Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

I generally recoil from comparing biden to putin but this really requires russian levels of post-truth politics.

Israel is committing war crimes like trump commits all his crimes - openly, in public and shielded by US elites.

the operation is highly organised, technically savvy

Of course an operation this sophisticated targets people looking to buying luxury brands for cheap, that sounds like an ideal mark.

I personally believe that preserving a false and misleading picture of reality designed to trumpet a deranged cult that is working to make the world objectively worse for everyone including themselves is not acceptable.

I would say, “Look mum I love you more than anything in the world but preserving some of these movies crosses an ethical line for me.”

Of course I grew up in a house of atheist jewish academics, so making and justifying personal ethical stances that contravene wider group stances is expected behavior in my family. And we take document preservation fairly seriously.

That code is to computer porn as the Hunt the Wumpus is to computer games.

Boeing is an important part of our military industrial base and thus an important part of the broader structure of US power.

That’s why they’re allowed to kill whistleblowers without repercussion.

“Because” often doesn’t make sense in the real world where anything that happens is the sum total of multiple factors. Especially a trend as broad as enshitification.

Being publicly traded seems like a contributing factor, but a sole owner can still enshitify through greed or incompetence.

I would guess that market consolidation and low competition are more of a factor.

Think of them as 2 methods for determining policy

They’re not though.

Democracy is a strategy some states use to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Science is a method for producing knowledge.

Policy is determined by the financial interests of our elites, our global imperial interests, and the form of our bureaucratic institutions.

Democracy, science and policy are three very distinct domains.

Civilization is one of those great words (like Innovation) where if you’re using it, you’re definitely using it wrong.

When you say civilization, do you mean: The State, Justified Violence, Official Oppression, Bureaucracy, A Standing Army, Cultures you Agree with, or just Table Manners?

if politicians would grow a backbone, most of the problems we have would be solved

Politicians aren’t scared to do what’s right. Their job is to act in the interest of their fellow elites. The most successful at empowering their fellows are given more power. Solving society’s problems isn’t remotely on the agenda.

If anything, we want more cowardly and timid elites. Politicians with a backbone are just more dangerous predators.

For those who are truly into etiquette, we understand that it is a gift we give to others and hope they will choose to return in kind.

What well-wrought words!

I feel like there’s a picture of etiquette where it’s always stuffy and exists only to reinforce unjust hierarchies. Etiquette as a gift given freely with hope but no expectation of return is a great alternate model.

How’s that normal?

Because English is an important international language. It’s the most spoken second language - the language most spoken by bilingual people.

In some places it’s tied in with status - a lot of universities regularly use English titles on non English language content, for example.

It helps a bilingual audience find videos in both English and their native language with the same search.

And I bet it helps with SEO which probably means that an English title can increase your income.

The incredibly inconsiderate inconvenience of having to click the next video?

I’ve run into this issue a lot while looking into Indian history and archaeology and it has never bothered me in the slightest.

Why do some people seem so offended by briefly hearing a language they don’t understand? You clicked a video that turned out to not be what you wanted. That’s gonna happen.

I love this comment so much, but it feels hypocritical for a supporter of Canadian cricket to be lecturing people about doing it wrong.

**Except for allergies or ARFID or something

You take the automatic RFID chip out of your food? How else will the app know when you’ve finished digesting?

One of the many things I loved about Taiwan was that people leave the left side of the escalator free for those who want to walk up or down.

There’s one single file line of people standing on the escalator. Even during the evening commute, there’s a single file line snaking back down into the station. But then as you get close there’s a much smaller line to the left moving much quicker of every who plans to walk up.

It’s so civilized.

Medicine existed in some form as long as humanity has

Probably longer. Most or all primates eat or rub plants with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. Some monkeys, bears too I think. So medicine probably predates the emergence of homo.

A lot of archaeological dicks are apotropaic - they ward off evil. Some are for fertility of course. Today I feel like it’s often seen as a minorly transgressive act, drawing something ‘rude’. It’s so fascinating that we keep doing the same thing and just change what we say it means.

There’s a minor fortification somewhere, I think it was roman. Outside the walls they found a fawn skeleton, fully articulated, with no butchery marks and a broken leg that had healed a bit before death. Nearby is the fully articulated skeleton of a cat.

The thinking is that a soft hearted soldier, child or spouse found a fawn with a broken leg. They tried to nurse it back to health and when it died they buried it near their cat.