On the flip side, the US health agencies will keep their back channels open to the WHO.

If something particularly nasty crops us they’ll have no choice other than to collaborate

Suggest best types of dry food they would like! I have one gummy shark with a voracious appetite but I worry sometimes the dry food I give her isn’t the best for her to eat. (I give her wet food too.)

Been trying to break in this career for too long. If it doesn’t work out by EOY 2025, do something else

Can someone explain why global flatpaks are installed in /var/lib and not /opt or /usr/local?

Notice how he’s not ignoring government directions and moaning about it when the government isn’t captured by him?

Fantastic, Linux needs tools like this for users who need to make occasional changes and inspect systemd.

For inspiration, I would suggest you also look at LaunchControl, which is a GUI tool to administer launchd on macOS.

With the Reboot Into Selected, will this modify the next boot only without changing the default?

You still have to come up with the explanation of what started life in the first place!

Something something sneaking into other people’s houses is haram therefore VPN is haram?

The US seems perfectly happy with socialism … for its corporate sector

Though the English is are weird

Local names in Britain do my head in

I miss the KDE 3.x crystal theme

Oh fuck! Buy travel insurance…

Then they were pulled on board, the survivors thought they’d died and landed in hell

A malicious gene drive. Basically, use molecular tools to ensure that a gene is always passed down from a parent to its progeny, regardless of the other parent’s genetic makeup.

Many choices available: propagate resistance to a pesticide for mosquitos, guarantee Huntington’s disease in a family, or crash a population of beneficial species by reducing fertility, to name a few.

Australia: carrying out elections.

Voting is compulsory and you will be fined if you don’t vote without an acceptable reason.

But because voting is compulsory, it’s extremely easy and accessible. Waiting in line for more than 15 minutes is a long wait. Even in the suburbs you’re not usually more than a five minute drive from a polling place.

If you think you’ll have trouble getting to a polling place on election day (a Saturday), you can request a postal ballot or vote early at a different polling place.

We have an independent electoral commission federally and in each state/territory to organise elections (depending on which level of government you’re voting for). They also handle district boundaries to remove gerrymandering.

All ballots are marked and counted by hand. The counting process is open and transparent: any candidate can send people to inspect the counting process and ensure there are no irregularities.

This sounds like a Carmen Sandiego heist

Did you ever contrast it with Brave New World? In many ways the latter is more disturbing since the masses are kept busy with frivolity to question their world.

I think this is a really interesting question. To me, if I hear a claim, I might say I accept it as knowledge or believe it as a worldview.

For example, I get irked by people asking if I “believe” in climate change. To me, it’s not a matter of belief: there is a body of knowledge being scrutinised by extraordinarily smart and talented people. I accept the existence of and need to mitigate climate change.

On the other hand, do I believe we’re not alone in the universe? I can’t rely on knowledge, it’s a lot of intuition.

Thank you for reminding me of this one! I keep forgetting to try it out