactly the same thing.
You're confusing brand/trademark with origin labelling. A farmers market will inevitably have multiple cheeses created by different producers, all of which may be labelled "Blue d'Avergne".
Yeah, brands do happen, I bought a cheese labelled "Blue style cheese" the other day because it was cheaper and may have been made in Poland to the same process.
If you take for instance "Champagne" - you might have an equivalent product but it's not "Champagne" unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. Yet alternative sparkling whites such as "Prosecco" (Italy), "Cava" (Spain) and "Cristal" (US) seem to do quite well. If you have a good enough product, you shouldn't have any need to claim equivalence with another regional variety.
The same reason you cannot use someone else trademark even if you use the same formula. Origin guarantees are just collective trademarks for small producers.
Moreover quality of the product is not always the only reason to buy a product (see fair trade, organic product, religious belief ...)
They can label it as made the same way. They can do comparative marketing - 'we use the same techniques but better ingredients, our product is better'.
What they can't do is pretend their product is the actual traditional product from some other geographical location.
There seems like no possible way that can be detrimental to consumers?
Even the water can make a significant difference. The animals producing the meat will influence taste depending on their life and what they're eating. It's reasonable that a regional product will turn out markedly different to the same recipe in a completely different environment.
It's reasonable to want the product as intended, not what it becomes after a series of shortcuts and cost savings to produce ostensibly the "same" product.
It's only heavily industrialised foods where this starts not to matter, mainly as it becomes so disntaced from those inputs.
Cheese is actually a tricky example. Cheeses produced outside of their origin geo tend to have somewhat different microbiomes and, therefore, somewhat different tastes and other characteristics. See, for example, this episode of Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/say-cheese-2/
I'm by no means an extremist on the topic. I think it would be pretty silly at this point to say that only Cheddar from Cheddar, England could be labeled as such. But origin naming rules aren't silly either.
Food is not like building a car in a factory. It's not a formula like chemistry.
The milk matter, cereal matter, where cow live matter. The whole supply chain. it's really difficult/impossibile to replicate that.
You can have something similar, but call it with the generic name.
In Italy you can get really good food everywhere. But i can assure you, you can feel the difference between location.
For that we get DOC, DOP to certify location, tradition, etc.
It can get even more subtle than that. Speaking with a restaurant owner in a tiny village on the Pyrenees, I told him he would make a killing if he opened in a restaurant in Barcelona.
"It wouldn't work. The animals would have to be transported. They would sweat and that affects the taste".
Can only speak for myself, but as there is no really objective way to measure that kind of equivalence, we as consumers are left with the rather blunt tools of traditions and establishing brands when it comes to food. Some of the product types which are protected are several hundred years old, predating all trademark laws which would otherwise have had a similar effect.
There are also some products in EU which are sold as '<something something> style <fooditem> because of the reason you state, but with that said: They rarely reach the quality of the 'real deal'. Apparently it is not very easy to create similar quality products?
Well given that a lot of the Industrial Revolution came at the expense of forceful colonisation, I would say this subsidy would be a great way to structure reparations to India from the UK. [..Ducks lower..]
I would have no problem with that whatsoever and gladly pay even more taxes - if I didn't know that all I would pay for is corruption. People spending money have to be accountable - and that using an actually working system, not just on paper - to those who pay. Foreign tax payers are in the worst position possible, because not even their own government would care much and hide behind "higher level policy and diplomacy" before risking trouble. "You vote for me in the UN and I'll overlook your corruption" - every day in "realpolitik".
For me, a European amateur sociologist who's never actually been to the USA, Stephen King was a great introduction to the American working class, especially as portrayed in the 1980s.
As someone who can capture a period of time, and the people in that period of time, I feel King is unmatched. I think decades (centuries?) from now, people will value King for that quality.
"Incineration is possible, but it isn't as easy as burning the carcass in a fire. Temperatures of more than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit — sometimes up to 1,800 degrees — are required to effectively neutralize prions. Unlike most bacteria, regular cooking won't help at all.
"Disposal issues are tough," says Barbara Powers, director of Colorado State University's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory."
No. You have to denature the protein to reduce the infectivity.
You need about 20 minutes, a pressurized autoclave, and some nasty chemicals to do this effectively. There is research into other methods but I really don't know anything about them.
Proteins aren't destroyed by cooking. Otherwise you would not be able to get any proteins from cooked meat or beans.
The only reliable method that I'm aware of to denature proteins without making the whole thing inedible is hydrolysis. Gelatin is made from collagen in the skin, bones, and connective tissues of various animals, but Jell-O is generally considered safe.
> Proteins aren't destroyed by cooking. Otherwise you would not be able to get any proteins from cooked meat or beans.
"Protein" in food really means "amino acids" as far as nutrition is concerned; even if the protein isn't denatured by cooking (and at least some proteins are), it will be broken down to amino acids by your digestive system before being absorbed into your body. Your body uses the amino acids to build its own proteins.
IIRC quite a few animal-source protein strings that are "fully compatible" with our own ('animal') bodies are taken up as-is without breakdown into AA and resynthesis into "human protein". Much more efficient.
"Proteins ingested in the diet are digested into amino acids or small peptides that can be absorbed by the intestine and transported in the blood."
If by "animal-source protein strings" you mean "small peptides", then yes. But in general they still have to be resynthesized into the proteins used by the body. There might be a few useful proteins that are small enough to fall into the "small peptide" range and would therefore be absorbed and used as-is.
Prions have a little over 200 amino acids, so they are on the large side to be considered "small peptides" (which AFAIK are typically a few to a couple of dozen amino acids). They appear to be resistant to the enzymes that normally digest proteins, and it doesn't appear to be clearly understood how they get from the digestive tract into the bloodstream. See, for example, here:
"Denaturing" means to make the protein take on a different shape, which is all that is necessary (since a prion is the correct amino acids arranged in a pathological arrangement). You can denature proteins with heat or very high or low pH, depending on which protein that it is.
But the dangerous part of a prion is the way it's folded, right? All you have to do is denature it to render it harmless. It's just harder to do for some proteins than others.
