Aceticon

As a Portuguese (that has also lived in a few other countries in Europe) I would say that it's more that there is a range of emotions that men can express without that being frowned upon were certain things are still frowned upon if you show them openly (mainly around sadness) though for example openly showing tenderness for your partner or children is expected and even approved (unlike certain other cultures were men are expect to be distant).

Mind you, in some cultures the limits on expression of emotions or selectivity about which emotions you are expected to express is pretty high for both men and women (for example, the Dutch in general tend to refrain from expressing much emotion to strangers) and in some cases there is even such a strong expectation that you react in certain ways that it leads to people in general faking expressions of emotion (the English upper and upper middle classes are pretty big on showing the "appropriate" reaction independently of feeling it).

I would say (from contact with Americans and consuming some American media as well as having lived in England) that the expectations on what emotions people should be expressing are quite different and in England they're even very much defined by people's social class (for example, the "English Gentleman" is entirely a façade - all about what you show, not at all about what you think - and occupies the same place in terms of male behaviour expectations for traditional old-money upper class English men as the bossy slightly-angry assertive go-gotter seems to occupy in the US).

So far I generally have seen a tendency for frowning upon grown up men expressing sadness for themselves (though in some countries, not for expressing sadness in empathy with others and their pain, especially if they're close family) and have also noticed equivalent expectations on the expression of emotion by women (for example, it seems to me that middle and upper class English women have a massive weight of social expectations on them in terms of what they're expect to show to others - including the emotions they express - in lots of situations, and a lot of it is about reacting with the "appropriate" emotion in some situations even if they don't feel it)

I've learned to free my emotions a lot more by studying Acting (by, for a few years, doing short acting courses as an adult whilst living in London): it turns out modern acting techniques - the stuff that roughly falls under the Method Acting umbrella - are all about feeling truthfully as if you were indeed that character you're playing living that specific situation, so essentially I had a pretty much judgment free (in terms of other people judging you) license to let myself go and fully feel and show it (as that "person" which was the character in that situation).

Curiously it also unlocked my empathy (which turns out to be so high I'll literally yawn from seeing animals yawn) though I'm not sure if my blocking of most of my Empathy until then was due to social expectations on how men are supposed to behave or a childhood self-defense mechanism due to one of my parents being VERY intense and emotionally selfish (it makes sense I would block it merely not to constaly be overwhelmed by somebody else's rollercoaster of emotions).

All this even though I'm Portuguese and thus grew up in a culture were people are very expressive (compared to what I saw living in both Northern European and Anglo-Saxon countries, so think something like Italians), and all that expressiveness is backed by actual emotion (people really are enthusiastic or angry or saddened by what the other person telling you their story went through), though I would say that the range of emotions men are socially expected to express is limited to mainly positive emotional states or anger-related emotions.

Anyways, just my 2c as I think it's an unusual point of view and maybe food for thought.

PS: One of the things I learned in Acting is that not only does your body follow your mind but also your mind follows your body (really: if you have any ability for introspection try walking with a confident walk and see how it makes you feel. Then try a downtrodden walk or a fearful walk) which kind dovetails with the whole idea that if you're not expected to show certain kinds of emotional states you end up not feeling such emotions in day to day (except when you're overwhelmed by it and it hits you like a ton of bricks).

"Perceived value"

Without that element, there would be no explanation for Marketing other than pure Brand Awareness promotion working (and McDonalds is definitely beyond needing more Brand Awareness, at least in the Developed World)

Even then, it doesn't explain a lot of how Marketing does its work (namelly the stuff they took from Psychology and use to do things like create associations between brand and specific feelings on people's subconscious - you know, the way cars are "freedom" and perfumes are "sex").

And don't get me started on other techniques that prey of human cognitive weaknesses (for example, FOMO would not work with the fabled Homo Economicus that underpins so much of Free Market Theory)

Anyways, a ton of present day enshittification (and that includes this kind of price inflation) relies on people having a well entrenched positive perception of a brand after years of having a relationship with it (i.e. chosing it as customers) and there being quite a lot of momentum behind it. It also relies a lot on using a "slow boiling" effect to keep people from spotting the full picture of the changes.

Actually technology such as solar concentrators using molten salt is perfectly capable of supplying power at night.

In addition to that Portugal has also invested a lot in Wind generation (which, for all my criticism of my own country, was actually a wise bet) which doesn't suffer from the problem of not producing at night or when there is heavy cloud cover.

Further, power consumption at night is mostly residential since industry seldom operates at those hours, and if electricity prices for business customers are made to float with availability, in a solar-heavy production environment big industrial consumers would be fitting their consumption to the period when solar is up.

Also, consider that even when the days are shorter in Portugal, they're still longer than most of Europe because of how far South the country is compare to most of the rest - even at the peak of Winter days are at worst about 9h long.

