RunawayFixer

Kinda like the sharpy hurricane: he'd rather do something that makes him look stupid and petty, than admit to having been wrong about something. Combine a very fragile ego with stupidity and you end up with antics like this.

I want to add: The guy dressed like active russian soldiers and he never had outward signs identifying him as press. The vehicles he drove in on the frontline were those of the russian army, so again no markings of being press. Thus Ukraine attacked some Russian soldiers, one of which happened to be an embedded war journalist. Afaik, Ukraine did not actively seek out or target a journalist.

This attack by Ukraine is not the same thing as the Israeli or Russian army targeting journalists. If a journalist clearly marked themselves or their vehicle as journalists, then they were more likely to be attacked by the Israeli/Russian army than if they hadn't. Russia has even been using guided missiles to target hotels because foreign press was staying there. And given that Russia actively targeted journalists, that might be an explanation as to why this russian propagandist did not mark himself as a journalist, but imo it's more likely that he just liked cosplaying as one of the boys.

Has there ever been done a sociological study on how many and why so many closeted homosexuals are homophobic? I can think of 2 reasons as to why, but I would love to see some numbers.

The 2 reasons I can think of: Non homosexuals don't think as much about homo sex as closeted homosexuals, so they are less likely to constantly be thinking about gays having sex and thus less likely to speak out against it. And closeted homosexuals are probably jealous of gays that are no longer in the closet, a case of "how dare those people openly live happy lives doing what I would like to do, but can't because I'm a bigot with a fragile ego". And this last point is probably why it's so often republicans who are like this: it fits with the republican mindset of being "the party of spite".

It's a toilet with a rear outlet, not uncommon at all I think. When installed on an upper floor, they are less intrusive on the living space below it.

It's a cop out, a way to temporarily relieve the problem without actually solving the problem. Every year the trains run a tiny bit slower and every year reliability is as bad as the year before.

Especially for small trains and shorter journeys it has gotten silly imo. Journeys that used to take about ~15 minutes now take ~30 minutes. And at the time when it took that train 15 minutes, they were really punctual and reliable, while now they're not. I found an article from 2014 which remarked that Mechelen-leuven was going to take 26 minutes while it only used to take 16 minutes. Now in 2024 that same line is 25-31 minutes with an acceptable error margin of +6 minutes.

https://www.demorgen.be/nieuws/brussel-antwerpen-trager-dan-in-1935~b2af282e/?referrer=https://www.qwant.com/

From my personal experience, those slower trains are not driving slower and being more punctual, they're just spending a lot more time standing still. My small commuter train to Brussels would always spend 10 to 50 minutes waiting in the same junction. In the case of the 50 minutes, I think it was just pretending to be a later train so that it could arrive on time.

In Belgium it's 6 minutes and only the arrival at the final destination is checked. Cancelled trains are also not included in the statistics, which has lead to trains being cancelled to increase punctuality: instead of starting it's journey 10 minutes late, the train starts "on time" 1 hour later. Travellers missing connections is also not included in the statistics.

So put these 3 together and the actual delays of travellers are much larger than the statistics would like us to believe.

And to add insult to injury, to increase their "punctuality", the train operator seems to increase journey times with every schedule revision. So not only are trains less punctual than they were a few decades ago, journey times are also often significantly longer.

So according to the statistics, Belgian trains are doing fine, but the actual travellers disagree.

Gamer's Nexus did at least one video on bad Newegg sale practices and customer service about 2 years ago. A fun watch if you like trainwreck stories.

A few years ago Newegg was bought by foreign investors and it's now a prime example of the various ways in which bad leadership, focused on short term profits, can damage a company in the long term. Newegg isn't the only company that is suffering from that short term thinking, but as it turns out, the audience for computer parts is a bit more critical and mobile than people who shop on Amazon, so Newegg has had a fast decline.

I think that might be possible with mitochondrial dna (it always comes from the mother), but I only found 1 speculative source that draws a conclusion: "Nobody today has mitochondrial DNA like that in Neanderthals and, since it’s passed only maternally, this implies that interbreeding was more often between their men and our women." https://aeon.co/essays/what-do-we-know-about-the-lives-of-neanderthal-women

It's an essay, not a research paper, I wouldn't bet any money on this conclusion being correct.

There are examples of 2 distinct species (with different chromosome count) creating (sometimes) fertile offspring: https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/when-hybrids-are-fertile-3/

But genetically the neanderthalers were far less different from us than those examples. Apparently all modern humans share 99.9% of DNA and neanderthalers shared 99.7% of that. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/are-neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-the-same-species

So the no viable offspring rule might not be that good for differentiating species, but that also doesn't mean that neanderthalers and us were not the same species. The more I read on it, the more I think that we were. Apparently we interbred quite a lot over the millennia.

In a non first past the post voting system, it's less likely that 1 radical party remains in power long enough to screw up the high courts. But it can still happen, case in point Hungary and Poland.

Iirc, Orban had been in power for many years in Hungary and went for a gradual erosion of the independence of the courts. Death by a thousand cuts.

Pis in Poland only had a majority for 2 election cycles, but they needed only the first win to screw up the courts. Instead of a gradual (legalistic) takeover, they went for a bonkers hostile takeover of the supreme courts: https://freedomhouse.org/report/analytical-brief/2018/hostile-takeover-how-law-and-justice-captured-polands-courts

The eu should have kicked out both states out of the decision making process and implemented sanctions, but since that required unanimity, Poland and Hungary were essentially protecting each other from consequences. Now that pis lost in Poland, I hope that the eu takes action and prevents this from happening again.

Inspired by is not the same as based on. I don't think that it can ever be canonical because the time period was never explored in depth by Frank Herbert himself, but I do think that the what ifs of this time period could make for a very interesting premise.

Either way, the showrunner is apparently Alison Schapker, who was also the primary showrunner for Altered Carbon, which I really liked. So I'm definitely going to give the first episode a chance :)

From imdb: "Ten thousand years before Paul Atreides joined the Fremen to lead an uprising on Arrakis to take down House Harkonen, two sisters (Valya and Tula Harkkonen) create the mysterious all-female order called the Bene Gesserit. In Dune Prophecy, the siblings combat forces that threaten the future of humankind.".

Iirc, 10000 thousand years before Dune was the time of the Butler Jihad, when humankind fought against the thinking machines. So I think it's a series based on apocryphal stories on how the feudal society in Dune came to be. Lots of creative freedom for the creators, kinda like Knights of the Old Republic was for Star Wars.