barsoap

It's a couple more actually. That list also mentions brands that are in other games and source books but e.g. Porsche is definitely in 2077.

Kinda yes but no? There's minimum standards for gun control in the EU and thus the "right to bear arms" countries (Austria, Czechia, Poland, Baltic states, Finland) regularly have work cut out for them when the framework gets tightened while the "may issue" and "don't issue" countries are perpetually in overcompliance.

It's mostly Arabs which have trouble fitting in due to the vastly different organisation of society, down to predominant family system, while e.g. Turks fit in quite well. Gesticulating mediterranean drama queens, sure, but so is everyone from Spain to Greece. There's also a fuckton of Turkish-Arab beef. Afghans are also usually completely overwhelmed but also much more cut off from their background and on top of that accustomed to a multi-ethnic society. It's more of a "start a new life" type of thing for them, less "bring your clan baggage with you". Iranians don't even register, Albanians if then as Balkaners.

I guess the reduction to "Muslim" might happen organically with easterners as Turks never really made it there in appreciable numbers. Outside of Berlin, that is, and the rest are pretty much invisible. Like, imagine if the only English-speaking people you ever met were all Americans, what you'd think of English speakers as a whole.

The vast majority of CEOs don't become billionaires, most billionaires are born with a golden spoon in their mouth, and the rest got there by stepping on everyone else's backs. That's rewarding sociopathy.

Artists and athletes don't do either, they work to get good at their craft and, crucially, would be doing the same thing even if they were not as successful as they are. You can count them as petite bourgeois which of course come in good and bad but as artists and athletes are not, by trade, businesspeople they tend to very much fall on the good side. Like, you won't see Clooney undermining the actor's union -- on the contrary, he's advocated for raising his own union dues. And when they use their money to start a business you don't tend to get another Oracle or something but ARCH Motorcycles. Give me one reason why, in luxury space anarchism, the answer to Keanu Reeves saying "I want to build cool motorcycles, you in?" the answer of the collective wouldn't range from "hell yes" to "meh but you guys do you". He'd get all the resources he'd need: He entertained and uplifted billions, of course we'll chime in.

OTOH, of course, fuck J.K. Rowling. But unlike with the golden spoon billionaires she's the exception, not the norm.

Een Man de op een Frömden schimpt
weil he vun woanners kümmt
keen Mensch hölpen deit
wenn denn een Möw doröver flügt
schitt eem meern in sien Gesicht
Genauso soll das sein

Bezos’ is hardly the only high-dollar wedding to be held in the city — not least George and Amal Clooney’s nuptials in 2014, which were cheered on by locals.

Yeah don't confuse the Clooneys for Bezos, please. Whether an actor should be a half-billionaire is up for debate but if anyone should have that kind of money yes it's artists, sportsball players, etc. That is, don't confuse celebrities and feudal lords. Venice is an ancient and serene republic, have some self-respect.

You're going to spend 1 to 1.8k or such on the flights alone when coming from the US. Plus of course, as a yank, being able to afford to have a free day at all.

I get it most yanks are broke but a couple hundred are not much in terms of holiday money. Cheap hotels are going to cost you 25 to 50 Euros per night alone. Mallorca 4-star all-inclusive incl. plane tickets about 1k per person, seven nights. That's groceries for a year if you know what you're doing, or a bit more than two months of German welfare (the raw disposable payout, rent, heating, and health insurance is separate). Monthly net income on minimum wage ~1.6k, you'll probably spend most of your holidays in Balconia but if you want, yep, the Baleares are affordable. Trekking from hostel to hostel? Even more so, that's student-level holidays. Drinking wine while doing it? Depending on country, cheaper than beer. So, no, it's not out of touch. It's just not ameripoor.

Couple of days in Venice? There's camping grounds all around, bring a camper (I know, investment, but you can also rent them) or a tent. Commute into the city, if you buy anything... well ideally just don't it's all a tourist trap.

I'm not Christian so I don't really have a skin in the game but insofar as I'm still Lutheran: No, those people aren't Christian. Well, actual Lutherans would never say it like that but talk about "people regrettably being in grave error" but same difference.

Point being is that you can't profess to follow a religion if you ignore core tenets. You can't be a dancer if you never dance. And you can't be a Christian if your creed boils down to "Jesus was too woke".

Your religion is evil and always has been.

Christianity has always been self-righteous and arrogant (see the Lutheran "charity" above), but that's not the same as evil -- otherwise the French would also be inherently evil. They can, indeed, be quite rad on occasion.

A narrative that conveniently ignores that the Dalai Llama was, and is, more of a socialist than the CCP ever mustered to be and was always very much on board with reforming everything. Or, well, the current incarnation always was. The split only came after it became clear that tankies gonna tank, that is, the CCP cared less about the freedom of the people (both in a spiritual and material sense) than about having full control over a mineral-rich mountain fortress to build a military-industrial base that couldn't be shelled from the ocean. Tibet alas is, geographically, the Switzerland of the Himalayas. Another factor was the sheer popularity of the Llama in Tibet, spiritual leader + socialist is a sure-fire double whammy to popularity but threatened the party's prerogative of interpretation not to mention orthodox Marxist doctrine, opium for the people and everything.

You know what's the most absurd thing about all this, especially considering Marxist materialism? That the CCP is claiming that it can legislate on reincarnation. And not in the "yeah this is all BS" sense, that'd be par for the course, but in the "ok here is how it's going to be done" sense. Went so far as to accuse the Dalai Llama of blasphemy for suggesting that whether and how he reincarnates will be up to him. And I guess the CCP is stuck on insisting that incarnation is real because otherwise the can't blame the current Dalai Llama for the politics of his previous lives?

It is not those who hear the law, but those who do the law, who shall be delivered.

It's astonishing how many self-professed Christians straight-up ignore Romans 2.

Epictetus puts it even better though:

Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation. And when persons came to him and desired to be recommended by him to philosophers, he took and- recommended them, so well did he bear being overlooked. So that if ever any talk should happen among the unlearned concerning philosophic theorems, be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you may be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them after they have been digested.

Flashback: Once upon the time, 2014, the DFB (German football association) required the FC St. Pauli to "neutralise" their grounds as they were having the national team as guests for training before their friendly against Poland. As far as the club understood the thing, that meant obscuring all the sponsor ads, fair enough. The DFB interpreted it differently: Also any and all political slogans shall be obscured, and St. Pauli, famously, sports a big "Kein Fußball den Faschisten" in the stadium, installed permanently. ("No football for fascists" -- as in they're not supposed to have any at all, not this football isn't for them). The DFB then improvised and, with limited means, covered the slogan to read "no football". It was a draw, nil nil. Uninspired, one might say.

No union without social interaction to found and preserve it. It's why small businesses are much worse at ganging up on big businesses that exploit them than workers are at ganging up on bosses: Businesses aren't people, they don't have social interactions. Workers are and do, thus unions can and do form.