... it would certainly put the hyperventilation industry out of business, to just ... you know ... cool things off a bit.

We can't have that!!

"The US and the rest of the West as well as Russia are ruled by a set of ethics that have grown out of Christianity..."

False, but also irrelevant. Christian ethics have grown out of culture, so even if what you claim is true, the "Christianity" part can be entirely factored out.

That is unless you believe the absurd claims of Christianity, then you aren't even qualified to have the conversation.

"...why else do we regard human sacrifice and child abandonment as unacceptable?"

Indeed! Why else? You, in fact, are NOT qualified to have the conversation.

"There's a very legitimate argument that our present problems come from the fact that there is no overarching ethical structure that everyone will accept as the basis for decisions."

Except that there is, and it is extremist Christians who threaten it.

"In that context the commitment of Islamic countries to Islam is as reasonable. "

And what a context it is!

Leave Christian extremists in power long enough and the US will end the same way. It's not what the religion is, it's who the people are.

Neither of these things is true, but instead is Republican messaging toward these candidates. By "widely perceived" you mean what ignorant Republican voters think.

And we'll need to start worrying about that in 400,000,000,000,000 years.

Not really. Every ruling power in Iran over the past century has made the exact same bad decisions in this respect. The previous monarchy, the more recent monarchy, socialists, capitalists, foreign interests, Islamic revolutionaries, they've all been drawing too much water from the aquifers too fast for terrible reasons.

When will it improve? And chiropractic is healthcare advice?

Not anything. Especially when dealing with nuclear. There are some parts that once degraded cannot be safely replaced. For example, the containment unit. And others where making a new one makes more economic sense than replacing even when technically possible. What state this plant is in I have no idea, and am not qualified to have an opinion on. I just hope experts are making the decision based on economics and power requirements and not politics.

No, it isn't. You're absolutely deluding yourself. And even if it was, nobody uses it to actually write anything. Learning to write (vs read) would be, is, and has been for 50 years an utter waste of time.

MacOS has its own barriers to calling itself a professional operating system. A good part of my job is forcing it to conform to basic enterprise system management practices.

I can't see them selling email accounts for $9 per month. That's just too small of a service for that much money. $1.50 per month maybe (paid annually to lessen CC processing fees), but not $9 per month.

Calling them names and leveling false accusations at them is kind of the exact opposite of ignoring them in peace. Unless that's what brings you peace, in which case you're the mentally ill fuckup in that equation.

Demanding that people who are different from you to explain themselves to your satisfaction before you're willing to leave them the hell alone is peak conservative asshole.

I can manufacture outrageous events from my imagination and then extrapolate that fiction into a nation-wide systemic problem too!

Mozilla? "high standards for vendors"?

(mike drop)