In terms of interstellar planetary observations we're not even at the peering through hand-ground lenses in a medieval observatory stage yet, we're still trying to squint-count the pleiades on a windblown steppe as a test of eyesight. These are part of many tiny progressive advances that will ultimately lead to things like a constellation of observation satellites in a globe around the sun using its gravitational field to magnify distant worlds to an incredible extent. Taken individually it mightn't look like much but it all adds up over time.

Although I've never been incarcerated and it's highly unlikely that I ever will be, I don't think a criminal record should be a permanent millstone around anyone's neck. If you've done your time and are no longer a threat to anyone or anything, it should need a court order to turn up criminal records. Time done, move on. Anything else is vengeance, not justice.

Very shellfish of them. ...thank you, I'll be here all night, try the veal!

No Ireland still gets to vote on issues which would amend the Irish constitution, that continues to remain in force and was mostly the reason we got a vote on these treaties in the first place as I recall. The politicians can agree to whatever they want but if it means changing a word of Bunreacht na hEireann they have to run it by the people first. Which while awesome is mostly used by the population to strategically force the politicians to get a better deal rather than specifically opting out of European affairs.

I think the powers that be in the EU were either talking about or had enacted measures so that only a majority of countries needed to ratify treaties or something out of bitterness at the rampant and unchecked democracy in Ireland. Still, they wouldn't survive a constitutional challenge even if the government agreed to them.

Wan't there some standard exception for oil rigs, prisons, schools etc in the normal licensing?

What grievous offence has he committed upon your person that you'd wish him a horrendous death and his body likely never recovered? I quite liked Aliens myself.

Quote the opposite I'd say, these people are likely to be lionised in China and have their careers furthered by being prosecuted. And if they really want to go abroad they can have new identities manufactured wholesale by their government. Global politics are a whole other level.

Ireland's doing okay, thanks. Not exactly booming for sure but ruined the country isn't.

Okay, so straight in with the ad-homs, right.

Aaand we're off. Women as historical slaves. Let's take a closer look at that, shall we?

If the woman was a slave, that would make the man the mint julep sippin' massa, right? Except was there ever one single white slave owner who ever died to save the lives of his black slaves? Who ever gave up a space in a lifeboat to his black slave and chose to go down with a ship in their stead? Who ever stood with a rifle between his black slaves and an enemy to defend their lives, rather than his right to own them?

Can you even imagine a white slave owner working 16 hours in a field while his black slave stayed inside most of the day and kept his house tidy, then coming home and sharing the fruits of his labors with his black slave?

Did a black woman who was the sexual partner of a white slave owner have any expectation of respect, lifelong provision or shelter, or of sharing the benefits of his quality of life and his social status? Or was she just an object of the moment, free to be used and cast aside at will? Did a black man who was obligated to obey his owner's wife have any legal right or recourse when she pointed a finger and claimed he raped her? Or was he swinging from a tree within hours?

Yeah, women weren't slaves (except the ones that were actual slaves of course) and it's pretty horrifyingly racist that someone would diminish the experiences of actual slaves by such a comparison.

Yes, that was the point I was making. Wives in comparison to husbands, people of equivalent social status except one has more priveleges than the other, and it turns out that it wasn't the husband. This came from a woman of the time incidentally, and an awful lot of women agreed with her. Of course they were probably also incensed at the attitudes of the suffragettes towards poor folk and those of colour.

So any unmarried women rapidly died off in poverty?

And do you think that was because they hated women or didn't want to have to deal with long absences if she got pregnant? There's usually a practical reason for all of this stuff once you scratch the surface and dispense with the hysterics.

Which applied to men also. Third level education was for rich people back then.

Okay, so you know you're wrong and don't want to hear that. At least you admitted it up front I guess.

I'm self employed and the banks won't give me a loan for property because of the erratic nature of being self employed. The banks don't hate me or treat me this way because of my gender, they just weigh up the chances of getting their money back and decide they can do better elsewhere. Trying to paint this as misogyny or misandry is ridiculous.

