Recent submissions

Comment · 2 months ago
It is fascinating (this word doesn't quite capture sentiment, but the best I can think of right now) how any mention of the Catholic Church, on whatever specific topic — in this case, an encyclical about AI — triggers the immediate desire in some to go full ad hominem.

"billionaire", "in some Vatican sense". Would you elaborate? This just sounds like such a low and lazy attack

Comment · 3 months ago
I use Zellij and only recently had a colleague tell me that the name comes from Arabic and had not made the link to "Azulejo". It makes sense of course, considering they all refer to some form of tiling :)
Comment · 3 months ago
on macOS: Cmd+Space -> Cmd+4

No need to install anything.

Comment · 5 months ago
This has been mentioned, if using different words, elsewhere in this thread but soccer is much more accessible and casual in Latin America and Western Europe. Children often live in cities/towns where they have high mobility and agency to move around and so can get together without adult management and play and develop more freely. It's not like the U.S. where it's very processed (soccer camp, parents need to drive their kids to a place that's basically professionally organized), et cetera.

The closest thing to that in the U.S. is kids playing basketball in Brooklyn or L.A.

Comment · 5 months ago
Demand can be fleeting. See Austin, TX in the early pandemic years vs now

Too much reliance on the permanent number-go-up hypothesis in home prices

Comment · 5 months ago
the property can always be sold to a new owner that has a different use in mind.

Another drawback, you're likely to have less negotiating power with a corporate-owned rental.

Comment · 8 months ago
Yes, to a significant but not total degree. Some of those losses were later recouped by Portugal (current Northeastern Brazil and Angola).

I think that the losses in Asia were more lasting, or permanent.

Comment · 8 months ago
This is one resentful individual. Likes to imply how this or that people is inferior to the other (I thought we were discussing differences in forms of settlement, colonization and maritime expansion) then pivots to modern day economic statistics to again imply that some people are superior to others then finally succumbs to racism but is careful enough to change the language!!
Comment · 8 months ago
This is true. Tordesillas meant that trans-Pacific trade was not realistic for Portugal.
Comment · 8 months ago
No, lol, that is not how that works. Your point is factually wrong, your point doesn't "stand".
Comment · 8 months ago
You may want to look into the genetic composition of modern-day Brazilians to consider whether "Amerindians were exterminated" is a coherent way to represent it.

edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just talking about a different thing than I :)

edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory by other powers.

Comment · 8 months ago
do 99.9% of the people born there speak Dutch? When they became independent, were they 80%+ Reformed Dutch protestants?

I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.

Comment · 8 months ago
Since when is taxing all subjects a necessity? Britain didn't tax people in the 13 colonies so could we conclude that before the American Revolution they were not part of the British Empire?
Comment · 8 months ago
I think the comparison with the Netherlands is generally appropriate, but we must recognize that what they did in Brazil was exceptional (meaning not comparable to their former possessions in Asia and Africa, a difference from the mere trading nodes) and the NL never did achieve anything like it.

The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.

The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.

So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.

Comment · 8 months ago
In the country where I grew up, physicians have immense clout and are notorious for writing unintelligibly. I once pointed this out as a kid and was told by the secretary something like: the doctor is too busy to write legible prescriptions.

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