fonix232

Except it does. Any LEO that is openly discriminating against specific members of the society they’re policing based on inalienable characteristics - aka what they were born as, let that be being ginger, having complete alopecia, or being a goblin - should be disqualified from those duties.

Technically, money as a term applies to any kind of exchange valuation system, not just currencies and their representations (aka coins and bills and other denominations).

And the history of valuation of exchange goes back to prehistoric times - as long as barter has existed, so has money, even if it wasn’t called officially that.

For example we have records of debt ledgers from ancient Mesopotamia, cca 5000BCE, which tallied goods exchanges that weren’t executed immediately (e.g. one party would offer a dozen eggs in return for a unit of wheat, but the wheat would be delivered months later).

But debt handling goes back even further, tally sticks were used as early as 30000BCE. Yes, even cavemen traded and kept rudimentary records of it.

Mind you these are all “money of account” systems. “Money of exchange” systems - where an intermediary, representative system is used for valuation instead of an account - also developed prior to coin usage. In North Africa, the Mediterranean, and ancient China, units of salt were frequently used for such purpose. In Mexico? Cacao beans. In the Maldives, natives used cowrie shells. Hell, in Ancient Greece and Rome, even slaves were used as money.

Interestingly, the first evidence of gold jewelry - from around 4600BCE to 4200BCE, the exact time being hard to determine with certainty - actually falls around the same time as the Mesopotamian use of trade account ledgers, making it hard to identify which might’ve appeared sooner - however most gold jewelry evidence from the era is located quite further away from Mesopotamia, in current day Bulgaria, meaning the two did not coexist at the same place in the same time (at least presumably), making it so that in some areas, gold jewelry might have appeared sooner than a formalised/codified approach to money of account, and vice versa, in some areas, accounting existed for millennia before good began appearing in use for jewelry or decoration (e.g. in Mesopotamia, the oldest discovery of gold use is dated to around 2500BCE).

But ultimately, humans of all eras, even prior to tool use, liked to adorn themselves with things they found pretty, and pretty things thus have always held value even if not officially codified, so I think we can state with confidence that gold jewelry and gold as money more or less come hand in hand in history.

Nah, the issue is much deeper rooted. fElonia has been a white supremacist moron for a VERY long time.

When he sold his first company, Zip2, to Compaq, the latter said that the code was practically unusable.

Later on, he funded the formation of the original X dot com, an online bank, where he fired all other founders within the first half year due to “creative differences”, basically stole their work, and within a year they merged with Peter Thiel’s PayPal/Confinity. A few months later Musk got ousted as CEO because of mismanagement. Go figure.

Half his ventures since have been abject and utter failures, which would’ve ruined anyone else financially, but because he’s got his rich emerald mine owner daddy, he always had a nice little trust fund to fall back on.

And his views also go back to his father, who was a fervent supporter of the Apartheid state, and is essentially a white supremacist (also an elitist piece of shit). Don’t even get me started about mummy dearest, to whom muskie had to run just so he didn’t have to fight Zuckerberg…

At SpaceX there literally used to be a “Musk management department”, solely tasked with giving the imbecile random tasks that don’t affect mission critical stuff, and making sure he’s not saying absolutely moronic BS in interviews.

He’s basically stuck on the mental and emotional level of a 13yo teen who just hit puberty, combined with that Cybertruck shaped body, more gender affirming care than your average post-op trans person, and a botched micropenis he can’t even use. Him going full on alt-right wasn’t a question of if, but when.

This tends to happen with nouveau riche - the generation that makes the initial wealth usually grows up in relative scarcity and is better due to it (learning money management and the importance of not overspending, but saving as much as one can). But they lack the skills or ability to pass this education on, the second generation is spoiled because the parents want to give their kids everything they couldn’t have in their childhood, and thus that generation becomes entitled little shits who care not about money because they always seem to have enough for anything they want, let it be a new car, a new bachelor pad, or paying off the right people to get out from a DUI or drug charges.

This even tends to happen to people whom aren’t even rich rich, just well off enough so that money isn’t really an issue. Real estate can be one of those businesses where one can get to that level of well off.

While it’s true that they essentially pay to have their names added to a room/hall/floor/wing/building, don’t forget that those donations tend to fund actually important research and equipment (this mostly happens to hospitals and universities or research facilities).

It’s also a common occurrence for scientific research locations/institutions to name an area after an important scientist, upon their passing.

See the perfect example: Star Trek Discovery namedropping Musk in-between the Wright brothers and Zephram Cochrane (in-universe inventor of the warp drive), and even having a high school named after him.

