My understanding is that we still don’t know what it IS, but we now have corroboration that it EXISTS and roughly what it WEIGHS.

No, catholics (generally) believe that worldly goals are accomplished by worldly methods. Worshipping god isn’t intended to accomplish anything in this life: it’s intended to secure a place in heaven.

Mind you, I’m atheist; I’m not saying it actually DOES secure a place in heaven. I’m just pointing out that for genuine believers, prayer is not intended, primarily, to accomplish worldly ends. It sometimes INCLUDES requests for personal worldly aid, but a priest would scold you if he knew that’s ALL you prayed for. You’re supposed to thank god for giving you existence, ask for the strength to live more virtuously, ask for leniency on your imperfections, etc.

I’m glad we have you to tell us what is and isn’t culture worth preserving; we were at real risk of having a diversity of opinion for a moment there.

Kidnapping?

Many hospitals are also run by the church. Catholics believe in science - all recent popes say evolution is fact.

What about him?

Obama’s been gone almost a decade at this point and we still have yet to pass this bill because the government always backs down at the last minute in the face of threats from the US that it would “force” US companies to not do business with us. The Dáil (parliament) supports the bill but the cabinet shoots it down. So you’re not wrong to be cynical, but every time Israel commits some fresh outrage the pressure grows for the government to pass it or risk losing the next election.

To be specific, Ireland isn’t in Schengen because the UK isn’t in Schengen and we’re trying to keep the border as non-bordery as possible.

Oh, and let’s not forget:

A lot of those, I wouldn’t consider PC mascots as their games are on console too. They’d be more like multiplatform mascots. Doom was on the SNES for example. But there are some games that just aren’t the same unless you’re playing on PC.

If they found his car they must know who he is and what he looks like. Shouldn’t they be putting his picture on the news?

Note: by having the USA abstain from that UN vote right at the end of his presidency, Obama made it possible (ie legal) for us to do this.

If we were targeting Israel specifically, we would run afoul of all sorts of EU regulations since external trade policy falls under EU competency. HOWEVER, because there is a UN resolution specifically identifying the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories as illegal occuptions under international law, it’s possible for us to pass a law that doesn’t specifically target Israel by name, but rather target any territory that is illegally occupied.

If Brussels takes issue with the ban and tries to fine us for some trumped-up reason like arguing that we’re exceeding our reserved competencies, that would initiate legal proceedings which would give us standing to counter and argue that we are only meeting our international obligations as outlined by the UN, and furthermore that the EU-Israel trade deal has a boilerplate clause requiring Israel to meet certain human rights criteria or the entire trade deal goes kaput.

Basically if the EU takes us to court over this, we’ll be able to force the argument to be over whether Israel is violating human rights, at which point (because judges are not politicians) the court will almost certainly side with us, which would THEN put Brussels into the legal position where they’re OBLIGED to ban these goods EU-wide.

Because Brussels knows this, they’re likely to try and avoid initiating proceedings, turning a blind eye. However a lack of consequences for us would embolden other EU members to copy us. Basically it’s a rock and a hard place for Brussels.

Just pointing this out so that people see that UN votes DO matter.

The word “al” means “the” in Arabic - for example, “al jazeera” means “the island”. And a lower case L looks like a capital i, so “AI” is visually indistinguishable from “Al”. So the joke is that people who try to shoehorn Artificial Intelligence into everything look like they’re speaking in Arabic.

Every land is stolen. The problem is that they’re in the middle of committing genocide.

Like, extra rights, you mean? Because lots of countries recognize animal rights.

I don’t think history supports that prediction. Far more likely that America will follow the trajectory of post-USSR Russia. Not as extreme of course, but I think the normalization of open kleptocracy is already on display.

Of all Mel Brooks comedies, I think Men in Tights is the only one that stands up to repeat viewings.

Regardless of how expensive the show was, that money was well-spent as it’s reinvigorated the flagging fan interest in the entire franchise. People would be excited to see more political thriller/spy procedural stuff set in the Galaxy Far Far Away now. I was already fascinated by the Doctor Pershing stuff in The Mandalorian; if they started building on that angle and did a “Kleya as an aging George Smiley-type working with Chancellor Mothma, General Syndulla and Senator Organa in trying to counter the rise of the First Order during the Galactic Cold War era” I would be front row centre for that and I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one. Andor has made the politics of Star Wars exciting again, and I wanna see more Senate oversight committees with Leia going up against Senator Xiono et al. Though unfortunately a recast would be necessary…

Things that went wrong with The Acolyte:

• It spoiled its “mystery” in its first episode but then continued to act like we, the audience, were in the dark about it

• A lot of the conflict came from characters holding the Idiot Ball for no reason and never communicating

• It killed off all the most interesting characters that it had spent the entire season fleshing out, and then asked us to tune in next season to follow the continuing adventures of the characters it hadn’t managed to make us care about (and Qimir who’s cool but not cool enough to carry a show on his own)

Why not just reboot the whole thing from scratch altogether and redo the entire franchise but with coherent logic this time?