Been there, done that.

Back in the early 1990’s i went to a grade school for sick and disabled children. I have a visual disability myself. Some of the kids were very, very sick. Leukemia, lung diseases, etc. So we’d usually lose about two, three kids per year.

The Christmas holiday was always rough. Some would hold on just to celebrate one last Christmas. When we’d return back to school in January, you’d always hope to start with the same number of classmates…

I’m always amazed cat owners let them roam. You’re putting a LOT of trust in both the animal as well as your greater environment. Just the other week I read a message from our local animal shelter. They had found a cat which had gotten poisoned. Either intentionally or unintentionally, that couldn’t be determined.

They had to put it down before the owner was found, it was that sick. I’d feel pretty guilty if that was my cat.

Cats can get run over, abducted, get hurt, etc. Even ignoring the fact that it’s a living creature, it’s also an expensive piece of property and vet bills aren’t cheap either.

Yep. It was pretty wild that some people actually fell for the Palestine argument. That was only really an issue for a very small minority of the left. Most average Americans couldn’t find it on a map, much less a reason to give a shit about it.

Ultimately, it wasn’t even necessary to try and fracture the left with the Palestine argument. It was already fractured enough that she never stood a chance.

Even in a fairly normal race, it’s silly to think voters would care more about people half a world away, rather than the issues they’re dealing with themselves like the high cost of living, housing shortages, etc.

They also made some mistakes by accidentally including some victims! I read there was at least a few people on there who actually died in a camp.

It’s also worth pointing out that ‘suspected’ is quite a vague term. If a neighbour didn’t like you and tipped you as a collaborator, you might very well be on that list despite being perfectly clean.

Still, it’s a good thing they’re at least acknowledging this uncomfortable part of Dutch history. Some families will finally have some closure/answers as to what their (grand)parents did or didn’t do during the war.

That’s why I avoid vacations abroad like the plague. I absolutely loathe being around people, and people on vacation abroad tend to be the worst version of themselves. I’d much rather stay at home than deal with that.

Yeah, so I noticed :D A YouTube video I saw also mentioned T-Square as another one that’s likely to’ve influenced video game music.

Listening to some of Casiopea’s tracks definitely evokes that feeling of ‘I might’ve heard that in Ridge Racer or Gran Turismo’ without being able to pin down a specific track.

I’m not seeing a track called Countdown on YT music though, what album is that on?

Huh, that’s actually pretty cool music.

Well if you look at his musical career, it’s relatively short prior to 1987. So not really.

He started singing in a church choir when he was 10. He played drums in some local bands and left school at 16. He started playing drums for bands that played clubs. In 1985, he became lead singer for the soul band FBI and was noticed by a record producer. His first real songs were singig on ‘Let It Be’ by a charity group Ferry Aid, after the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. That was march 1987. Followed that up by a duet with Lisa Fabien in may. And in august 1987 Never Gonna Give You Up was released, which he’d actually recorded on january 1 st that year.

It’s certainly… not common for someone to go from ‘shy guy playing drums in a nightclub band’ to having a chart topping hit in 25 countries in less than five years. He managed to actually have a pretty good career after that, though none of his work will ever reach the lofty heights of Never Gonna Give You Up in terms of sheer popularity. And the fact that the song managed to be a hit, disappear, and come back ten times as strong because of a joke is like a fluke on top of a fluke.

1987 to be precise. It was quite a popular song when it was released; it was a chart topper in 25 countries. It was played for weeks on the radio and the single sold like hot cakes.

What’s even wilder: it was Rick Astley’s first solo hit. He had done duets and sang on other people’s tracks, but that was his first single from his debut studio album. And it went straight to the fucking moon.

He had a fair few hits and ‘retired’ in 1993. He was 27 at the time! He returned in 2000, and in 2007 the rickroll became a thing. And the rest you know.

As an 80’s kid, you can imagine it was wild to see kids using one of my favorite songs ever as a meme. I’m just glad Astley himself took the jokes in a good nature and is enjoying his continued career because of it. Gotta be even stranger for him to see the song get back to this level of popularity well over 20 years post release because of a dumb internet joke.

You’ll get there eventually; we can’t all be as progressive :D

I honestly don’t think people care that much about a woman running. Because at that level, their gender is not ‘man’ or ‘woman’ but ‘politician’.

People didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she was quite unlikeable and the campaign centred around it being ‘her turn’. People didn’t vote for Harris because she was generally invisible and had to run a very truncated campaign. The fact that both were women was the least of their worries.

Other countries have elected women leaders with no issues. Heck, you see women presidents all the time in movies and TV shows. Nobody bats an eye.

So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.

If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.

Ayyyy, a wild Well There’s Your Problem reference. By far my favourite podcast.

Ah good, I really could use another two years of working from home.

You can absolutely mean those things. I’ve said them to others, so they don’t offend me.

I agree that everyone’s a unique individual. But when looking at problems on a global scale, you need to approach things objectively and dispassionately.

From a purely statistics standpoint, I and 1 sibling should be here. Because that’s the replacement rate for when my parents die. A life for a life, so to speak.

Problem is, my parents had three kids. So now we’ve already gone above that replacement rate. And globally, more people have kids above the replacement rate, hence the population growth.

I don’t have or want kids. That’s not for me, and I don’t want them to be born in a world that’s going to get rapidly worse to live in. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing or capable to make such choices.

Well you can also turn that around and ask: why do we need more people? What does another individual add?

One might argue that a baby born today might cure cancer or all known diseases. They might invent free, unlimited energy. They could be the greatest writer to ever live. Humanity’s best poet. He could bring about world peace.

But he could also be our next Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc.

Earth is a finite planet. It’s not getting any bigger. So every human we add to it, takes up yet another square meter that consumes resources for an average of 80 years or so. I’ve seen my country get more crowded and the problems it causes.

We don’t need more people. At all.

I did that test late last year, and repeated it with another town this summer to see if it had improved. Granted, it made less mistakes - but still very annoying ones. Like placing a tourist info at a completely incorrect, non-existent address.

I assume your result also depends a bit on what town you try. I doubt it has really been trained with information pertaining to a city of 160.000 inhabitants in the Netherlands. It should do better with the US I’d imagine.

The problem is it doesn’t tell you it has knowledge gaps like that. Instead, it chooses to be confidently incorrect.

There’s also simply way too many people on earth as it is. My country - one of the smallest on earth- had 15 million people back in 1995. Right now, 30 years later, we’re at 18 million. And in 2037, they’re expecting 19 million.

Small numbers on a global scale, but definitely a lot of growth that’s causing issues. There’s a housing shortage, rising prices, healthcare and pensions are under threat, etc etc.

And there’s places that are much, much worse. For example, even India is encouraging population growth. When the country is still very poor. That’s going to help their economy in the short run, but it’s going to be a much larger problem down the line.

We need a controlled population decline, sooner rather than later.

You know, just for you: I just changed it to the Coca Cola santa :D

It is; they’ve got an awesome collection of steam locomotives and matching rolling stock. They also do a lot of restoration work.

Here’s actually a shot from the railroad crossing at the end of our street. And yes, the locomotive is ‘backwards’ in this configuration, as it can equally pull in both directions. Makes it a lot easier that they don’t need to turn the locomotive itself around at either end.