The version I know is from the UK.

Sadly, yes.

That’s the one which IMHO tends to be over-roasted.

Yeah, that wall of text is my rationale for doing exactly that.

Personally I’m more of a believer in the saying “Politics is Acting for ugly people”.

Looks like countries in Europe and North Africa with at least one Starbucks store.

From my own experience living in a couple of those countries, this doesn’t mean much as Starbuck presence in some is pretty much residual with a handful of places in main cities or airports, serving mostly tourists (who, at least at first, don’t know they can get better and way cheaper coffee - not to mention pastries - in the local coffee shops which are all over the place)

For example, the UK (which has zero coffee tradition, though it does have the imported notion of patisserie in places like London) has lots of Starbucks whilst for example there are all of 11 Starbucks shops (almost all of which in tourist areas, two of which in the Airport) in Lisbon which is the capital of Portugal (a city of 1 - 2 million people), whilst there are thousands (probably tens of thousands, as they’re stupidly common) local coffee places just in Lisbon plus pretty much all local restaurants serve proper expressos made with properly roasted good quality Arabica beans (though Portugal does have a tendency for over-roasting) in Italian expresso machines.

That map most definitelly does not confirm the claim of Starbucks being a thing in Europe since a lot of that green is “is present”, not “it’s common”, much less “has a large market share”.

Having lived in multiple of those countries, lets just say that most of those greens aren’t anywhere as green as in a few others and even the most green of all (probably the UK) aren’t as green as the US.

For a lot of those countries (which have long traditions of good coffee), Startbucks have only a handful of stores in one or two major cities, mostly frequented by tourists since the locals can get better coffee from local coffee places and its way cheaper.

(Were I am now, Portugal, there’s a coffee place just about in every corner in any city, plus restaurants, all serving perfect expressos from Italian made expresso machines, with the most expensive cup in a place like Lisbon costing about €1.20)

You’re seriously deceiving yourself if you think there being and handful of Startbuck stores in touristic areas in a country with a strong tradition of coffee drinking is Starbucks being “a thing” there.

That full to the brim mini-shot cup is literally more quantity than a short expresso.

Any company based in or with operations in American can receive a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, aka FISA Court) order to allow mass access to data in systems they control (which definitelly includes networked machines running Windows for Microsoft ever since Microsoft has been able to push software to them - in the form of updates - to do anything they want in that machine).

These orders cannot be legally divulged by the recipient and can only be disputed in FISA Courts, the proceedings of which are themselves not public and cannot be divulged unless the side fighting the Authorities wins.

In other words, companies based in or with operations in the US can receive secret orders from an American Foreign Surveillance court which they must comply with without divulging them and which they cannot dispute elsewhere but that court, which has many special rules making it different from a normal Court, with for example the proceedings being secret.

The Surveillance System in the US is far more powerful, systematic and well entrenched than that idea you have that “companies do favors for the Feds” - that shit hasn’t been true since at least the Patriot Act.

Neoliberals want that the entity controlled by voters - the elected government/president/whatever (depending on country) - to not watch over or control the things which are important for Money (in their parlance, to “not interfere with the Free Market”, which in turn justifies privatising everything).

In other words, to make the Power which is controlled by voters be below the Power Of Money.

They’re against Democracy and in favor of Oligarch with “democracy” as a theatrical façade focused only on Moral subjects and not doing anything at all for other things which constrain the Freedom of most people.

Notice how the more hard-core Neoliberal the mainstream “center”-“left” parties in a country are (and the one Canada is pretty hard-core compared to most of Europe, tough even then not quite at the level of the Democrats in the US) the more their entire public political fight with the (Fascist) “center”-right is in the Moral space (Identity Politics) and the less it is in terms of freedoms which are limited by the control of Money over everything required for survival (with productive and shelter assets being owned mainly by a handful of people, so the rest are forced to toil within conditions controled the former group merely to have food and shelter).

In summary, they shrink “Democracy” down to a system that represents voters in the Moral sphere only where they loudly “battle” the “right” and everything else important to voters is controller not by a system where every person has one and only one vote and all votes count the same, but by a system where each dollar is a “vote” and some people have billions more “votes” than others - in other words, it’s not Democracy anymore because in most domains the vote which is equal for all individuals controls nothing at all.

