Yes, good point.

Sure, but there was a very long debate about the implications of Brexit with both sides getting a comprehensive airing. I’m not defending Boris. Boris is an asshole and a corrupt, clownish demagogue, but the Conservative Party is more than just Boris. The people of the UK voted for Brexit in a refendum and kept the Conservatives in power for 14 years, including twice AFTER the Brexit referendum. Heck, the 2019 election was practically a second referendum on Brexit and the Conservatives got their largest landslide victory since Thatcher was PM. Boris may be an asshole, but the people of the UK have to own Brexit.

Is Tusk similar to Boris? I mean, obviously Boris presided over Brexit which was a real fuck-up. Then again, was Brexit really Boris’s fault? What with the referendum, democracy and all that good stuff. It seems to me that the people of the UK made their own bed in that regard.

That dude has a good sense of humor. He seems like a good leader.

When I’m in bed, my cat will walk up to the side of the bed and meow. I reach down to stroke her and she walks away. Then she comes back and meows again. So I reach down to try to pick her up. Walks away again. Okay, so she wants me to follow her, right? Maybe she’s hungry, wants to go outside? So I get up. But then she doesn’t go anywhere except the foot of the bed. Then she let’s me pick her up and put her on the bed. But then she quickly walks to the end of the bed and acts like she’s going to jump down. Then I have to make a big production of making a spot for her, patting the bed and speaking soothingly. Then she lies down. This little game happens every night. She has me trained.

Cute. And yet…I AM A MEAT ZOMBIE. MUST EAT. NOM NOM NOM.

This exact thing happened in the wine world in 1976 during the “Judgment of Paris” wine-tasting event. The top wine critics in the world did a blind taste test of the best French wines and a bunch of unknown California wines. Naturally, everyone, including the critics, thought France would win hands-down. California won, shocking everyone. Before revealing the results, the judges were asked whether they thought the California or French wines had won. They all assumed that the wines they rated the highest were French, claiming they could tell which was which even while blinded. The interesting thing isn’t so much that California wines were good, but rather that the professional judges couldn’t tell the difference in a blind taste test.

My brother, I didn’t say it was “nothing”, I said it was middle class. I worked a second job in the evenings to save up enough to afford the first boat. Then I sold the first boat for the same amount I paid for it and used that plus some savings and a small loan to afford the second boat, which I just paid off. And I drove a rust bucket for an extra five years so I could afford to save for the second boat. I didn’t just have a spare $45k laying around. And even if I did manage to save $45k over a decade, that’s still not rich by any means.

Middle class is not rich. Fundamentally, it means you have to work for a living and make more than the bare minimum needed to get by. Middle class means you can save a little and be able to afford a little nicer house over time, a decent car, and a few luxuries. If you only make enough money to scrape by with no ability to save, then you aren’t middle class, you are poor. Being middle class also means you need that pay cheque every two weeks and that you are vulnerable to becoming poor if you lose your job.

Not at all. Fire suppression on a small yacht is a hand-held fire extinguisher or two, which is $30. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has more than that for fire suppression. Satnav is not necessary, but most boats over 30ft will have a chart plotter already because manual charting is a lot of work. Every sailboat over 30 feet has a depth sounder already. A decent chartplotter-depth sounder combo is about $1200, like a laptop, if you need or want to replace it for some reason, but they’ll last 20 years no problem. Small sailboats don’t require much paperwork and don’t require annual licensing in many jurisdictions, just a small one-time registration fee when you buy it. Permits for international travel are cheap. If I recall correctly, the permit to sail to the US, for example, is under $100.

You definitely don’t have to be a rich asshole to own a sailboat and it is weird that this perception persists. My first sailboat was a 1983 30-footer that I got for $18,000 about 10 years ago. My slightly newer 36-footer was $45,000 and it is big enough for a coastal cruising couple to live on pretty comfortably. The vast majority of boats are designed to be sailed by a cruising couple, and most sailors are stinky, sunburned, slightly stressed, somewhat impaired, and bruised from doing their own maintenance and being tossed around in rough conditions.

