I’m never going to be one to dog on something before I try it. If it’s good and can offer the same or better experience as Firefox then sign me up. The biggest sticking point for me, though, is potentially losing Firefox’s massive add-in library. I really like my uBlock Origin and Restore YouTube Dislike and my VPN extension and Metamask and all the other crap I’ve got there.

Year 3 of using Fedora and I still don’t know what the equivalent of apt purge is

There is no limit in the Constitution that prohibits individual US states from exchanging representatives with foreign countries or from expressing or sending support to them. However, there are some caveats, of course, and it’s a very nuanced area of law that has interesting implications:

1. Accepting formal diplomatic representatives from another power is deemed under international law to mean recognising the independence and sovereignty of the power whose representatives you are accepting. Which essentially precludes formal diplomatic ties from consideration. This is why the US doesn’t accept diplomats from the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan) and refuses official Taiwanese diplomatic and service passports, but is more than happy to accept “unofficial” representatives.
2. Any representatives sent would not have the power to contract treaties as US states are not competent under US law to enter into treaties or make any other binding obligation to other countries. This is problematic because that means they can’t even do as much as rent an office space in another country without the involvement of the US federal government.
3. The primary reasons that a country might consider hosting a diplomatic mission of a foreign power is so that they can (1) complain to the ambassador about that foreign power doing things that they don’t like, (2) so that the foreign power can issue passports and visas within the host country, (3) so that consular services can be provided by the foreign power to its citizens or subjects living within the host country, and (4) negotiate treaties. Since US states don’t really do anything abroad that can’t be handled or complained about through the US Department of State, and because US states don’t issue passports or visas, and because consular services to US citizens is already provided through the diplomatic missions of the United States, it is unnecessary for any country to consider hosting a US state diplomatic mission.

Paper money doesn’t exist

Yeah when the Japanese saw the Americans off in the distance running for their ice cream barge like schoolchildren at the playground and looked down at their shitty dried prune sorrowfully planted in a thin tray of plain white rice, they pretty much knew the war was over.

Okay, you got me there. I’ll admit that’s a pretty good use for cryptocurrencies

Blockchain is the perfect solution to none of life’s problems

Usually for used stuff eBay is way cheaper. And for many things, it doesn’t matter whether it is new or used.

Even if we were starting from scratch, ignoring the historical connotations of this flag, it would be regarded as racist and utterly unsuitable for use as a Chinese national symbol. The colours represented what were, at the time of its creation, the five recognised ethnic groups of China, those being, from top to bottom, Han, Manchu, Mongols, Muslims, and Tibetans.

The modern Chinese state recognises fifty-six ethnic groups. This is also not counting the aborignial peoples of Taiwan, all of whom the Chinese government consider to be collectively “Gaoshan people” but which the Taiwanese government considers 16 different ethnic groups, potentially more depending on who you ask.

Yes, the great Chinese empire is as diverse as any.

Even if you only include ethnic groups with more than five million people, that’s still ten different groups, and a ten-colour flag would be pretty jarring, to say the least, with one very famous exception of an 11-colour flag that is still rather aesthetically pleasing. And, of course, as the meme would imply, people pretty much automatically assume that any flag with lots of colours arranged in a horizontal bar represents an LGBTQ identity. LGBTQ acceptance is pretty low overall in Mainland China compared to Europe or North America so I don’t think the prospect of allowing the Americans to mock a future Chinese national symbol as a “gay flag” will go over too well.

On a barely-related note, this flag redesign idea is found pretty frequently on the Chinese Internet and seems to be popular with Mainlanders.

Can’t say whether it would go down well with Taiwanese people though.

Step 1: Go to station ticket office

Step 2: Tell ticket agent where you want to go

Step 3: Give cash to ticket agent

Step 4: Receive ticket

I can’t comment on the practices of Italian transit agencies, but in the US, when you buy a train or bus ticket, the email just contains a QR code which you give to the train conductor or bus driver to scan. It also typically includes your name as well (tickets are not transferrable to prevent resale) but I don’t see a reason that you couldn’t design a system with simple bearer tickets.

So this system could just take your payment (which is not anonymous anyway since a name is required to process card payments) and then show you a QR code and tell you to take a screenshot of it.

Well compare the proportion of natives living in Canada/United States versus the proportion of natives living in India or Nigeria or South Africa and I think you’ll agree I’m mostly right when I say that the British succeeded in displacing the indigenous population of North America.

They tried doing that to the native people living in North America too. The only difference is that they largely succeeded.

.gov and .mil are controlled by the American government and they are reserved for use by American government websites and American military websites respectively.

Ah yes. How to get by without a job:

• Fraud (false warranty claims)
• Theft (stealing coins from vending machine)
• Gambling (crypto)
• Literally just self-employment (starting a drop shipping business/flipping things on eBay)