Wikipedia (Jan 2001, so barely squeaked in)

I think they’re only including mainstream models.

I can think of four possible reasons:-

• It works on my system - We are shaped by our experiences. To someone who had their life turned around by a religious order (or a religious individual), it would make sense to follow their teachings.

• Opium of the masses - Life is filled with suffering. It is nice to imagine that there is someone looking out for you. An afterlife free of suffering is even better.

• Just following orders - If you want to do something, but don’t think your community will support you, it is easier if you say ‘god told me to do it’. It might also make it easier to justify the action to yourself.

• Church of England - You don’t care much either way, but it’s too much of a hassle to leave. Plus meeting your friends and neighbours every week is fun.

At least you don’t expect them to undergo two training arcs, beat a kaiju in single combat and h*‎ld h*nds with their crush to graduate.

Even though they’re big into tech, it comes across to me that the government and general population is still stuck in the mid 90’s regarding devices (pc’s etc, smartphones excluded).

India is big in software. Hardware has to be imported from China / Korea / Taiwan, and we have to pay them what they demand.

On paper, India has a lot of protections for transgender people (including reservations in many government jobs). Enforcement is another question.

I still feel nervous about a regional nuclear war* between you and Pakistan or a land war with China, particularly as the region dries out.

Neither will happen. Both our politicians and Pakistani generals love sabre-rattling. Both also love their wealth and status too much to do anything stupid. And while China can really hurt us in a potential war, they can do at least as much damage by stopping exports to us.

More like an apples to windows comparison.

Yep. But even a closed-source CPU is good if it makes the architecture more mainstream.

Wikipedia defines capitalism as an ‘economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit’. In contrast, communism involves ‘common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products … based on need’. The ‘means of production’ here refer to property that can be used to produce goods, and ultimately, wealth. Factories are the usual example.

I must point out, however, that the meanings of these words change over time and place. Also note that it was the Marxists who popularised these two terms; to quote Wikipedia, ‘scholars who are uncritical of capitalism rarely actually use the term capitalism’.

Right, which is why I prefer to rely on local backups. Much cheaper in the long run.

6$ is about 500 rupees. I can get another HDD for double that price.

I do copy some important files to Google Drive, but I don’t pay for it, and I don’t rely on it.

I mean, saying a model is cheaper than the latest iPhone is like saying Teslas are cheaper than Mercedes-Benz.

Snipers arent picking Admirals off regularly on their own ships.

Nelson has left the chat been shot by a tailor.

Indian here. Tigers are not household pets, as keeping them is illegal. Hell, keeping a body part of a dead tiger requires a permit, and is only allowed under very rare circumstances. Tigers have better protections under Indian law than humans.

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What OP said is Motoo Kimura’s Neutral Theory of evolution. There’s a lot of evidence supporting it. The vast majority of mutations have a negligible effect on fitness. So it is very possible that something may evolve purely by chance.

Only thing I can think of is gravity, no?

They’re not talking about the stuff in the universe being finite. The space itself could be finite, for example by looping back on itself. Tthe usual comparison is to a circular track - you can drive as far as you like on it without hitting an edge, but you’ll eventually come back to the point where you started. Now scale this up to three dimensions.

That would imply there’s something in the middle that keeps everything from straying too far?

Even if we’re talking about a system held together by gravity, it does not need a central mass. The overall system just needs to be dense enough that each piece is stabilised by all the others.

and to then wash your hands with soap.

The grossness is because it might not clean your backside as thoroughly as water.

Iirc, removeable batteries make phones harder to break. If you drop them, the back cover and battery come off, reducing the shock on the display.