Tropical regions? Look at the guy! This is clearly somewhere in Eastern Europe!

It’s really pretty but I’m glad I’m not down there in all that traffic!

Granddaughter was the first one to get blocked!

A trillion bucks, but not in cash; in shares of those companies. Try to sell it all for cash and you tank the share price. People lose their jobs, pension funds that own shares in those companies lose value.

That’s the trouble with taxing wealth. It’s not liquid like income. All that net worth is tied up in the companies and not easily accessed.

I’ve looked around quite a bit for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. No one seems to have the complete series. The show ran nightly for 30 years and amassed 6714 episodes so it would be quite a large torrent.

Something can be untrue without being a lie. Generally we like to say that for something to be a lie requires an intent to deceive. If I tell you “the next bus is coming at 3:30pm” and it arrives at 3:32, was I lying? No, the bus was just late.

Anyway, most of these religions are very old and it’s hard to say we know anything about the mindset of the people who started them. Having said that, Scientology is not so old and based on Hubbard’s other writings we could probably make a solid case that he was intending to deceive people. So I don’t mind if you call that one a lie!

Rice pudding. Tapioca pudding. Both excellent with raisins.

I do love stuffing with dried cranberries though! And traditional Christmas fruitcake with myriad dried fruits and nuts!

Convenience is an umbrella term. There are a thousand different reasons people choose convenience and not all of them are synonymous with laziness. Single parents, working multiple jobs, with disabilities that limit mobility, lack of a car, not enough time to make a trip on public transit, lack of public transit options in their area, and countless more.

The ability to just choose to take a bunch of extra time, or take a car to go pick up an item, is a luxury and a privilege. And all that just to spite bezos and make you happy? Not reasonable.

I’m not describing any state solution!

Right but this is a separate issue. My original comment was about Israelis whose families have been living in that region of the world for millennia. They have a right to be there. They are not equivalent to colonists from Europe arriving in the Americas.

The Israeli government uses antisemitism as a weapon to attack their critics. They conflate criticism of the Israeli government with attacks on Jews. It’s bullshit, duplicitous rhetoric.

But here we are conflating Israelis who can trace their ancestry to that region for millennia with (a minority of) European Jews who moved there during/after WW2, and calling all of them colonists. Now we are being duplicitous!

The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.

The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.

Yeah, especially if you don’t have a car. Going across town to buy one little knick knack can be an all day affair, with 2 public transit fares included.

This may explain why Amazon is much more popular in North America than Europe: public transit. So if you want to stick it to Jeff, work for better public transit and more walkable cities!

Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.

When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.

Absolutely! Taboos are one of the biggest aphrodisiacs! If it were out in the open and fully accepted then it would lose all the appeal!

Religion is a product of oral tradition, taboo, and superstition. These features of human behaviour played a valuable role in protecting humans from dangers we did not individually understand. Fires, lightning, floods, drought, poisons, diseases (especially sexually transmitted diseases) underlie much of the religious beliefs and other cultural superstitions you can see even today.

A favourite of mine is the processing of cassava aka manioc by indigenous Amazonian tribes. Their cultural practice involves a long, multi-stage cooking and washing process which removes the cyanide that is naturally present in the root. The amazing thing is that the cyanide levels are high enough to cause chronic poisoning but low enough to not present any short term symptoms besides a bitter taste. However, taking shortcuts with the process leads to a reduction in the bitterness without actually removing enough of the cyanide to prevent chronic poisoning.

This means that this cultural practice maintains a complicated process that can’t be immediately supported by the available evidence (bitterness) but nevertheless provides a strong protective effect against chronic poisoning. In the absence of modern chemistry, this complex practice could only have developed through a long process of cultural evolution selecting against tribes who suffer from the chronic cyanide poisoning.

Does anyone know what the timeline is for these cases? Seems to me like there won’t be enough time to finish these before the election.

The update prevents CrowdStrike from working. That’s a good thing!

CrowdStrike blew it. 3rd party vendors should never have the power to freeze or crash people’s computers through incompetent, untested updates!

I’ve only been able to find absolute numbers for those. I can’t find statistics based on number of bicycle trips, miles travelled, or per capita.

Ahhh, good ol’ Harry!

It’s even worse than that. The Republican side is full of all the gun enthusiasts. In a civil war I don’t like the “north’s” chances this time around.

Not to mention all the fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and drones the military has.