Imagine being a professional music listener. That would be the life. Sure I’d have to write a ton, like every day, and go to a bunch of events with record execs probably. Still sounds alright

I’ll remind you that sailing ships big enough for piracy very much cost more than a house. If nothing else, they’re way bigger than a house, and literally house dozens of crew for long stretches of time. A huge amount of modern capitalism was invented exactly because ships were so expensive and risky (insurance, large scale banking, corporations, lots of contract law, risk assessments, time value of money etc)

But yeah. Valuable space freight passing through areas of space with complicated conditions with many safe harbours for the pirates, for one reason or another. Political (government doesn’t care that they pirate against those other guys) geographical (countless small islands/asteroids makes searching for them futile), or otherwise

People have walked on the moon.

Serious attempt at an answer: I was terrified of this myself. I felt super tired on much less, had no idea how I would cope with a full day of work plus coming home and going right back out to be social or whatever. I ended up having to do it, plus language lessons twice a week. Have been doing it a couple years now. I think you really do adjust, at least a little. You find ways to rest in smaller periods, in bathroom at work, going out for a break with the smokers, sleeping when you come home etc. I find a lot of things I ended up sacrificing but I also find it’s not as hard as you might think. I even manage to cook most days, and stay on top of household chores for the most part. It isn’t a brag, and I think I fall back on the same recipes time and again. One one level, it just sort of all gets forced to be optimised, but I do also feel I have more energy

I can assure you that there were people who didn’t like small talk, and people who didn’t quite get that, long before the internet was a twinkle in Berners-lee’s eye

Yeah actually that sounds pretty good, might ask my partner about it when she comes home

Right. Theres nothing inherent to the act of making a bed, or having a bed made, that makes it normal. It’s literally only normal if you’re a person that normally does that. If you need a benefit of routine in life, you can choose whatever routine you want!

This. Its not as through Venezuela was invaded because they were insufficiently rigorous in proving the US’s statements wrong. The US was going to do that anyway

Tests are good vibes we like test. I feel safe warm embrace when test. Test brought dog back to life.

Enforcement.

It’s not hard to build public trust in this sort of thing if you aren’t a coward. Visible enforcement.

Idk, I use basically no paper at home or at my full time job. I get ungodly amounts from my language class though

Yes. People have tried both of those things. Heck, the encyclical even talks about it. It’s very long

Are you aware of what identical twins are?

I mean. They tested it from 98 feet away. Orbit is a little higher from that. They also said they could do a max of 19 mph. Orbital speeds, again, a little more. Just a little.

Yeah. I mean I’m pretty sure I can’t tell 100% when the subject is like, just a neutral photo of someone.

But the product people always have the worst, most garish taste in images, making it easy to tell - they don’t have the bare minimum of a photographer and artist between them and the slop, so the images are a tasteless person’s idea of art, all high contrast, vignettes, dramatic lighting from multiple angles like it’s on a film set etc.

Idk dude I’m still playing it on steam pretty regularly? Ive got some weird auto-generated username which I guess comes from an epic account made for me but I never had to do anything it just works fine

I once flew alone from Spain as a child and got registered as requiring assistance (due to being a child) There was an old blind lady on the flight with me. Somehow, they mistakenly thought that I was blind, and that the old lady I guess was just old. So they were dragging me around and saying all sorts of confusing things to me in Spanish, putting my hands on things etc. it was a weird experience for me, but probably worse for the poor lady. Eventually the confusion was resolved at the gate with some staff member saying to me in English “you can see me, yes?” While right in front of me. I was very confused, wondering if it was a trick question, but eventually we stumbled into understanding what had happened.

Whether you learn to speak a language has very little to do with school lessons anyhow. We had french from elementary school in the UK till I was 16, and I’d estimate my fluency at A2-B1. A combination of excessive focus on grammar, painfully slow lessons, and utterly no exposure outside of the classroom means nobody learns it. As an adult I’ve moved to another country speaking another language, attending language lessons, and I’m seeing this pattern again- the classmates who never use the language at home or work barely seem to make progress beyond a certain point, whereas those using it at home, socially or at work are making lightning fast progress.

Incidentally this is a big reason that it’s common for wealthy people to hire nannies or tutors that speak another language to live with their children and teach them.

It’s not as though passive exposure is enough on its own though - without at least some effort on behalf of both the learner and others, people don’t learn

The guy who invented chiropractic literally says he learned it from a ghost called Jim Atkinson. He also did “magnetic healing”.

I went to a chiropractor as a kid because of back pain. They pretty quickly figured out it was because one of my legs was longer than the other, and did several adjustments to my back, next, and legs, none of which did very much. I was told to keep coming back and it would take time to work, and that if I stopped, the pain would come back. (Of course, this conveniently meant I would have to keep paying for sessions)

The words the guy was using about why things worked were utterly crackpot, including stuff about how adjustments or pressure applied in specific parts of the hands could affect parts of the gut or brain etc. about how my organs weren’t getting enough nerve supply. All sorts of ridiculous charts on the walls showing things that I definitely knew weren’t in the body.

I later figured out my back pain was because my schoolbag was too heavy. My legs are the same length as each other.

Oh and yes, I absolutely can and will deny that acupuncture works. It doesn’t. It’s all placebo, which is very powerful.

Oh that rabbit hole is gonna get a whole lot wilder for you: they produced man portable atomic mortars! Search up Davy Crockett mortars

South Africa made atomic cannons like this one too back under apartheid