See? Then it just becomes an affordable (if cramped) house.

I’ve also known people who had their own massive custom built catamaran that they lived on. Traveled around the world on that thing, accepting paying passengers to travel with them part of the way.

I’ve read that Mohammed even wanted to merge his movement with Judaism, but Jewish leaders rejected him, and apparently that set some bad blood.

Are you sure about that 3000? I thought at the time it was mostly the 6th year of the rule of some king, emperor or governor (Herod, Augustus or Quirinius, most likely), although the Bible doesn’t even provide those kind of dates.

As far as I’m aware, having a single universal reckoning is something that Christianity invented in the middle ages. But still based on the rule of Jesus as king, of course.

I’m a Christian in the Calvinist tradition, but I try to follow Jesus more than Paul. Paul was in my opinion very much a pragmatic who tried to spread Christianity in Greece, and was willing to compromise a bit with Greek sensibilities (which included slavery and misogyny). When in doubt, I look to Jesus instead.

Also, I think Calvin went a bit too far overboard on some things. The reformation was a good thing, but that doesn’t make him right about everything.

My car cost €8000, and that’s also about the budget I have for a boat.

Yeah, but people with more expensive cars than that are still likely millionaires. I’ve been thinking of buying a boat for years, but that boat would still be a lot smaller than these. (And I still haven’t because it’s not just the purchase, but also maintenance and mooring.)

Although friends of us do have a boat that might be that size. They also live on a houseboat. They don’t have a regular house, and if they have a car, I haven’t seen it.

So I guess middle class people can own a boat like that, but it takes sacrifices in other areas.

Congressmembers are only a minuscule fraction of the population of DC. And the rest of the population never voted for any of them. So the vast, vast majority of people in DC are unrepresented.

Cool. A couple of decades ago I read about former astronaut/physics prof Wubbo Ockels working on something like that but with kites. I’ve never heard of any production version of that coming off the ground. I hope this does better.

Not just Trump; the Dutch parliament has just accepted a motion to also declare Antifa a terrorist organization.

This is a country that was occupied by Nazis 80 years ago. People who fought in the resistance have always been considered heroes. And now they’re declared criminals. These parties are openly siding with the Nazis.

Mind you, we also had the AFA, Anti-Fascist Action 40 years ago, when they attacked a racist fringe political party with smoke bombs that ended up burning down a hotel, so declaring them terrorist would have made some sort of sense at the time, but they haven’t been heard of for the past 39 years.

It’s pure political posturing to side with Trump or create an excuse to arrest protesters who disagree with them.

I think the countries that refuse to compete in the genocide song festival should just get together and organise their own genocide-free song festival.

Disgusting that so many countries haven’t protested yet, and even more disgusted at Germany for insisting that Israel should be part of it, but good on the slowly increasing number of countries that are finally taking a stand.

“More functional than the USA” is a low bar, though. And rapidly getting lower.

See, America? That’s how you do it. Learn from Brazil.

That’s not what I picked up from it. The biggest idea that it presents very early in the book is that of a shared subjective truth: most of the things that make up our society, like countries, laws, corporations, etc. do not exist objectively; they only exist because we all believe in them. Objectively, these things don’t exist, but our society is built upon everybody agreeing that these imaginary orders exist, and we’re constantly inventing new imaginary structures on top of that.

That’s indeed a bad development I wasn’t aware of. Even more so if they base their own software on others, and then block others from their platform.

I’ve got a Bambu A1 mini that I’m quite happy with. Bambu studio works perfectly fine on Linux, and I can import lots of different kinds of designs from anywhere, but I think you do really need Bambu Studio to prepare the print for this specific printer. I have no idea if there’s any way around that, but is that necessary?

The a1 mini is very good at small details. The main downside is of course that it’s not very big, so not suitable for large prints. It calibrates automatically and is very low maintenance.

I switched newspapers when I noticed that every time my newspaper write about something I actually knew about, they wrote garbage.

Sapiens does present some really powerful ideas, though. I enjoyed it a lot, but the book clearly glosses over a lot of details. Then again, it tries to tackle a ridiculously big scope, so I can see how it can’t get into all of the details. I still consider it a worthy read despite its shortcomings. But read it more for the ideas than for the facts.

Googling stuff online doesn’t make you a programmer either. You still have to learn it, know how to apply what you look up, understand how the computer works. Although it’s easier to learn by yourself, at least partially because there are no lives at stake.

And doctors look up plenty of stuff too. Only a fool would think they already know everything.

I’m absolutely baffled at Labour. The Tories were a complete clown show, and it should have been trivial to put up some serious opposition against them, but they never did. Only when the Tories really burned out, did Labour win, and they’re immediately giving us Tories-light. The same shit, just toned down 20%.

When does the UK start voting for better parties? Replace the Tories with LibDem and Labour with the Greens. If I lived in England, I’d be upset I couldn’t vote for SNP. Every other party is better than these two.

Options include accepting female emperors, picking a new royal family, or becoming a republic. You’re probably right that they’ll go with the female emperor when the time comes.

Ah, it’s just a fancy ad. That explains the poor writing.