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I’d recommend GrandPerspective:[1] it’s really good at displaying this sort of thing, has been around for over two decades, and the developer has managed to keep it to <5MB which is perfect when you’re running very low on space.

[1] https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/


I use GP, would recommend as well; it generates great color codes tree maps of your storage. Once you get used to navigating it that way, you won’t go back.

The US is at “flawed democracy” in the Economist Democracy Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

The US is a republic with some democratic institutions, but the economists index isn’t some platonic indicator that gets to define who’s a good government and who isn’t. Several of its higher ranking countries have outright banned extremely popular political parties in recent years.

Care to tell us what the politics of those parties were?

Because a functioning democracy would ban a nazi party.


So is France.

And both have a similarly executive-centric form of government where the president and the majority party hold a disproportionate amount of power. Although the US is even worse than France on this regard as far as I know.

I think it makes sense that both are categorised as flawed.


democracy is a lower form of government in the ancient world

I wonder who those critics were and what they were motivated by. (Rhetorical)

If you want to talk about rhetoric look at the idea of a “democracy index” - a score suggesting a scientific approach for determining how good/free a nation is.

We can play the “whose saying it game”, or look at the arguments. Democracy is rule by the lowest - and it’s easily manipulated by the popular. Buying votes, focus on the carnal, and immediate is a clear sign of democracy in decline.


I was more wondering about these emperors, kings, barbarians, and those in their influence who were casting aspersions at Athens. Why are we giving these historically incorrect people the time of day?

Once again, looking at incentives can help you find hidden motivations. But at some point you have to look at the arguments at see if they make sense or not.

The US founders didn’t believe in democracy. More people do today, mostly out of a sense that it’s moral obligation. Very few actually will argue it leads to better government outcomes.


I wouldn’t assume some any index from a magazine is the end all authority on what a nation state is.

I mean I can start my own magazine and create my own index however I want. Doesn’t mean it’s right.


I guess if your magazine's index reaches the height to have its wikipedia page, then, although it might not be right, but it will be pretty credible.

Anyone can have a Wikipedia page? There is no hurdle.

I degoogled back when they announced AMP email, and am in broad agreement with the author here. The only things I’ve found it hard to replace are YouTube, Arts & Culture, Google Books, and Books ngrams. Everything else has great alternatives to move to 100%, and Books is just a backup alongside archive.org and Hathi.

Even if you just stop using one piece of Google you’ll find yourself in a better place.


What do you look for in Arts & Culture? I find https://www.getdailyart.com/ pretty great if you are mostly just interested in painting.

I produce book for Standard Ebooks, and they need cover art.[1] Arts & Culture is a good source, but I also use Wikimedia Commons and some museum sites directly.

[1] https://standardebooks.org/artworks


What have you done for email?

I ended up at Soverin. Luckily I was already using Gmail with my own domain, so I could switch without having to change addresses.

https://soverin.com/


For me, Fastmail has been incredible.

I concur on Fastmail. I only keep a "legacy" Gmail account for parental tech support.

…until you have to stab its little eyes with the pins of the plug.

Internet Explorer on Mac was a completely different rendering engine (Tasman) to Windows (Trident). The only that was the same was the name.

(I swear at some point my brain will run out of space because it’s full of useless things like this.)


If you’re interested in watching some sumo, NHK put up English-commentated 30 minute ad-free round-up videos on YouTube for each day of each fifteen-day-long basho. They take each video down after a week or so, so you need to be watching at the time. The next basho is held in Ōsaka and starts March 8th (see https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/sumo/basho-schedule/).

When I visited Japan, I went to a Spring basho in Tokyo.

The sumo matches were much more entertaining than I had expected, as the strategies employed by the fighters were varied and the sumo rules ensure that a winner is decided in a relatively short time.


Side note, but Kagi has a great feature where you can remove worthless sites like Grokipedia from your results so that you can safely forget they exist. Recommended.

For users of other search engines, the uBlacklist extension[0] is a godsend. It'll also apply the same blacklist to every search engine you use.

[0]: https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist


Thanks.

They also have a report form for slop sites, but none of mine got reviewed yet (I have 5 reports since November, and the help still says "We will start processing reports officially in January.")

That's actually pretty smart to address reports in batches to find the intersection of sites users routinely encounter and sites that are AI slop instead of trying to address reports individually as they come in.

Yeah but it's february.

The title’s a pun on a legendarily bad English phrasebook English as She Is Spoke: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/pedro-carolino_jose-da-fon...

All your base, but in 1855 Portugal instead of 1991 Japan.

The reason for this choice is explained in the article. It is a highly apt analogy.

E.g. with phrases such as "Let us go and respire the air"

(which I am now keen to use in an actual conversation)


people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats

Historical sea levels were wildly different at different times, so not necessarily. For instance, the British isles were settled at a point when it was a part of the mainland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png


Certainly. Land bridges are also a thing. As is swimming, in some cases.


There’s also a free text field for you to say why you’re cancelling.


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