Don't forget that wind turbines still produce at night when there is less demand. So either you use that power to pump water upstream (if you have dams) or you can use it to produce Hydrogen.

There is also work underway on solar cells which directly produce hydrogen instead of electricity.

Or you can put it into a battery.

Years ago the Portuguese government encouraged consumers to submit their receipts in a portal and each submitted receipt was a entry to a raffle where the prizes were luxury cars. This way they could match the receipts from consumers with the ones reported by the shops. It felt wrong to put citizens policing the shops but it worked.

I remember visiting Italy and we were warned repeatedly to always take and keep receipts, even if just getting a gelato -- that after the transaction the police could demand it, with punitive measures if you don't have it. This system was to ensure that shopkeepers were actually keeping receipts.

The GST/HST system in Canada sort of serves the same purpose. It is an overarching tax system that seems redundant in that every business then can claim back every bit of GST they've paid out. But to do so you have to have receipts for everything, from every source, and when they randomly do an audit they aren't checking you as much as they're building a profile of every other business you interacted with.

Tax avoidance is a problem in every country.

At a different level that's part of the reason receipts exist, and why you occasionally see things like "if we don't give you a receipt your order is free."

In those cases it's typically about preventing the employees from not ringing up the sale and just pocketing the cash. The receipt proves that the order was entered into the system. Same idea, just a difference of who's stealing from whom.

Hm, I suppose that scam is less of a problem in the era of credit cards.

Taiwan does that too. If you leave the country you can drop them off at one of the charity boxes using it for income.

The system still in place, if I'm not totally mistaken. (I haven't checked, because I usually don't give away my tax number for sheer laziness - I still don't know it by heart.)

we have something similar in Czech republic. It's called Účtenkovka (receipt lottery) and some con men discovered it and started their scams there.

Amazing! Thank you so much for this. I am getting myself an A3 diagram of my hometown.

I wonder how many people will actually buy this. Personally, I would rather get a box full of veggies than some internet karma.

I wonder if there are any costs to use the waterways. Even if the boats are slower than trains, couldn't it be the case that with all the layovers a train takes as much or more time than a boat? It would be cool to have a boat service similar to Flixbus.

Yeah, there is: speed. I work on software for inland cargo shipping, and the major factor there is speed and inflexibility of destinations. Trains, at least for cargo, are easily faster by a factor of two, if not faster. Going from the port of Rotterdam to Groningen (north of NL) takes about 24 hours by barge, but will take only around 8 hours by cargo train. By passenger train similar distances will take around 4 to 5 hours.

Usually this is not too big of an issue when transporting cheap bulk goods, but especially food and other perishables (flowers!) are difficult when it comes to transportation over water.

It's quite curious how the Europe is the only place with real inland shipping networks over water, other regions do not even come close in terms of amount of cargo transported, even though the natural resources are often there. The rest of the world pretty much relies on trains and trucks to transport cargo. There is quite some room for disruption here, but it's a hard an capital intensive market to break into.

EDIT: To come back to your point about people, they often value time quite highly. Not very many people take a ship to travel the world anymore, even though there is a lot of the earth reachable by the sea. Natural resources is only one part of the equation, and usually the trade-off is between time and money.

Actually most other continents have far less rivers which lend themselves to easy shipping. Also development in Europe was ahead of the curve in the last couple hundred years (and before we did not have the technology for locks and easy travel upriver). Now that everyone has catched up (or is in the process) there are fare quicker/easier/cheaper/flexible options like trains, trucks, planes available. So the pressure to build good waterways is way less.

Indeed. You couldn't offer the same level of services that a cruise ship does because of height restrictions and it's too slow for fast-paced youngsters. Price-wise it's hard to compete with interrail so I guess it would be a very niche thing. Which leads me to wonder if there is anyone hitchhiking barges.

Passing through a lock usually needs a fee (by the ship for passenger ships, by the ton for transport ships).

