Did you consider that it might have something to do with Angela Merkel? Probably not.

There is a certain irony to the fact that a U.S. billionaire is paying to handle a bridge here in the Netherlands (for his half a billion yacht), while in his home country bridges are collapsing. Seems priorities towards taxation and maintenance of common infrastructure are somehow unbalanced.

It is not "survival of the fittest" Never has been. It is "survival of those who are fit enough to procreate".

I live in The Netherlands. No troubles here. Building materials have risen in price, but that is a global thing. No problems with petrol, no empty shelves in supermarkets. No bad news coming in from France or Germany, only bad stuff about the UK.

I should not have taken a sip of my beer while reading your reply. Combining laughing and drinking makes for an uncomfortable reminder that beer should not be expelled through the nose.

What happens when they find the ideal location and that location contains an ark-like structure with millions of eggs, spores, and whatever in it?

Exactly this. In the extreme right, economic power and state power are merged by corporations taking over the state. In the extreme left, state power and economic power are merged by the state taking over the corporations.

Violence is bad. I hate violence. But I will kick the shit out of anyone who hurts my children.

With BLM you have violence that was related to racism, a form of oppression.

The recent violence was related to trying to stay in power.

There is a huge difference.

Yes, push people, and they react. Push a large enough group hard enough, and enough people within that group will react with violence. That is a human trait. I do not like it, but it is a fact.

Now look at the pushing. In one case it is racism. That racism exists in the US has been proven. In the other case, the pushing originates with one man, with unproven claims of a stolen election. Unproven in courts of law. Unproven by science. There is a big difference there that should be addressed first. Rioting because of being oppressed is quite different from rioting in order to stay in power.

After that has been addressed we have to acknowledge that we cannot change that people react when pushed. But we can change the stimuli they get. Give them broad and objective information for example. Not propaganda. Give them equal rights and equal chances in life.

So if you are serious about getting civilized behaviour, address the stimuli. In one case: stop racism. In the other case: reform your political system and your propaganda media. A two-party system is almost as much as a joke as a communist one-party system. And the media in the US suffer from the same idiocy. In communist systems you see one side in the media. In the US you see two. In China you get one type of propaganda, in the US you get two. Problem is, there are not just one or two sides. There are many. Having just two leads to narrow news reporting, polarisation, and inherent instability like you see now. You are also pushed into one camp, judging from the 'us and them' statements you make. Fortunately you still reach out to 'the other side'. Unfortunately more and more people are being brainwashed: about half of the voters are. Which half depends on what side you are on. The only way out is to see that both sides have been brainwashed. Both sides are being played.

So please, do your best to reform both politics as well as the media. They have both been corrupted. The courts have not yet been corrupted, but the process has already been started.

Correlation and causation are two different things.

I agree. From a personal point of view I found that the Latin lessons I followed around the age of 15, 16 had the most impact in my coding skills that any other thing I was taught in school. In order to translate a complex sentence in Latin text, you need to break it down into parts and subparts, find out wich words are referencing other words or (sub)parts, and then construct the whole thing again in your own language. That is the same pattern as in programming: you need to break functionality of a domain in (sub)parts, and then connect them all in a programming language.

REST is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia pages. You know, web pages that are primarily read by humans. Using REST for APIs that are primarily used by software (and NOT humans) is one big anti pattern. It's like screws and hammers. Nothing wrong with either, but don't use 'em together.

You can create millions of new web sites overnight, and change the shit out of all existing web pages, without needing any new software. Your browser does not need to change. That is one of the powers of REST. If you create a new API or change an existing one, you MUST change software to adequately use that new or changed API. Your client software MUST change. Totally different use cases.

The name does not even apply: the representational state (RES part of REST) is about a web page and that all state is contained in that page. And you click on something and get a new page and a new state. That is the 'transfer'. Not anything like using an API.

And don't get me started on how the lessons from the OSI model are totally thown away with 'REST' APIs. REST for APIs is yet another example in the line of the article. We are stuck, or even going backwards.

Could not agree more. This is one of the manifestations of the problem that most people do not understand or remember the 'goals', but they do remember the 'means'. So the solution to a different problem is used on a new problem.

I fully agree with you on the lunacy of "everybody can be great at anything". I think it is a myth, brought into the world by people who are 'self made'. It is so much easier for your own ego to say that anyone can reach what you yourself have reached: if not everybody does it, you must be special.

On top of that, I think it has also been used as a tool for those in power to keep that power. "Everyone can become the nations leader, you just need to be voted in!". Any of the plebs can become a ruler. Not a ruler? That is your own choice. And here is some bread an circuses.

So the myth is perpetuated from at least two powerful stories.

Just like I could never be an athlete because I lack the needed metabolism (I am probably slightly below average), most people lack the brain patterns that good programmers need.

You are still trying to convince me. So that must mean that I am asking the wrong questions. This is not about convincing me, this is about the processes in your mind.

Which sources do you use and which ones do you not use to 'defend' your position? What happens in your brain when you read that William Barr of all people stated: "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in this election."

Does your brain want to find out why he is saying that or does your brain look for ways to fit it into the position it has taken about this election? I guess it is the latter. You have already made up your mind: you do not only think this election was rigged, you also feel it. You feel it with the whole of your being. And the more arguments you are having on the web or in real life, the more you will be convinced that you must be right. Barr stating that he found no evidence does not fit in your world view. So you will find a way to throw that fact out.

Most likely route will be the route that Trump has taken: 'Barr cum suis did not do anything.' Imagine that, one of the most hardline Trump loyalists is not able to do anything with all the evidence Giuliani sais he has. Is that not weird? And all the Trump voters in the Justice Department who all did nothing with that evidence? What happens when you think about that?

Also, Giuliani stated: "The president has seen more than enough evidence that this was a massive fraud all over the country. We are going to prove it. We're going to prove it to the state legislatures, we're going to prove it to the court.". What happens if you want to include that into your world view? You say he was not in court to talk about fraud. Why not? He said he was going to prove fraud in court, yet he did not prove it. What is going on in your brain if you process this: are you actively trying to disprove your point of view, or are you looking to get confirmation on your bias? Note that it is very human to do the latter.

And again, please do not try to convince me. You don't need to convince me. This is not about what I consider to be 'truth'. This is about the processes that go on in your brain. The thoughts and though processes of someone who is kind enough to conversate with a total stranger on the internet. What you do to reach a conclusion and defend that conclusion is what is interesting.