Indeed, you are correct. This one is talking only about dysfunction. There are others (like this one or that one ) who look at factors like sensitivity/pleasure and can’t find an adverse effect, but I didn’t mention them, because I can’t see how they came to that conclusion and how the initial data was generated. So I can’t really say, whether that’s a sufficient result. Then, there’s studies like this one which asked males about their function and pleasure and compare between then and before circumcision, but again, that’s based on self-reports, which vary.

Phimosis is a congenital issue

That’s the primary type. There’s also the secondary type, that can evolve through inflammation for example. Which can be part of the pathology with insufficient hygiene.

To preface this: The science seems a bit inconclusive on the exact effects on sexual function or sensitivity. This review paper from 2023 in the Journal “Sexual Medicine Review” suggests that: “Despite the conflicting data reported in articles, the weight of the scientific evidence suggests there is not sufficient data to establish a direct association between male circumcision and sexual dysfunction.”

Unfortunately most papers are paywalled and we’d have to weed through the source papers to judge methodical weaknesses as well, since a lot of it is self-reporting. (I remember reading but can’t find a paper right now, where they tested a more objective pressure threshold that could be felt in circumcised and uncircumcised males and found some difference. But I can’t remember how significant the difference was.)

I’ve met a guy who was bullied in high school so bad for it he got a circ as an adult. (…) I don’t want to make him feel like something’s wrong with him his whole life because I was uncomfortable with the idea.

It’s a value judgement. But if you ask me personally, I would not try to avoid potential (not ensured) bullying by doing a lasting medical procedure. Especially considering that like with every such procedure there is a risk of complications (3.84% overall). Much rather I’d try to be there for him, if there is bullying and see to it, that he doesn’t feel shame around it.

Apparently crazy painful recovery.

That sounds like complications. Generally there’s more complications when it’s for therapeutic reasons and with higher age.

I’ve also talked to women who are generally grossed out by uncircumcised men. And I know women who prefer it the other way round. Again, you know your cultural environment better than me, but I don’t think you should make a decision like this on subjective opinions of some limited anecdotes. Also: Even if these opinions were objectively prevalent, they can change geographically or over time. And: Think about the kind and quality of a relation that falls apart because of something like that.

And last but not least, we have a view of a clinician in this topic who highlights the necessity of teaching him good hygiene to avoid phimosis (or general build up of smegma and its risks) and the role you think you can and want to play in his upbringing. There’s a lot of people around the world who are uncircumcised and I don’t think there is any prevalent medical downside from it. And I would absolutely add as a precaution, that such a procedure, if you chose to do it, should absolutely be made in an appropriate medical facility by qualified doctors.

Oh! So is that what bloatware is?

It’s because how it came about and how the process works (which they make up for themselves btw) it needed unanimous consent.

That would be my biggest worry as well. Although this isn’t specified yet, I assume that they would develop the software for Google/Apple. IIRC the Digitale Gesellschaft, a privacy advocacy group, has mentioned this as feedback about a year ago. I don’t know what was done with that though. Other issues were included in the development plan though.

Also: With how this law is worded, no one is forced to use an eID. You can go the old fashioned way and e.g. go to the traffic office in person.

Please don’t jump to conclusions. A well implemented eID can even improve privacy compared to the alternative of accessing big parts of the internet by trusting private companies to handle sensitive information like photos of physical IDs.

There is something in cryptography called Zero Knowledge Proof. With it only minimal information is exchanged and no party can tell anything about the person accessing it, i.e. the website who you are or profiling your ID, nor the verifier or issuer what you’re doing.

Without knowing how the eID will be implemented, you can’t just make such blanket statements. Want to know the details? It is open source and you can look up any technical details as well as the software code publicly.

Just gonna leave this here. Wind is SSW

Compared to just five years ago, they have been more risky during this and last season. We’ve seen more standing starts for example and just a few weeks ago in Silverstone we saw a crash at Copse corner (Hadjar rear-ended Antonelli) because visibility was so bad. At Spa, after multiple fatal accidents at the same corner over recent years, yes absolutely they’d rather err on the side of caution.

Well… let’s see whether that intensity is raceable. If not, they won’t start they race for a while, since there is more of this rain coming after that from W-NW.

Edit: This is exciting. No sign of delaying the start. Rain will wind down a bit after the start, before picking up again. And maybe even with a short heavy downpour too. The drivers really have to prove themselves.

