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Author: AÞling

Aþling's Thoughts is a cultural, political, travel and general information blog. The author is an aspiring author and current IT professional living in beautiful New Hampshire. He has been blogging since 2002 and has been a celiac since the early 1980s. He has traveled to over 40 countries and has lived in three countries on different continents.
How to make your content accessible

How to make your content accessible

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I have long been concerned about following web standards (and any others that apply to me) to ensure maximum accessibility for readers of my website (and others I maintain). I recently attended a brief training that covered the definition of accessibility. It’s wider than I realized. Accessibility can be defined in terms of people’s disabilities – something like “the product or service can be used regardless of a user’s disabilities” – but it’s better to define it more broadly as…

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Being Green in 2022

Being Green in 2022

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I recognize that most of the impacts from climate change can only be mitigated by governments making regulation changes. Without those regulations, landfill might continue to be cheaper than recycling, single-use plastics will remain cheaper than more sustainable alternatives, and gasoline (UK: petroleum) vehicles and machinery will continue to be easier to use than alternatives. A few companies are responsible for most of the world’s carbon emissions, and Americans are by far the largest polluters per head. This article is…

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Car manufacturers selling electric cars (February 2022)

Car manufacturers selling electric cars (February 2022)

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If you’re in the market for a new car, and if you have a place where you can charge it, then you should be looking to buy an electric car. Unless you can’t afford it, anything else – if you don’t mind me being direct – is immoral given that climate change is already happening and is killing five million people per year – a number that will only increase in the future. Shopping for an electric car is hard…

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine

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Today, Russia invaded Ukraine. We have known for a while now that Russia was pondering invading. Ukraine, though not a perfect democracy, has expressed an interest in aligning more with the free countries of Europe and has been getting more democratic recently. As a result, Russia’s dictator, Putin, has decided that it needs to ‘protect’ not only those in the east who consider themselves Russian, but also those in the rest of the country who consider themselves Ukrainian. This sounds…

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A little of being a foreigner

A little of being a foreigner

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I am an American Citizen, but aside from the legal documentation, I am culturally a foreigner. Because of this I have some experiences that I suspect others never have, or have less often. Before I tell this story, I think you need to know about a difference between British and American homes that is really obvious to a visitor from one to the other: British homes are made of different materials than American ones. In England, homes are almost all…

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We know whether the COVID vaccines work

We know whether the COVID vaccines work

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The COVID vaccines have been rejected by some people, especially in the USA. The reasons vary from lies about the use of aborted babies in their production, to doubts about how well they work. (A so-called ‘pro-life’ group has said there are no moral reasons not to use the Moderna, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, or even Johnson and Johnson vaccines – source 1, source 2). To clarify that they do work, these graphs provide a very clear, simple comparison of similar…

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lightbulb in focus
Why you know less than you think

Why you know less than you think

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Everything I know is learned. It’s an important thing to remember – it’s easy to forget and believe that everything you know is true in some fundamental and foundational way. Everything you know is learned too. Let’s unpack that. What do you know to be true? I know that I am writing this at the moment. Well, I think I am. Some dreams are pretty vivid, and hallucinations can be so vivid that people genuinely don’t know what’s going on….

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Our roof after the snow
How not to die because of your roof

How not to die because of your roof

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The title of this article may seem like an easy thing to achieve – don’t climb on it. But this is not about falling off your roof. Let me give you some background. I am from England. In England, the weather ranges from around 80°F (26°C) on occasional days in the summer, to around 32°F (0°C) on occasional days in the winter. Most of the year, the weather hovers around 50°F (10°C) to 60°F (15°C). The air is more humid…

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Windows 11 first thoughts

Windows 11 first thoughts

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I installed Windows 11 on my personal laptop last night because I like to try new things. Some people see an update to Android, or to a program they use, and fear having to learn the changes, or to make things comfortable again. But I am the reverse – if something can be changed, I want to try it out. Every review that I have seen says something like “It’s not finished yet” which is true, so I will ignore…

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