Or you’re listening to a podcast and space out a few seconds. Then you skip back to listen again and zone out again. Rinse and repeat until you don’t care anymore.

Water is wet. More at 11

As a Norwegian: seconded. It’s tough to get real close and personal with Nordic people. We have smaller friend groups and don’t swap out friends often, but that is largely because we are quite loyal. So when you’re in, you’re in to stay.

I’m not going to do your homework for you. Suffice is to say China is still an emerging market and all indicators aside from exports are unusually low for the kind of economy China is. I don’t know what kind of point you’re trying to make because you seem to be skirting the issue. None of the pieces I linked proclaim China is about to collapse, only pointing out the challenges. Again: what the hell is your point?

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/consumer-confidence https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-august-2024-economy-record-export-growth-amid-domestic-challenges/ https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/09/09/europes-luxury-goods-market-set-to-feel-the-pinch-as-china-growth-weakens https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/analysis-chinas-monetary-volleys-miss-key-threat-to-economic-growth/ar-AA1r9V9Q

Plus anecdotal stories from people I know that traveled to China in the past few months.

Basically, the post-COVID recovery was already slower than expected. Then the property sector all but halted. People are stuck with gig work and temporary contracts.

Why do you imagine the government is doling out money for the first time if everything is peachy?

Lots of people, especially the Chinese. The sentiment about work, investment, economic prospects, consumption are all quite bad. The central bank is cutting rates. Just today the government dipped their toes into the helicopter money game. The only thing keeping the party going is exports

It’s fine until it’s not. China is sort of notorious for such grey lines that can shift overnight. And if you are influential, you may just fall victims to the “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys” practice

Contrapoints’ latest video is a very good one you might find interesting. It’s sort of a PhD in video form, very deeply researched. The topic is heterosexuality, framed through the Twilight stories. It’s long and pretty meaty

Yeah AvE was a punch in the nuts

The reference in this specific pamphlet is against education that teaches evolution (and also by extension anything else the specific Christian sect disagrees with such as equality and other liberal values). Education is good as long as you’re learning “The Truth(™)”: maths, history and religion

I grew up in this kind of environment. Every religion and denomination except your specific subset of Christianity is bad, you’re taught.

Sounds like your attitude isn’t “I don’t know” but rather “I believe”. They’re not the same. In my view the default position should be agnostic atheism until such a time as you can be gnostic in either direction.

Kitchen stuff: a carbon steel wok, a Dutch oven and a bread form. Also an electric toothbrush.

But most of all: a fully automatic bean to cup coffee machine

Or, and hear me out, re-writing and re-working all the features built over a decade to work in this new game would take so much time and effort that CS2 would either never launch, or not be worth CO’s expense if the game sold at a standard price?

Just shooting from the hip here, but I think maybe you can see cults as a subset of cultures.

A cult is a small group defined by an authority figure, how it treats its members and its relationship with the rest of the world. They are often small groups, but can be large like Jehova’s Witnesses.

Cults are usually a subset of a religious faction, like baptists or Lutherans, which in turn is a subset of for example Protestantism. (There are non-religious cults as well of course).

And confusingly religions exist within cultures and can be a core part of their identity, but one religion can also exist in a totally different culture.

So I think you’re trying to compare all apples with a specific type of oranges here.

When I was doing the same research a few years back Fastmail was recommended to me and I’ve been very happy with it. It was fairly easy to set up with an email address from my own domain too.

After the first season, which was an obligatory “Star Trek Type Show Finds Its Feet” season, it really hit its stride to become the best Star Trek since DS9. Not in name, but certainly in spirit. So earnest, with a great message throughout. Sure it had some mediocre jokes here and there but so did TNG, let’s not forget. I was sitting around just the other day thinking how I missed watching The Orville

Windows 11 also does that. You have to jump to the command line and do some stuff mid-install to get it to install without an internet connection. Boggles the mind

Thank you! First impression of that app is really good.

Edit after a day’s use: it really scratches that itch. Smooth scrolling, looks great