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I had no idea floccinaucihipilification was a real word. I saw it in a fake spelling bee for a commercial decades ago and assumed it was just a comically long fake word.

It was invented as a comically long fake word, but gained enough currency to be used in real writing, though in a tongue-in-cheek way.

It's a Latin calque. I'm sure the spelling should be floccipaucinihil... from pauci, few and nihil, nothing - you and the reviewer have used spellings that differ from this and from each other, but I doubt O'Brian did.


Windows Vista came out and everyone hated it. Microsoft ignored everyone and said, “You fool users just don’t understand what makes a good operating system.” Snow Leopard was the next major OS release and it just worked the way people expected an OS to work. Paired with solid understated marketing, it felt like users were respected for their choices in an OS once again. MS was forced to follow suit with W7.

Now, MS is back to ignoring users by forcing telemetry and AI. Too bad we don’t still have Steve Jobs to show them how it’s done.


> Windows Vista came out and everyone hated it.

People had difficultly opening the plastic case it came in. I did. Ms added a red pull tab to indicate an affordance, then later changed the case to a simple clam shell for Windows 7.


Fentanyl, no?

Fentanyl is another opioid, like heroin; it also has a very high addictive potential. But, if I am not mistaken, the real problem with fentanyl is that dealers contaminate other drugs with fentanyl, which becomes lethal when not done correctly (and dealers aren't very responsible)

China is single-handedly propping up Iran, NK, and Russia financially. If you ahem removed the top 1000 leaders of the CCP tomorrow, those three countries wouldn’t be able to continue their population repression and the world would be an immeasurably better place. Iran killed, what, 20k of their own population earlier this year? Russia has lost 10x that this year alone. Blocking tech from China directly hampers their funding of these countries. Am I wrong?

If some nut job ordered assassination of 1000 PRC officials tomorrow, the world would be plunged into apocalyptic, possibly nuclear, war.

It's maybe the worst possible way to handle the situation even if you are a breathless US interventionist.


Somewhat over-estimating the numbers, but even if your stats were accurate it wouldn’t change the critique that “the west” does the exact same thing.

This isn’t what-about-ism, this is simply acknowledging the realpolitik that there are great powers vying for control over the rest if the world through proxies. A game as old as civilisation itself.

We support Ukraine, they support Russia.

We support Israel, they support Iran.

We X, they Y.

Neither is more right or wrong than the other, and neither is the only bad actor.


Besides which, I doubt China has sufficient influence over Iran to restrain them, considering the US "ahem removed" the all the people that could plausibly considered moderates. I wonder how reasonable China would feel if the US really went ahead and "ahem removed" a thousand of the top political leadership. My bet, well, it's certainly possible they are correct on the "wouldn't be able to continue their population repression" bit... considering we'll all be too busy dying of nuclear winter.

Imagine things happening other way around and China deciding to "ahem remove", not even a thousand, maybe a dozen people from the US government. Odds on that not ending in a nuclear exchange, anyone? I would take that bet at basically any odds, only I probably wouldn't be alive to spend it if I won.


You’re insane if you think supporting Russia is not “more wrong” than supporting Ukraine during a war Russia started to invade Ukraine.

Didn't the US stop new aid since 2025? Sanctions against Russia sure (at least until they decided the spat with Iran was more important) but I feel like that moral high ground is little enough that proposing to "ahem remove"...

Actually on second thought even if the US is doing everything perfectly re Ukraine and Iran and whatever and general being the paragon of morality it really feels like jimbob45's proposal would be a speedrun of losing any possible moral high ground. The only thing that would do it faster is a first strike, and probably only by a couple of days or so. We're really discussing that as if "ahem removing" the leadership of a P5 (i.e. has enough nukes to end the world) country is a sane and normal thing to suggest?


That's not my meaning. There is a larger game being played. Sometimes one side is the aggressor in one particular local skirmish, sometimes the other.

Over the last few decades, the United States has regularly been the "unprovoked aggressor".

But again, the numbers aren't the point. The individual skirmishes aren't the point.

Neither side is "good" or "evil" like some child's cartoon. These are merely Great Powers poking and prodding each other, looking for advantage.


What about Israel?

We support them but they don’t need us. Iran would crumble tomorrow without China. Also, Likud Israel might be gone after this year’s October election, whether we want it gone or not. Conversely, China acts as a virtual suzerain over Iran (and NK).

If you truly believe that Gaza would be entirely rubble as it is today without the last 2 decades of slavish US backing, I don't know what to tell you.

US is also best friends with the financiers of the horrific genocide in Sudan.

This isn't whataboutism because you're genuinely presenting it as if it's something very different from what the US has been up to for the last 60 years.


