They accomplish that and the already diminutive presence they have in the world will shrink even more.

The French Foreign Legion is an elite force, open to non french individuals to enlist.

Because it is, by nature, a multicultural force, the legion has a specific trainning regime to develop unit spirit. These are not cannon fodder: any individual that can make the FFL, can after three years of service request french citizenship.

Russia seems to be just trying to find bodies to fill the ranks.

Okay, so I’m going to leave my two cents here.

I’m European, from a left leaning, liberal (in the sense we actively recognize individual rights and liberties but one individual freedom can not tramble the next), and this exact same legal disposition exists.

Allow me to share the explanation I was given.

Fresh water is not easy to manage, sanitize transport and distribute. The operation is insanely complex and expensive, with huge expenses for quality control, infrastructure and machinery.

Water is a public service here; it is a guaranteed right. You need to reach extreme lengths to have your water service shut off, like having several months of delinquent bills.

however, all of this infrastructure needs to be paid for and it is paid through a serious of added charges, some percentually calculated based off the amount of water you use, others are fixed values charged as service fees (like sanitation and garbage collection).

This implies that if all the water consumed in an entire building was being paid by a single person, the water itself would be paid, but related costs would only be charged once, meaning the portion of money collected to cover the entire maintenance of the services would be severely reduced.

By enforcing that for each home there must be a separate service, the overall cost is diluted and the value service is maintained as cheap as humanly possible and the basic services are maintained as public services, out of the reach of private sector interest.

And, please take my word for, you do not want water, sewage or garbage collection controlled by private companies.

These are sectors where there is a limit for how much expense you can cut. It requires constant investment in machinery and infrastructure to just maintain operations. Improving efficiency requires even higher investment that is only recoupable after several years, if ever.

Privates work for profit. These entities work to just break even, although some can be highly profitable, but profit is always destined to reinvest.

Today, I was the 1% getting to know something new.

Done!

Some good humored banter never hurt anybody.

That is the sole thing I draw the line. Scynical as it may sound, ink on skin, no. It feels as an ownership brand that can never be taken off or thrown away.

I personally dislike the notion of being permanent on another life. Either because things don’t work, people grow apart or someone simply dies, from misfortune, sickness or old age, nobody should be tied to another, in any way. Life should go on. Must.

And I’m happily and for a long time monogamous.

What I wanted to convey is, if the mesh is fine enough, the pattern can get marked on the skin, leaving an elegant but discreet - shall we call it - love brand behind.

If you’re going to cheat, at least be bold enough about it and keep the wedding band on.

Use metal and artistic value, like this.

And if the pattern is open enough, sun ligh will leave the mark on the skin. It’s one very discreet way to keep the “mark” of who we love, skin deep.

Hate requires too much emotional investment. What I want is options.

You can’t know everything.

You’re welcome.

It’s a hobby as it is.

If I ever manage to sell enough copies of it to be able to pay for a Kagi subscription, I’ll do it and make it public knowledge.

Read somewhere on the thread Ecosia is part of Bing ecosystem.

That was one of the most out of the blue comments I have ever read. It sounded so… unreal. Something out of a sitcom. Then I read “sugartits” is the name of the lemmy you were replying to. That’s was really top mark. Kudos for you.

Okay.

Now that we already know we are pretty much at the hands of one pupeteer, what options are there?

I already read about Kagi (apologies if mispelled) but I like to write as a hobby and 300 searches per month go fast.

What other options are there?

Edit:

For those who may be arriving now:

• Kagi seems to be a good option for an alternative search engine; it is a paid service, for which I don’t have the €€€ right now. Many speak very well about it.
• SearXNG is a thing as well, to my understanding a decentralized search system. Worth the try, in my opinion. If it’s something that is decentralized, it is worthy to support and divulge.
• There is mojeek.com, supposedly not very good but any option that goes against the monopoly is worth the try! I’m going to try this one.
• Brave.com is an option but is a bit shady.
• You should try Ecosia if you want to support reforestation efforts. Read somewhere in the thread it is part of the Bing ecosystem.
• Yep is a thing as well. Somewhere in the thread, a lemmy points they use the search results for AI trainning. So… That is that.
• And it seems there is a search engine by the name of dogpile.com.
• Startpage is another search engine (portal?) suggested by another user. I’ve used it before and like it. Read somewhere it somehow piped a standard google search but removed tracking and ads.
• and I just remembered Presearch.com. This is a really shady one (crypto warning!) that I suspect is a fork/collab with Brave Browser. I’ve used it, they have reward-per-search reward system (or had) where they give you crypto for every search. Good results, some that don’t come up neither on DDG nor Google.

p.p.s Should I start categorizing these from “shady” to “worthy”?

p.p.s 2 Does anyone remember StumbleUpon? I know it was never a search engine to begin with but it was the best source of good internet content I ever got acquainted to.

Can we get something like that back?

Ouch!

Stronk. The joke is “stronk”.

Nobody is discussion the level on convinience for it, here

The removable battery is achievable by moving to Europe.

If that is enough for your needs, that’s fine.