How so? I think it’s quite an accurate summary. The German economy has been stagnating for a while, mainly due to its poorly handled transition towards an economy based on renewable energy. Their reliance on cheap Russian gas was shattered by the onset of the war in Ukraine, and their economic and political influence within the EU has been in steep decline ever since.

Or the EMF generators they carry around with them in their pockets, A.K.A their phones.

I’d say a good-sized part of it is simply the American preference for watching beautiful, weathly people doing beautiful, wealthy people things. Hollywood rom-coms and US TV shows in general clearly skew towards upper middle class settings when compared to the equivalents from, say, the UK.

In other words, I reckon US media prefer their fictional characters to be aspirational whereas other cultures prefer theirs to be relatable.

More frequent kernel updates.

It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Firstly, ultra-orthodox Jews (a.k.a Haredim) are mostly non-zionist. They also only make up roughly 33% of Israeli settlers.

Traditionally, the Haredim have voted for their own center-right Haredi parties, but a minority (especially the younger generation) are now drifting further rightward towards the nationalist Religious Zionist party of Ben Gvir and Smotrich that is particularly popular amongst the settlers. Despite this recent trend, though, the majority of Haredim remain Anti-Zionist.

It’s this stance, combined with the facts that Haredi men have been able to avoid military service and have relied heavily on social security to fund their living costs, that has caused a lot of resentment towards them from the majority of Israeli society. As the article above notes, this removal of their military service exemption has overwhelming support amongst the general population.

But you’re definitely right in saying that this throws a spanner in the works, albeit mostly for Netanyahu. His brittle coalition relies heavily on support from the two main Haredi parties in the Knesset. This new policy could backfire on him.

• requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration (suboptimal OOTB experience for newbies)
• Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore
• Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint
• More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint

Much as it was when the counter-protesters showed up at UCLA last month and attacked the protesters with pepper spray and sticks for hours while the police stood by and watched.

Important context: the synagogue in question was holding a real estate sale for land allegedly stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank.

This protest was not against Jews praying at a synagogue. This protest was not antisemitic. This was a protest against the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and against settlements that Biden’s own administration considers illegal.

But I suppose the AP doesn’t consider that relevant information.

The Death of Stalin is great.

But isn’t this something you can tweak within your DE configuration? I’m on Gnome and don’t have this issue.

This sounds like a DE thing than a Wayland/X thing.

Yeah, same. Getting past Guardians in BoTW required relying heavily on save scumming until I managed to get it right. Any fight that needed flurry rush was also always a disaster.

Not really, and I think that’s because in many games I play primarily to experience the world, find new items, and generally explore. The story itself usually takes a back seat and is rarely the thing driving me forward.

One counterpoint to that, off the top of my head, is Journey, which I always play through to the end scene.

Darks Souls 3, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Skyrim.

I love RPGs but hate boss fights, for some reason. Once I feel I’ve done enough exploration and character development, I invariably lose all interest close to the last boss.

It’s not so much saying that someone’s religious beliefs are logically impossible, more highly unlikely. When I typically see this rhetoric, it’s generally along the lines of “how on Earth did you weigh up all the evidence (or lack thereof) and come to the conclusion that God exists?”, or more impolite words to that effect.

I personally don’t browbeat the religious, so I’m not condoning it, but that’s why this line of argument generally isn’t gnostic atheism.

If, on the other hand, someone is actually saying that the existence of God is logically impossible, a priori, then that would be gnostic atheism. But, like I said before, that generally isn’t what most atheists believe or argue for.

Gnostic atheists are only a thing on paper; I’ve never met or heard of another atheist who ascribes to this view. As the link you provided states, this academic definition of atheism is not one ascribed to by the vast majority of self-described atheists.

Or, to quote the American Atheists organization:

Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods. Source

On this basis, any invisible unicorn/intergalactic teapot/flying spaghetti monster argument that invokes “burden of proof” is not an gnostic atheist position. The argument is based on the idea that until evidence for an invisible unicorn exists, there is no reason for it to have any bearing on our behavior.

This is different from saying that because no evidence of an invisible unicorn exists, that we must conclude that it categorically does not exist. You cannot logically prove the non-existence of a non-existent entity.

As an atheist who is not anti-religion, I wholeheartedly agree. The religious do not have a monopoly on irrationality, or weaponizing ideology.

I see many atheists on forums proposing the idea that if we could only just get rid of religion, the world would be a harmonious and rational place. As if human beings wouldn’t still be perfectly able to come up with new and interesting ways to rationalize conflict and division amongst themselves.

I agree with your second paragraph but take issue with your first.

Atheism is not the belief that God categorically does not exist; it’s the position that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that God exists, and that therefore there is no reason to believe in him/her/it. It’s a subtle but important distinction because the first is not logically consistent whereas the latter is.

Agnosticism, on the other hand, tends to either be the view that the likelihood of God existing is more or less equal to that of God not existing, or the view that we will probably never know so we cannot come down on one side or the other.

Yeah, it’s an interesting dichotomy and one that is quite typical of Thai culture, which many people don’t realize is actually conservative in a quiet kind of way.

For years, LGBT+ people have been tolerated but still not fully accepted by mainstream society. So while LBGT+ people can be out in public and not get harassed like they do in other cultures, they still haven’t had the same legal rights as CIS/straight people. This is why this new legislation is a great move forward in the right direction.