I’m not fully familiar with the politics in Canada (though what I’ve seen of the Liberals is basically what I describe above), but all of this shit is painfully obvious in both the US and Britain, plus it has already infiltrated the rest of Europe to quite an extent (especially the EU, since Neoliberals use its supranational powers which are supposedly to facilitate Trade Integration, to force Neoliberal policies on countries, especially those in the Eurozone).

Anyways, all this to say that the increasing Authoritarianism you see in the more Neoliberal countries is the mainstream “center” parties which control power making sure they can detect and subvert early any civil society movements which might wrestly power away from them - in other words, the final destruction of whatever is left of Democracy and the path which is still left through the vote to undo the Oligarchic system (which would require the mainstream parties to lose most of their vote to alternatives naturally born from the civil society which weren’t just puppets created by wealthy individuals, something which already is very difficult in countries with First Past The Post systems and which total civil society surveilance is meant to make impossible)

Sometimes one does something in a certain way (which would otherwise be a shit way to do it) for very good reasons which are external to the code, be they requirements related, external upstream or downstream systems or due to existing system limitations or deployment environment.

More than a decade ago, I learned that even if one isn’t at all prone to put comments in the code, you should add comments for such reasons in that quirky code: months or years later that will yield exactly the reaction of this meme when you or somebody else sees that code (whilst you might remember why you did, somebody else will certainly not)

Maybe even more importantly, it allows other people to actually remove that crap if the reasons behind it don’t apply anymore, which they would otherwise not do because they would be fearful that the hacked-together pile of crap was needed for some reason elsewhere they were not aware of so they could not risk refactor it - most long lived codebases out there are riddled with crap which had pretty good reasons to be there back when it was done but it doesn’t anymore, but which newer people can’t just remove until they’ve gained a full understanding of the whole code base and how it’s wired to the rest (and, even then, there’s a risk that the reason is a requirement and if they just remove that code it breaks something that the users expect).

Even if you’re the kind of coder that thinks that “the code is self explanatory” (something which, by the way, betrays a lack of experience in the full life-cycle of software that has been in production for years and been worked on by several people) do your future self and others a favor by explaining the choices derived from external reasons (“Why has the auto engineer chosen to put the steering wheel in a British car on the right side?”) that led to code design which is NOT explainable by purely internal or good design or coding reasons.

(Or at least make it stupidly clear in the appropriate level of tests, which normally is requirements testing or integration testing)

If you’re really good and working in a proper professional environment (most programmer aren’t), consider tracing things back to the entries in the software requirements document, use cases or even elements of an use case, at least for the “quirky” choices.

I’ll bitch and moan about my own work from a few months ago “before I knew better”.

Maybe it only behaves as a particle when it’s being observed?

Well, at least the American taxman accepted Euros.

In my country we have a saying: “You can’t please both Greeks and Trojans” (which, to be Historically correct, should have been Athenians and Trojans)

Anyways, the point is that there will always be somebody who doesn’t like you or something you do even whilst others will.

No point in trying to please everybody and caring about what everybody things.

Knowing how to spot genuine sexual enjoyment (from body reactions that can’t actually be willed into happening) really spoils most porn, even the “amateur” stuff.

The Moral problem isn’t the Sex, it’s the Work, specifically the being forced to Work within an Economic and Political structure set-up and de facto controlled by others, to merelly survive.

We’re born in a World were somebody else already owns all the stuff we need to survive (most notably Land), and unless lucky to have been born in a high net worth family, de facto slaves who have no option but to Work for the owners of everything in order to survive, and for some people that means Sex Work.

In this line of Work like in many others, I bet that if something like a proper Universal Income came along a lot of people, thus having an actual choice, would be doing something else.

There’s no problem in doing Sex Work because you want to, there is a problem in doing Sex Work because you have to.

