Jesus_666

And then your European players wonder why the color artifacts are all wrong. PAL and NTSC had different distinct looks (and presumably so did SECAM).

The social implications of veiling are an interesting and complex topic. Unfortunately, public discourse tends to be pretty bad at handling complex topics. But there are occasional moments of lucidity. To wit:

Sometime around 2015 or so we had a big political debate in Germany. Some politicians were floating the idea of a "burqa ban" (= a flat ban on all forms of Islamic face veiling). For a while it was seriously debated but it ultimately failed as most Germans considered it to violate freedom of religion.

The media were actually helpful – at least the publicly funded ones were. One particularly interesting report I saw was when a female reporter put on full veils (and correctly identified what she was wearing as a niqab, not a burqa) and went out in public. First with a hidden camera to see how she was treated, then with a camera team to get vox pops.

Opinions were actually fairly divided even among Muslims. One male Muslim argued that face veils always are inherently oppressive and have no place in society. A young woman (who was wearing nothing indicating her religion) expressed admiration for those who fully veil and hoped that one day she'd be able to as well. An old woman wearing a headscarf who was carrying groceries said that she did wear the niqab "but not right now; I have things to do".

That diversity of views has stuck with me, especially that last statement. I never expected someone who observes such full veiling to be so pragmatic about it. (Yes, that does go against the reasons for wearing them in the first place but everybody tailors their religion to themself.) If wearing any kind of veils can be something you can just decide not to do, then it becomes an expression of agency, not one of lack thereof. I respect that.

Of course it's not respectable when someone is forced to wear a headscarf/a niqab/whatever. But a ban isn't going to fix that; people who oppress their wives aren't going to stop doing so. If they feel that nobody outside the house is allowed to see their wife's face then the wife will simply no longer be allowed to leave the house.

Ultimately, in my opinion, people should be allowed to wear any religious garment they want, provided it's their own desire to do so and there's no overriding reason to disallow it. (E.g., no matter how religious you are, you do not wear a kaftan or a cross necklace or anything else that dangles while operating industrial machinery.) Anything else is useless at best.

Might be worth adding to the API. This kind of notification is obviously useful but a bit surprising for people who once passed by and left a comment.

Yeah, it's not super bad but definitely a bit surprising.

Not very well, given that I'm not subscribed and have no idea why I was notified.

I find that LLMs also tend to create very placative, kitschy content. Nuance is beyond them.

True, although in the context of "hey, here's some money to make a one-season ATLA sequel" you're probably expected to have something that feels ATLA-ish – which means that a dramatic overarching plot is hard to avoid. This is especially so since a single-season show needs to establish its setting and characters, give them some room to breather, and set up and conclude an interesting storyline all in a handful of episodes. Action plots are easier to do under those constraints.

These days there's more freedom; Avatar has ascended to cult franchise status and the purse strings are no longer held by a network hellbent self-sabotage. We could totally make Avatar: The Next Generation, where people spend most of their time standing around and discussing philosophy. You can do that in animation, as Orb has just demonstrated, and the universe has plenty of space for it.

The jealous people are actually the only antagonists with a good point, which was undermined when it turns out they were unknowingly led by an ultra super special guy. And then they were essentially ignored after the ultra super special guy was out of the picture.

Of course this was partially an artifact of the show's production history. The first arc was supposed to be all there is, then the network started adding and subtracting seasons at random. It's hard o tell a nuanced story in one season and even harder to tell a coherent one when your life expectancy fluctuates wildly.

In my opinion LOK would've been a bit more interesting if they'd spent more time examining social tension in the city instead of focusing on the actions of a few people. Explore what it takes to turn several mutually antagonistic factions in a confined area into one functioning society and discuss the effects of long-term social tension.

Of course there would still be some bad guys to punch. Can't have an Avatar show without good fights.

Honestly, Windows isn't ready for the desktop, either, it's just not ready in a different way that most people are familiar with.

Things like an OS update breaking the system should be rare, not so common that people are barely surprised when it happens to them. In a unified system developed as one integral product by one company there should be one config UI, not at least three (one of which is essentially undocumented). "Use third-party software to disable core features of the OS" shouldn't be sensible advice.

Windows is horribly janky, it's just common enough that people accept that jank as an unavoidable part of using a computer.

So far Article 7 hasn't been used because Poland had Hungary's back. Given that Poland is no longer ruled by the right-populist PiS, that might no longer hold, though.

There are various definitions of synonymity with varying degrees of strictness. Whether something is considered synonymous depends both on how strictly one defines synonymity and on which context one operates in.

I assumed a relatively strict definition: Two terms are synonymous if and only if they can be used interchangeably in most contexts, e.g. "bigger" and "larger". Under that definition, "tax" and "tariff" are not synonymous; "tariff" usually implies something crossing a border while "tax" doesn't.

However, an equally correct definition is that two terms are synonymous if they have similar or related meanings within a context. Under this definition, "tax" and "tariff" are synonymous since they describe similar things – even if they aren't interchangeable. This definition is usually used by synonym lists because it makes it a lot easier to write those lists. Annoyingly, this means that two words that are listed as synonymous in such a list aren't necessarily synonymous in the context you're using them in.

For example, Collins lists "tariff" and "tithe" as synonymous. Do you know anyone who pays a tariff to a church? The synonym list for "tithe" doesn't even mention a church-specific reading; it just assumes that a tithe is some kind of tax and that's close enough. You can write like that but your style would be seen as very flowery and wouldn't be suitable e.g. in a scientific context.

Another correct definition, by the way, is that the two words must have exactly the same meaning in all possible readings. That one is so strict it's practically useless for natural languages but can be use in different contexts.

Let's look at how Merriam-Webster describes synonyms:

1: one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses

2a: a word or phrase that by association is held to embody something (such as a concept or quality)
"a tyrant whose name has become a synonym for oppression"

2b: metonym

3: one of two or more scientific names used to designate the same taxonomic group
→ compare homonym

All three definitions I gave above match Merriam-Webster's first definition, depending on whether one chooses "the same" vs. "nearly the same" and "some" vs. "all".

Interestingly, Collins's definition of "synonym" is very strict due to excessive brevity:

A synonym is a word or expression which means the same as another word or expression.

This doesn't allow for similar meanings (which their own synonym lists heavily rely upon as illustrated above), which is probably not intended.

I didn't check Thesauris since you messed up that link but so far one dictionary says "it depends" and the other one says "the meaning must be the same" (and then completely ignores its own definition). "It depends" is the best we can do.