Not all religions have a heaven to look up to. Most schools of Hinduism, and Mahayana Buddhism, require a person to live multiple lives before they achieve nirvana (‘non-being’ or ‘enlightenment’, not ‘heaven’). Other schools of Hinduism and Buddhism are either silent on life after death (Theravada) or reject it (Navayana, Charvaka).

The US counts floors from 1. Most of the world counts from 0. So the answer would depend on which country OP is in. And this is assuming the building has a flat base.

I’m guessing there’s a bit of survivorship bias here. People who really want to die will probably choose surer methods, and/or try again and again.

World News moderation is extremely strict. I’m grateful to the mods for keeping the community sane, but occassionally there’ll be a false positive.

Not-fun fact: The Times is also owned by News Corp.

There was a recent paper saying exactly this.

Many Indian languages allow words in a logical unit to be stringed together as long as it sounds okay (so basically, avoid consonant - consonant joining).

The problem is that Indian languages belong to three or four language families. In contrast, all European languages (except Basque, Hungarian and Finnish) belong to one language family.

Put another way, Hindi, Sanskrit and English are more similar to each other (all Indo-European) than any of them are to Ladakhi (Sino-Tibetan), Munda (Austroasiatic) or Tamil (Dravidian).

When an Indian speaks English as a second language, it will be influenced by their first language. But the effect of Punjabi would be quite different from that of Telegu, which in turn would be quite different from that of Zo.

I had the opposite experience. Lemmy’s World News is much less racist than Reddit’s. So many articles about events in Asia, Africa, etc.

It is, in cases where it works, probably the best available method we have for finding the truth.

But there are a lot of questions it cannot answer, it can still give the wrong result just by chance, and the results are only as good as the assumptions you made. The last point is particularly important, and can allow bias to creep in even when all the experiments are done correctly.

Finally, real scientists often do not (and sometimes cannot) follow the scientific method perfectly, due to all sorts of reasons.

It’s not that it can’t practically be followed, it is just that everyone running after H-index or whatever the hot thing is now has resulted in a drop in quality.

Most likely he already has someone with your first name in his contact list.

Countries do not have, or lose, interest in doing this or that on a whim. The British government agreed to Indian independence because continued large-scale protests were making it difficult to profitably exploit India’s natural resources, and the home economy (and army) were in a state of rebuilding after WW2. Also, there was diplomatic pressure from the two superpowers to end colonialism.

Russia claims to be concerned with (1) Ukraine joining NATO, and (2) the treatment of the Russian minority in Ukraine. (In addition, Putin is probably using this war to rally domestic support, and weaken / arrest the opposition.) Would either of these concerns have been assuaged by a stronger Ukrainian military?

Again, I am not saying that violence should never be used. The Nazis, clearly, had to be defeated militarily. France had to be driven out of Vietnam. But violence should always be the last option. And the buildup of weapons encourages politicians to respond to any problem with force, which just makes things worse for everyone.

The last election was over a decade ago. Also, Gaza is only one part of Palestine.

Hamas isn’t the government of Palestine. That is the PLA. Hamas are an extremist group that controls the Gaza strip.

I don’t think invading other people’s countries is morally right. But the Russian decision to invade Ukraine was taken, in part, due to concern that Ukraine might join NATO.

I think the idea of all weapons are bad, is a idea born by people far far away from any dictators or aggressive neighbors etc.

My country won independence from the biggest empire in the history of the world through non-violent methods. This of course does not mean non-violent methods will always work. But going to war without trying peaceful methods first is a great way to commit suicide on a national level. And having more weapons does seem to encourage such behaviour.

Right, I’m not saying countries should dismantle their armies, just that weapon manufacturing and stockpiling should be avoided as far as possible unless your country is under attack.

Ukraine was similarly lacking in arms from 1990 to 2014. Russia only felt the need to attack when it felt threatened that Ukraine might join NATO, because that could result in US troops on its doorstep.

If you don’t want to be invaded by uncooperative and irrational autocracies, you have to build up as much military capacity as your unpredictable systemic rivals.

Every resource spent on weapons is a resource not spent on infrastructure / education / what have you. Military expenditure is at best a necessary evil; a better option is to have just enough weapons to stop an enemy’s initial attack, and to invest the rest of your resources into building industrial capacity that can be used for military production if the need arises.

Remind me again, who had the military advantage by sheer numbers in the war on Ukraine?

Russia doesn’t calculate how many weapons it needs to produce depending on how many Ukraine has. It’s main threats are the other superpowers - the US and China. So of course in a conflict with Ukraine they will have a massive advantage.

In peacetime, countries do not make as many weapons as they can. They make as many weapons as they think they need, based on how many weapons they think their rivals have. So when you make a weapon, you also make a lot of other countries make weapons. And this weapon buildup increases the risk of war.

To hide their scent from predators.