Dorothy Dix was the world’s most successful female columnist of the first half of the 20th century, whose columns were syndicated internationally. Here's one of her columns from 1938:

DEAR MISS DIX – Do you think the girl who is always trying to save a boy’s pocketbook, even though she may not be going to marry him, is appreciated as much as the gold-digger who is out for all she can get? I have always in mind the fact that a boy may not have a great deal of money and try to keep him from spending money upon me, but my friends say I am foolish not to take all I can get, and certainly, as far as I can see, I get no thanks from the boys. So where am I? — Mabel.

Answer – from the way boys complain about how the girls hold them up, and what it costs to take a Jane out for an evening’s diversion, I should think that all the young men of your neighborhood would fall on your neck with loud cries of gratitude.

For the gold-diggers certainly are heartless robbers. They go on the assumption that every youth is a millionaire, although they work right at the next desk to him and are perfectly aware that his pay envelope has no more in it than theirs.

Now that's not to say that pay gap and career issues didn't exist, but I would estimate that they existed for the same reason as they do today, as in nothing to do with paying women less purely because they are women. There are certain jobs where your genitalia will affect your pay rate but they generally aren't pursued by polite society.

And yet it seems odd that the majority of my older female relations and indeed your own mother somehow managed to not just find work but have good careers during these dark ages of woman hatred. No?

The takeaway is that it's starting to overall look like poor people being ground down by rich people, rather than men grinding down women. Life treated anyone not born with a silver spoon in their mouth pretty badly historically.

I've some doubts about quite a lot of the commonly accepted modern wisdom vis a vis women in the workplace back then and even previously. Most of the women in my family worked outside the home back in the 60s and 70s, some even had excellent careers. I would strongly question the narrative that second wave feminism "liberated" women or did much more than take credit for social changes which were well under way regardless due to increasing average wealth and the invention of labour saving domestic devices.

Going back even further, the book "No Votes for Women" explores some of the realities at the time of the Suffragettes and raises the point that we should be perhaps less asking how shitty conditions were for women in the past but rather asking how comparitively shitty it was for men - the answer is usually quite a bit more:

"Almost immediately after the April committee meetings, Helena Gilder detailed the reasons she opposed woman suffrage in a long letter to her dearest friend , Mary Hallock Foote...

She , like many other anti-suffragists, believed in an inextricable link between military service and voting; only a person able to sacrifice himself on the battlefield earned the right to vote."

"In view of the privileges they already had women did not need political rights. Mariana Van Rensselaer articulated her particular views about women in articles for the New York World in May and June 1894;...She considered the enfranchisement of millions of women a risk not worth taking. Women already held more privileges than men under the law.

Specifically, Van Rensselaer wrote, a woman had control of her earnings, her personal property, and any real estate she owned. She could carry on a business or profession, she had no responsibility for her husband’s debts, and she was not required to support him.

She could sue and be sued, and she could make contracts. She had no obligation to serve on juries. With her husband she had equal rights to their children and, yet, he was obligated to support her and her children. Women were entitled to alimony in the event of a divorce, while a man could not ask for alimony.

She was entitled to one third of her husband’s real estate upon his death, but he was not entitled to her property after death if there were no children. Van Rensselaer concluded that the distribution of labor and privileges between women and men seemed fair, that the different roles of women and men were critically important, and that it was “slander” to claim that men did not already take good care of women."

Or just get an actual dog. Preferably two. Best damn burglar deterrent in the known universe and they'll make their presence known very quickly. All this high tech finagling has nothing on man's best friend. /thread

Don't anthropomorphise nature, he hates that.

Skilled JS programmers, or scripters if you prefer, are doing pretty well these days.

I haven't actually met most people so I can't really say what they consider, although well done on finding the time to post here what with your busy schedule meeting them by the way. From those I've spoken to they generally seem to feel that inflation will eat away at the last decades of their mortgages, which is probably true to an extent. Short term pain, long term gain.

So does renting, without decades of debt slavery and possible depreciation of the asset if you ever want to sell it on. In fact mortgages reduce your immediate comfort more than renting if the cost of the interest is greater than the rent.