The colonists really missed an opportunity imo, the USA could have had such great place names as New Fingringhoe, but instead it seems like only the boring names got copied :(

While I do agree that HP is a very scummy + awful company, their pricing system is not worse than that of many other companies. Many many companies use an inflated listed price system in combination with very large discounts, often fixed discounts per customer.

There’s several benefits to this. One of the biggest is that it allows their vendors to give nice “discounts” to entice ignorant customers. Ignorant people are more likely to buy a $2000 computer with 50% discount than a $1000 with 0% discount. And occasionally someone will come along and be scammed out of paying full listed price.

Inflating the list price is just very common and 50% is not even one of the worst offenders, just look at American health insurance prices for a much more egregious example. Construction building suppliers also systematically use it and “discounts” of 40 to 70% are common.

If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.

I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.

Russia wouldn’t even have had to capitulate, a white peace and some empty diplomatic gestures from Ukraine (like signing a piece of paper in which they promise to “denazify”), would have been enough to get a peace that Russia can sell at home. The classic power play of “we’re going home because we accomplished all objectives, we’re definitely not running away with our tail between our legs”. But Putin would rather see hundreds of thousands of Russians die, just so he can pretend one more year to never be wrong about anything.

It always amazes me how cheap it is to buy politicians, as compared to how much spending they decide on.

I do think the EU should more heavily invest in bribing USA politicians, especially since it’s been legalized. The ROI just seems amazing.

And I wish that I was being sarcastic, but I’m not. EU pro democracy bribes and dark money pac’s could be a counter to authoritarian states their dark money/influence projects, helping out the embattled USA democracy. And when the USA fascists see that their pro democracy opponents are receiving as much/more money from slush funds, then they might be more open to the idea of making all bribery illegal again.

Little issues should not be ignored because there exists a big other issue. There will always be a bigger issue, so with that reasoning, the right time to do something about the little issue, would be never.

Working on smaller issues also doesn’t stop anyone from working on the bigger issues, processes like this can happen in parallel.

Until you really really need to go hard, then it’s clothes off again.

A few years back I had something clogging up my intestines (no clue what) on the night that I was going to take a 3 hour flight to a wedding, so no lying down and way too much sitting in a cramped position for a too long time. I never felt more constipated as after I arrived and could finally stretch again.

So about 2 hours later when I could feel that it was nearly time, I evacuated to the furthest possible bathroom (I didn’t want to be a party pooper), lost all clothing except my socks and spend 30 minutes in agony, explosively shitting away, while covered in sweat and bracing myself against the walls.

All of which to say, is that you might think that you have left your shirtless days behind, but when shit really hits the fan, then you won’t be able to stop yourself from going back to your old habits.

From what I remember (it’s been over a decade since I read it), the southern hemisphere has much more water than the north.

Water is a great heat battery, especially deep oceans. And there’s a gigantic mass of water in the south. So in the summer it stays cooler because that mass of water can store a lot of energy, and in the winter it stays much warmer because the oceans slowly releases the heat that they have stored.

All that water mass is essentially “dampening” the climate extremes. And since ocean water also slushes around + evaporates in much greater mass than the little water on land, heat also gets redistributed better than on land.

So in short: more water = cooler in the summer + warmer in the winter.

It wasn’t really immediately, it was only under Pooh Bear that mainland China abandoned all pretenses and went full authoritarian in Hong Kong. China seems to be doing another great leap forward, again lead by a paranoid authoritarian leader who happens to be superb at politicking, but bad at governing. It’s as if history is doomed to repeat itself.

Edit: I somehow misspelled Hong Kong.

I had never heard of Renault Duster before (nor seen one), so I looked it up. The Renault Duster is apparently a Dacia Duster with mostly cosmetic changes, for sale outside the eu, typically released later than the Dacia Duster is released in the eu. So it’s the same car, but different brand badges + cosmetics depending on the country were it’s sold. They are so similar, that I’d just call it the same car, not a copy.

Dacia sales keep increasing every year. This does show there is an increasing demand for simple cars.

I still use Foxit 9.72 on my pc (which I don’t have open ATM, so I can’t check to be certain I gave the right version). I have tried newer versions, but there always was some kind of enshittyfication change that annoyed me and I always reverted back to that last good version.

I remembered reading many years ago about large solar plants in SA and I wondered what happened to that. Apparently Zuma happened: From a world leader in renewables, to years behind, thanks to Zuma and his cronies.

https://martinplaut.com/2022/07/14/how-zuma-and-his-cronies-destroyed-plans-for-south-africas-renewable-energy-revolution/

I suspect they are talking about Madison Cawthorn.

There always was a lot of dirt on him: he was known for sexual harassment, he was caught lying several times, he engaged in nepotism and graft, … None of those scandals were a problem for the republican party, but when he mentioned some dirt from other republicans, they went after him with a vengeance. An example article, but you can find many more: https://wlos.com/news/local/republicans-and-democrats-take-shots-at-rep-cawthorn-over-latest-video

From looking at it as an outsider, I’ve become convinced that the entire republican party is rotten and only people on whom there is kompromat, are given opportunities to be elected to the highest level.

It is not the settings of your enterprise, the file savings mess is 100% on Microsoft. Imo learning to work with it is pointless, since it will be entirely changed sometime in the future again when Microsoft again tries to trick more people into using these programs in order to boost their quarterly statistics.

I know “lab” is an abbreviation for Labrador (a dog) or laboratory. You probably meant lap. I was a bit confused at first, because it’s entirely plausible for a cat to sit on a dog :) Shuffling is walking without lifting your feet (also used for shuffling a deck of cards), you probably meant “brushed”.

That said: it often seems like they take us for granted, but you can’t not love the little bastards :D

The USA is it’s own continent, noone is going to attempt to send troops over. A self coup like that is very plausible, it’s been done many times before in other countries and there’s nothing exceptional about the USA in this regard.

The problem is media capture and people not realizing how they are being bamboozled, not anything else.

Here’s a very good article on this republican practice: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller/

Can you take another picture of the bird with a banana for scale?