As for that problem in drier years you pointed out, it's even more of a problem with the hydro-heavy generation that the country has at the moment, so having more solar would make it less of a problem: yeah, drier years would affect the ability to store excess power produced by solar in dams but, guess what, solar would still be producing fine during the day even in the worst drought whilst hydro would not, same as it happened 2 years ago when the share of renewables was down to less than 50% exactly because a longuish period of drought forced most hydro-generation to stop.

Solar is hardly a silver bullet, but for a country like Portugal which has excellent conditions for it, solar should be a far larger slice of the generation makeup than it is, especially considering that the single biggest source of renewable energy - hydro - is the one which will be worst hit with the effects of Global Warming.

But yeah, your point is valid that renewables, at least in Portugal, won't work by themselves unless there is some deeper interconnection with the rest of Europe and even Northern Africa to balance production across a wider area (when wind is not blowing somewhere, it still blows somewhere else, and the same applies to cloudy weather vs sunny weather), some kind of energy market which incentivizes heavy consumers to consumer the most when solar is at its peak and for investors to actually invest in energy storage to make money from "arbitraging the sunlight" (i.e. store cheap electricity during the day to sell it for more at night) or to use the kind of solar technology that also works during the night (i.e. molten salt solar concentrators). I say "at least in Portugal" because the whole problem with Global Warming and hydro-generation is going to be very nasty in Portugal (according to Global Warming models, which predict most of the country will basically turn into a desert) but some other places in Europe are going to be a lot more rainy and hence can reliably get their renewables from hydro.

That said, I am almost 100% certain that the politicians in Portugal will not make the right choices and instead will make the choices that maximize short-term profitability for the largest energy company in the country, because that's mainly what they've been doing in the last couple of decades and they have a similar broad pattern of behavior of sacrificing the mid and long term for the short term (for example, the way housing has been handled in Portugal has caused a massive brain drain and further fall in birth rates in a country already suffering from an aged population, so in 10 or 20 years' time there will be massive problems with things like pensions because the country will have too many old people, not enough young people and most of the younger won't be the highly educated children of the locals but imported ones who generally have significantly less formal education hence less capability to work in high-value-added domains).

I wouldn't put any bets down on which one is winning the "most crooked shitshow" competition...

Solar has only started growing very recently as the government has focused on large projects and made sure home generation for feed-in is nonviable.

This choice has, "of course", no relation to how massive projects means lots of money greasing palms whilst home generation does not.

Portugal has a huge installed base of hydro-generation, some of which is capable of being used to store excess energy (by pumping it up to the upper basin of the dam for later use in generation).

The mix of lots of hours of sunlight, the country being not so hot that solar panels suffer from lower efficiency due to heat and hydro-generation which can be used for storing excess power produced for use later, makes the country pretty much optimal for solar generation.

No, the reason for the crap legislation of solar self-generation can probably be found in the deep incestuous relationship between the two main political parties and the largest power generation company of the country, alongside Portugal being one of the most corrupt countries in the EU (notably, the country in the EU which has the least number of anti-Corruption measures from the EU-Commission implemented)

Most of which is hydro-generation, and most of that is the product of an installed base or projects started way back in Fascist days (so, half a century ago). By the way, this is way is why the year before this value was much lower - below 50% - since there was a drought in the country (which, by the way, is something Global Warming models predict will become a far more common occurrence) so hydro-generation produced way less.

Meanwhile solar generation, which should be very widespread in the country containing the capital of Europe with the most hours of sunlight per year (and yet not as hot as North Africa, hence solar panels here do do not suffer as much from heat related lowering of efficiency) has barely started going and home solar generation is pretty limited due to - as somebody else already pointed out - really bad legislation (which, knowing my country as I do, I have little doubt it's the product of Corruption in favour of well connected companies such as the largest energy provider in the country - which, "curiously", employs lots of politicians from the two main parties).

The country could have massive amounts of home solar - like Germany but with way more productivity due to way more hours of sunshine - but it doesn't and solar is all about massive projects, which, surprise surprise, just happen to have the biggest payouts for politicians who need their hands greased.

As usual, my country is a shit show which only succeeds at something by sheer absolute luck and hence not at all in a reliable and constant way, because it sure as hell isn't due to it being properly managed or having clean competent politicians.

Portugal is so sunny that Lisbon is literally the ~~city~~ capital of Europe with the most hours of sunlight per year.

The complexity is not in the "writing words", it's in knowing which words to write.

The best possible proof that Belgium is not just a place set up by The Netherlands and France as a network of gas stations to travel between those countries is that the roads in Belgium are visibly worse than in The Netherlands or France (really: you can tell exactly were the border is when driving into and out of Belgium by the change in the condition of the road).

The problem for the Belgium friend is that he's not keen on admitting that if Belgium wasn't a real nation but rather a Franco-Dutch partnership, it would be better run.

At least in some EU countries EULAs aren't even valid in any way form or shape because they're considered an unilateral attempt to force new contract terms after a sale, which is an implicit contract.

Absolutely, put a contract in front of people and say "sign here" before they pay and it's valid (although even then, some terms are never valid since certain things can't legally be signed away in a contract), try and force new contractual terms after a sale has been closed and it's not at all valid.