Oh, so you did! I missed that.

I’ll just say, having lived in Vietnam for quite some time, it certainly is a much better country than China, but describing it as “mixed” and “partially socialist” understates its issues. Corruption is rampant and open, and is the way of things in both the private and public sectors.

As just one example, the Saigon Metro project began construction not long before I stopped living there in 2012, and was scheduled to finish in 2018. Rampant corruption with that project has meant multiple times it’s just stalled with seemingly no progress made for years, and the Japanese construction company hired to do some of the work threatened to pull out over cost overruns caused by the corruption. It’s a lovely country in so many ways, and its government is so much better than those that tankies usually love to praise in terms of the degrees of gross authoritarian bs, but it’s got a long it could improve in many regards.

Not being arrested for publicly disagreeing with the government is a good thing.

Sorry, I thought we were talking about democratic countries. Didn’t realise it was “make up whatever shit makes you feel good” time.

the most democratic nation currently on the planet

Sorry, but I didn’t see anyone mention Denmark or Norway anywhere in this thread.

Unfortunately tankies throw out the good parts of liberalism along with the bad, and endorse throwing people in gaol for wrongthink.

If I’m put in charge, that guy is the first to go.

Is there any language in which a definite article on its own is a perfectly valid sentence or phrase?

Oh damn. I didn’t realise just how ahead of his time (by Anglosphere standards) Nader was. We’re 50 years on and just now are the evils of motornormativity starting to be more widely understood.

Personally I like the idea of a second house that is able to act as the house of review, thanks to its members having longer terms than the lower house. That’s a quality we have in Australia federally, but not in my home state of Queensland which is unicameral. It’s also something New Zealand lacks with its unicameral legislature (elected via MMP).

I’ve only skimmed it, I’ll admit, but all I saw was that it said there were 4 attempts. I didn’t see what they were, apart from the 1 I already knew of which was mentioned (the 2021 instance).

Sorry I still don’t really understand. What does “unsafe at any speed” mean?

Oh neat. Are their maps actually being used by Microsoft’s Bing Maps or other user-facing products yet?

Assuming this is real (it’s not)

Proof?

Subtlety and nuance are great in art

They can be. But if that was the intention, that’s what the teacher should have said. “Dial it back” is a far cry from “your art would be more powerful with a more subtle message”. And anyway, sometimes the artist doesn’t want to be subtle and that’s ok too. Subtle art can be easy to misinterpret. Look at all the chadbros who idolise the characters in Fight Club.

I’m happy to see you’re not talking in the 3rd person anymore though.

Pretty sure they just didn’t have reason to refer to themselves in that comment. They’ve always used normal pronouns for other people.

Americans lost abortion rights because of the piss-weak Democratic party relying on a shaky legal foundation to keep them in place rather than legislating it themselves at any of the times they controlled the Senate, House, and White House under Carter, Clinton, Obama, or Biden. All of whome had a period where that was the case. It’s not feminists of any sort that are to blame.

I recall a couple of years ago some talk about a new open mapping initiative that Apple or some other big commerical players were going to be involved in. Separate from OSM. What ever happened to that?

I’m surprised that Apple Maps has a community that is pretty much Tue same size as organic maps

Ftfy

Because like, what is there to talk about?

Wait, 4 attempts? I think I only heard about 1.

This one needs explaining

Basically, “X is one-third more than Y” means either X = (4/3) × Y or X = Y + 1/3. I’m fine with either interpretation.

The problem is that with the values of X and Y in this example, neither interpretation produces a valid equation.

“a half is one-third more than a third” should mean either

1/3 + 1/3 = 1/2

Or

1/3 + (1/3 × 1/3) = 1/2

Neither of which is true.