DicIfTEx

This reminds me of a very interesting book called “Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean” by Franco Cassano: https://academic.oup.com/fordham-scholarship-online/book/208...

In short, he argues that Mediterranean countries must reject the northern European denigration of them as backwards, old-fashioned and workshy, and instead reclaim their cultures as vitally human and a necessary corrective to an over-focus on 'efficiency'.

So do several countries, as listed here at https://www.etuc.org/en/pressrelease/climate-crisis-requires... :

Belgium: 29°C for light physical workload, 26°C for a moderately heavy physical workload, 22°C at heavy physical workload and 18°C at very heavy physical workload

Hungary: 31°C for sedentary and light physical work, 29°C for moderately physical work and 27°C for heavy physical work

Latvia: Maximum working temperature for indoor work of 28°C

Montenegro: Maximum working temperature for outdoor work of 36°C

Slovenia: The air temperature in work areas must not exceed 28 °C

(although I don't see any obvious similarities between the countries that do and don't have such protections, but based on that list it does seem that former Yugoslav and Soviet states are overrepresented)

The fantastic Fall of Civilizations podcast also had an episode about it: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-...

Coincidentally enough, frequent Atlantic contributor James Fallows wrote a rather scathing assessment of the Economist (albeit in the Post) way back in 1991: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/1991/10/-quot...

Here's a recent blog post in a similar vein: https://benthams.substack.com/p/voting-self-interestedly-is-...

Although your plane crash example falls afoul of the broken window fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Plus the simple fact that, by the same logic, you can try to both-sides plain murder on the ground that the murderer wants to murder (and, again, that the undertakers and coroners and such must be kept in business). Clearly, whilst every policy will have supporters and detractors, some detractions are more worthy of consideration than others.

I think back to this 2019 talk about software engineering by Jonathan Blow, entitled ”Preventing the Collapse of Civilization”, more and more often lately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

Same here; I remember playing ARMA 3 during the early-2013 public alpha, which was an eye-opening look at how the gaming sausage is made in real time (and before Early Access was as established a concept as it is now).

I was rather disappointed when I heard that they had been acquired by BAE Systems, but on further inspection it seems like that was only the BI Simulations arm (responsible for VBS), now rebranded as OneArc. My guess is that a release like this wouldn't have happened were they not still independent.

Meyer has continued to mark anniversaries in the life Rebecca would have led, most recently a week ago on what would have been her eighteen birthday: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2026/06/07/eighteen/

I can't recommend this 2019 talk about software engineering by Jonathan Blow, entitled ”Preventing the Collapse of Civilization”, enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

https://www.diabetes.org.uk/about-us/news-and-views/junk-foo...

https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/government-bans-high-sugar-a...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/soft-drink-levy-extended-...

And for anything you really need to keep hidden, there's always culportage.

NB: On looking into this, it appears to be one Lemkin relative (who claims to be working on behalf of the family) and a collection of Zionist organisations who take issue with the Institute's accurate description of Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, in agreement with just about every competent national and international body you can think of from the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Israeli human rights orgs to the UN, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemkin_Institute_for_Genocide_...

Given there's a lot of trans techies out there, and things will probably heat up sharply in the US following the Venezuela attack and Minneapolis ICE shooting, this seems like a worthwhile warning to share here.

See also this link for details of two ongoing Canadian cases featuring trans and non-binary Americans: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/trump-lgbtq-am...

(I believe Kreager's asylum case is due to be heard later this year, but I can't find a date)

They were the first to be purged together with homosexuals, transvestites, handicapped, etc.

Speaking of which: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/experts-warn-u-s...

I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita

Can you elaborate on this?

From what I can tell, the UK's per-capita electricity generation has dropped steadily from a 2003 high[0] (4,069 kWh in 2024, 6,657 in 2003, 5,266 in 1985) and per-capita energy consumption has been going down since 2005,[1] but energy intensity (read: inverse of efficiency) has been decreasing consistently since at least 1965.[2] Domestic electricity production is down 24% since 2000,[3] whilst imports (which I don't think includes Albanians) are up 206% in the same period.[4]

That all reads to me as a country whose domestic generation has been replaced by imports and whose consumption has been reduced by efficiency gains, but I'm aware that I'm conflating figures here for 'energy' and for solely 'electricity'; I couldn't find anything for per-capita energy generation, as you specified.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#in-...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#wha...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#ene...

