PiecePractical

The first car I had with a name was a 93 LeSabre that all my friends called "The Beast"!

Same here!

And on top of that, different translations can effectively make different stories as well. Just look at the story of Dinah. Most translations day that she was assaulted but some would suggest that she just had consensual sex. That's a distinction that effectively makes it a different story depending on who did the translating.

That's just enough to buy my wife and I ice cream cones at the best place in town and leave enough of a tip that we don't feel like we're being cheap. Date night sorted!

Yeah, that's the guy, dude was a C-list basketball player for a few years. Also an MMA fighter with an 0/1 record apparently.

Depends on why/how my needs are being met I suppose. If this is a post-scarcity situation where everyone's needs are met and no one has to work, I'd probably keep at my current job. I install and repair nurse call systems (the buttons you push in a hospital to tell the staff you need help) I mostly enjoy the work and someone is going to have to keep doing it. I live in a town with a huge hospital and could easily keep busy without leaving town.

If this situation where only my own basic needs are met and not everyone else's, I wouldn't keep going to that job. Management is kind of a pain and they can certainly afford to train someone who needs the work. I'd still fix whatever kind of shit I knew how to because honestly, I love working with a wrench but, I'd be doing it freelance at that point. I'd probably start by knocking on the doors of local machine shops, fixing machine tools and lasers was more fun than nurse call and if I wasn't tied to one specific brand, I could probably keep busy without driving 4 hours a day (I quit that job because I was tired of travel). If that took off, I'd try to turn it into a business and train someone to pick up the slack so I could still take the occasional vacation without leaving regular customers hanging. If that wasn't enough to keep even just me busy, I'd probably start asking around about other random shit that needed to be fixed. Lots of people deal with broken shit because they can't afford to fix it and if I was only looking to stave off boredom, not having to make a profit, I could probably get it done affordably.

Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It's mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn't a big deal. Also, I'm problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I'd like, I get a little weird.

So, while in think there are certainly fair criticisms to be made of allowing patents on plants, the paper you linked is kind of just low quality fear mongering. It's heavy one scare tactics and light on facts. I wouldn't let anything in this paper keep you up at night without verifying it through a more reputable source.

To try to answer your questions though;

1. I really don't understand why you think it wouldn't be. There are some sources recommending that boliological waste made up of the GMOs themselves be sterilized before leaving lab conditions but if you eat a GMO and it passes through your digestive track there will be few if any living GMO cells remaining. Particularly in the case of peppers, mammals' digestive tracts will destroy pepper seeds. That's why they're spicy, it's ironically a defense mechanism to keep us mammals from eating them.

2. At any rate, 1is kind of a moot point because the paper you linked clearly states that wild peppers were cross bred with commercial peppers. That's very traditional plant breeding, no mention of GMOs. Given the blatant fear mongering in the rest of the paper, I'd be floored if they missed a chance to scare people about GMOs in these peppers. So unless the peppers you're asking about are different from the ones in the paper, I'd say they're definitely not GMOs. Also, I don't believe there are any GMO peppers on the market at present.

3. The short version is this. A company, let's say Pioneer seed, patents a breed of corn that has, let's say increased stalk strength for windstorm prone areas. A farmer buys and plants those seeds, sells the resulting crop. The only difference from heirloom seeds is that the farmer is legally prohibited from using that crop as seed corn and selling that crop.

4. So in principle, there isn't really an impact on society from patented seeds. In practice, some of the patent holders have been overly aggressive with there enforcement. IMHO, this is a patent enforcement issue not an issue with the parents themselves. I don't know about Europe but I know that here in the US there is a problem with dubious patents being approved and enforced but again, that's patents as a whole not just seed patents. At this point I'd be more worried about what happens without seed patents. Nobody is going develop seeds except universitys which (at least here in the US) are criminally underfunded. Effectively, our crop technology would stagnant without serious increases in public University funding which I'm a huge supporter of but sadly, can't imagine happening in my lifetime.

I hope I'm not coming off as an asshole here. Just trying to answer your questions honestly.

Since it sounds like you've lived mostly in the south, I'm going to quote some advice my wife gave to a co-worker when she first moved up Georgia.

"You may think you have winter clothes but, you do not. Buy a coat, gloves and, a hat when you get here. They don't carry them heavy enough down there."

Also, if you're going to try to be outside in the winter, consider bomber hats these if you're not familiar. They look dopey but you wouldn't believe how much warmer they keep you. I keep one in the car for emergencies and I'm convinced it's saved my life during some breakdowns at -50.

Don't fall into the St. Cloud mentality of the Twin Cities being 45-60 minutes away meaning you can't take advantage if it.

Also, don't fall for the "The cities are a war zone, you'll get shot down there" crap that a lot of people outside the metro try to sell. Minneapolis really isn't any worse than any other city that size and neither is St. Paul. A lot of the people who are deathly afraid of the cities are really just afraid of cities in general and don't have any real concept of what is or isn't a bad neighborhood.

Also, I'm seconding the food recommendations but I'd add that my wife and I were in St. Cloud this spring and we went to Arroy Thai & Filipino which was also great.

Yeah, back when my wife and I were dating she lived not far north of there. It was shitty but I still bought a lot of toothbrushes, deodorant and such there when I unexpectedly ended up spending the night. Sad to see it go.

I like to say "don't become an anecdote."

Lol, this makes me think of a guy I went to highschool with. He was a farm kid who would get up early and work around the farm before school. One day he spills gas on his flannel shirt before school but doesn't have time to change so he figures it'll air out enough on his way to work (it didn't). Second or third class of the day was shop. He starts working in the welding booth without stopping to put on the flame retardant overcoat. A hot spark hit that gas soaked flannel and dude light up like the human torch. He had some serious burns but makes a full recovery. For years after that though, the shop teacher used to say to anyone who complained about the overcoats, "go ask Phil if they're worth it or not".