>I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically.
Symbols are arguably the most important aspect of geopolitics.
Counterpoint: the Cold War was pretty much all about geopolitical symbols, e.g. the Berlin Wall, nuclear deterrence, the Space Race, counting Olympic medals.
> Berlin Wall, nuclear deterrence, the Space Race, counting Olympic medals
I'm sure the guns trained on people trying to cross the Berlin wall to the west was just a "symbol", or the nuclear tests to prove that superpowers could kill everyone, or the people who died during the space race to send someone to the Moon. Olympics, sure whatever.
Yes, a nonbinding UN resolution that does a stupid thing that no one has to care about is a symbol, just one no one cares about because its nonbinding.
To some people the Berlin Wall was an immediate and terrible factor in their lives. But to most people in the world, it was a symbol of oppression rather than a physical manifestation of it.
Except the part where had to lift an old mainframe from that frozen shithole with a helicopter under fire. And like 10 different proxy wars that are still going on.
I'm still trying to figure out who is dangling the keys in front of whom. Trump is dangling them in front of MAGA, but who is dangling them in front of Trump?
Trump is dangling them in front of his opponents and the public.
"Lake America" is a literal nominal change that will have no lasting impacts that anybody actually cares about. But because it's so wild and outrageous, it captures so much attention that you probably haven't heard about the following:
"The strategy came to public light after [former Trump chief political strategist] Bannon told Michael Lewis in 2018 that "The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit".
There are several hundred federal judges, and cases like this can be brought before virtually any of them. As a consequence at least one judge has ruled practically every single action by the Trump administration is illegal. These rulings are typically overturn at some point in the appeals process up to the Supreme Court, which has mostly upheld them as legal.
I mean, a plain JPEG can tolerate up to I think 2^16 × 2^16 pixels, and already that you don’t really want to decode from a single unseekable bitstream with no index and no effort to improve locality of data required to fill a rectangular viewport. [ImageMagick’s display(1) is the best at tolerating huge JPEGs and even it, IIRC, conks out after 2^15 × 2^15.] You can allocate however many bits you want for the size, but beyond a few dozen megapixels you really need to do indexed independently-decodable tiles, and when the image is dozens of gigabytes after compression, you need a pyramid of pre-downscaled versions as well (1/4 + 1/16 + ... ≈ 33% overhead which is completely acceptable). Thus my question.
“Maybe later” and variants annoyed me to no end until I realized that the implication is that you’re not making an indelible choice. As with anything, it can be overused, but I personally enjoy not having to think about whether I can change my mind later.
What? Gold underwent a massive revaluation with the end of Bretton Woods in 1971. It was prior to then that government were actively involved in making the price of gold artificially low.
Fun fact: under 31 U.S. Code § 5117 a troy ounce of gold is still valued at 42 and 2/9ths dollars.
Gold became much ‘cheaper’ in the period 1945-70 because there was a series of technical revolutions in South Africa mining (never mind the apartheid …) This is why Breton Woods lasted as long as it did.
The countries like France that conspired in resentment to break it as ‘privilege’ are now effectively in flames.
The right to a civil jury trial in the 7th Amend. to the US Constitution is only available where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars (a massive sum in 1791, and a trifle now).
Around the year 2015.
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