Convenience is an umbrella term. There are a thousand different reasons people choose convenience and not all of them are synonymous with laziness. Single parents, working multiple jobs, with disabilities that limit mobility, lack of a car, not enough time to make a trip on public transit, lack of public transit options in their area, and countless more.

The ability to just choose to take a bunch of extra time, or take a car to go pick up an item, is a luxury and a privilege. And all that just to spite bezos and make you happy? Not reasonable.

I’m not describing any state solution!

Right but this is a separate issue. My original comment was about Israelis whose families have been living in that region of the world for millennia. They have a right to be there. They are not equivalent to colonists from Europe arriving in the Americas.

The Israeli government uses antisemitism as a weapon to attack their critics. They conflate criticism of the Israeli government with attacks on Jews. It’s bullshit, duplicitous rhetoric.

But here we are conflating Israelis who can trace their ancestry to that region for millennia with (a minority of) European Jews who moved there during/after WW2, and calling all of them colonists. Now we are being duplicitous!

The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.

The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.

Yeah, especially if you don’t have a car. Going across town to buy one little knick knack can be an all day affair, with 2 public transit fares included.

This may explain why Amazon is much more popular in North America than Europe: public transit. So if you want to stick it to Jeff, work for better public transit and more walkable cities!

Older people tend to be richer because they’ve had more time to earn and save money. Compare a 20-year-old to a 40-year-old. Both spent about 20 years being a kid, growing up and going to school, but the 40-year-old had an extra 20 years after that to earn and save money. You can do the same comparison between a 40-year-old and a 60-year-old, but take all the money the 60-year-old earned in the first 20 years of working and invest it in the stock market for the next 20 years, while also continuing to work.

Wealth can build like crazy. If you invest at 7% average annual return, you’ll double your money in just over 10 years. At 10% the doubling period is just over 7 years. Now consider that the S&P 500 had an average annualized return over 10% between 1957 and 2023, and that 60-year-old’s 20 year investment would multiply by 6.7x.

Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.

When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.

It was a casual remark, not a hill to die on. That’s entirely your read!

Floor to ceiling stalls are much harder to clean. The gaps underneath allow for water to drain out when washing everything.

I think Tengu is non-undead but insane from wearing the mask.

Absolutely! Taboos are one of the biggest aphrodisiacs! If it were out in the open and fully accepted then it would lose all the appeal!

Weight in pounds isn’t the right unit here. Weight varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field you’re in, whereas mass does not. A kilogram here on earth weighs 2.2lbs but on the moon it only weighs 0.36lbs.

I think it’s the opposite. All the outrage on social media just feeds back into itself. It’s an engine fueling disillusionment, not productive change.

Presbyopia is the age-related hardening of the lens and weakening of the muscles used for focusing. The process is progressive and irreversible. Lasik is not a good option for people with presbyopia and any surgeon recommending it is not acting in your best interest as a patient. You should probably seek a second opinion!

The 20 year warranty on Lasik doesn’t guarantee a lifetime of normal vision. The surgery can neither correct nor prevent presbyopia, the most common form of age-related far-sightedness. This reduction in vision is caused by a hardening and loss of flexibility in the lens as well as a weakening of the muscles used for focusing.

Honestly it’s a form of depoliticization because it’s not a serious proposal with any realistic chance of success. It distracts people from getting engaged with real politics and actually making a difference. And at the end of the day, isn’t that exactly what the billionaires want?

To him it’s just another day at the office.

Religion is a product of oral tradition, taboo, and superstition. These features of human behaviour played a valuable role in protecting humans from dangers we did not individually understand. Fires, lightning, floods, drought, poisons, diseases (especially sexually transmitted diseases) underlie much of the religious beliefs and other cultural superstitions you can see even today.

A favourite of mine is the processing of cassava aka manioc by indigenous Amazonian tribes. Their cultural practice involves a long, multi-stage cooking and washing process which removes the cyanide that is naturally present in the root. The amazing thing is that the cyanide levels are high enough to cause chronic poisoning but low enough to not present any short term symptoms besides a bitter taste. However, taking shortcuts with the process leads to a reduction in the bitterness without actually removing enough of the cyanide to prevent chronic poisoning.

This means that this cultural practice maintains a complicated process that can’t be immediately supported by the available evidence (bitterness) but nevertheless provides a strong protective effect against chronic poisoning. In the absence of modern chemistry, this complex practice could only have developed through a long process of cultural evolution selecting against tribes who suffer from the chronic cyanide poisoning.

Or maybe they could convince Trump that supporting Ukraine is good for them; good for a lot of American weapons factory workers.

Does anyone know what the timeline is for these cases? Seems to me like there won’t be enough time to finish these before the election.