Crow has ulterior motives

…you don’t know how lucky you are, boy!
Back in the US…
Back in the US…
Back in the USSR!

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The windows in my freshman-year dorm (a late-60s, early-70s era building) had windows that couldn’t be opened. That’s pretty common for dorms. Prevents rowdy kids throwing stuff out of them.

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Time to shovel the nest. Better get a spoon.

That sounds really quite wasteful.

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Also sometimes useful to keep small children from falling to their deaths. (This might also apply to drunk college students, depending on the height of the buildling)

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Actually, by using hot water boilers in a central location which then provide the hot water/air across the city/district, it is far more energy efficient than local/house heaters which run purely on electricity. The local heaters may not be energy efficient/maintained and cause higher electricity usage. Since the central boilers use hot water, a part of it is recycled and is environment friendly, while also helping save energy cost by increasing the ambient temperature within the boiler stations via the steam, thus using lesser heat.
Of course, this can be vetted by actual calculations by some agency, but this is my understanding.

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oh and since its a VERY cold country, this really helps the poor. They dont die of cold at least :wink:

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The architect who designed the college I went to is said to have said that there are only two models for student halls of residence; prisons, and homes for the elderly. He went with homes for the elderly. Opening windows, walk in showers, ramps and wide staircases - could have been a lot worse.

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As I understand it, in the Soviet era the State provided the necessities very cheap - tiny flats, public transport, heating, water, and black bread, which was vitamin and mineral fortified so you could live off it if you had to. If you wanted more it was up to you. Talk of a basic income is a “capitalist” take on this.

Also:

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(I don’t have a widget for Cyrillic on my computer, I have to cut and paste from other sources. I am also out of practice with my Russian, so forgot spoon was feminine.)

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I did consider withdrawing the post as it came over as smartass, but it was one of my Russian lesson days and after looking at all the red ink on my last piece, I had the urge to correct someone else. Sorry.

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China too, despite the pollution.

ETA: Well, not all buildings are heated this way, but for those that are, apparently the way to adjust the temperature is by opening the window.

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They should have tried some reflective cake.

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Perfectly OK.

I always thought it was interesting that fork and spoon are feminine, but knife is masculine-- very obvious and ancient reasons for that I’m sure.

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The oldest words tend not to follow the rules - like dyadya being masculine. Fork and spoon are comparatively recent words whereas knife is very ancient.
And some words just have gender because of accidents of spelling. In France when a soldier (soldat) goes on guard duty he changes gender (la sentinelle).
I think languages were designed to frustrate computer translation.

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