Except Java 17. Java 17 went to `java --version`. And `java -version` doesn’t work anymore (Yes I jumped from Java 8 to 17, but most people did).

It has already happened in the past.

I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA. As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

“But it was impossible to predict!” that the mask was useful. Well, Pr Raoult did. Many doctors did. Government can’t claim innocence “by being wrongly advised” after implementing nationwide policies without knowing anything correct AND banning criticism on Facebook.

You can’t claim innocence when you perform wilful censorship.

This is the most probable explanation for governments around the world saying that masks are “Absolutely useless” (literal quote) until June 2020.

It is lying-as-a-form-of-governance. It’s extremely detrimental to credibility: From that point, anything new a government said can be taken as a probable lie, since they lie as a routine operation of their job, just for practicability, because it’s easier than explaining. The common answer was “Doctors say masks are useless, why don’t you believe science.”

> I wish more people thought critically and had healthy criticism

The Covid response has killed the permission of citizen to doubt science, even though it is widely recognized that “science” had been used to make people do the opposite of what’s in their interest. You can’t both admit they told people not to wear masks at one point AND ask them to believe that they can trust the vaccine. Newspapers had to be in on the lie, social media had to prevent critical thinking for the duration of it: It’s extremely damaging to public health.

I’m surprised that individual governments didn’t even think about “Let’s not participate to a blatant lie, let’s tell people we don’t have masks and they should not buy one to let them available to hospitals, but tell them they should wear anything they have at home.” No government used the pedagogy method. They all opted for lie-as—a-policy, and-pretend-it’s-science.

Targetting delinquants is often seen as straight up racist, which kind of proves the point.

EZ is the Muslims’ best opportunity to separate the good from the evils, because many Muslims in France would like the bad ones to be convicted, which the current system prevents. Macron has instaurated a system that can be summarized as “Let’s free all Muslim criminals”, which does a lot of torts to all of them.

I think we live in a dangerously intertwined world, and a bit of email redundancy in each country would be quite important.

Currently Russia has no right to sanction us, so anything they do is a further breach of ITO, which further deepens their case.

Diplomacy is important. The good guy has to respect the rules, or at least write them so we pretend that there are rules we adhere to.

Less serious questions: Is it a 140dB alarm? Do you recognize models by sound? I assume the A320 is medium-size, do they have bigger airplanes?

It made a very nice Batman shadow on the manager’s dashboard. That’s about all they can be used for.

…which is a pretty good proof of team cohesion.

It’s more than that: The trains are negotiated at political levels! The “8:18 to Marseilles” (fictitious example) could be a headline in the news if the region refuses to fund it, and the worker’s union may have striked to keep it, while inhabitants’ HOA has negociated with the city to keep it under 12€: They are the object of a convergence of fixed interests. They run for generations: the train I took as a kid is still arriving on the same track today (and in one stop, it stops at track E; tracks A-D were dismantled but never renumbered due to this legacy).

The good thing with rails is that they aren’t going away, and trains can be negotiated for decades, they’re far from being scheduled on-the-fly.

- Snapchat is essential to some youth friendships nowadays, unfortunately,

- People dwell in dopamine hits, notably because their social life is broken. It’s a self-reinforcing problem, true, but initially their social life was broken. You don’t get into drugs when all is good, or at least you can resist.