I thoroughly enjoyed Shellabarger’s “Prince of Foxes”, set in Italy during the Renaissance. I think it was fairly lighthearted, but maybe someone who read it more recently can correct me if my memory is off. A friend of mine reviewed it as “a register of Italian names”, so you know its got to be good. Must be 30 years since I read it and it was the first book that came to mind so it did have an impact on me even if it failed to catch the fancy of my friend. My suspicion is that he failed to read past the first chapter as the rest of the book has adventures and excitement aplenty.

“Someone”. And yes, they are.

I’m more into metalworking and I’m not that good with wood, but I’ve made quite a few handles for files and other tools. I’ve used boiled linseed oil for finishing mostly because that was what I had but the handles get dirty and ugly almost instantly. Is Danish oil better in that regard or would you recommend something else for oily/greasy use? Oh, and your handle looks way better than mine, I need to step up my wood game. 😀

Fusion 360. It’s the only thing that makes me boot into windows. I’ve lazily tried to make do with some 3D CAD on Linux, but no.

Sweden: Svensson, although the most common surname is Andersson.

Specifically for Gothenburg - Glenn “everybody is called Glenn in Gothenburg”, or older use - Kålle (male) and Ada (female). Not used that often.

Can’t believe that this still makes me laugh after all these years. Classic.

I know toasters are for bathing, but hadn’t heard circular saws were better for showers. TIL.

How about just making all comments complete non sequiturs. Correct sentences, but completely out of context, just to fuck with the AIs. If the comments aren’t all that valuable to teach AIs with anymore, well…

Edit: Also upvoting those comments.

I agree. Can’t really see how it would work in practice in international waters though. Who should enforce it for example? UN, maybe? Some new international coast guard type organization operating only on international waters? Should the local marine or coast guard be responsible for the vessels under the same flag even on international waters? Kind of a big job, that. I’m no maritime expert by any stretch and international law and treaties aren’t in my book of tricks either. It can’t be entirely impossible, but I’m not your man on this. There’s quite possibly some simpler solution that would at least improve the situation, but… Maybe if local companies was bound to local regulations even on international waters and their actions could be prosecuted according to that, things might at least improve. At least for a case like this, provided his company was US based in the first place and/or the boat they used. I dunno.

You are probably right about game theory working for zero sum games, but in this game, there is only one player. Us. Humanity as a whole. The two outcomes in that game are so trivial that we don’t need game theory to figure out which outcome is most beneficial.

We pretty much already know what needs to be done to win this game, or at least give it our best shot. Game theory is what holds us back from doing that, because we are wrongly applying it to try and find local best outcomes. Unfortunately, there is no point in looking for local best outcomes in this game, because they won’t matter if the whole game is lost.

I can’t say I fully thought out my comment to that extent, but I do agree that we need proper regulations to protect us from shady business practices, even if the CEO in this case believed it to be safe enough to take the same risks as the customers. But that is beside the point. Proper regulations protects the public even in that case.

How those regulations could be enforced on international waters is whole bag of cats that I don’t even have a shoot-from-the-hip kinda opinion on. UN somehow? I don’t know.

Yeah, Lennon fans can be annoying.

Yep, that’s the one. I saw this argument someplace on youtube, but I’m a bit uncertain as to where so I can’t give credit to whoever came up with it.

It’s not easy keeping it on the wagon, that’s for sure. You think you’re doing well, but a moment of weakness is all it takes sometimes. It gets easier and easier in time but you still need to be vigilant for ever. I fell of the wagon after being clean for three years. That sucked. I was so fucking disappointed with myself. Can’t ever let your guard down. Thinking you’re safe is often the one that gets you. Don’t mean to preach, you know all this already of course. As I said before, you need to find your own way that works for you. Stay strong, I believe in you. If you need to talk, pm me. Now I need to get my beauty sleep. Hasn’t improved my looks much so far, but I keep the hope alive. Cheers.

Yeah he was right about that, but what many people don’t get is that kindness in and of itself is actually all you need. All that other baggage that comes with the dude you’re talking about has caused a lot of trouble and isn’t necessary for kindness to work its magic. Love is all you need, to quote someone else who wasn’t always on the money, but he was right about that.

Some suggestions that might actually help, huh? Novel idea, that. Not trying to put you down, It was more of a comment about what the rest of this conversion’s been about.

