Indeed it would be unfortunate if the press started printing gruesome images of skeletal starving women, men and children, isn't it.... You know, photos that reminded people of some sort of horror that was revealed 80 years ago.

I agree in general terms, but Bernie is not the only "uncompromised politician" in the world. How many politicians outside the US can you even name?

In 1976, Benjamin Netanyahu's brother died. A flight from Israel to Paris had been hijacked by some Palestinian and German terrorists, and flown to Uganda, where they demanded release of prisoners, threatening to kill the Israeli and Jewish passengers (the rest were released). Israel decided to launch a mission on foreign soil to rescue them, and I think Bibi's older brother was the sole Israeli casualty.

What we are seeing today in Gaza is most likely, mostly, as a direct result of that death. Raw caveman emotion. (with a few decades of carefully layered public relations)

[now I'm going to go upvote all the heart-warming examples of human kindness in this thread]

Around the same time, in Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/...

And meanwhile, in Ireland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig

ffs USA, surely you know that democracy is about electing the people most citizens like, rather than the people most citizens don't not like...

I've heard the socioeconomic differences thing many, many times, and have kids that wear uniform. But I've never understood that argument.

It conceals socioeconomic differences. Which in the case of economic differences, is probably not egalitarian, strictly speaking? Ditto for social "class" in the sense of whether the family is historically "monied" and has particular dress style. In the case of cultural or ethnic differences, I do not see how the egalitarian logic follows either, as freely expressing your identity is restrained.

In terms of bullying... in my experience bullies will always bully. They will just do it on your overcoat, or how old your uniform is, or your earrings, or your accent, or the colour of your hair. I don't know, maybe the uniform helps a bit...

So many suggestions possible with that prompt.

I might suggest the Vlad Taltos series, starting with Jhereg, by Steven Brust. Reaslistic characters, snappy dialog, interesting premise of human's status in the society, and a pretty far-out series of villains. It comes down to more or less a first person assassin- / intrigue-based plot with cleverly set-up who-dunnit elements here and there, and an overarching storyline, and a good sense of the universe.

Some good suggestions in this thread. If you want even more options - I have been tapping into this Slashdot thread for a decade now, and it's still giving me winners - which might not work for you, mind (e.g ."Little, Big" by Crowley, it led me to "To Reign in Hell" also by Brust, "Jack of Shadows" by Zelazny,)

In Biostatistics - only ever use pi in the variance of the logistic density. Using 3.14 gives substantially equivalent results to using arbitrarily large precision. But I use whatever my calculator or R give me.

I found this: https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/... without too much difficulty.

Not sure if there is an English or Welsh version, or British. There may well be local ones...

I'm no expert on this, far from it. But I'd say you have clicked (both sides) and you should say you'd like to stay in touch and hang out with her. You don't have to confess your undying love you know.

Use a line like "so when are we gonna hang out now that you're working from home?"....

Time to go smol.

Rather than deliberately misunderstanding, maybe they are trying to reclaim it in response to its widespread misuse in recent years.

This is more or less how "Ministry for the Future" starts, isn't it?

another is the hypertext transfer protocol... (?!)

In my initial short searches I did earlier, Antonio Gramsci comes up as addressing the issue of “cultural hegemony”, where art and entertainment tends to represent the dominant bourgeois culture, which makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard of Gramsci in passing, but haven’t read anything by him yet. I think it’s a good place to begin regarding a critical analysis.

Also worth reading is Camus' short piece "Create Dangerously", on the responsibility that artists have to challenge.

I don't have it bookmarked any more, but Slashdot is the grand-daddy of them all, and still going strong. Unlike Ars Technica, I can't vouch for it's comments being quite as informative or interesting (not for a few decades now)

My understanding is that it will eventually used to improve autocorrect, when they get it working properly.

Unfortunately, no it's not catastrophic. I think we'll run out of adjectives before this is over, so we need to ration them now.

Going back to the 80s here, but I would recommend the Taltos series by Steven Brust. It's a very catchy read, great world-building. It starts as pretty much hard-boiled hitman whodunit in a fantasy setting, but escalated to much higher stakes. He's still writing the series.

Brusts other stuff is good too.

I second the other suggestion in this thread of Becky Chambers', classy stuff that really draws you in, very cozy, but not epic sci fi!

The other series I'd recommended then is an old one by Greg Bear: The Way series, starting with Eon. It is about an asteroid which appears in orbit when Earth is at the brink of war, and is one of the most mind-bending, far-fetched sci-fi stories I've read, that is still arguably hard sci-fi.