I guess we need to distinguish between legislation, regulation and case law established through judicial precedent. Legislation is definitely too cumbersome to react to shifting moral standards. Regulation and judicial precedent are more flexible in cases where legal consequences are warranted.

As so often, there is nuance to the topic. General statements are hard to make both concisely and precisely. I opted for brevity, but you are absolutely right.

Either way, we agree that complacency about CSA is fucked up.

Laws should follow and codify ethics, not dictate them. If a transgression (such as not reporting CSA to the relevant authorities) is not already banned by law, that doesn’t mean it’s fine. It means the law needs to be amended.

If it’s five people throwing them, they’re terrorists. If it’s five million, they’re a problem. (Depending on the size of country and military, I’m pulling numbers out my arse to exemplify a point, not as accurate measures).

Numbers matter. If you have enough people on your side and willing to join the throwing for your cocktails to make a difference, that might work for you. But if most of the populace are scared to lose more than they stand to gain, you’ll end up with the brave throwers arrested or killed, the media denouncing their “undemocratic” acts and possibly the people even more afraid to do anything.

Any revolutionary movement will need to hit a point of critical mass that allows it to succeed. It’s hard to gauge just when that point is reached, but if you misjudge, you’ll end up another failed insurrection.

Peaceful protests build the sense of consensus and unity. Violent solutions can’t succeed without both popular support and enough participants to make a difference, but if everybody’s scared of standing alone they’re doomed. Sudden upheaval is likely to make more people oppose the change, because most people like stability.

Peaceful protests that get gradually more frustrated are more likely to support more drastic measures than a sudden upheaval. Whether or not you believe peaceful protests will fix anything, they’re the best solution that’s viable right now.

Me no word good 😄
Nah, you’ve got a point, my brain is just fried these days. I definitely need a vacation.

I was supporting your point. I forget that comments are seen as counterargument by default.

But you’re right, my comment would have been more useful in reply to the other person.

Reduce
Reuse <- You are here
Recycle

Not using it at all would be better, sure, but if you don’t have that option for whatever reason, reusing it is the next best thing. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

It’s the irreverence with which they are used. If the average European medieval peasant affirm their sincerity and honesty by saying “May God damn me to hell if I lie”, that’s an (implicit) oath. They’re putting their salvation on the line. That’s how serious the matter at hand is.

If I casually say “damn, that ass”, I’m using a boiled down version of that (when the oath formula becomes so widespread, people start omitting words because everyone knows what you mean anyway, even if you just say “God Damn me” and eventually just “damn”). But I’m not doing it out of a devout belief that the thing I’m saying warrants reinforcement by invoking divine wrath. I’m abusing the sanctity of good for an entirely profane matter. I’m reducing God’s power and wrarh to a colloquial tool.

That would be rather pathetic then, to resort to anticompetitive practices and still not prevail.

I believe that is why people made such a fuss about the GDPR allowing courts to slap companies for up to 4% of their worldwide annual revenue. Whether or not that full extent is ever brought to bear against particularly megacorps is a different question, but at least medium-sized companies will probably avoid repeat offenses. I don’t know how Meta felt about the 1.2 billion ticket either, but I can’t imagine they just shrugged it off as normal business expenses.

Are they succeeding? I have no idea of the actual figures and the Internet tends to form echo chambers, so I don’t know if the sentiments I read that they’re still not much of a threat are actually representative.

Speak for yourself

I’m actually gaming on nvidia! Didn’t take any tinkering either. I got the Nvidia version of Nobara, which many steam games “just work” on.

That’s not to say I didn’t start tinkering anyway, but new games I install and just run work fine.

Is that latch on the inside or the outside?

Me, staring at my code, fiddling around, retrying it over and over: “WHY WON’T YOU WORK, DAMMIT?”

Me, late at night, trying to sleep, suddenly wide awake: “Oh that’s why!”

Me, the next morning, staring at my code: “…what was it again?”

I assume the “almost everything” is relative to the things people need to calculate gravity for. Astrophysics is cool, but rather the minority compared to, say, calculating the forces a bridge has to withstand or the arc of a ballistic projectile or any other calculations concerning primarily things on our planet.

I think that’s a question of perspective. We, judging from hindisght and with access to more Information, can tell that. But the people signing up out of a misguided desire to serve probably didn’t. Their motivation - regardless of result - was probably to do the right thing, which is a sentiment that Trump evidently doesn’t just not understand, but doesn’t even seem aware of. “What’s in it for them?” betrays a fundamental ignorance of even the concept that his ilk leverage to get people fighting their wars.

Traitors against the people, so yeah