Most European countries do not use first past the post, but proportional representation with multiple elected representatives per voting district. There is far less incentive for politicians to gerrymander with proportional representation.

This was new to me so I tried looking it up as well. I found a lot of results right away with startpage, which makes me wonder what search engine you were using?

They (the evangelicals) are apparently calling it “toxic empathy” and they jump through a lot of loops to claim that it’s bad to have empathy with the victims of USA republican policies.

My first result was a long opinion piece criticizing evangelicals for their newfound crusade against empathy: https://churchleaders.com/news/511911-the-scandal-of-evangelical-empathy.html/4

2nd result is an evangelical that does a bit of mind bending to explain why empathy with outgroups is “toxic”: https://unityinchristianity.com/2025/02/03/the-truth-about-toxic-empathy-and-why-its-becoming-a-controversial-topic/.

The 3rd article has a claim that Jesus Himself was not empathic: “Clearly the Lord Jesus Christ can be sympathetic, but He cannot be empathetic in the sense of identifying with our sinful emotions and desires.” https://www.e-n.org.uk/features/2025-03-the-problem-with-empathy/ That article also references a book by an evangelical called “the sin of empathy”.

Modern USA could be summed up by the old Russian adage: “And then, somehow, it got worse.”

Blabla, google it, yet you ignore all evidence that was posted to the contrary of your beliefs. As expected you come up empty handed because you have nothing except your own vitriol.

I get that you are a bitter and resentful person, but that is a choice that you are making. I’ll try to explain below and I get that the text will be longer than you are used to, but I do implore you to read it. I’d like to try and help you get some perspective.

You don’t have to make up things and present them as facts. You don’t have to resent other people who try to show you that some beliefs that you hold, have no factual basis. We don’t try to inform people like you out of malice, but it’s to help others to be more informed and to help people in general make more informed decisions.

I suspect that your wilful ignorance has often brought you into useless conflicts where you ended up resenting the other participants because they were dismissive of you and your opinions. But that’s not their fault. You are the one chosing to reject facts and resenting those that do not accept your beliefs over factual evidence. Your resentment and frustration has it’s origin within your own choices, which has one major potential upside for you: you can chose to stop being that bitter resentful person.

Don’t make things up, respect other people’s opinions, be open to the possibility that some of your beliefs might not be true. Do those 3 simple things and you will find that interactions in your life will on average be much more agreeable and positive for you.

Show the proof then. insulting others and making a fool out of yourself doesn’t count as proof, so do try to come up with a proper science based source.

Your willingness to make things up, your doubling down when it becomes obvious to others that you made stuff up and then finally your reaction to jump to hatred of those that demonstrated that you make stuff up … It all makes you come across as unhinged.

I post literal proof that the shit that you made up, is made up. And your answer is to double down and throw insults around, and even now 2 weeks later you’re still at it. Somehow you’re not very convincing.

Is burning bunker fuel in international waters very polluting and should someone try to do something about it? Yes it is and yes they should. And the good news is that they have been working at it: https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-2020.aspx

But were the more polluting cargo ships from the past more polluting than “a continent”? Probably only if that continent was not Asia, Europe, America or Africa. If they were and I’m wrong, then I would love to see a source. Telling me to “google it” is not a source, I already tried looking for it when I first asked the question and I could find no info about this claim. It seemed like a hyperbole comparison that they made up.

I also tried looking up your claim that 10 ships pollute more than all cars combined, and the first result was an article debunking a similar myth (about 15 ships): https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2021/04/no-sixteen-large-ships-do-no-pollute-more-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/

Which continent? Antarctica? It wouldn’t surprise me, but it seems like an entirely useless comparison to make.

Starting with pulling on the door is already impolite imo. If there is no visual cue as to the occupancy of the room, then the first thing one should do is knock. If the light is off or the occupancy signal says it’s free, then sure, try the handle. Otherwise knock first, give the person who is shitting there a chance to reply with “occupied” or to knock back. But looking through gaps or trying if the door opens with the handle and then going “oops sorry”, please no.

Same goes up for offices, meeting spaces, bedrooms etc, when the door is closed and it could be occupied, always knock before attempting to enter. Less bad when someone does it, but still, one could just knock.

Why didn’t you try knocking? Knock twice 2 times, with a few seconds pause in between, if no response, then you can try the door. Going straight to looking into the gap is … creepy imo.

Edit: this was in reply to “The only way to know was to look in the gap.”. And no it wasn’t. Knock for fucks sake, have some manners.

I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter

*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *

The latin line with the date starts with “datum”.

That issue is not exclusive to Linux though. Try hard enough and you can brick anything. And sometimes you don’t have to do anything at all to end up with a brick.

One time that I was really glad for having a backup pc, was when I build a pc with the first generation Ryzen cpu: The pc had no display output after putting it together. After wasting much time with double checking everything, I decided to do a bios update, which solved the issue. I couldn’t have done so without my old laptop at hand. Moral of the story for me: always have a backup pc.

Welp, I’ve taught my parents to use the fakespot site before doing a purchase on Amazon. Fakespot was never a perfect tool, but it was easy to use and better than not checking review quality at all.

It’s like the saying goes: true beauty is on the inside.

They might be trying to confuse search algorithms, so that when Russians look for Ukrainian meat grinder, they get some articles with babushkas instead of blogposts that are critical about how Putin’s regime conducts the war.

Edit after some more thinking about it: those critical blogposts probably get censored away, so that when Russians try looking for them, they find no relevant results. Now that these other meat grinder articles exist, the search results will be populated again and look less suspiciously devoid of relevant results.

Canceling to downgrade your 365 subscription is the “normal” Microsoft way, so that part is not a new scummy practice that was invented for this scummy occasion. I do hope this forced upsell comes back to bite Microsoft in the ass, most consumers won’t be aware of the downgrade option, but consumer agencies shouldn’t let this slide, it’s setting a very bad precedent.

The ms instructions:

1. Go to Services & subscriptions and if prompted, sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription.
2. Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription.
3. The Cancel page will show you the features of your current subscription plan. If you’re switching to another plan with less features, select the plan that works for you.
4. Follow the instructions to complete the switch. Your existing subscription might not change immediately, but it will automatically change to the new plan when the plan renews. You won’t be charged for the new plan until it renews into that plan.
   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switch-between-microsoft-365-subscriptions-3fcc1efc-2722-427f-8efa-db94b9b0a36b

It definitely is unfortunately. Source: not an American.

Why do people hate Lenovo and Razer? From what I’ve read in the past early Razer laptops had a battery problem, but that was it. I can’t recall systemic laptop design issues. And Lenovo has a malignant bloatware problem, but that’s not a problem at all if going for Linux. So I’m out of the loop on what’s supposedly wrong with these 2.

For good graphics performance in a smallish package, I like Lenovo Legion.

If graphics aren’t a concern, then I have no more specific recommendation, too much choice. I like flip style laptops, but I don’t know if those have proper Linux support. I’d also look for a screen larger than 14", but with thin bezels.

The worst build laptop that I’ve ever held in my hands was from MSI. Cooling problems that made the fans work almost permanently at full blast (even after repasting by the shop), underperforming for the specs, a chassis with too much flex and a broken screen hinge after slightly more than 2 years (just out of warranty). When I looked up the screen hinge problem, it turned out to be an old recurring problem that MSI never bothered to fix when releasing new models, like they couldn’t be arsed to give a fuck.

This laptop was bought in about 2017 or 2018 after which I put MSI on the do not buy list. It’s possible that they’ve improved their quality since then, but I doubt it, given that I can find the same complaints in forum posts from 2024:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/are-hinge-issues-still-a-thing.343279/page-5