True enough. And Trump could very well accelerate that with his economic temper tantrums. Still, I don’t know what currency BRICS would settle on; certainly not the ruble, not after Putin cratered the whole country’s economy. The yuan?

Or gueuze. They tend to be a bit hard to find in the US. Sour Flanders red ales are another good style, and also difficult to find.

IIRC, a proper lambic is made with spontaneous fermentation, which makes each batch slightly different.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that also change the way that the arrow is accelerated by the bow? Like, it starts a little slower, and then has increased acceleration until the string returns the the starting position? Whereas a long or recurve bow is going to have the hardest acceleration at the very start, since that’s where the most energy is stored?

And if that’s true, how does that affect the flight of the arrow? I know that with stick bows, the arrow bows as it’s being accelerated, and then wobbles slightly before stabilizing a few feet in front of the bow. Some of that is likely because the arrow has to bend around the bow stave. But do you see less of that with a compound bow?

The US is a unicorn country because the US dollar is the primary currency in the world. If the Euro supplanted the US dollar for that position, then the problems with excessive debt could absolutely happen in the US.

Hmmm. I could support mandatory service, but not necessarily military service. An army of conscripts isn’t a very good army; just look at Russia. OTOH, I think that, in general, a population that has some basic level of training so that they can be called up and quickly activated if the professional military needs more people isn’t a terrible idea. On the other other hand, I think that people being conscripted to do public works and service is a pretty solid idea.

That said, I’d be much, much more supportive of a system where no one had citizenship–and I mean no one–without doing four years of service for their country first, in whatever capacity they were needed and capable of serving, whether that’s some form of military service, or working in soup kitchens. E.g., unless you are willing to work for the country, you should not be able to vote -or- be elected, nor should you have absolute, unfettered free speech. IMO people need to be invested in some way in their country. Look at immigrants that have been naturalized; they’re often far more serious about their citizenship and their responsibilities as citizens than people that were born and raised here. IMO we should aspire to have all citizens be as committed as those that have been naturalized.

EDIT - to be clear, I support a population being actively engaged in the politics of their locality, state, and country. Too many people are disengaged from news and politics, and that’s a terrible thing.

As far as firearms training, my issue is that it’s often used as a way to deny rights. E.g., make training mandatory to get a permit, but make training expensive, inconvenient to get to, at times that conflict with work schedules, etc., in order to discourage people from exercising their right. If training was offered on-demand, was free, and you didn’t need to pass a test in order to be able to use your civil right, then sure. Like, the hunters’ safety classes? You have to take the class, but you don’t have to pass a test in order to be permitted to get a hunting license. (Or, you don’t in my state. I’ve taken the class; most of it is pretty basic if you are already familiar with guns.) Any system that uses testing to determine if you can exercise a civil right will inevitably end up functioning like literacy tests did for voting rights.

In that case, I would recommend using your time machine to go back in time and buying something to protect the floor from the sofa.

Short of sanding the floor down, there’s really not a lot that you can do. The dents and dings aren’t going to pop back out; it’s not like auto repair where you can use a suction cup to pup them back up. Sanding the floor down is expensive; you’re looking at thousands of dollars to have it done by a professional that will do it correctly. Doing it yourself is… not a great idea, unless you are a perfectionist and have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing. Even then, renting the machines–or buying!–and buying the needed sandpaper, CA glue, and poly finish (assuming you want to use poly; I have other finishes that I prefer, but poly is fast and usually non-toxic) may well be more than your deposit.

The argument that you’re going to want to make is that this is expected wear and tear; that might fly with your landlord, it might not. You could make a small-claims case out of it, and you might be able to win that. Or you might not, and then you’d be out your deposit, plus the cost of filing a small-claims case.

Sharp knives work considerably better for that; you’re less likely to slip off the onion and hit a finger.

It depends on what you want from a knife.

I want a knife that will take and hold an edge, will resist chipping and setting into a bend, but is also fairly easy to re-sharpen. For what I want, san mai forging using plain carbon steels gives nearly the best results. If you want a knife that will be extremely tough and resistant to rusting or staining, plain carbon steels would be a very poor choice. My favorite vegetable knife needs to be cleaned immediately and oiled lightly after every use, and is absolutely not dishwasher safe. Most people would prefer a stainless steel construction over a knife like that.

What I’m looking for in a knife is shaving cleanly and easily; a knife can be fairly dull and still cut a tomato.

