2021 thoughts (since nobody made one)

General Chat
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I find it unacceptable that some delivery services will not leave packages unattended even when it’s a relatively low value item. It’s infuriating to have to go to some depot miles away just to retrieve something and usually the next day to boot (by the time the package makes it back to the depot and all that). My understanding is that if you were to claim your packages were stolen on a regular basis then you’d find that the service will no longer be offered to you.

Otherwise, as @yebellz says the tiny amount of theft is just a cost of doing business.

The only downside to having things left unattended is that it’s a sign that you are not home and so leaves you more vulnerable to burglars. I.e. it’s not the package that will be stolen by the more valuable stuff from inside your house.

But anyway, it’s all moot since lockdown and working at home nothing really needs leaving out any more since I’m always in…

And anyway just leaving it outside the door might be safer than leaving it in a “safe place”

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Don’t be modest, fellow-Dutchman. He is a bit more than a racing driver: He is Formula 1 World Champion 2021! :wink:

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Oh, that is very handy … I can see the “dude, that’s two in the price of one” kind of talk immediately going into people’s heads here.

To be honest I feel very bad about that concept. I remember waiting for 20 days for a book from Bookdepository, so I eventually I contacted them and told them it never arrived. They were very polite about it, asked for no proof (they provide free shipping, so no tracking number for the customer - maybe they have one on their end? I do not know) and said “it’s cool, we’ll send you another one” and they did … they eventually both arrived many days later, so I sent them a message that I was very sorry about the whole issue and if I could send them back the book and they were like “no keep it for the inconvenience of waiting for almost a month”.

I was very impressed by that attitude.

It would here :slight_smile:
It is very interesting to find such cultural differences via internet discussions. I really like this aspect of a forum.

We have “cleaners” here that take ANYTHING that is not bolted down :wink:
I’ll give an example, last winter one of my central heating “bodies” burst and subsequently proceeded to try and flood my house. I got on that fast and we got it replaced very soon. The damn thing though weights like 35 kilos of solid metal and with the residual water it was barely possible for us to move it out in the front door of my house without damaging the floor.

So I leave it there. 1 hour later it was gone. :rofl:
You could argue that metal is valuable for scrap, but the same happens with any junk you might leave outside. Old mattresses, old furniture, old clothes. My old bike was nicked like that. :confused:

Packages would not stay on a door for more than 10 minutes and that’s my optimistic estimation.
I can see them following the delivery people and just loading them on their own trucks once the official delivery turned the next corner.

Meh, you could have a relative wear a ski mask and constantly “steal” your packages … you’d even have video proof that there is an actual porch thief. Plus you could only do it when you order expensive stuff.

I can see why that can be annoying, but why can’t they just send an SMS/email “your package arrived, please contact us and tell us when you can be at home to receive it up or if you would like to come to our depot and pick it up yourself?”

I find that a very reasonable system and I’ve never had any issues with that. Plus noone can ever steal my packages because I have not officially received them yet.

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To be fair there is usually a system which either shows you where the driver on the map and how many more deliveries they have before yours or they let you know a one or two hour window when it will arrive and often with the option for them to bring it another day instead. I think if you can’t manage to receive deliveries these days it’s not the delivery people’s fault!

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image

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Is it too early to see how people think 2021 was compared to expectations?

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I loved the Tintin books when I was a kid, and my daughter loved them too. I believe I have all of them. It was one of my father’s happiest book discoveries when they were first published in translation in the U.S. Just looking at that panel brings a smile to my face.

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Here’s our prime minister Mark Rutte, head of the Outbreak Management Team (OMT) Jaap van Dissel, IC specialist and OMT member Diederik Gommers and our minister of health Hugo de Jonge singing a Christmas song:

It’s clearly fake, since Hugo de Jonge never wears normal shoes.

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We count our 2021 day by day (or by hour) while, some future historian will be saying: “The first quarter of the 21st century…” or even “for several millenia between the Iron Age and the xyz age, …”

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I appreciate the perspective. It reminds me of my most successful cartoon gag, which I sold to a nationally syndicated panel some 30 years ago. Scene: two postal workers sorting packages. One asks, “What time is it?” The other answers, “June 26” (the day the panel was published).

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This really depends, though. When looking at, for example, Roman history, we do talk about history in yearly terms, or even in months or days.

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In the grand scheme of things, Roman history will one day be the “homo sapiens era” with a couple of footnotes.

History is too vast to make space for everyone, and our short lives don’t help comprehend this.

(2.000 years and change is not that long ago… :wink:)

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Be ready to die, little grains of sand.

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I don’t expect humanity to last long enough for that to happen, but who knows

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Eventually, maybe extraterrestrials might study and document our single planet grave.

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A little more optimism please. The odds are looking reasonable that you guys may achieve a two planet grave.

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We will all achieve an “everywhere grave” in the heat death of the universe. Unless, as some think, the universe contracts to a new seed and then expands all over again. In that case, don’t expect to be saved via James Blish’s ridiculous ending to The Triumph of Time.

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Is this space correct? Or did you not mean some additional beings from planet earth?

On this topic,

Is the first space correct and is this a judgement on that we will only be able to create one grave of the type “planet”?

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