Consumption tax is sales/VAT tax excluding some necessities and capital goods. Yes, there are some awkward edge cases: in the UK the exclusions were food and children's clothes, which leads to battles over prepared cold food (e.g. sandwich), takeaway and restaurant dining.
Sin taxes are obviously things society might want to discourage, mainly for health reasons, like alcohol and smoking, but also gambling and externalities, like pollution. Some might stretch that to all carbon emissions to moderate climate change.
Don't tax things you want: working / income and investment / capital gains.
Inheritance tax is doubly wrong because the wealth is already taxed, and death is unavoidable (but emigration is possible, which might help in some countries).
- Photography, not to take better photos, but to see the world more continuously and deeply.
- Architecture, not to build anything, but to be more aware of urban context, visual design, practical use and emotional response in the built environment.
- Music, not to read a score or play an instrument, but to really hear the structure of music, appreciate melody, pattern, balance, pace, production, individual virtuosity and harmonious combination.
Live out of a suitcase, travel the world, hang out with a wide selection of excellent mathematicians, write joint papers with many of them, when you get bored or stuck, pack the suitcase and keep moving - for your whole life.
Presumably this reduces the beam footprint on the ground,
hence increases the bandwidth available to individual users
in dense urban environments (reduced sharing).
China is the world's second largest producer of silver, after Mexico and ahead of Peru.
It is introducing licensing for export of silver starting on 1 January 2026.
There is speculation that the new regulations will favor a few large companies, slow the flow of exports, and provide a mechanism for the government to impose explicit 'critical mineral' export controls on silver in the future.
The name 'Gobi Wall' seems to refer to the section of the wall within Mongolia. Its garrisons and forts are numbered from G01 at the western end of the section, where the wall crosses the border.