[3] https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...

[4] https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...

Under current DoJ antitrust guidelines, there's nothing to stop a future administration from reviewing any anti-competitive actions ignored by the current one as part of an anti-competitive series of actions: https://www.justice.gov/atr/merger-guidelines/applying-merge...

So those businesses either know, or expect, that either:

a) these guidelines will be changed in a way that makes them hard or impossible to revert (i.e. through legislation or a Supreme Court judgement); or

b) there is little risk of a future change of administration.

As does GrapheneOS with its Contact Scopes permission.

Ah my mistake, I linked to the docs for `pg_dump` (which has long had the `format` option) rather than `pg_dumpall` (which lacks it).

Before Postgres 18 was released, the docs listed `format` as an option for `pg_dumpall` in the upcoming version 18 (e.g. Wayback Machine from Jun 2025 https://web.archive.org/web/20250624230110/https://www.postg... ). The relevant commit is from Apr 2025 (see link #0 in my original comment). But now all mention has been scrubbed, even from the Devel branch docs.

I was expecting `pg_dumpall` to get the `--format` option in v18,[0] but at the moment the docs say it's still only available in the development branch.[1]

Is anyone familiar with Postgres development able to give an update on the state of the feature? Is it planned for a future (18 or 19) release?

[0] https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit...

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/app-pgdump.html#:~:tex...

Estonia's system was an area of some fascination for me years ago, so here's what I can remember:

After splitting from the Soviet Union, Estonia were basically starting from scratch with their telecoms system. Finland offered them their old stock to get started, but the Estonians decided to instead treat it as a greenfield project and deploy the most modern infrastructure available at the time. Compare to the UK, where most of our infrastructure is literally crumbling as it passes its 50-year predicted lifespan and we spent almost a decade of time and tens of billions of pounds on a vapourware railway line. So the technical inheritance (or lack thereof) favoured Estonia.

I don't know much about how the Estonian system was initially built, but I would imagine a post-Soviet state likely retained enough state capacity to do it mostly in-house (and perhaps they received outside funding too, as the '90s were a period of largesse). Compare to the UK, where state capacity is effectively nil and the project would invariably be outsourced to the same contractors and consulting firms that have taken on every other aspect of government, with concomitant price and time overruns (see also: train).

A crucial element of the Estonian system is that data is private by default (see https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/e-services-regi... ) If I recall correctly, any government agency can request access to specified data for a state purpose, but each request must be reviewed and approved by the data subject. All access requests are logged so a subject can audit who has been accessing what (which suggests maybe it's possible to bulk approve access in advance, or grant persistent rights to someone like one's own doctor). In comparison, the Snoopers' Charter granted unfettered access to Brits' Internet connection records to a huge number of agencies, from the security services to the Food & Agriculture Agency (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#... ).

Estonia is also recognised as a global leader in IT security, following massive investment after Russia-attributed cyberattacks in 2007; they host the NATO Centre of Excellence and the eu-LISA HQ. As far as keeping one's data away from prying outside eyes, they're probably a pretty safe bet. As for the UK… (Eyes passim ad nauseam).

Lastly, I believe Estonians generally report greater levels of trust in their government than Brits. 2023 figures suggest the gap may have narrowed from when I last looked (I can't say I've been following Estonian politics, so I couldn't suggest why) but still some 37.8% of Estonians say they trust their national government as compared to 26.7% of Brits (see https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-trsic/tru... ). And there are certain sizeable constituencies in the UK where, in light of historic abuses, they are even less likely to ever trust the government: Scousers; northerners; women & ethnic minorities (specifically for the police, doubly specifically for the Met); environmental activists (see the spycops scandal); and people of Irish descent. I'm sure there's some skeletons in the Estonian government's closets, but there's a limit to how much damage you can do when your state is 35 years old rather than a centuries-old former world-spanning imperial hegemon.

Those stated trust figures also predate the UK government's support for the genocide in Gaza, which has doubtless had a significant impact on that figure; even people who wouldn't have considered themselves particularly political a couple years earlier are appalled at the regular arrests of protesting pensioners outside Parliament (see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/09/palestine-acti... ). The incredibly unpopular incumbent government is only the latest in a long line of increasingly authoritarian regimes of both the political right and (allegedly) left (see https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/09/labour-needs-arrest-uks-... ), meaning everybody in the country of any political persuasion can think of recent examples of why they might not want to invite increased government surveillance. Plus, with the recent passage of the Online Safety Act, most people are now primed to associate a new digital ID with the government wanting to know their porn habits, and we're a famously prudish nation.