I think you are pretty much right on in your reasoning and we need more people to realize this and get angry enough to demand action. Even the most stubborn denialists will start to figure out that there is something not quite right about the weather phenomena we are seeing more and more frequently and with larger amplitudes than ever before. Question is if they realize soon enough. Because some serious action needs to happen like yesterday if we want to stop this. As much as I would like to implement space communism, it is a tough sell and it it needs to happen slowly. Otherwise we’ll just be making another Stalin/Mao-type society and that’s not really ideal to say the least. Regardless of what the tankies in lemmygrad would have us believe. I don’t really have an easy solution on hand, I’m pretty much winging it as I go. Easy solutions to complex problems rub me the wrong way as well, even if they are an easier sell. This is why it is so important to have discussions like this. Crowd-source a solution, if you will. But mainly to raise awareness and gain buy-in from as many people as possible. Corporations been pretty successful in dumping all the responsibility on us and therefore avoiding a lot of costs in cleaning up. Take bottles for example. In the later Cambrian period when I was young, soda came in glass bottles and soda companies were responsible for the whole life cycle of the bottle. This is a lot more expensive than letting the customers take the responsibility for the trash, but more importantly, they’re off the hook for all the plastic bottles that’s dumped everywhere. They can even have campaigns telling us to be responsible with the trash they produce and not having to deal with it themselves. Win-win. We need to shift the responsibility back to the corporations again. Don’t fall for the old “we just give customers what they want”-routine. It is just trying to shift the blame for their lack of responsibility while producing the goods we buy. I’d they can’t make their products without fucking the world up, they shouldn’t make them at all. I’m quoting from memory here, so correct me when I’m wrong. Just one hundred companies are responsible for over 30%(?) of the world’s CO2 emissions and they tell us we need to save the world by recycling? Give me a break. And ducking (autocorrect, but I’m keeping it) abolish Citizens United already. The US isn’t a democracy even on paper anymore.

Slightly off topic - I saw a pretty interesting video by Abagail of Philosophy tube about the morality and legality of protests and the examples that were used was based on a protest on a coal mine in Germany some years ago. This is likely preaching to the quire in this community, but if you’ve not seen Philosophy tube before, you really should check it out. I’m a proud patron there, myself. 😊 Sorry to make you use google to find it, but that’s how lazy I am. To come clean, some of the butchered points above may originally be from her. I think. I have a terrible memory for who said what.

I’m sorry to not have answered earlier, but I got tied up a bit and also lost a comment to this by being clumsy. Not that used to typing on the phone this much.

I feel you, I really do. It is not easy fending of the existential dread and you do almost anything to not feel it so much, just for a while. The society we live in do not help much and not playing by their rules anymore feels good. Not letting it turn destructive for yourself is the real trick though. Questioning what you’ve been fed your whole life is not an easy process. You’ve built your entire existence on one set of beliefs and realizing that you may have been wrong to do that, is not a small thing. It is very easy to reject everything and if you push it too far it is easy to succumb to some sort of nihilism. That’s rarely helpful for yourself or the people around you. You need to find something else to replace those lies that you’ve been fed. What that is, you need to find out for yourself. Take your time, the world can take care of itself for a while. You seem to be the kind of person that likes to figure things out for yourself and that is a good thing. Don’t lose that, and keep an eye out for all the other lies people are trying to sell. But be especially wary of what some dusty old know-it-all on the internet says. Find your own way and try not to lose hope.

I too feel like that a lot of the time. The problem with using game theory, is that game theory only works for a zero sum game. This isn’t a zero sum game. Making us believe that is part of the propaganda. Helping someone else to a better life does not make your life worse. Our whole success as a species is proof plenty of that. A group of people helping each other is more successful than being alone and trying to fend for yourself. The propaganda is trying to make us forget that. Unfortunately, our whole economic system is built like it is a zero sum game and that is reflected in the values of society and the US is perhaps the most clear cut example of this. It is all lies. We must, however, widen the scope of our thinking. The community isn’t just your little patch of dirt. It is the whole world. Helping another part of the world or other people will make it better for you as well in the long run. Even if it temporarily inconveniences you, welcoming people who can’t survive in their patch of dirt to yours, will strengthen you in the long run. Even better is to stop exploiting other people so they can have a good life at home and doesn’t need to work 18 hour shifts to make plastic shit we don’t even need. It’s not a zero sum game and we need to stop believing that it is.

Good for you! Wish more people would follow your example. Not everyone can, but there’s always something to do. I must say that this community has made my day a lot better. It is easy to lose hope, but I have gained back a little faith in humanity today. Thanks.

If you’re implying what I think you’re implying, violence is rarely the way to go. It feeds on itself and those who are best at it or most inclined to use it tend to rise to the top and those are not the kind of people you want running things when the smoke has cleared. Those people tend to continue using those same methods that worked to get them where they are. History has numerous examples of when well meaning movements that came to power through violence and turned to crap afterwords because the leaders continued using violence to stay in power. Be very wary of simple solutions to complex problems.

You are right in the sense that change is needed and change never comes easy. I think it is a mistake to blame the people, despite my click-baity first question above. People are just trying to get by and do not see a way to improve things. If you got a mortgage and a couple kids you gotta feed and the boss is on your back with ever more work and there’s just not enough time in the day, it is bloody hard to let go of that responsibility and join the revolution. Most people just want to get by and are too tired to do anything else. They are also fed an endless stream of propaganda that you got to succeed and if you just work hard you’re gonna get rich one day. It is all lies, of course, but it is not easy to see through all that massive indoctrination that you’ve been forcefed since you were born. The shitty schools does not help much either.

Yes, people are too comfortable. But if your life is anything like I described above, you’re too bloody tired not to be. You just want to get a few hours to watch the TV or look through your Facebook feed before you crash into bed with a few beers to numb the pain. People are still believing in the rugged individualism and it must be their own fault if they don’t succeed. (Or some scary minority’s fault) It is a very compelling story. Letting go of all the things you’ve been told your whole life isn’t easy and there are very powerful forces doing all they can to prevent people from realizing they’ve been had. It’s much easier to lie to someone than convincing them they’ve been lied to. Do not blame the people, blame the system.