Corruption would have played a part. If you brought a tanker or free oil, whose business interest, or tax revenue, would be impacted by an influx of cheap oil?

Who is being incentivized not to solve the issue?

Where do you dock the ship?

Who gets the oil for free but then charges the next user down the supply chain?

How can you be sure the majority of the oil does not end up on the black market, exported or not used for grid energy?

Twenty years ago the most advanced economy in the world, California, had blackouts due to fraud and corruption. If it can happen in CA it can happen anywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

I am sure being Erdoğan's son in law helped more to obtain his position than being an MIT graduate.

In the private sector it is not unheard of for a salesperson to drop 5 figures on champagne. If salesman from firm A is willing to give an exec or buyer a night to remember once or twice a year, with booze costing one or two weeks salary before tax, and the salesperson from firm B simply sends a "happy holidays" card once a year, it can easily sway that exec even if they believe they are unbiased.

[0] https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/Portals/102/gifts.pdf

No I am not. I was making a salient legal point. The OP recommended visiting and making up your own mind. I pointed out that for many people that would be dangerous and illegal.

I have sympathy for the Iranian people who have a wonderful culture but are held captive by a repressive fanatical regime.

Your father may have claimed it was very obvious, but nobody else thinks so.

He disputed current practices of certain groups/sects, and his law superseded the "old" law. The key point is that Jesus did not "back date" his laws. He did not claim they applied to the ancient Hebrews and that they should be judged according to them.

> Also Christianity cannot be an offshoot of the religion now called Judaism

I make a point of noting that I was talking about Judaism as it was at 0 BC/AD.

You are incorrect. That is not controversial. In a sermon delivered by Apostle Paul in Athens, he even tells the pagans they may be worshiping the same God but not know it. [0] Paul was probably the least flexible or accommodating of the first Christian teachers.

What is controversial is the details. While Muhammad was inspired by Christian teachings, specifically Nestorianism [1], later Islamic scholars declared that Christian teachings were corrupted [2] thereby nullifying any contradictions between Jewish, Christian and Islamic teachings.

So yes, a Muslim theologian might truthfully say Islam is a superset of Christianity and Judaism, but they are not referring to any known version of Christianity or Judaism.

Christians on the other hand consider themselves a superset of Judaism. For the most part they don't dispute Judaism (as it existed before 0AD) and think of Christianity are an updated/evolved version.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagus_sermon

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahira

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrif

This is my experience. After years of paying for the service, for multiple users, using tools that seemed to have been forgotten by the dev team, my credit card failed to process one month.

Support was not interested in helping me. Not at all. Ended up having to move my team's workflow off Zoho. I had been begging them to bill my card, but they just kept sending me generic emails asking me to try again. Phone support was even less helpful.

I have seen crumbling Catholic churches, and I have seen the Vatican Meusum. Two extremes of wealth.

That is one pallet, at a cost of maybe $20,000 at bulk retail in the USA.

Were you or your siblings shoulder tapped in college by recruiters? If not that may have been why.

The area I was visiting was not so different from other places I had visited or worked, just with a greater chance of maleria and lower chance of getting quick treatment.

Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities.

You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse?

Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for sure that a large meatorite will hit the earth and cause mass deaths and crop failure, but I have no idea in how many 100s, 1000s or millions of year it will happen. If it happens tomorrow it would be a black Swan *

* an example only, we would get plenty of advanced warning.

The solution would be the states deciding among themselves who should get what, with the richer states being OK with getting less than they would otherwise get.

Not at all. It is neither against nor required by Stoicism.

Stoicism is broadly compatible with theism, and Neo-Stoicism was a movement specifically about finding common ground between Christianity with Classical Stoicism, rooted in the fact that both developed around the same time and that Seneca's brother had a meaningful interaction with Paul the Apostle described in the Book of Acts.

The Stoics mention Zeus. In The Enchiridion [1], Epictetus says Zeus has fixed his destiny. In this sense Zeus is much like Fate, and the Stoics generally acknowledged fate. There is no implication that what happens to us is "good". Stoicism is about accepting whatever happens and not worrying about it.

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45109/45109-h/45109-h.htm

I would say the average commuter can put out 300w for 10 seconds. They would hate it but everytime you see a commuter straining up a hill, they are putting that kind of wattage. In practice they probably don't because they don't like the strain.