The average sailboat is basically a trailer on the water, except you don’t need a big truck to haul it. You can spend as much or as little as you want to, of course, but the majority of boats in an average marina (ie, not a rich Florida asshole marina) are 1980s-era fiberglass boats in the 30-40 ft range. The engines are typically 3-cylinder marinized small diesel tractor engines in the 25-50 horsepower range that’ll push the boat at about 6 knots (about 11 km/h). This is not the description of a rich asshole toy. This is a solid, middle-class hobby similar to trailer camping.

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Don’t go bothering Korean Jesus. He’s busy with Korean shit.

Exactly. Many people have an ignorant view of British cuisine, as though only foods grown in the British Isles are British. All kinds of foods and dishes from all over the world have been shipped, used, and adapted in Britain since at least the time of the Roman Empire. Heck, most of what a British, European or North American person would see on the menu of their local Indian restaurant is not traditional Indian food at all, but rather Anglo-Indian.

I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.

I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!

Not at all. I identified a particular historical event where the French failed badly. Identifying one country’s specific mistakes doesn’t imply that others are angels. For example, obviously no one would claim that Germany and Japan were “angels” during WW2, but that goes without saying, right?

In fact, I responded to another commenter who called them out for racism and arrogance because that is far too general a claim with no evidence.

The current bad reputation of the French is mostly because of WW2. They surrendered after only 6 weeks of fighting and then heavily collaborated with the Nazis. French collaboration was so heartfelt that they refused to hand over their navy to the British when requested to do so. They even fired on American ships and troops in North Africa when the Americans arrived to liberate them from German occupation.

The French were also enthusiastic participants in the Final Solution. According to Wikipedia, “the Nazis in France relied to a considerable extent on the co-operation of local authorities to carry out what they called the Final Solution. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews.”

After the war, De Gaulle promoted the narrative that the French heroically resisted the Nazis, but this was not at all true. The famous French Resistance was tiny until the last part of the war, and only grew once it became clear that Germany would lose. The French government also denied their role in the Holocaust for over 50 years until 1995 when Jacques Chirac finally admitted that, “[T]hose black hours soiled our history forever. … [T]he criminal madness of the occupier was assisted by the French people, by the French State. … France, that day, committed the irreparable.”

So, yeah, that’s why people dunk on France, particularly when it comes to military matters. They certainly did not live up to the ideals of the Revolution or the martial prowess of Napoleon.

The generational gap in support for Israel is caused by the fact that boomers and GenX made up their mind about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict back in the 80s and 90s when the PLO was suicide bombing Israel on a daily basis. The younger generation has only known Israel as the oppressor state under right wing idiots like Netanyahu. They also forget that Israel was the underdog when all of their neighbours ganged up on them and tried to wipe the Jews off the face of the Earth again, repeatedly. The younger generation just sees the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians and assumes that Israel must be in the wrong.

Netanyahu is a psychopath, but that doesn’t make Hamas any less culpable for their raping and murdering. Netanyahu and his right-wing theocratic conspirators have to go, and so does Hamas, hopefully in body bags. The civilian population? They are human shields for Hamas, but I doubt many Israelis are shedding tears for them either. Israelis remember the daily suicide bombings of restaurants and shops by the PLO back in the day. It’s a fucked up situation and has been for decades.

I didn’t know until now that I unconsciously use strong implicit multiplication (meaning that I get the answer “1”). I believe it happens more or less as a consequence of starting inside the parentheses and then working my way out.

It is a funny little bit of notational ambiguity, so it is funny that people get riled up about it.

I suspect there is plenty of data poisoning software development. However, most of it is private development for use in the lucrative business of click farming.

The World Federation of Advertisers estimates that ad fraud (which is data poisoning with extra steps) accounts for 10-30% of clicks, globally.