FYI, some numbers. The guardian article is still definitely worth reading, it just had no statistics.

*Nationally (USA), Tesla drivers had 26.67 accidents per 1,000 drivers. This was up from 23.54 last year.

The Ram and Subaru brands were again among the most accident-prone. Ram had 23.15 per 1,000 drivers while Subaru had 22.89.

…

As of October 2024, there have been hundreds of documented nonfatal incidents involving Autopilot and fifty-one reported fatalities, forty-four of which NHTSA investigations or expert testimony later verified and two that NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations verified as happening during the engagement of Full Self-Driving (FSD).*

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/

Use the UK flag if the site is in English and use the American flag if it’s in Webster English. Seems pretty evident to me.

Yes, many times. Historically, it seems like the very strong empires first defeated themselves and once they were sufficiently weakened for outside forces to be able to threaten them … they still kept being self sabotaged by their own elite who prioritized maneuvering against each other for temporary power/wealth grabs over working together to face the outside threats.

The late Roman empire has a bunch of good examples: blatant corruption, over taxation of the poor, many assassinations, sabotaging their peers that were trying to improve the situation, constant civil war, the battle that destroyed the military backbone of the western Roman empire was fought between romans, … And all that while the empire was being torn apart by outside invasions.

Or a more recent example: the polish Lithuanian commonwealth had a paralyzed government thanks to corrupt elites with veto powers in their parliament of nobles (sejm) and only once the nation was mostly destroyed and the nation on the cusp of final destruction, did the sejm introduce some sensible new laws, but it was too late.

With smaller regional powers you can have cases like “they were in a golden age and had never been as powerful, but then the mongols appeared”, but with hegemon empires the failure of their inner workings is always going to be instrumental in their own demise.

For the other nations in nato it would be for the best (imo obviously). Republican usa is not a reliable ally and the other nato nations have not all come to terms with that new reality yet. If the usa quits nato, then it instantly removes all doubt and the remaining nations of NATO can immediately start work on improving the alliance, instead of being stuck in limbo for a few more years while they’re hoping that the usa will somehow magically unfuck itself.

My bad for assuming wrong.

And yeah, sarcasm with just text doesn’t work very well, got to add something for making obvious that it is sarcasm, or plenty of people (me included as you saw) will assume otherwise.

Starting with pulling on the door is already impolite imo. If there is no visual cue as to the occupancy of the room, then the first thing one should do is knock. If the light is off or the occupancy signal says it’s free, then sure, try the handle. Otherwise knock first, give the person who is shitting there a chance to reply with “occupied” or to knock back. But looking through gaps or trying if the door opens with the handle and then going “oops sorry”, please no.

Same goes up for offices, meeting spaces, bedrooms etc, when the door is closed and it could be occupied, always knock before attempting to enter. Less bad when someone does it, but still, one could just knock.

Fault? I didn’t mean to imply that China is responsible for starting the latest bout of civil war in Myanmar, because they weren’t. There’s really no reason to believe that whenever something bad happens, some outside big boogeyman is entirely to blame. If you want to know what caused the current civil war to start, try looking it up, but please don’t make assumptions.

If you can’t look it up because of time constraints or other reasons, then accept that you don’t know. It’s impossible to know everything, so there’s nothing wrong with not knowing some things. But imo not knowing something and knowing that you don’t know, is a lot better than making assumptions and inventing alternate facts.

Why didn’t you try knocking? Knock twice 2 times, with a few seconds pause in between, if no response, then you can try the door. Going straight to looking into the gap is … creepy imo.

Edit: this was in reply to “The only way to know was to look in the gap.”. And no it wasn’t. Knock for fucks sake, have some manners.

China is a direct neighbour of Myanmar, with a history of political meddling in Myanmar and also of setting up illegal exploitative businesses by entrepreneurs. But even without the meddling, they are direct neighbours, which should be enough reason for Myanmar journalists to want to know what is going on in China.

The glider attack happened in ww2, not ww1.

If you are from Luttich as you say, then in ww1 the part of Belgium where you’re from, was a part of Germany. The German speaking parts of Belgium, namely Eupen and Malmedy, were only allocated to Belgium with the treaty of Versailles (1919). But since you are from the German speaking part of Belgium, you of course already knew this.

For those confused by the place names: in Belgium there is a city called Liège (French speaking) in a province called Liège. Luttich is the German name for Liège. Eupen and Malmedy became a part of the province of Liège in the 1920s.

Bravo, another vague link. Can you explain how what you link to supports your claim?

The wiki article is actually very good. The historical revisionist is just claiming that it says things which it definitely does not.

That’s an article about a military campaign in a war that was already on going. The article even has a section called “outbreak of the war”, in which the actual outbreak of the war is explained (which was not Germany invading Belgium). The article does not in any way support your claim that Germany started world war 1 by invading Belgium.

Why are you linking articles and then misrepresenting what is in those articles?

This is a very novel take of historical revisionism, first time I’ve encountered it.

Do you have any sources other than yourself that support your claim that ww1 was started by Germany attacking Belgium?

The internet did not end up in the trash heap after the dot com bubble burst. Ai too has real world uses that go beyond the current planet wrecking bubble.

Fascists don’t respect democracy or even other people’s rights, so it’s logical that democracies should not trust them in positions of power. It’s basically the paradox of tolerance: “if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”

And if you want to see what happens when these kinda of people are left unchecked in the cause of retaining the “moral high ground”, just look at the USA. The USA democrats have been giving in for 40 years against increasingly perverse transgressions by republican actors, and now it’s a dumpster fire on the cusp of becoming a full blown dictatorship.

Great find.

I checked a few other historic front pages on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_newspapers The Oxford Gazette from 1665 used the same month-day format. The first edition from The Guardian from 1821 also used it. Some British news papers like The Times never stopped using it, while The Guardian is now using day-month. So it was the British after all.

I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter

*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *

The latin line with the date starts with “datum”.

In the EU (or atleast my part of it), studwalls are commonly used for the inner walls of office buildings. If you want to hang anything heavy on them (like a large TV), then you need to anchor it into the studs. Studwalls are not a bad solution, but if they are build as cheap as possible, then they can indeed be very flimsy.

I wouldn’t mind having a studwall in my own home, but I would use OSB+gypsum instead of 2*gypsum to give it some additional strength. And I’d never use it for outer walls.

Over time the salt crystals will fuse together (form clumps) because of moisture in the air. Sugar does the same thing. The clumps can be easily broken up and are still perfectly edible, but clumps in new product would be considered a quality issue.

Edit: this is an educated guess as what that best before date means, but I’m actually not a 100% certain. I’m not from the sector.