In my country, jury duty can be refused and is deemed as a role, not an obligation. It is an honor, as it is very rare to have such added role in court; takes very complex and often serious crimes. People called for it often accept but I have heard of situations where people object from personal or moral values.

And, again, in my country, voting is not an obligation, nor legal, nor moral. It is a right and the duty to vote is considered a matter of respect towards the right that was acquired through a revolution and the individual right to be part of the political destiny of the nation, no matter how small.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, here, but I don’t care.

A duty arises from a personal sense of necessity to do something. Call moral obligation if it is easier for you. Being moral relative… Obligation is determined, enforced and enforceable by law.

I have the duty of cast my vote in any election, not an obligation.

A simple example.

You be the judge of it:

• punched through a tempered, textured, 3mm thick glass, leading to several cuts on a hand and wrist
• kicked a glass panel on a door and got a nasty cust on my toe
• several instances of cutting myself on different types of thorny bushes
• perforation with glasses rim on my eyebrow
• severe cut on my other eyebrow, another on the bridge of my nose
• broken arm, twice
• fall from a 1st floor balcony, landing on a bush, after breaking a cabinet with my back and legs, until finally reaching the ground
• hundreds, if not thousands, of small scrapes and bruises
• bitten by dogs, leading to deep gouges, on my calves
• severe tear on the back of my left hand, with a broken bone, not exposed, leading to surgery
• many, many, many sprained ankles and wrists
• three pulled teeth plus all the bleeding from losing my baby teeth
• minor burns on hands and fingers, from cooking
• several nasty cuts from kitchen knives and a perforation by a lobster spike, which led to a severe infection, with a piece of lobster shell stuck underneath a finger nail
• a few near choking to death episodes
• two electrocussion incidents (230V), for mere seconds

duty ≠ obligation

To need it explained and clarified into body of law is scary.

I’m not against supporting a software in a recurring form but the web browser is essentially the lock and key of accessing the entirery of what exists outside your machine.

That would garner an immense power to whichever entity developing one. Remember Microsoft and the IE case.

Firefox is not perfect and apparently on a downwards spiral but what made it stand out was because it wanted to be free and for all. Chrome is far from being a good thing.

The Mafia and most, if not all organized crime syndicates, started as a way for people to defend themselves from abusive governments, officials, etc. Mafia thrives by getting along with people, not openly prey on them.

Syndicates also tend to be patriotic, in the sense that they are defending or at least looking to preserve their interests where they are rooted.

Mafia tends to arbour great disdain for police and similar forces. They can be useful if bribeable or somehow coherced to look the other way but they are still police. The enemy.

I’ll give you an extreme example.

In Brasil, the Comando Vermelho is one of the largest, if not te largest, criminal organization on the country. They are well known for their extremely violent and cruel methods. Yet they are the biggest employers in the areas they control. They build schools, pay people for their work (mostly unrelated to criminal activities), distribute food, run clinics. They act as de facto police, courts and punishers, to keep peace. They nearly replace the state because the state nearly abandoned the poorest of poor, amongst who they set grounds, in the favelas.

I can’t imagine the resistance they would pose to an invading force.

And, I can’t confirm this, but I have a memory of reading somewhere that during WW2, the Mafia helped the Allies infiltrate areas.

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Still too rich for my blood

That sounds very nice!

I don’t have the money for a FairPhone.

But unplug from the net? Sounds strange. The model I checked is a fully fledged smartphone. Nothing that signaled the phone was about not having advanced functionalities.

Foreigns agents have no semblance of authority outside their country.

When in doubt call the Carabinieri. Or the local Mafia chapter.

There more subtle ways to sow discord. But carry on. Let’s see of this sets enough asses on fire and meaningful things start being done.

Good

People, let’s dowload the entirery of the thing while it still has some degree of credibility.

My friend, may that dark period of time end soon in your country, and I will gladly show you what proper wine is. And it is not from France.

What’s this? Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed, today?

Hello from Portugal!

We also suffer from combination of rain and waste waters here. And most cities just wave it off, even when solving the problem could be done with very little inconvenience.

But I digress.

What type of installation are you more familiar with?

Most instalations around here are two stage processes, fully biological. Exceptions with terciary processing are very few and with fourth stage processing I have heard about a single one, that once supplied water to a brewery for a proof-of-concept experiment with crafting beer with processed waste water.

I respect your remark. The solar panels are not technically a part of the process but we can agree the use of otherwise vacant space is smart.

I work in the field and some units can in fact produce enough gas to self sustain operation. It is about choosing the right process and the adequate machinery.

Newer systems, with SBRs, do tend to produce a lot less muds. Older systems, like the one I spend more time on, produces a great deal more of muds.

A midsize city around where I live is currently undergoing viability studies to implement a digestor. They are trucking off-site 30 metric tons of dehydrated muds for composting every two or three days. If the muds could be digested first, they could cut back a good deal on the energy bill.

Other places are installing solar panel arrays and considering batteries next.

Hells Bells, I knew. Hells Belle… Glad to meet you.

The issue with sanitation is that it consumes resources, and a good amount of if, in a very short time. And planning and putting it down requires specialized, skilled, work, which costs a lot of money. And maintain and operate it returns a permanent cost.

Politians are not willing to do this and are mostly uncapable of explaining why this should be done. It also does not help most people being completely ignorant or uncaring for ecological impact, unless it comes back to bite their behind.

Waste water management is crucial and it is a source of resources, water only being the first.

Muds can be harvested for digestion, in order to produce methane for generating electricity. Depending on the scale, it can be used to power the plant alone or to inject into the wide power grid.

Digested muds can be further processed by composting and then be funneled towards agriculture and forestry.

Fats can be harvested, purified and transformed into soaps, creams and industrial lubricants. Extremely well purified fats can even be converted to fuel or even added to feeds.

Going green is necessary and extremely profitable.

If enough ambition is put in place, fully organic treatments can be put in place and wild life can be made part, by default, of treating waste waters and fish, water fowls and even plants with secondary uses can be introduced to create another value chain.

However, to kickstart all of this, it is necessary to make people aware that water, regardless carrying waste, is still water and, as such, is precious.

You really should not.

Waste water treatment, in order to reach human consumption grade, undergoes several stages of treatment.

• preliminary

Removes solids, largely unsoluble, be it organic or inorganic

• primary

Forced oxygenization, to activate micro organism capable of digesting the organic matter present. This stage is the most crucial for the entire process.

• secondary

Waters are allowed to settle, in order to separate solids, now highly rich organic mud, from the water, in large pools or tanks, that are continually fed. Entering water displaces already clarified and mostly depleted of oxygen water, which can safely be returned to nature.

• terciary

Previously clarified water undergoes UV treatment and/or has added minute quantities of sodium hypochlorite, for disinfection purposes. Microfiltering can be added subsequently.

This water is safe for use in street cleaning, irrigation, industrial uses, fire fighting, etc.

• quarternary

Obligatory microfiltering, followed by reverse osmosis process, to remove heavy metals and trace chemicals, followed by filtering through activated charcoal filters. Mineral (sand and rock) filters are then used to give back minerals to the water, to give it an organoleptic profile.

Stabilization of pH and final clarification can be done, before being reintroduced to the supply network.