I honestly have to wonder why civil war hasn’t broken out yet in the USA.

Like, I’m reminded of Calvin Candie saying “and it wouldn’t’ve taken me no fifty years to do it, neither”.

This is why code should be written to be library-agnostic. Or, rather, libraries should be written to a particular open source interface standard to make library agnosticism easier.

If server code is released such that people can run private servers after the official servers are shut down, then legally the people running the servers should be the ones liable for illegal activity that happens on them.

I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them. Maybe a subscription service that provides access to servers for several different online service games.

Of course, it would be more likely that it would be just a player who hosts a server for themselves and their friends and doesn’t attempt to be profitable. That would be fine too.

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The main problem with modern civilization is that it’s no longer possible to rob rich people. If Peter Thiel’s money actually physically existed, in like a vault somewhere, SOMEBODY would have burgled the vault by now, purely because of the insanely favorable risk vs reward ratio - like a lottery where the cost of buying tickets of every possible combination costs less than the jackpot, once the reward is high enough, there will always be SOMEONE who will make the necessary investment to negate the risk. And “robbing the rich” would always have enough popular support that there would be little effort to find the thief as long as the oligarch was unpopular enough. But now Thiel’s money no longer physically exists, and it’s basically impossible to forcibly take it from him without basically having to destroy the entire global banking system first in order to get at it.

You’ve basically just described “confession”. You go into a little box designed to make it as difficult as possible for the priest to identify you, you talk about all the ways you feel like you’re a bad person, and the priest talks to you for a while about it, then gives you some actionable items to make amends and once you’ve done them God officially forgives you. The whole concept of confession is designed to allow people to let go of their regrets and live in the now. It’s actually quite clever as a bit of societal design. If modern priests had psychotherapy degrees then everyone in the world would have access to free therapy - unfortunately they wouldn’t be very useful for LGBT+ people.

Yeah someone who cares enough about security to switch to Signal in the first place will be willing to go into the settings to get everything just the way they like it, but everybody else will only keep the app if it doesn’t bug them.

I repeat: kidnapping?

No, catholics (generally) believe that worldly goals are accomplished by worldly methods. Worshipping god isn’t intended to accomplish anything in this life: it’s intended to secure a place in heaven.

Mind you, I’m atheist; I’m not saying it actually DOES secure a place in heaven. I’m just pointing out that for genuine believers, prayer is not intended, primarily, to accomplish worldly ends. It sometimes INCLUDES requests for personal worldly aid, but a priest would scold you if he knew that’s ALL you prayed for. You’re supposed to thank god for giving you existence, ask for the strength to live more virtuously, ask for leniency on your imperfections, etc.

I’m glad we have you to tell us what is and isn’t culture worth preserving; we were at real risk of having a diversity of opinion for a moment there.

Kidnapping?

Many hospitals are also run by the church. Catholics believe in science - all recent popes say evolution is fact.

Obama’s been gone almost a decade at this point and we still have yet to pass this bill because the government always backs down at the last minute in the face of threats from the US that it would “force” US companies to not do business with us. The Dáil (parliament) supports the bill but the cabinet shoots it down. So you’re not wrong to be cynical, but every time Israel commits some fresh outrage the pressure grows for the government to pass it or risk losing the next election.

To be specific, Ireland isn’t in Schengen because the UK isn’t in Schengen and we’re trying to keep the border as non-bordery as possible.

If they found his car they must know who he is and what he looks like. Shouldn’t they be putting his picture on the news?

Note: by having the USA abstain from that UN vote right at the end of his presidency, Obama made it possible (ie legal) for us to do this.

If we were targeting Israel specifically, we would run afoul of all sorts of EU regulations since external trade policy falls under EU competency. HOWEVER, because there is a UN resolution specifically identifying the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories as illegal occuptions under international law, it’s possible for us to pass a law that doesn’t specifically target Israel by name, but rather target any territory that is illegally occupied.

If Brussels takes issue with the ban and tries to fine us for some trumped-up reason like arguing that we’re exceeding our reserved competencies, that would initiate legal proceedings which would give us standing to counter and argue that we are only meeting our international obligations as outlined by the UN, and furthermore that the EU-Israel trade deal has a boilerplate clause requiring Israel to meet certain human rights criteria or the entire trade deal goes kaput.

Basically if the EU takes us to court over this, we’ll be able to force the argument to be over whether Israel is violating human rights, at which point (because judges are not politicians) the court will almost certainly side with us, which would THEN put Brussels into the legal position where they’re OBLIGED to ban these goods EU-wide.

Because Brussels knows this, they’re likely to try and avoid initiating proceedings, turning a blind eye. However a lack of consequences for us would embolden other EU members to copy us. Basically it’s a rock and a hard place for Brussels.

Just pointing this out so that people see that UN votes DO matter.

Like, extra rights, you mean? Because lots of countries recognize animal rights.

I don’t think history supports that prediction. Far more likely that America will follow the trajectory of post-USSR Russia. Not as extreme of course, but I think the normalization of open kleptocracy is already on display.

Evidently not, since some voters thought (and still think!) that the solution was to elect Trump. That’s evidently where the bar is, as determined by the voters.

Worse than Trump? No.