You seem to be running around with some serioulsy lack of life experience and understanding of people plus are probably subconsciously influenced by exposure to American-style hyperreductive politics (i.e. namelly the Red Scare bollocks) so let me tell you a story:

I’m a member a small leftwing party in my country. Now, this country used to be under a Fascist dictatorship and had a Revolution which overthrew it about 50 years ago. The result of this is that some older people who fought against Fascism and were deeply involved in Politics during the Revolution are pretty hard-core leftwingers in older more traditional ways.

Now this party I’m in isn’t the Communist Party (yeah, my country has one), differing mainly because it’s against autoritarian approaches to improving people’s lives. That said, a number of members there are from the old generation, who grew up under Fascism with one or other variant of Communism as the lighthouse signalling their way to a better world.

Back when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was having a conversation with some “comrades” from the party (yeah, even though not being the Communist Party, the party I’m in has inherited a lot of elements from the anti-Fascism revolutionary origins of its founding members, and that includes that other party members are “comrades”) and one of the older ones immediatelly sided with Russia.

Now, I happen to understand were he’s coming from (and YOU CLEARLY WOULD NOT AND JUDGING BY YOUR SIMPLETON JUDGEMENTAL TAKE, WOULD NOT EVEN TRY) - his political birth was under a Fascist dictatorship, were the by far loudest political messaging for change and the main light illuminating the path out was the Soviet Union’s variant of Communism (most people rotting in the Fascist political prisons were Communists) so of course his instinctive reaction was to think “Russia must be doing this for a good reason” and side with them: that’s just tribalist fanboyism talking (and in my experience the one thing Soviet and Mao’s styles of Communism do well is turning people into unthinking tribalist fanboys, something which people like the OP with their blunt adversarial approach actually help because they reinforce the “fortress mentality” side of that propaganda).

Guess what: I actually talked with him about it, pointed out this was a very big nation invading the territory of a smaller nation, one which they couldn’t possibly fear because it was so much smaller - thus a clear big aggressor and small victim situation - and that I was on the side of the victim - Ukraine - and against the aggressor - Russia - just like when the US invaded Iraq I was against the US and on the side of Iraq due to exactly the same Principle. I also pointed out that the claims of Russia of their actions being to “free” Ukraine were exactly like America’s claims when invading Iraq and that Freedom comes from self-determination, not violent invasion by a foreign nation (a take which ressonates with how my own country overthrew BY ITSELF Fascism and brought Democracy)

THAT got him thinking and him thinking got him to change his mind about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and side with Ukraine instead of Russia - ultimatelly brains and principles overrode the knee-jerk pro-Russia from the indoctrination in his younger years.

(Granted, this would be a lot harder with members of the actual Communist Party - this guy wasn’t in the Communist Party exactly because he had tried it and disliked it mainly because of their spirit of wanting to impose things on others - i.e. the authoritarianism - so he left and ended up in an anti-autoritarian small leftwing party)

So, you see, not all tankies are alike and IN THE WHOLE WORLD (most of which is not the US) there are a whole lot of reasons and life paths for people ending up with those beliefs, and doing like the OP did and just poking them like a little child that afterwards runs back to their friends boasting about having poked them and how angry they got, ain’t gonna change the ones who can change, it’s just going to keep them there or even push them further in.

It all feels kinda performative…

Well, yeah, that’s like going into a German sub and saying how you detest the way of doing things of both Germans and French.

You’re criticizing their way of doing things and just because you’re criticizing somebody else, doesn’t make it any better (in fact, mentioning them like side by side makes it sound you think they’re equivalent, which will piss of a few more people).

Not that think the point you made in that post you listed here is incorrect, rather I’m criticizing your “surprise” at the reaction to what you did in the context you did it: I mean if you walked into a Nazi bar and called Hitler a cunt it would be both be true that “You’re correct” and “You set yourself up to be assaulted by Nazis”.

I don’t think you understand either the concept of Statistics or the one of common sense.

You’re comparing frequent extreme events of an obviously nonsensical nature by LLMs given very limited responsibility (like the one were it tells a person with suicidal thoughts to “kill yourself”) with rare events due to design failures of highly complex systems in situations of huge responsibility.

That’s not merely as mismatched as an “apples” and “oranges” comparison, that’s as mismatched as an “apples” and “major engineering project” comparison.

Now ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for apple pie.