LarryMullins

Emacs is forever.

I wish I could believe that Microsoft appreciates Excel that much. Excel is one of the most empowering applications ever written and the single greatest thing Microsoft has ever been involved with.

If only the UK had some sort of naval tradition and could send their own ships into the channel to enforce the UK's will, rather than trying to fix the problem by arresting people for saying shit online.

Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the... net. Britons will never be... Hmm, this song will need a lot of changes.

Confusing. The people saying "The Nordic Model isn't socialism!" are the people who are responding to "No, that's socialism!" Saying that the nordic model isn't socialism is a response to those who oppose it by saying it is, an attempt to persuade anti-socialists to chill out.

Have the Board draw straws and execute the person who draws short. Anything short of this admittedly harsh measure will be written off as the cost of doing business and probably overturned by lobbying, bribery, legal arguments in court, etc. There is value in a punishment that cannot be undone.

I know some people used to chop down trees to get a line of sight for satellite TV. Starlink is different in that you need more than a single LOS to a specific spot in the sky, but I wouldn't be too surprised if a lot of people ultimately chop down more trees to get access.

Alternatively, perhaps the starlink antenna could be mounted on a large pole or modest radio tower. That would be ugly but probably a lot less ugly than chopping down your trees.

AFAIK the old school stuff (e.g. synthetic human insulin) is cheap, so I assume that's not the sort they're talking about. Probably they're talking about analogue insulin, which is very expensive.

Russia would probably be silent if they had proof America did it, because they don't want WW3. And America would probably be silent if they had proof Russia did it, for exactly the same reason. Neither side wants to escalate this into WW3, because then everybody loses.

It's a lot more convenient to explain that you totally would retaliate if only you knew who did it, rather than claiming you knew who did it but you're not going to retaliate anyway because you fear escalation. So everybody plays dumb.

> Also if Russia did do it, its officially an attack on NATO and requires a response?

In either the case of America attacking a pipeline jointly owned by the Russians or the Russians attacking a pipeline jointly owned by a NATO country, you could call this an act of war. But in neither case will either side use it as their casus belli to start WW3, because nobody wants that. Nobody is waiting for a 'legitimate' excuse to start such a war. It is much safer for everybody to pretend they haven't noticed such attacks, or to pretend that the culprit is uncertain or maybe that it was done by accident. Pretending to be ignorant of the provocation is preferable to WW3, for both sides of the conflict.

> a) that was never considered "crazy"

The very premise of stealing a Soviet submarine wreck off the ocean floor with nobody noticing is pants-on-head insane. The USN thought the CIA was being moronic to even consider this plan. The USN's idea was a lot saner; to simply use submersibles to extract intelligence-relevant materials from the wreck underwater, not lift and take the entire wreck. No surface ships needed, much less an expensive purpose-built attention-drawing surface ship.

Europeans are lucky that most Americans don't care what Europeans think of America, and continue to support and defend the EU despite Europeans being utterly ungrateful for any of it. If you lot had to pay for your own defense, you'd have a lot less social programs to go around, a lot less to gloat about to the Americans you hate so much.

> We do have nukes you know.

The only nukes Germany has are those that America charitably allows Germany to borrow. If Germany grew up like UK and France and bought/made their own toys, then maybe Germany would find itself to have more autonomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing

Yup, pretty much this. We all know who wears the pants in the NATO relationship.

In a system where private property ownership is only specially delegated to a handful of people or organizations, those few privileged people or orgs ARE part of the government. In a system where everybody has that right by default, that's different.

An ostensibly independent organization that has been granted a special right to collect a tax is an example of the former, not the latter.

> The difference is that here in the giftcard industry, we want to stop that,

Do you guys really? I mean "you guys" generally, not you personally.

It doesn't seem that way to me. If the gift card industry really wanted to curb this shit, it would be a simple matter to abolish all high-value denominations of gift card and forbid purchasing more than one a day. If Gran wants to buy a birthday gift for her grandhchild, a single $20 gift card should be more than sufficient to show her love. There is no reason to allow her to buy 10x $500 cards in one day. Only tiny fraction of the population could afford to be doing something like that legitimately, virtually all such sales are people being tricked by scammers, yet the high denomination gift cards still exist despite your industry's supposed care.

No, not in a sense that triggers truth in advertising laws.

"Non-government tax" is bullshit semantics. Any random organization cannot collect a tax unless a government has delegated special authority to that organization, thereby making that organization part of government.

It's like saying "independent courts" aren't part of "the government" because the courts are "independent" and because elected politicians don't have the official authority to tell judges how cases should be decided. Semantics. The courts are a branch of government.

> I believe it is an overtly hostile action against EU citizens and, particularly, Germans, who will suffer the most economically.

In the scenario where America did it, I think there is a strong argument to be made that it was in the long-term interests of EU citizens, despite causing them some short-term discomfort. They never should have started this pipeline project in the first place, buying energy from Russia made the EU weak. Breaking that relationship permanently will make the EU stronger.

> conspiracy drivel

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713661

Project Azorian was a crazy conspiracy theory, and also true. You discredit yourself by using "conspiracy theory" in the "obviously false" sense. Intelligence agencies really do conspire to do things. That's their job.

> Because the pipeline was already off.

There is a substantial difference between the pipeline being off and the pipeline being off the table.

Sure, include those as well. Are you certain that he's wrong about either? Nothing can be certain when it comes to intrinsically clandestine matters.

Either way, you should at least know who the man is if you want to maintain any pretext of knowing modern American history.

For completeness, the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident was two alleged incidents. One of them probably happened and the other almost certainly didn't (admitted by Robert McNamara years later.) The first incident, the one that probably happened, was insufficient casus belli for LBJ and then conveniently for the war hawks the second incident, which never actually happened, sealed the deal two days later.

McNamara's tacit admission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODxnUrFX6k

It's not unsourced, the source is being kept private. That may not seem like a meaningful difference but there is a difference. And that difference is the reason Seymour Hersh's reputation is relevant.

> Man, the author (no idea who that is...)

Seymour Hersh, famous for his coverage of the My Lai massacre, Project Azorian, and more. You probably should know him.

Good call. Like it or not, reputation counts for a lot. Particularly in reporting of matters the government prefers remain private.

> It seems how we diagnose people is totally unconnected from any empirical data on if a culture more willing to diagnose people is making people healthier on a population-wide level.

Speaking of an absence of empirical data: People are being told by doctors that their brain has a "chemical imbalance" which medication can fix, despite those doctors not performing any chemical tests on the patient's brain at all. Supposed "chemical imbalances" for which the science of chemistry can produce no empirical data. My brother lost years of his life in a drug-induced haze before he questioned the wisdom of doctors, got off the psyche drugs, and saw a massive improvement in his outlook on life all around. Turns out he had real problems to address and the drugs were only helping him to ignore those problems instead of actually confronting them. He never needed drugs, he needed a mature mentor.

Going to college is not the same as graduating with a degree. A ton of people go to college for a time and leave with little more than a mountain of debt. Also, a bachelors degree is not even the least degree you can get from a university.

> it is the right thing to do

You had me nodding until this part. Yes, twitter is filled with misinformation. But government censorship is more dangerous than misinformation. Governments have killed more people than anything else short of heart attacks and cancer. Governments murdered hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century; giving governments the power to censor whatever the government deems to be misinformation is insanely dangerous. The most dangerous kind of misinformation is that which is promulgated by the government itself.

If there is to be no sale, then is it really advertising at all? If I "advertise" that I own a thing with no intention of selling that thing, then laws about honest advertisement don't apply to me.

My car (not for sale) has a nuclear reactor and can travel through time.