Tariffs, labour- and energy costs. Is it just me or do EU seem to lack a competitive edge?

Every drink is for sale, even coffee. They aggressively use the bag sizer and try to take bags away at the gate, under the ruse that their tiny Airbus overhead bins cannot fit them (they can).

Baseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation".

Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plants.

In 2025, that's no longer the case. The cheapest power is solar & wind, which produces power intermittently. And the next cheapest power is dispatchable.

To take advantage of this cheap intermittent power, we need a way to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Which is provided by storage and/or peaker plants.

That's what we need. If added non-dispatchable power to that mix than we're displacing cheap solar/wind with more expensive mix, and still not eliminating the need for further storage/peaker plants.

If non-dispatchable power is significantly cheaper than storage and/or peaker power than it's useful in a modern grid. That's not the case in 2025. The next cheapest power is natural gas, and it's dispatchable. If you restrict to clean options, storage & geographical diversity is cheaper than other options. Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage.

I'm a European and this is fake news

Interestingly, it was what pushed me back into it. Even just capturing family stuff, the limitations of smartphone cameras were always niggling, the article gives one example of why, but focal length is just one of the things you gain more control over with a real camera.

I realised a big reason I defaulted to my phone was simply that it's always there in my pocket, while my "real" camera was a burden to carry around. Related to the popular photography maxim that "the best camera is the one you have with you".

One day, after "seeing" some good shots in my head and totally missing them due to phone camera limitations, I decided I had to fix it. I started with an RX100 (I got the M3 secondhand at a decent price), which is as pocketable as a phone and immediately improved things for me.

Eventully that reminded me how much I enjoyed real photography, and now I often cart a big camera and multiple lenses around with me again. Oh well :)

Around the Ring in 5 minutes would be pretty wild.

Most people take photos of DSO's, but while you've got the gear, why not photograph the moon. It's also technically fun. Using a cooled camera, I video the moon/Jupiter at 20fps at 3000x3000. Then using software, I only take the frames where there is minimal atmospheric distortion. With the remaining frames, you stack them to get a very detailed image of the moon/planets.

Look up the other gear from ZWO the maker of the seestar.

£75 a month seems very reasonable for sports nerds, compared to the cost and availability in the past

People don’t want to ly for content, that’s as old as the hills.

I don’t do sport, and I wouldn’t fund such a terrible exploitative industry (televised sports is all about getting people hooked on gambling), but I’ve certainly spent that much for entertainment I do like in the past - and far more. A night at the theatre will cost a lot more than subscribing to all the sports channels. A weekly cinema visit too.