I wish I had your confidence that capitalism can be tweaked into a fair system.

I honestly think the logical end point to capitalism is self-destructive extreme wealth disparity.

“Oof. Right in the blocks”

“What a load of absolute blocks”

“It’s the dog’s blocks”

Camera zoom into extreme closeup. “oh… blocks”.

Yep, that’s the one.

Where did you go?

Each time or cumulatively?

I think you’re a little off on the “we need to fix this world” guys.

Although zombie films / TV series lean heavily into the action side of things, that’s just because it’s more entertaining than watching people building things, developing tech, doing scientific research.

Remember with COVID 19? Huge numbers of people immediately set out to find a cure, inventing and deploying ways to prevent and monitor the spread, creating pop-in treatment centres, etc.

It’s the money-men making the decisions now, instead of people who actually care about the product.

Mind you, this isn’t sustainable - by shifting to the more “luxury” end of the hobby, and their refusal to embrace emerging technology, they’re creating huge gaps in the market for exploitation.

They’re on the verge of Nokia-ing themselves out of market dominance.

Warhammerers?

The initial buy-in, especially at a Games Workshop/ Warhammer store is astronomical.

You’ll need paintbrushes to start - here, try these, the most expensive paintbrushes you’ll ever buy. And paints too, how about our mindboggling range of expensive paints?

When I took up mini painting again as an adult, with dirt-cheap acrylic paints and brushes, and achieved far better results than I ever did as a kid with the “proper” stuff, it was a real eye-opener.

From an outsider’s perspective, although the Republicans are clearly the most corrupt of the two parties, the Democrats are far from being the good guys.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the Democrat politicians don’t actually care about truth and justice either, they’re just less bad than the Republicans are.

Tldr: vote Democrat, but don’t kid yourself. Vote because they are the least worst option.

When juries deliberate, they discuss their reasons for thinking this or that. Basically, by telling the jury to disregard something, the judge is saying that this shouldn’t be included in the decision-making process.

Of course people can’t just take things out of their heads, and of course the legal representatives take advantage of that fact.

Is it possible to just tell them it’s a medical appointment, but it’s about something that you don’t feel comfortable talking about?

It’s the truth, it explains the secrecy about the appointment, but it keeps the secret.

The trouble with “creepy” is that it’s emotive. Although it’s absolutely a correct word to use, it can easily be dismissed as an insult.

“Weird” is less of an insult, and can be taken objectively. I’ve got OCD, I know I’m weird - I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise.

But the thing is, Trump and Co don’t just want to be seen as “normal”, they want to be seen as the best at “normal”.

This is why “weird” works. It’s possible to argue that Trump being creepy is just someone else’s opinion, but it’s very hard to deny that he doesn’t do and say some weird things.

This is sticking because, even with the ludicrous amounts of good-faith his supporters have for him, it’s undeniably true, and possibly taps into any underlying misgivings they may have.

Something to add to this.

The people protesting against racism are counter-protesters. They are showing up to protest against the far right who are in turn protesting against migrants.

In the past couple of days they have been out-numbering the far right protesters by at least an order of magnitude, and a lot of the expected riots have been averted.

Does “World’s Richest Man” count as a leader? Because I’m struggling to think of any negatives to him being suddenly substracted from the world.

Also, TIL that substracted is a valid, albeit obsolete, variant of subtract.

That’s not wrong at all, but there is a much more recent Adam and Eve - an actual anatomically modern human woman and man that all of us are descended from (although, again, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart - I.e. they weren’t a couple)

It should also be stressed that I’m not saying that at one point there was only one woman alive or one man alive.

Mitochondrial DNA isn’t like the usual inherited mix of DNA - instead it’s passed down directly from mothers to their children. If they have girls, then it’ll be passed down to their children too. If they only have boys, though, then that mitochondrial DNA has come to a dead end. Basically it’s matrilineal - it passes down the female line.

The same with the Y Chromosome. Fathers pass the Y chromosome to their sons. If they only have daughters, well it’s come to a dead end. It’s patrilineal - it passes down the male line.

DNA analysis shows that all of our mitochondrial DNA is shockingly similar - especially compared to many other animals. Rolling back the clock (by accounting for the tiny random mutations that occur over time) shows that everyone converges to a single person around 155,000 years ago. Before modern humans, as a species, had expanded out of Africa and spread across the world.

Interestingly, especially so if looking for biblical comparisons, the Y-chromosomal Adam can be traced to around 100,000 years earlier than Mitochondrial Eve - so he did appear first.

So, the next question might be, “if anatomically modern humans existed for at least 100,000 years before the Mitochondrial Eve, what happened to all the other mitochondria variants - why did we end up with only one?”

That is simply a numbers game. Compared to many other animals, humans only have relatively few children in their lifetime. This keeps small populations from exploding suddenly, but it also increases the likelihood of only having boys (and stopping that line of Mitochondrial DNA).

You can map it out on a piece of paper:

Get five different coloured pens and a black pen.

Across the top of the page, draw dot in each coloured pen, with a black one beside it. The coloured dots are female, the black ones male). These are the parents.

Now for the kids. Toss a coin twice - heads for a boy (draw a dot in black pen beneath the parents), tails for a girl (draw a dot the same colour as the mum). Do this for all.

Now pair up the offspring and carry on.

You’ll find very quickly, one colour will start to dominate the paper. This represents the Mitochondrial DNA.

Mankind isn’t descended from two people.

Kinda.

The Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam are a thing. Admittedly, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart, but all mankind is descended from these two people.

I’m British, and AC/DC are Australian so… I guess you’re right?

Edit (although I do kind of like AC/DC, so IDK)

This.

Alternatively, it might be that it’s just an additional identical role, but company policy means they need to go through a new round of interviews.

NHS = National Health Service

It’s what we have in the UK, and essentially means that all your health care is free.

Vasectomy = free. Having a baby in hospital = free. CAT scan = free. Insulin = free.

Admittedly, it’s paid for in taxes, but at a small fraction of the cost of the American way of doing things.

If you’re interested in smaller scale sculpting, it’d be remiss of me not to direct you to The Crafsman Steady Craftin’

https://youtube.com/@thecrafsman?si=IrZ7Ze0j5WnfyXXk

Had mine done through the NHS. Basically two questions, “do you have children already” and “how long since your last child was born?”.

If you haven’t had kids yet, you just need to explain why you want a vasectomy, usually with a specialist. If your last child was born less than two months ago, they want you to wait (apparently a lot of men’s first reaction to the realities of having a baby is to try to ensure it won’t happen again).