Last week was one of the worst in my life but, never being one to let himself put down, I was finally able to produce the most correct answer to ‘how are you’? : Here I am. Still alive. Against my will.

Um. What? Are those ‘billions’ with a ‘b’? As in…a fifth of a trillion ?

Capitalism is the art of making compliant sheeps out of middle-classniks who are afraid to lose their jobs. More specifically, they are not afraid of speaking out, or refusing orders, because that would threaten their livelihood, but because the could not afford their current lifestyle anymore.

What I don’t get is: why exactly is such software so popular ? Does one really need it instead of just swiping twice or thrice to find the app one is looking for?

A nice corollary to Taleb’s 'People reserve standard compliments for those who do not threaten their pride; the others they often praise by calling “arrogant” '.

My first time in Norway (2010) I noticed right away that the prices were pretty obscene, so the first thing I did when I arrived at the hostel was to ask the guy behind the counter what the minimum wage was. He didn’t even know the concept of minimum wage.

Wexit.

In my (very personal) experience, people who boast about how rational and science-oriented they are tend to do some pretty irrational things, such as believing in amulets and marrying.

…as well as the fact that some countries in theory allow multiple citizenships but in practice only their own country’s. Iran is a prominent example. If you have Iranian birthright citizenship, it matters little if you have a second or third one: the minute you set foot in Iran (which is presumably not something that people are doing a lot these days), you will be treated as an Iranian, and if you break the law, you will be tried just as every other Iranian.

Where I come from, there’s a saying that goes something like this: ‘There are only two kinds of people in jail: the very stupid and the very poor.’

Prosody (XMPP server). Setup takes an hour at most even if you have never worked with Lua. Easy to interact with (it has a built-in shell), easy on system resources, and easy-to-understand config. Support for groups, E2EE, attachments including videos and voice recordings, among others.

‘Bureaucracy is a construct designed to maximise the distance between a decision maker and the consequences of his actions’

N.N. Taleb

Interesting !

Reminds me of the Islamic concept of the Aura, which basically denotes body parts that should be covered in public. There’s the so-called greater and the so-called lesser Aura. The greater Aura (= the body parts for which you commit a greater sin should you uncover yours in public or look at someone else’s), goes from the navel to the knees. Thus, for a Muslim woman, it is less of a sin to go topless (as long as her pants cover all the way up to the navel) as it is to run around in a miniskirt or shorts.

Replace code written by humans with AI-generated code! They said. It will be fun! They said.

This, and don’t forget to use W3’s HTML and CSS validators.

Best (and most existential) one I’ve seen in quite a while.