gambutin

I was referring to the Arab conquest of Iran after 633.

Is it fair to call it colonialism instead of occupation?

Iranians are not "just" Arabs. They speak their own language called Farsi, which has Indo-European roots. Their culture is overall very different and goes back before Islamic conquest of Iran.

I am saying external regime change = bad is not true. Only if you want it to be true - for your narrative.

Then you will say things like: but it was 80 years ago!!

You mean like the US regime changes in Germany and Japan 1945? Those ones were really bad for the local population!

Let’s be honest: children are usually forced on people. It was simply an expectation of your family and society in general for you to have children. This pressure is gone in western societies.

"How dare you asking me when I will have children?"

It’s also not necessary to have kids for retirement anymore.

Look at the top 3 countries with the highest fertility rates over the last 10 years:

- Chad - Somalia - DR Congo

Outside of Africa it’s Afghanistan and Yemen.

The last paragraph says this:

The will-it-won’t-it collapse of the AMOC is something to keep an eye on. But there are other pressing climate change issues to address in the near term, such as food security, ecosystem degradation, and rising disease rates.

It’s a bit odd how fast the discussion moves away from what actually happened and onto nitpicking the wording used to criticize it.

Even if you drop the word “sole” entirely, the basic expectation is still that a government does not kill unarmed civilians.

At that point, it is fair to wonder whether the objection adds any clarity, or just pulls attention away from the judgment itself.

Isn’t that like everything else in life? We set very high standards and then measure people against them.

Which boss is perfect? Which dad is? Nothing and no one is.

But there are shades. Some are way closer to the bar than others.

I can list hundreds of governments that have not reacted to mass protests by killing unarmed civilians (their own people) by the thousand.

Asking questions usually helps to alleviate confusion.

What is it exactly you’re confused about?

I think, as sad as it sounds, the exact number doesn’t really matter.

We know: We know: a government whose sole purpose is to protect its people has committed the mass murder of unarmed civilians. has committed the mass murder of unarmed civilians.

That’s all there is to know to make a judgement about what has happened.

I humbly disagree.

I want to be aware of enough to be productive, yes, but not so much that I get bogged down in the minutiae of corporate politics and can’t focus on my daily work.

Honestly, I’m not sure.

If I know what was going on transparently I am stressed. As an ordinary employee, I don’t need to know everything and therefore don’t need to worry about it.

Glad to see you here.

I’m almost afraid to ask but how are you and everyone else?

I’ve read the Wikipedia article about Japan and had a friend living there. Beat that!

I’m curious if it’s possible to somehow retrieve the whitelist to see who’s on it?

Here’s the YouTube video description:

Tim Maudlin - On the Methodology of Actual Physics

Physicists and philosophers often allow themselves the luxury of contemplating the methodology of a sort of idealized physicist. One such tempting model of how physicists make predictions is provided by Laplace's (or more accurately Bošković's) demon: the complete physical state of the universe at a moment is fed into some fundamental dynamical equation and then one calculates what will-or might-happen. Of course, everyone knows that this is an idealization. The requisite initial condition cannot, in fact, be known. And even if it were, the calculation could not be done. So arriving at actual predictions must involve idealizations and simplifications. But the extent and nature of those idealizations and simplifications has not, I think, been properly acknowledged, especially in the context of quantum-mechanical predictions.

I will consider the problem at a somewhat abstract level, and then make specific remarks about predictions of arrival-place and arrival-time predictions that are based in quantum theory. There, the conceptual foundations of the predictive methods are more shaky and contestable than is generally recognized.

AFAIK, one technique for monitoring cracks uses ultrasonic sensors. They send sound waves through the rails and detect cracks by analyzing reflected waves.