The slavish US backing is the same slavish backing we give to Egypt, both consequent on Camp David. It is very obvious - simple arithmetic - that Israel would have a much bigger and chearper arsenal if they traded arms with China, India, Russia etc. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just jewpilled.

Yeah, supporting Israel as we do is also insane. By that I mean delivering weapons so that they can continue their wars against their neighbors, their genocide, and their illegal, and extending occupation of the West Bank. Our politicians still don't find it in themselves to criticize Israel, after their actions have been recognized as Genocide.

Only a few countries in Europe have been more vocal about it, like Spain and I believe Ireland.

Especially, it hurts to see that German politicians are so uneducated, that they have learned nothing from history, and still act by the categories "Israel? Good!", "Against Israel? Evil!".


the USA is single handidly proping up a genocidal Israel and putting drunk TV hosts in charge of their department of war... and is at the tipping point of ethnic cleansing....

It’s not. If you have older parents today, you can do the math on what activities they’re doing and quickly determine that you’re never going to see a cent from them. My friends all report the same.

I may sound salty but I’m not. I’ve spent enough time on Reddit to know that the real nightmare is when your parents didn’t save anything and can’t still work. Then, you’re obligated to take care of them and they actively take away from both you and their grandchildren (if they didn’t outright block you from being able to have kids in the first place).


> Then, you’re obligated to take care of them

No, you very much are not.


Well, in 3/5 of the United States you are. Look up filial laws. They’re rarely enforced but they’re there.

Well thankfully I don’t live in that broken country.

Most of us are thankful our parents took care of us and do love them. I recognize that it’s not everyone but I think most kids don’t want to see their parents suffer.

If a parent starts with a home bought by the grandparent and dual income and a lot of money, and end up not having a pension because they spent all the money on holidays and multiple homes and zero investing, would you feel like you need to support them?

I feel constantly conflicted, the previous generation started with way more and wasted a lot more and now we are called in to support them, affecting their grandchildren? I don't think that's ok


As a parent I would far rather suffer than see my kids suffer.

As a child of parents who think like this, I refuse to let them.

People with irresponsible parents often end up feeling less responsibility towards them. People with responsible parents often feel more responsibility towards them. Often, the irresponsible groups are suffering more consequences too, which adds to the bitterness.

Of course there are other permutations, since life is full of so many uncontrollable factors.


Believe it or not I’m also a child of parents

So my kids should suffer more than me, and I should suffer more than my parents?


> Most

I’d love to see a source for that.


> I’ve spent enough time on Reddit to know

Please tell me you see the irony in this.


Unpopular opinion: baseball is not fun at all to play in organized leagues for children. Baseball is, however, the best pick-up game to play with ten friends, house rules, and improvised equipment.

It's like how Twister is super fun to play with your friends casually but how you'd never want to play in an organized Twister league.


While I agree, it’s hard to trust Google not to kill this off in the future. They’re not winning and the prospect of dumping their own for a partnership with another AI company isn’t out of the picture.

This is a joke, right? I can’t think of any league as blatantly corrupt as FIFA on any level.

What are you on about? FIFA is not a league and certainly not in charge of european football

How do you feel about internships?

No, there will always be the threat of teen pregnancy. Conversely, we could wipe out HIV permanently if enough public will across the world was directed toward it.

I fully believe that HIV wouldn’t exist if PrEP had come out in the 80s when public hysteria was at an all-time high and the will to eradicate it was present.


>if PrEP had come out in the 80s when public hysteria was at an all-time high

You mean the time the US admin was intentionally neglecting the epidemic because "it's a gay disease"? Why do you think Reagan would have done anything to ensure such a medication was easily available?


We haven’t even managed to wipe out polio, and that is a cheap, lifelong vaccine.

If we gave every living human on the planet the polio vaccine as soon as they were able to receive it, it would still exist in the wild somewhere.

If new generations are not also given the vaccine, it will eventually return.

Probably the same with HIV, although I could see it being somewhat more difficult for that to make a resurgence. If we inoculated the entire human race against it, it could possibly eradicate HIV for several generations, if not permanently.


Humans are the only reservoir for polio, so that’s not true. We could theoretically wipe out polio just like smallpox because there are no animal reservoirs.

Huh. TIL. That boggles the mind though. Makes me wonder where it came from, or if perhaps its source was somehow killed off or otherwise destroyed, or if perhaps there is a reservoir somewhere that we simply are not aware of?

There’s a fair amount of viruses that have no animal reservoir.

Either they evolved from a different human virus, or from an animal virus.

Measles for example evolved from a livestock virus called rinderpest and lost the ability to infect cattle as it became a specialized human virus.


not only that, people are explicitly trying to bring back measles, and succeeding at it

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