Being Ukrainian puts a completely different spin on it. My comment still holds true for Americans, but I would rather not see Ukrainians ground under the heel of another dictator, especially one enabled by the stupidification of the United States.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see it. The century of American supremacy is coming to a close. You may not want to admit it, because everyone in the US has been thought about American exceptionalism since they started school. China will rise, as will Europe possibly. I think Russia is failing as well. Its current lashing out is the end of their term as a great power.

The US is a big country, and the fall will be slow, but I don’t think there is a way to stop it now. I suspect that future historians will trace it back to the Nixon era. Come to think of it, every Republican president since then has also been really, really shitty when it came to preserving the health of the democracy.

I suspect that it was a defense mechanism due to her experience of many older men trying to hit on her. Better not to even open the door.

My ex, visiting Canada from Japan, once complained that there are too many trees.

Because he has the knowledge and experience to completely understand the final product. It used an approach that he hadn’t thought of, that is better suited to the problem.

I was talking to someone who does software development, and he described his experiments with AI for coding.

He said that he was able to use it successfully and come to a solution that was elegant and appropriate.

However, what he did not do was learn how to solve the problem, or indeed learn anything that would help him in future work.

Have you paid any attention to the political scene in the United States? There is no way that a billionaire could be convicted of any crime. In the rare event that they are charged, they can delay and obfuscate so that they die before any repercussions must be suffered.

I don’t think that the truth of the two-tiered American justice system has ever been so clearly delineated.

That’s strange, because the Catholic Church officially endorses evolution.

Also, the term “pre-health science”, that “she” used has never been used in Canada as far as I know. We don’t even say pre-med. Either you are in med school, or you are trying to get in, taking a variety of courses. There is no defined set of courses that we call pre-med.

Other differences between us and the US regarding post-secondary education:

Canadian universities are also almost completely free of fraternities and sororities.

We have sports scholarships, but they are nowhere near as lavish as in the US. Sports in general is a minor sideline for Canadian universities.

And to us, college always means community college. University is university (and never “uni” as some benighted countries call it).

No, Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek were tools of the international Jewish conspiracy. I think she said that Zhou En-Lai was the one who started helping them to destroy China by bringing them under the control of the Americans.

A Chinese person I know believes that Jews control the entire world. Even China was controlled by the Jews until Xi Jinping came along and tried to throw off the yoke. Apparently, the hooked nose is a dead giveaway for spotting Jews.

Fortunately, she is mostly isolated (by her own choice, she has a vehicle and plenty of time and money to socialize if she wants) aside from communicating online.

She also told me that the Mexican government had been taken over by Freemasons in the 1800s and become extremely hostile to the Catholic Church. Priests were killed or driven out of the country, monasteries and convents were closed, and Church property was forfeited to the state.

Actually, to my greatest astonishment, that last paragraph is completely true. Look up anti-clericalism in Mexico. The remnants of these anti-clerical laws were only removed from the Mexican constitution in 1992.

The people in China, and to a lesser extent Russia, want to have a word with you about how the government can control the internet.

Given Trump’s physical condition and eating habits, I would be extremely surprised if he even made it to the end of the current term.

I’m not sure what’s so amazing about that. I see lots of people get the same outline when they go skiing.

I see that the last update was more than 2 years ago. Is it just complete? Or is it being neglected?

Hitting inferiors in the head (especially for doing something foolish) is certainly a common trope in Japanese comedy.

It’s been a couple of decades since I lived in Japan, but I don’t know if they have experienced the same campaign against childhood violence that we have in North America. A few years ago, corporal punishment was made explicitly illegal both at schools and in the home. I’m not sure how much it has changed.

What’s brown and red and sticky?

Another bloody stick.

They are outrageously expensive compared to my hydro Quebec rate of USD $0.05/kWh, or even my previous rate in Ontario of (varying by the the time of day) USD $0.06-0.12/kWh.

96% of Quebec electricity is generated by hydro power, which of course doesn’t require any fuel. The other thing, though, is that power generation and transmission is done through a public corporation, not a private one. The profits go into general government revenue.

Sounds like the position of Mistress is now open.

I thought that it used up all its good insights covering the first couple of books, and then limped to the ending.