This, mind you, happened right before his “pedo guy” comments - the episode aired in early October 2017, whereas Musk made the comment on 15 July 2018. So within a year Musk managed to kill off the respect of a large chunk of nerds just by letting his inner Nazi appear for a moment.

Chickens are opportunistic feeders.

They take any opportunity to feed.

The South isn’t the only issue here.

What truly went wrong is the aftermath of WW2. Nazis shouldn’t have been let off as easily as they were - especially the ones that escaped justice to countries like Argentina.

That easy-handedness allowed the ideology to survive just long enough for those who saw the atrocities to mostly die off, and to plan ahead and arise through “backdoor channels” on the fringes of society, let that be the Neo-Nazi skinhead or biker groups, incels, or other similar brainwashed extremities of people - generally tons of dim-witted morons misled easily by the handful of intelligent, actually morally fucked ones in charge.

I too hope the US manages another civil war and gets broken up, because the political imbalance both internally due to the fucked up, rigid political systems and externally due to the constant influence they exert over others, is not tenable. A more EU-like approach between the 50 states (plus DC plus PR) would be much more beneficial to both the states and the world.

The “official” left - the Dems - might not fight back, but remember that most of their support comes from the sheer desperation of actual leftists having no other viable representation.

Fortunately bad quality DRAM can be found out much quicker than bad quality capacitors.

Not really. DRAM at its core is not even useful without a controller that actually provides managed access to it. Any backdoor would need to be either in the controller or a layer above for it to be functional. And controllers aren’t the issue, DRAM chips are.

This.

There isn’t a singular pinnacle stoner food because munchies hit different for everyone, and even for one person there’s tons of variations.

Sometimes I’ll crave a super cheesy Chicago style deep dish pizza. Another time, I’ll die for some Black Forest Gateaux, or even a simple vanilla ice cream. Other times I can demolish an entire fruit basket. Hell, once I craved creamed spinach…

You fight government overreach by civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach in the same manner.

If you give a free pass to corporations disobeying laws just because you personally dislike those laws, soon you’ll find all regulations are pointless because no corporation follows them…

Also, there’s no such thing as “governmental overreach” in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people. You elect the representatives, you have a say in what laws get passed. I do agree that we could do with a refresher because the current forms of representative democracy are breaking thanks to (primarily right wing) political false marketing with no repercussions, and nowadays we do have a way to have people give direct input on laws and regulations before they get passed, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the government isn’t supposed to be some shady ruler class but rather a form of communal governance.

There’s no clear cut answer for that because there’s no absolute morality - and this is presented by the many issues raised with the entirety of the wizarding world Rowling built.

Take house elves for example. For us it’s obvious, they’re quasi slaves, and no amount of them saying they want this can alleviate the fact that wizards are enslaving an entire race just to make housework easier. We do see from e.g. the Weasleys that housework is trivial - an enchantment here, a spell there, and dishes clean themselves, clothes stay clean and well shaped (let it be ironing, pressing, etc.), pretty much the only unique, unreplicateable ability elves have is that they can apparate anywhere unrestricted.

And it’s not like many treat them well. Sure, the ones at Hogwarts are not abused, as far as we know. But look at the other examples. The Malfoys with Dobby, the Blacks with Kreacher, even the Crouches with their elves whose name I don’t remember… Just continuous abuse. Verbal, physical, emotional.

And it’s not like Harry or most of his idols are exceptions. The only people we see treat Kreacher well, are the Weasley parents, and Hermione. And by “treat well” I mean not abuse. Harry cusses him out in DH, and even throws shit at him, Ron too has some not exactly nice remarks, and don’t get me started on Sirius, the man who claims to have left behind his family’s “dark and evil” ways, treats Kreacher as if he was responsible for Sirius’ childhood trauma.

Or take the Goblins of Gringotts. Most wizards see them as necessary downside for a working financial system. Most wizards also don’t think they’re people.

Or literally any other sapient creature. Look how Firenze is treated in OoP by the students. He’s “just” a centaur, and even though Dumbledore names him a professor, the students don’t consider him an actual teacher. Harry and a few others are open minded enough, but most think of him as a talking horse (I think this name is actually said in the books).

So many creatures show not just sentience (aka the understanding of self, which most animals exhibit, alongside basic emotions that aren’t instinctual), but actual sapience - the ability to form coherent, complex thoughts and communicate those in some form - meaning they’re not just intelligent on the level of an animal, but at least as an equal to human intelligence and cognizance. And yet these creatures are treated as second class citizens, if they’re citizens at all and not just considered “wildlife”, making them property.