So, in short:

· the Estonian government had the ideal circumstances, made all the right choices, prioritised privacy and security and are reasonably trusted by their citizens

· the UK government has doddery old infrastructure to work with, no money left, an addiction to outsourcing in spite of repeat disasters, a track record of authoritarian disregard for privacy and have little to no legitimacy amongst the populace

And, as others have pointed out, there's just no obvious constituency in the country that would be interested in this sort of thing (outside of Tony Blair and his mates) and no obvious problems that it provides a solution for; it seems like a hard sell, whether on ideological or practical grounds.

Just the other day, someone saw a pile of textbooks in my room and commented incredulously that I ‘still learn things from books?’

It was one of the most jarringly alien things I’ve ever heard, like being told that everyone has moved on from toilet paper to just using their hands, but I missed the memo.

There are still many details yet to come out, and the future is as ever unwritten, but I think a better historical analogue for the killing of Charlie Kirk is Horst Wessel, who Goebbels turned into a martyr for the NSDAP.

Not so puzzling; see also this classic post from Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...

Over the past year, there have been a number of headline-grabbing legal changes in the US, such as the legalization of marijuana in CO and WA, as well as the legalization of same-sex marriage in a growing number of US states.

As a majority of people in these states apparently favor these changes, advocates for the US democratic process cite these legal victories as examples of how the system can provide real freedoms to those who engage with it through lawful means. And it’s true, the bills did pass.

What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.

Hannah Arendt considered this argument in her essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship":

In the tumultuous discussion of moral issues which has been going on since the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the disclosure of the total complicity in crimes of all ranks of official society, that is, of the total collapse of normal moral standards, the following argument has been raised in endless variations: We who appear guilty today are in fact those who stayed on the job in order to prevent worse things from happening; only those who remained inside had a chance to mitigate things and to help at least some people; we gave the devil his due without selling our soul to him, whereas those who did nothing shirked all responsibilities and thought only of themselves, of the salvation of their precious souls… (p 34)

But, ultimately, she finds the excuse lacking:

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil. (p 36)

https://grattoncourses.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016...

Pretty much. Here's an in-depth look at mortality patterns in pre-modern societies: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...

One quirk to these model tables I want to note, because it sometimes confuses folks, is that they express ‘life expectancy’ not as a total expected age, but as average years of life expectancy from a given age, so a 25-year-old with 26.6 years of life expectancy is expecting to life to age 51, not just a year and a half.

What we see in these models is that life expectancy (female:male) at birth is very low, 25:22.8, but after the first year rises dramatically to 34.9:34.1 (note the gender gap narrowing) and by age 5 to 40.1:39.0 (remember to add the five years they’ve already lived). So life expectancy goes up quite a lot over the first several years of life, which is not, intuitively, the pattern we expect: we normally assume the more you’ve lived, the less years you have left.

See also the films Groundhog Day and (especially) Edge of Tomorrow.

Also, this contemporary homage published recently on a British military blog: https://wavellroom.com/2025/07/25/defence-baltic-bridge-drea...

I hate the term stealing identity, because it implies the victim made some mistake to allow it to happen. When what really happened is the company was lazy to verify that the person they're doing business with is actually who they say they are. The onus and liability should be on the company involved.

You may enjoy this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

I believe your modernisation attempt misinterprets the dino reference and its connection to the the previous clause about the floods; should it not rather be something like Mud overflowed the streets, as though the waters had only just retired from the face of the earth and it would not be shocking to meet a dinosaur etc. etc.

Although, as the comments on the original post discuss, this does rely on background knowledge that when Dickens was writing, there were popular theories associating dinosaurs with the Biblical flood.

For my part, I confused 'Megalosaurus' with 'Megalodon' and pictured a large shark stranded writhing on Holborn Hill by the sudden loss of its waters; an error which, paradoxically, helped me get closer to the intended meaning (which was, we know now, itself incorrect).

There's also this vintage article (1991!) from the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/1991/10/-quot...

I was referring to the government's stated case (whether or not one believes that they really believed it) that it was not in breach of its legal obligations to strip her of British citizenship because she was eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship, which the government of Bangladesh denied, leaving her stateless.