One test I’ve seen is rolling up a single sheet of paper into a tube, standing it on it’s end, and then cutting diagonally slowly with your kitchen knife. You should be able to cut the tube of paper cleanly, without knocking it over. If not, your knife should be honed or stropped.

good advice for finding sustainable, local textile production

There largely isn’t any of this. There’s really very, very little in the way of locally-sourced textiles, and what there is is going to be art rather than functional. I don’t know where you live, but in the US, there are only a handful of mills that remain, and you’d need to be placing a mill order (e.g., hundreds or thousands of yards of fabric) in order to do business with them. OTOH, there are often local tailors that will be able to order high-quality textiles to make bespoke garments for you. The downside is that this is REALLY expensive. For instance, I’m a bit slow at patternmaking, and not the best at fitting, and if I charged only $25/hr, you’d be looking at around $100 for the initial sloper, and probably another $150 to tune the fit. From there, patterning for a specific garment can take a day or more, depending on what you want, and that’s not including cost of materials and sewing time. For a bespoke suit, you’re starting at about $5000 from an experienced tailor.

That aside, there are certainly a large number of things that are buy once, cry once. Take kitchen knives; if you buy a Yoshimi Kato nakiri, a good set of Shapton glass stones (…which, TBF, will probably cost well over $1000), and take care of it, it will easily last your entire life. If you buy furniture from highly skilled carpenters, you’ll likely be buying something that will last over a century as long as it’s not abused; my grandfather made Craftsman-style furniture and cabinetry in the 20s-30s, and I know for certain that a number of his pieces are still around and in use. But buying the kind of quality and craftsmanship that will allow certain products to last for a lifetime is NOT cheap. While expensive doesn’t always mean quality, high-quality is almost never inexpensive.

“For all intensive porpoises” is the one that really annoys me.

They’re dolphins, not porpoises. Fuck, get your cetaceans right.

but this is ultimately voluntary and led by ones conscience.

Voluntary association is one of the defining traits of anarchist collectives though. None are compelled to participate, they do so willingly. The same was true with the early Christian church that existed within the Roman empire.

It is true that we see discrepancies between what Jesus supposedly said, and how the early church was organized. The church was certainly a product of its own time, much like Jesus’ teachings about the position of slaves.

This was Luke writing in Acts

My apologies; it’s been 30-odd years since I believed in a theistic religion, and I misremembered that.

[it] says very little (if anything) about how a state or market ought to behave.

True. Christianity is less concerned with material conditions than with eternal questions. But it seems fairly clear that valuing wealth and power more than spiritual matters is very antithetical to the teachings of Christ or his apostles. Wealth isn’t seen as inherently bad; it depends on what you do with it.

I was raised in a very conservative home, both economically and socially. Even as a young person, it was clear to me that there were some pretty serious discrepancies between what Jesus and his disciples said about wealth, and how my own family and church viewed wealth.

Not particularly. Christianity in particular, if one reads the New Testament strictly, is quite socialist. In one of the Pauline epistles, Paul talks about all of the members of a congregation holding all things in common.

Marx assumes that addressing the material conditions would eliminate religion, and i think he’s only partially correct. Yes, religion eases the pain of injustices now, but socialism can’t address ideas of purpose within the universe, and life after death. Economic theory has nothing to say about whether or not any given deity is real.

OTOH, I’m an atheistic Satanist; I largely oppose theistic religions because I see them used to control people, rather than to comfort or help.

The Lord works in mysterious ways…

Hydrocodone made my eyes itch so badly that I couldn’t keep them open. It took about five or six hours before I could see anything.

Of course, it doesn’t prove your point. Have you seen any of the detainees personally? Are you just going to rely on reports from western media about them, or from family members that are thousands of miles away? Do you believe that it’s “top secret” just because western media is telling you it is?

Or is it perhaps more likely that concentration camps, black sites, and detention facilities for ‘irregular combatants’ would maybe not be something that is open to reporters, and perhaps locals might not be willing to be open about them with foreigners?

hence why I encourage people to visit Xinjiang and try to find these millions-strong concentration camps or just

By that logic, there have never been any detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Why, if there were, surely you could just walk into Gitmo and see them yourself! But you can’t! So they must not have every existed!

Weird. I’ve gotten oxy for a surgery, and it was just meh. Didn’t make me feel tired, didn’t really do a lot for the pain–which wasn’t really that bad–def. didn’t get me high. OTOH, I’m allergic to at least one opiate, so IDK.

The Netherlands, perhaps?

As an American, I would support such a ban. the rest of the world shouldn’t be subjected to American social media.