I think you nailed it here. The successful religions are the ones that are useful as tools for the powerful. It’s not the cause of evil, but it’s something that lets powerful people convince people to do awful things.

On the other hand, for the believers, it’s a source of community and comfort. They’re given simple rules to follow and promised that their suffering is not in vain. It gives them simple answers to complex questions.

It also allows people to get over feeling bad. A bad thing is “part of god’s plans”. A bad thing you did is not really your fault because a trickster god made you do it, or the devil made you do it, so you don’t need to do any self-reflection. Or, a bad thing happened to you or someone you love, that’s just a bad god, or a devil, or a complex part of a god’s plan, so you don’t need to worry about it. This is all really useful for leaders, because they’re inevitably closer to the gods than the people they control, and they get to use excuses like “you’re suffering because the gods are unhappy with you” or “it’s your lot in life, because you were born to that caste” or “this was all because of this wicked group of other people who believe in a different god, so we should kill them and take their land”.

Humans are flawed and sometimes evil, but religion is a very useful tool to manipulate those people.

The last major American privacy law, the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1988 by Reagan. The only reason it happened is that politicians realized that their privacy was affected. Robert Bork was going through his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and someone got a hold of the tapes he had rented and published them.

Politicians were worried about their own personal privacy, so they passed a new law to protect the privacy of people’s video tape rentals.

Maybe the fact that the targets here were politicians will mean that something will happen with data privacy, for once.

like tundra on a dime

Um, wut?

Physics says it does not care of civilized countries

Civilized countries don’t have trucks going through areas where people live. In North America there are far too many “stroads”.

with a family member killed by a car

Killed by a driver.

That’s true, but it’s very hard to come up with a system that can’t be gamed. The fact that you’re not aware of Australia’s system works means it’s probably even more vulnerable to exploitation because nobody in Australia is paying attention.

Really, all political systems are based to some extent on people acting honourably and acting in the best interest of the country rather than themselves or their political party. Eventually that always breaks down.

e-note be like telegram memorandum memo but not on paper, on computer magic blinky box.

Repository: a collection of related computer code, like related files in a filing cabinet

Fork: a copy of a repository at a certain point in time, like a fork in the road, they diverge from that point

Pull request: a request that a repository owner incorporate your changes into their files.

When you’re on the information superhighway, in cyberspace, sometimes you want to send someone some information (datums). Sometimes an electronic mail is too formal or cumbersome for that, so you instead send them digital text messages, basically cybernetic telegrams, called e-notes.

I can’t help but feel that sane countries have an officer’s badge number visible at all times and that it’s a fireable offence to hide it in any way.

This isn’t something that someone should have to ask for, because there’s always a chance the officer might not comply. The officers you most need to get a badge number for are the ones who are going to try to hide it.

I can understand in 2025 that telling someone your name is dangerous. That’s as true for cops as it would be for a barista, a bouncer or a librarian. People are psychos and doxxing is too easy. But, there’s no reason that the public shouldn’t know a permanent ID for a cop that could be used in lawsuits or criminal proceedings.

Also, Air India goes by the unfortunate initialism “AI”, which will really gum up the headlines here.

Sure, one economic unit with massive tariffs between the three parts of that one economic unit.

The US had a period of “greatness” shortly after WWII.

Why was the US “great” in the 1950s and 1960s?

1. The labour protections from the New Deal hadn’t yet been repealed, so more wealth was shared with ordinary people (as long as they were white).
2. The US was the only major country to escape WWII without massive damage to its infrastructure. So, while other countries were focusing on rebuilding cities flattened by war, the US economy just shifted from producing war goods to producing consumer goods.
3. A lot of the world’s best and brightest fled to the US as a safe place to escape the war. These immigrants were essential to the US economy after the war.

So yeah, people’s grandpas were able to buy a house and support a family working a menial job for a brief period after WWII. But, that’s not because of some fundamental characteristic about the US that makes it better. It’s mostly because the US was fortunate enough to be on the opposite side of the planet from one of the most destructive wars in history.

The “less lethal” means “less lethal than a bullet”. They are less lethal than a bullet, but there’s a reason that they don’t use the term “non-lethal”.

No, I was on vacation on Earth, not Proxima Centari 6.

So do I.

So, what I think happened was that I knew roughly where my stuff was. When I went to play in the waves I basically went straight out from my towel. Because of the rip currents I was being pushed sideways while in the waves, but I mostly kept trying to correct for that so that I didn’t wander too far from my stuff. I am pretty sure about that, because that’s what I always do at the beach. I always hate being pushed around by rip currents and am really worried about getting caught in the undertow so I try to stick to the same part of the beach.

When I got tossed by the huge wave(s) I did end up getting moved sideways. I remember that because I remember how out of control I was. But, I suspect it wasn’t too far. So, when I went to search for my stuff I wasn’t searching the entire beach, just a small section of it.

I think I remembered what colours my beach towel was, so I think I just wandered that section of beach, squinting so I could see a bit better, looking for a towel with roughly the right colours and with nobody on it. Then when I thought I had the right one I crouched down to see if I could recognize the bag I brought.

I don’t think I asked for help, which would have been the smart option. But, I was a shy kid in a foreign country so I am pretty sure I didn’t do that.

But really, I don’t remember. I just have a clear memory of how helpless I felt, and a vague memory of wandering up and down the beach. The rest is just reconstructing how I think it probably happened based on vague memories and what I know about myself.

To each where own?

Yep, a good idea, but if you use them when playing in the ocean and are hit by a big wave, they can be knocked off.

If I was at home, I always knew where I had some backup glasses. But yeah, wake up at a friend’s house or something and you’re screwed.

1. I can wake up and glance at the time instead of having to lift something up and put it centimetres from my face to tell the time.
2. I can do sports without the glasses falling off, getting mashed into my face, etc.
3. I look a lot better, with a -13 prescription, my glasses were heavy and thick
4. My nose and ears aren’t in pain from carrying the weight of my glasses all the time.
5. I’m not having to constantly adjust my glasses whenever my nose sweats a bit.
6. I’m not completely blind any time I have to take off the glasses, like when I take a shower or go in a pool, or especially swim in the ocean where there are big waves.
7. I’m not utterly helpless because I’m blind if I lose my glasses. If you’re blind without your glasses, and your glasses aren’t where you expect, you can’t really use your eyesight to find them.
8. I don’t have to deal with all the problems of using and potentially losing contacts.
9. …

For me, before I got laser surgery, I was once swimming in the ocean at a very big and popular beach. I was wearing contacts because obviously wearing glasses in the water is next to impossible. I got hit by a big wave, tossed around, and lost my contacts. Now I was almost completely blind, in a foreign country where I knew almost nobody, and trying to find my beach towel and bag among thousands of others. I actually can’t remember how I resolved that problem, but I do remember the massive stress and panic being blind like that caused. When I got back from the trip, I got my eyes fixed within a year.

their