It’s something like the second law of Thermodynamics. It’s probability, not absolute. It’s possible all the gas molecules in the room arrange themselves one corner, but it’s fantastically unlikely. It’s possible to choose the right encryption key to a 256-bit cipher at random the first time, but it’s fantastically unlikely.

You probably grew up brushing your teeth with modern toothpaste, and had fluoride in the water.

This isn’t universally true, even today, in the United States. So says the diner in Indianapolis I went to where almost all the staff were missing teeth.

There’s nothing that points to Mary Magdalene being a prostitute. She’s conflated with another character who was, but they aren’t directly connected in the text.

By my very fundamentalist upbringing, this was all supposedly a metaphor for God’s love of the nation of Israel. Which is exactly the sort of “reading between the lines” that they said you weren’t supposed to do.

It’s not that complicated. Solomon was horny, someone a long time ago decided his hornyness should be canon, and now biblical literalists have to deal with it and don’t know how.

no missing teeth (lol)

More remarkable than you think without modern dental care.

Remember that I’m a nihilist and shrug my shoulders.

Then start to think about how everyone else is going to react and how I’ll need to plan for that.

The specific example I’m thinking of is DES. They messed with the S-boxes, and nobody at the time knew why. The assumption was that they weakened them.

However, some years later, cryptographers working in public developed differential cryptanalysis to break ciphers. Turns out, those changed S-boxes made it difficult to apply differential cryptanalysis. So it appears they actually made it stronger.

But then there’s this other wrinkle. They limited the key size to 56-bits, which even at the time was known to be too small. Computers would eventually catch up to that. Nation states would be able to break it, and eventually, well funded corporations would be able to break it. That time came in the 90s.

It appears they went both directions with that one. They gave themselves a window where they would be able to break it when few others could, including anything they had stored away over the decades.

That’s the trubble with the NSA. They want to spy on people, but they also need to protect American companies from foreign spies. When you use their stuff, it’s hard to be sure which part of the NSA was involved, or if both were in some way.

Presumably, she won’t “just got engaged” for more than a week. Or she has a very interesting personal life, I dunno.

Tons of tu quoque replies in the whole thread, which tends to prove OP’s title. Yes, we’re aware America does these things turbocharged. The whole point is that EU nations do all sorts of shit, too, but it isn’t scrutinized because America does it worse.

I mean, I don’t usually talk about my porn viewing with friends. There’s only a handful of people I would talk about it with. As far as fundamentalists goes, while I do have friends who identify as Christian, I would have a hard time being around someone under the fundamentalist label. For reasons that don’t specifically have anything to do with porn.

When it affects work or personal relationships.

France, Germany, and Austria all have a military-industrial complex problem. MIL money might not dominate their politics the same way as the US, but there is a problem there.

Even with their post-WW2 defensive militaries, Germany and Austria are perfectly ready to sell military hardware to anyone with the cash. H&K, Glock, and Steyr all hail from those two.

France sold off the Exocet anti-ship missile to just about anyone. As far as I can tell, it has only been fired in anger at the boats of other NATO members. Thanks, France!

I think there’s value to mandatory military service when your aims are primarily defensive. Country gets invaded and not only are there lots of people in the army already, but also there’s plenty of reserves who just need refresher training. When you’re the one getting invaded, you usually don’t have problems with motivation unless the current regime has really fucked up.

When you try to use a largely conscripted army for invasions, like Russia is doing, people start to wonder why the hell they’re doing this.

Conversely, when your country is known for military adventurism like the United States, it’s easier to motivate volunteers. They signed up for this, and as fucked up as it is, they almost want to be sent off to war in some far off land. England also has generally used a volunteer military throughout its imperialist history. Giving your citizens the choice works better if you’re going to be doing imperialism.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I think there should be mandatory service, but not necessarily military service. Something like the old Civilian Conservation Corps.

But I’m also old enough that this policy wouldn’t affect me directly, so take that as you will.

Tu quoque.

Europe likes to pretend it isn’t racist because its cops don’t beat up black people (for the most part). US racisim, OTOH, is on full public display. This doesn’t make one better than the other.

Good A plot, bad B plot, and a C plot that should have been cut entirely.