And while Harry might be “good” in the eye of the reader… He also doesn’t consider most of these creatures as equals. He fought for equality within the wizards, regardless of their birth status, where their magic comes from, or who their families are… but didn’t give a crap about the creatures, he was more than happy to preserve the status quo. He saw only one side of the injustice, fought against it, and won, proclaiming himself to be the good guy. While completely ignoring the more systemic injustices and in fact considering them perfectly okay.

To make a comparison with real world… imagine if the US civil war was fought over not slaves per se, but just the non-black slaves’ (so Asian, American indigenous, arab and Semitic, and what Americans considered “non-white” at the time like Spanish, Italian, Irish, Polish, etc. European immigrants) status, the Norrh saying “yeah slavery is fine up until this skin tone”.

To me this screams morally grey at best, because okay, Harry is directly opposing genocide… but on the other hand doesn’t give a crap about non-human members of the wizarding world, beyond “don’t kill them unnecessarily”. He doesn’t just don’t want to change the system - he doesn’t even see the issue with it!

Honestly the only morally positive person throughout the entire franchise was Newt Scamander from Fabtastic Beasts. Respectful towards all forms of life, no matter how sapient or not they are, always fighting for their betterment, protecting those who can’t defend themselves, and only fighting those who’d attack otherwise dedenceles creature.

Threats do work when delivered properly. See how the EU forced Apple into moving to USB-C or opening up sideloading/alternate app markets.

You just need to have weight to throw around behind your threats. The EU has weight. The UK alone? Hah.

Nope. His job was mostly to mop up after careless wizards and witches that enchanted or cursed Muggle objects to behave… differently than intended.

His fascination with Muggle stuff was a completely personal thing, although most others disliked it. Which to me made little sense, wizards being so stuck up their own arse they completely ignore the Muggle world like they’re not part of it when the literally live around them.

tbf there WAS a purge of aurors who supported Dumbledore and those who stayed with the Ministry did bail once Voldy took over.

Even Arthur Weasley, whose job was mostly irrelevant and minor, hightailed it out of there.

Can someone please take care of the diapered, dementia-ridden orange shitsack please? Also, rescue that cat he’s got stapled to his head. It’s starting to look mangy…

Well no surprise there, Harry was essentially a jock who only excelled in two things:

• magical self defence
• sports

And he was good enough in magical self defence that he took down the biggest baddest wizard with just the disarming spell. Literally a magical “put yer gun down”.

He could’ve gone into sports but hey, he just finished off the “big bad” shortly after he turned 18, so of course he’d chase that high. Especially when his girlfriend went into sports and they could hardly both play, that would be constant tension.

So yup, he went on to be a cop. And I see a lot of people claiming that ooh, the wizarding world is different, the police aren’t sent after innocent people, their justice system isn’t rigged, there’s no discrimination, yada yada… Hello??? Magical SAPIENT creatures are routinely enslaved, Dumbledore, someone people thought to be above reproach, was constantly accosted by the very same cops, Harry himself was accused and dragged into a kangaroo court over DEFENDING himself, the aurors have proven time after time that most of them are just as ineffective as the typical Murican doughnut-muncher mall cop, and about discrimination… “mudbloods” need a reminder? Or how Filch is treated?

The wizarding world is the last living remnant of the elitism of the British monarchy/nobility, and if you don’t see this, you lack practically all comprehensive reading skills. Put down those rose tinted glasses and read Harry Potter while paying attention to the social narrarive. It will open your eyes.

I hardly forgot about it, since I’m Hungarian.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire (which existed only in the 1800s up to 1918), was preceded by a separate Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Hungary, which happened to have the same ruler (same person who had both titles) since the late 1500s. Habsburgs didn’t take control of Hungary until 1526, and even then, limited to the western bits due to Ottoman incursions, and full control wasn’t achieved until 1718. So using 1282 as the beginning of Habsburg rule within Hungary, or equating the Habsburg dynasty with the Austro-Hungarian Empire is quite misleading.

Also, the Empire was hardly a world power, at least not to the level of Spain in the 1400-1500s, or the UK in the 1800s…

I also doubt the US will fold into the EU. Canada wants in, yes, but that’s because the US is totally fucked at the moment. What I suspect will happen is a collapse of the federal over-state, resulting in a union similar to the EU - and potentially on friendly terms with it too - into which Mexico and Canada will be invited too, plus a mutual defense pact.