Nigeria is not “the West”

Child marriage in the US is rare, in sharp decline and is heavily skewed towards poverty and Native Americans. Numerous political movements exist to raise minimum marriage age to 16-18.

So again, name a mainstream Western political movement where marriage at 9 is not insanity

[citation needed]

State a single mainstream western political movement in which marriage at 9 is not complete insanity

Nothing to see here guys. All cultures are equal and thinking the West has a better way is colonialism

/s

Even now and then it just catches me how absolutely insane it is how long the planet sustained complex life without any humans whatsoever. We’re an evolutionary accident. A footnote consequence of unlikely circumstance. Were it not for a number of unlikely destructive events this planet might have quite happily continued ad infinitum with only dinosaurs on it. Can you imagine that, if this whole universe had happened and this one random blue marble had dinosaurs on it and not a single minded being anywhere to appreciate the magnificent insanity of it all?

ha thanks

Oh we know lol

People with their birthday on Monday are not going like that their birthday is always on Monday…

Things seem to work fine with the calendar we have anyway.

programmer’s eye twitches

Maybe globalism was a bad idea? Maybe we should just create a lot of monkey spheres and each find our own local and relative level of happiness?

The battle against global starvation is one of the few things that’s actually going well…

https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised-768x540.png

Corridor Crew is also an excellent YouTube channel for industry professionals commenting on how effects are done

The UK should absolutely give back cultural artifacts it took from around the world, but everything else you said is silly.

I have no idea either

Lots of Americans here in London, UK. They’ve generally been transferred by their company though. I expect it’s v hard to get in when applying for a new job.

Your original question reads like it’s limited to this thread, not games you’ve seen recommended anywhere and everywhere

Civ II was peak of the series imho… Immersive gameplay trumps graphics

For me getting an alarm clock made a difference. Because that nullified my brains weak excuse that I needed my phone by my bed “for an alarm”. No I didn’t. People have woken up perfectly reliably for years before smartphones. So I got an alarm clock. And that made it easier to turn going to bed into calm reading time instead of doom scrolling (by leaving my phone charging in other room). And that’s made a big difference, not only to quality of reading but also general mood.

At least when they make the ad part of their show it’s easier to just skip forward past it (eg YouTube keyboard shortcut to skip forward ten seconds) It depends what you’re listening to really. A lot of content producers have made their peace with the fact that people are not going to pay for their content so some sort of spoken ad means they get some sort of return. I generally only listen to research / academic based shows where they have a separate patreon for ad-free episodes and discussions. I don’t mind paying for that where I think their content is worth it. That feels like a more honest exchange.

True, though I don’t think it’s just capitalism that causes this dishonesty. I think it’s any time there’s a depersonalised entity motivated to coerse people. And certainly that happens under capitalism. But you could point to centrally planned communist states peddling bullshit to people too.

I think the antidote (so far as practical ones go) - and speaking of the West - is to ‘shop local’. People find it harder to lie and be disingenuous when’s there’s a genuine relationship there besides the trade.

That’s the most egregious part about adverts (to me), things pretending to be my friend when there’s nothing there of the sort. It would be different if it’s an actual friend of mine suggesting this or that because they thought it would actually benefit me (and holding their tongue when they knew it wouldn’t)

Maybe it’s my age, but I’m more and more painfully aware of how many ways adverts pretend to be your friend. It’sv one of the most insipid and disingenuous things about modern society. The sheer ubiquity of charming voices trying to act like the common man, a chatty friend, a hapless discoverer of product X that offers you “up to” a benefit of… whatever.

The whole damn thing is just horrible and crap and predatory and wears down the soul, because my soul was programmed to be surrounded by a ‘clan’ motivated by my wellbeing (and I theirs in a meaningful way)

Actually… quite specifically it’s the “up to” thing that happens in adverts. “Up to 100% effective” the advert says. “Well what the hell does that mean?!” I yell at the telly. “Sometimes it’s 1% effective?? Why are you even talking to me about this thing?”. It’s ghoulish.

/rant