Em Adespoton

With the limited size of our domestic population, it always blows me away that there are enough Canadians living in countries like Lebanon to populate a small city.

Has UW never met Barbara Streisand before?

But wait… didn’t China say the re-education camps were a hoax, that Muslims have the same rights as everyone else in China, and that any issues they’d been having had already been resolved?

That’s how epistemological analysis works… if the general structure is the same but everyone pulls different meaning out of an event, something probably happened. If everything lines up exactly, someone probably faked the letters. If there’s totally conflicting stories, the record has been tampered with too much to say anything. If there’s no record, there’s nothing to say one way or another.

You realize that a significant portion of the bible is the collected letters and works that were at the time (that it was assembled) considered credible, right?

There’s a period of around 80 years that’s pretty hard to account for, but unlike the four gospels where there’s little corroborating evidence that tracks back into that 80 year period, the epistolary works are pretty likely to be authentic. They also reference a bunch of other letters that didn’t survive, something that tends to make them more likely authentic than not. And they involve people who were eyewitnesses of a man named Jesus (or Joshua or Yeshua if you prefer) and his younger (step) brothers.

The rest of the statements about him were solidified by 80 years or so after his death, but all the accounts don’t quite line up — which is actually a good argument for them being based on actual events.

So while there may be plenty of room for debate as to how much of the biblical teachings actually originated with a man named Jesus, his actual existence seems more evident than, say, Shakespeare.

Perplexing.

Basically, people are more aware of how they, personally, are affected by the economy.

The economy in general is doing better, but the majority of citizens are able to apply less and less of that to the things they value, and they see more and more of it being funnelled to the already wealthy.

Put it behind a PiHole that drops all traffic to Microsoft servers?

Perfect Dad joke material….

Terrorists need funding. Doing so is illegal, and can show up in tax filings.

No, No, and Yes.

Could be… also, the real allergen tends to show up in the essential oil, which is highly concentrated.

I find that odd actually; eucalyptus contains an oil that quite a few people are allergic to. I’d never heard it was a rare allergy, in fact, elements of its oils are often associated with allergies:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273331261_Eucalyptus_oil_Contact_allergy_and_safety

Once upon a time print shops would only accept files in Quark Xpress format. Eventually, they came to accept InDesign documents too. They have licenses for the software and workflows and toolchains set up to integrate those files into their existing prepress and press systems.

LaTeX is purely for academic markup for postscript printing. VivaDesigner and its kind? Only niche and hobby layout and print.

That said, I only share in PDF now, so I use other software for the layout phases and don’t care that it isn’t portable to other shops.

Hmm… outsider left. And yet I’m pretty conservative in my own country.

So I guess Trump is no longer allowed to vote in New York?

I presume Florida allows NY felons to vote though…,

I remembered something else I take that I’d totally forgotten that a few others mentioned: a compass.

I used to also take a topographical map of the area, but these days I tend to depend on my watch (which can drop waypoints and a breadcrumb map) and my phone. But I keep a compass in my survival pack.

Why? Because worst-case scenario is that the batteries in your electronics die. A compass will always work.

The compass doesn’t have to be for finding your way on a map — when you reach the trailhead, turn around and try to find something you’ll be able to see from a distance. Take a compass reading to see what direction it’s in. Then do the same if you ever leave the trail and when setting up camp. This will help you figure out the relative orientation of the land, so if you end up lost, you can pull out the compass and use it to find your way back, even if you can’t see the landmark, instead of wandering in circles.

Useful to practice with it somewhere familiar before using it in the wild too.

I was with you up until the “so fast under Modi” bit.

Modi was chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and has been PM since then — a decade.

It’s been a slow and predictable train wreck with a lot of momentum.

Meanwhile, he dismantled the caste system but it’s still going strong with only the exceptions being celebrated.

If you’re doing Scotland, be prepared for the quick changes in weather/temperature and the wind chill. And for the landscape to be bigger than it appears with lots of invisible folds in the landscape. Don’t go solo in unfamiliar areas.

Ah yes… deranged ultralight hikers :D This reminds me of one thing to add: try to ensure your fully packed backpack doesn’t weigh more than 30Kg; that should be enough for do a 4-day hike with at least one other person. For an overnighter, you’re still going to have to carry a lot of the same stuff except less food and toilet paper. But if planning to do longer hikes, there’s no harm in over packing for a single night a few times to get the feel of what you’re comfortable having vs how much it weighs.

One other thing: I trail run, so I’ll be in and out in four hours on trails where others are planning to stay one or more nights. Sometimes I get looks of disbelief from people with the full 30kg packs on as I run past them on the trail — but no, I’m not crazy enough to have that little on my back AND be planning to stay the night. Conversely, the reason I’ve got all that stuff on my back at all is because accidents happen.

I’ve had more than one time where I’ve been on a run and encountered a group that neglected to bring along a first aid kit, or a group that ran out of water. Always good to pack for slightly more than you’re expecting, just in case you need to help someone else out, or survive an extra night while others come looking for you.