A nice corollary to Taleb’s 'People reserve standard compliments for those who do not threaten their pride; the others they often praise by calling “arrogant” '.

Outside the more pragmatic and conceivable city-state, the very concept of nationality in the modern sense is pretty useless.

My first time in Norway (2010) I noticed right away that the prices were pretty obscene, so the first thing I did when I arrived at the hostel was to ask the guy behind the counter what the minimum wage was. He didn’t even know the concept of minimum wage.

What on earth does the GNU Compiler Collection have to do with Uncle Sam’s newest aggression war?

Wexit.

😆 yea. For instance, a former friend of mine, a hardcore psychologist and academic, always carried a green rune-like stone for ‘positive energy and good luck’.

In my (very personal) experience, people who boast about how rational and science-oriented they are tend to do some pretty irrational things, such as believing in amulets and marrying.

He’ll very much do something about it: express ‘deep concern’ and call ‘on all parties to respect (inter)national law’.

/s

That depends entirely on your definition of ‘success’.

Israel is a failed experiment in statehood. It’s about motherfucking time for every decision maker in virtually every government in the world to acknowledge that - and correct course.