Thx, corrected

It’s also not the first or only 21st century technology that is or was waaaaaaaaay overhyped.

First it was the Blockchain

Then it was the Cloud

Now it’s Artificial Stupidity.

We do. ‘Spring fever’ is very real. What’s less clear is why.

I have a friend who was addicted to both cocaine and alcohol. While he, of course, is convinced that cocaine is one of the worst substances to have ever existed, he is even more wary of alcohol because of: (I’m obviously both paraphrasing AND excluding most countries with a Muslim majority here)

a) Social acceptance. No one is ever going to judge you for quietly sitting in the corner of a bar drinking your beer. Try snorting a line on the same setting and see what happens.

b) Availability. Even in sparsely populated areas, you are never too far away (say, a 10 minute walk) from a bottle of wine/spirit/beer.

c) Practicality (which is what answers your question). You don’t need a syringe, spoon, knife, bill, bong or lighter, not even another recipient, to start binging on booze. Once you buy/steal the stuff, you’re all set - and drinking something definitely IS more ‘natural’ (as in, it’s a reflex) than injecting or smoking something.

Shit, man. WHY did you have to bring this up…

Those.nails.ruin.everything.

Because they are such a tiny AND unprotected minority, they are fairly easy targets for othering / discrimination.

[ I am not condoning, just informing ]

Reminds me of Finkelstein’s wise words…I can’t exactly remember his wording, but you can easily find the video in Peertube.

He said something to the effect of : In almost all places in the world, it’s wise to ideologically separate a people from its government…except in !$ra€| because a) civil institutions are so deeply intertwined with the military, and b) the majority of the people do, indeed, support the government’s genocidal policies…

I hate the fact that they made ‘The Descent 2’. Totally (and unnecessarily) killed the ambiguous ending of the original.

I seriously doubt that it would count as ‘shitty’, but it wasn’t very well received and is not widely known either, for me rather a kind of comfort movie I’ll defend till the edges of the earth: the Cohen brothers’ ‘A Serious Man’

So you see…up to a certain point it’s kind of our own fault too

I’d love to, but I can’t. Colonialism’s ‘Divide and conquer’ rule is only applicable and effective if the targets are either willingly in the game (i.e., corrupt enough to collaborate) already relatively divided (i.e. Already fragmented enough), or stupid enough not to realise what’s being done to them.

I don’t want to be that person either, but I really don’t think that Sykes is personally to blame for Britain’s shitty policies in and for the Middle East, the consequences of which still play a major role in the mess the region still is. Point being that, besides Gringoland, Britain should also be held accountable for the role they have played around the world in everything from ethnic cleansing all the way to supporting brutal, even murderous, dictatorships.

My thoughts exactly. I really hope they don’t mess that up.

Can you explain why you find the suggestion so outrageous ? I’m not advocating a 35 year old woman dating a 15 year old boy. I’m only saying that biology matters.

This is the one thing that’s hardly ever mentioned in the whole age gap debate, though I would add that there are constellations that are creepy by default. Being a 35+ old man, I feel that I’m at kind of a landmark age where dating someone 20 years younger than me would be gross, let alone illegal in most jurisdictions, so the ‘it depends on your behaviour and intentions’ argument doesn’t really hold. In contrast, I can very much imagine dating a 55 year old woman - and no, it’s not a MILF fetish. So in the end, your intentions/behaviour AND Gender AND actual age gap do matter IMHO.

Regarding the last part of your comment, a dude called Christopher Simon Sykes, whose last name you might recognise, wrote a book called ‘The man who created the middle East’. It’s a biography of his grandfather, and an attempt to vindicate him.

You can argue all you want about TPM and its ‘security’. I ALWAYS thought that forcing users to use TPM 2+ hardware is planned obsolescence and nothing/no one will convince me otherwise.

The only thing affected users can and should do is to leave that PoS of an ‘operating system’.

Yea. That is THE one reason why I’d never touch GrapheneOS as long as it only runs on Pixel hardware.

I know this will most probably be an unpopular opinion, but as someone who was born and raised in Central America, I have never understood why these countries are separate countries.