But other than that, ships (with speeds of up to 100 km/h for fast hydrofoils but rarely for the whole trip) are always going to be slower than trains (usually much faster than 100 km/h).

As an example, Vienna-Budapest used to be served by hydrofoil for a 6-hour trip, which takes 2 and a half hours by train. Calais-Dover is also a good example of how train is faster than ship (30 minutes vs 1h30), even in this instance of a very straight route for the ships.

I like taking a boat when I have the option, but it's rarely actually a more practical option than the train. It can be better than a bus though.

> Calais-Dover is also a good example of how train is faster than ship (30 minutes vs 1h30), even in this instance of a very straight route for the ships.

Do Calais-Dover ferries sell things on board? I imagine that the ferries in the Baltic Sea have no incentive to cut journey times, because so much of their profits come from getting people to eat, drink, and buy booze on board. Passengers need time to wander through the onboard shops and restaurants.

Yes they've got restaurants and shops and stuff.

And soon, possibly the return of duty free.

> As an example, Vienna-Budapest used to be served by hydrofoil for a 6-hour trip, which takes 2 and a half hours by train.

That sounds cool, but yes, not competitive unless you are looking for the enjoyment of being on a boat.

More practically, Vienna-Bratislava is 59 or 66 minutes by train, 75 minutes by boat. Depending on your exact departure and destination points, that might actually save a few minutes.

Much of that hydrofoil 6 hours is probably spent at the 5 locks in the Danube along that stretch. And not even in the locks, but waiting your turn for the lock.

So, unless you are looking for a tour of the steel-and-concrete locks of the Danube, the hydrofoil trip may not be for you.

It's a lot slower than trains.

Having done a few Barge Holidays in the UK on a 72 foot narrow boat the slow speed is relaxing, though doing the Tardebigge Flight (30 locks) is hard work.

Also being able to park the barge in front of the RSC and get tickets to see Kenneth Branagh was a highlight of one holiday

Generally the navigation authority will levy a toll (based on tonnage or vessel size), or annual licence charge.

I could argue that that's just your opinion and of an handful of other rival club supporters.

It's a nice story but I've seen this parenting technique applied in our western society:

- "Don't do this or the police will arrest you".

- "eat you yogurt or that kid over there is going to eat it".

Isn't this fearmongering?

I'll ask, "Can I have your yogurt?" Loss aversion kicks in pretty quickly. I don't think it's "fear" exactly because they can say no.

I think the police example is bad. We're based in the UK and we tell our children that the police are there to help. I don't want my children to grow up scared of the police.

I do, because I don’t want them to get shot (US obviously).

I was in Thailand last November and I spent some days in Krabi. It's so overly touristic that in most "paradisiac" beaches you cannot even take a decent nap with all the noisy long-tail boats going back and forth. Even though I contributed for the overexploration, I wasn't ready for this. I wouldn't be surprised if they start restricting access to other places like Railay.

How was Ao Nang? Is it bearable? (last time I went was 5 years ago).

I stayed a few nights in Ao Nang and even though is quite packed you can still find places to eat without reserving beforehand. I used it more as a base to visit the surroundings, as the beach there doesn't look that inviting with all the boats and the occasional sewer. I was expecting it to be more "Thai", instead as I walked down the street I heard the same radio hits I hear in Europe. But that's just my expectations hitting the globalization wall. On a positive note I really liked northern Thailand, the days I spent in Chiang Mai were definitely the best days of the trip.

I was shocked when I got a Thai massage there some years back and the woman asked me where I was from. 'Germany.' 'And you speak ENGLISH?!?!' That was very telling about the kind of people they usually get I think.

I exported the list and created a small node app to sort the colors: https://github.com/dcustodio/colorcount the top five is #00000 (66 occurrences), #CC0000 (18), #FF6600 (12), #FF0000 (10), #FFCC00 (8)

This is a really tool. I've always been meaning to create a list of all the works that use BrandColors or are derived from it. If I ever get around to doing that, I'll make sure to include this.