Saying “it’s us, men” (to rule the world) is inherently a narrative that avoid discussing the class division, because being a man is not being part of a social class.

I might have misunderstood what you meant, but this argument is put forward quite often by certain groups that lost completely touch with the class struggle, hence my remark.

Who do you think runs the fucking world already…its us, men.

I hope you realize how alienating a sentence like this is, for someone who is as stomped by society as many women are.

This narrative is exactly what prevents any form of class solidarity, and I really can’t understand how someone can write it in the same comment where class struggle is raised.

There are 2 issues here that are being mixed.

One is women not being allowed to positions of power. The other is with women being underrepresented in certain fields (e.g., stem).

The second issue is what I am talking about and I don’t think at all that men “choose” not to try certain careers in the same way women don’t “choose” not to study stem and pursue stem careers. For both, social pressure and expectations, an existing field dominated by the other sex with all its implications are factors of discrimination. Strict gender roles are damaging for both men and women, and this is a perfect example.

Like another comment stated about Germany, even in Italy medicine faculties have a majority of women today as well.

I agree that in general teacher jobs are not glamorous or high-paying, but it’s still a very important role in society and we can still discuss how it’s a problem that there is an effective (social, mostly) barrier for males accessing (lower level) education jobs.

I do believe that this is essentially another symptom of a wider problem related to gender roles.

Not OP, but positions like nurses or teachers are very female dominated. It’s not like males cannot reach those positions, but there are social obstacles to that. To make an example from my country, in Italy primary school teachers are > 90% female. I believe in kindergarten they reach 97 or 98%. This is also partially the result of strict gender roles than discriminate both men and women in terms of caring for children (I.e., women are de facto forced to do that, men are pushed away), which then reinforces the social practice of women doing all the caring jobs.

This is IMHO a problem for both men and women, but probably it’s not from the same perspective as what OP meant…

There is Brassic episode about stealing bull sperm (although from a farm, not a bank).

I think it’s S3e01

Fyi for point 2, you can sign with SSH key stored on a hardware token (e.g., yubikey).

I actually disagree that a book is “problematic” because it touches, presents, includes etc. any topic that morally we disagree with. Not every book has to be a manifesto or a depiction for a moral and just society, which is why I find most of the arguments against HP to be weak (some points were listed in a sibling comment thread).

subjecting any popular series to close reading with an eye for affront is likely to show up its flaws

I am quite sure this is true for any book (especially fiction), in fact. Which is why I think it’s an activity that makes sense only to justify the pre-existing opinion about the book, rather than having a value in itself.

if you have the chance to pick it up second-hand I’d encourage you to see if you can finish it.

To be clear, I know that Dan Brown stuff is garbage. I just have seen people who I think never read a book in the previous 10 years read that one (in translation though, so who knows…). So the book must at least be interesting and intriguing to keep the attention of people who are not used to read. For me this means not fitting in the “terrible writing” category, but maybe we mean different things by that.

The DaVinci code sold 80 millions copies. The first HP book alone sold 120 millions, and the whole series 600 millions, being the most sold series of books.

Not only they are one order of magnitude apart, but I think they sold for different reasons.

I haven’t read Dan Brown’s stuff, but I also doubt it’s terribly written by the way. Books that capture the interest of a population more and more unused to read can be shallow, banal, inconsistent, whatever, but not terribly written. Casual readers can hardly finish a terribly written book. In any case, HP books are children’s books. Children or teenagers are not literary critics, it’s not about reading “great literature”, however you define that.

I also can’t help to notice the coincidence that all the HP critiques started appearing in the last years, when the author went bananas. A series this popular, which ended in 2007, and suddenly 15 years later people notice that it’s “terribly written”? This smells more to me of a damnatio memoriae than genuine critique.

Honestly, I read the books translated + I could not and still cannot relate with the issues that I often see raised against the book (like the way diversity is represented). Especially when I was a kid, those issues were so not in my mind that I would never ever flag as issues.

To make an example: for me as a kid, slavery was something that mostly had to do with the roman empire. The whole debacle about house elves etc. is completely disconnected from real societal probelsm, recent history etc. I have always rooted for the elves because that’s what I was pushed to do emotionally, but without really ever reflecting on slavery as a whole. I am picking this example because it’s one of the most used ones to critique the book.

In general I also believe that authors can build worlds that do not represent their views, I find a lot of the critique I have read a stretch and I am especially suspicious that most of these critiques started appearing recently. I believe people started with the thesis (she is an asshole) and then backtracked the analysis trying to find anything at all in the books that could support the conclusion (rather than viceversa).

Either way, all of this is relatively irrelevant. People can like or dislike books - especially fiction - freely. For me the book is mostly associated with a vibe of being young, thinking about those stories, relating with the characters etc., not with the actual books content. So it’s more about thinking back of childhood/past than appreciating the literary value.

I found it very fun, interesting and captivating when I read those books (that is, when I was maybe 13-16?). If it was “terribly written” it wouldn’t have made the success it did, and also the target audience is generally not made of literary critics.

So I don’t think there is much to judge, especially since many people’s good opinion on the story is based on their lived experience with it, from when they were younger etc. And you can’t erase that from your life because the author turned out to be an asshole 15 years later.

Keep Tuscany, Rome, Milan, Naples and Venice and you are done for Italy.

I like Estonian Kelluke, a local carbonated lemonade. Probably mostly meant for kids, but hey…

I drank it straight from an old soviet tank sold in a parking lot. It tasted exactly like I expected.

I personally can’t stand it, but chinotto is either you love it or you hate it.

Fun fact: the picture is for chinotto Neri, with the motto: chi beve neri, neri beve. (Literally “who drinks Neri, Neri drinks” but “Neri beve” sounds like ne ribeve “drinks it again”).

I understood what you meant, not sure why you would assume otherwise. My point is that there is no need to invent new business models. Your proposal is similar to “pay with your data”, a new business model that has negative consequences for the collectivity.

In case of these types of games, a flat rate for the game and potentially a pay-per-use without margin to cover hosting (minimal, can be factored in the initial price) and API calls (gMaps) could be an option. Or none of this, and they factor in the cost already in the initial purchase. Either way, to come back to the topic of discussion, asking a one year subscription for a game sold for free (to lure people in) is IMHO predatory behavior with no excuse.

Anyway, tl;dr money already exists and people can pay for that, we don’t need to waste more computing power to find an alternative. The use of crypto incentives the overall crypto market which causes even more people (or companies) to waste energy for nothing.

This feels like a technical approach for a solution to a political problem. We shouldn’t normalize a solution to a predatory approach that companies have, we should regulate so that the approach can’t be taken by companies on the first place, we should foster competition so that those who do are going to be outcompeted etc.

Wasting even more electricity to compute numbers used in an unstable speculative market with no clear future is IMHO a completely wrong approach to the problem.

Objdct storage is anyway something I prefer over their app. Restic(/rustic) does the backup client side. B2 or any other storage to just save the data. This way you also have no vendor lock.

There are a lot of russian speaking estonians in general, not just in the east. Tallinn has quite a big population for example (Tallinn has basically 30% of the population of the whole country).

After your and the other commenter’s post I had to go check, I didn’t know she was in Scientology. Wow, that makes it even worse. Personally it is just her facial expression range (that is, a very narrow one), that irrationally makes her unlikable to me. I thought it was a good character representation in the first season of Handmaid’s tale, but then once I realized that it’s how she plays every character, or in every situation…