Oh yeah! You are right. Next year all the cars will open both their wings and a car that comes within 1s of another can deploy more electric power (350 kW IIRC) at higher speeds for a boost, but with limited energy per lap and at any point in the lap, so not limited to zones. Will be a totally different kind of overtaking or defending in the new formula.

At least in a proper race, strategy can mix up things so that we might see overtakes. Sprints on the other hand are just DRS-trains circling round.

Maybe they need to think of an additional DRS zone out of Stavelot (T15) so they can’t save up the battery for only one big deployment per lap.

There do exist things resembling that a bit. Usually done on the local level and mostly concerning some street/development design, where people are invited to actively participate in a workshop style event with experts and vote on the results. But yes, these are not mandates. And as soon as you go onto the state or federal level, such structures become virtually non-existent.

The others are parliamentary commissions which can be instated by parliament and are formed of mainly external experts around a certain issue. These are often used on state and federal levels of government.

I would love if representation was spread wider over the population and that involvement was higher. I also am baffled at how bad general civics education is here in school, especially at the obligatory level. I would welcome a far more detailed and engaging civics education where they could already get some experience right at the school. Or go and participate at some local event. This way they also see the importance of a truly democratic process. Alas, as long as they can’t vote, nobody seems to want their opinions.

Another part that needs addressing is finances. There’s a lot of intransparency yes, but the way it works now, it is also very hard to get your message across without being big in a main political party or having some big private sponsor. Which limits your actual freedom before and after you’re elected. If we’re thinking radical we might severely limit campaign budgets or think about public funds allowing the same restrictive scope for everyone, no matter their background and finances. This would also limit the imbalance in outreach between capital-backed candidates and others.

A third huge problem lies within the judiciary, where judges on many levels effectively also have to be party-associated to get elected. If that sounds completely compromising their necessary impartiality, yeah, it’s because it does. (Although I don’t have data on how that influences their work)

And lastly: The structures of accountability for politicians. I know that some steadiness or stability is necessary, but without the fear of accountability, far too many misuse their positions without repercussions. As we see from around the world, this invites more and more brazen figures to do more and more brazen violations. Just a brain-fart: 100k signatures to force a vote on relieving someone of their immunity so they can be tried in court. And to not just wait it out. Right now, it’s parliament that has this exclusive possibility.

This is not law yet. The Federal Council (the executive) has started a consultation process at the beginning of the year which ended in May. They are now looking at all the feedback that came in, that was - unsurprisingly - exclusively negative from all sides. If the responsible minister wants to go ahead with it, it goes to the Federal Council for a vote. If they approve it, this would be a decree to change an existing decree and that would come into effect next year or the year after.

And this is where direct democracy comes in: If this is the case anyone can start getting signatures for a public initiative which would change the constitution to prohibit such practices. In fact anyone can start doing that now. If it succeeds, then it’ll come to a popular vote. Threema (a secure chat provider) has already announced that they would do that and I’m sure that they wouldn’t be the only ones to band together in this.

The process might take long, but this is in no way “not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal” and in fact has happened multiple times in the past. Hence why Switzerland has a direct vote on issues every few months because of something called “Referendum”, whereby a popular vote can be forced on an issue passing through parliament. I might have my criticisms of the political system, but this ain’t it.

its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing

Well yes, there is some level of representation, so over 8 million people don’t have to decide every little detail on 1000s of changes of law. The system is built upon a “milita” system. I.e. politicians usually have a job. So people have the possibility to vote in experts or their vicinity and know that they won’t solely be career politicians. Unfortunately the laws around financing and propaganda are rather lax, giving an advantage to the rich, which leads to an over-representation of the capitalist class with occupations such as lawyers and business-owners and a clear under-representation of classical working-class jobs such as craftspeople or office workers. This is amendable though to correct the mismatch, if people realize their class interest and don’t fall for the same right-wing propaganda of a party whose playbook has been inspired by the US GOP for decades and who is inspiring Germany’s AfD now.

The main downside of the system imo has to do with people with no knowledge on an issue having to weigh in on them and therefore how powerful propaganda campaigns can be, which means that money buys power, as in every other existing so-called democracy - direct or not. Especially with how money shifts power away from the populace, this is inherent to capitalistic systems and it would be on the populace to protect itself from it. With enough propaganda though, people keep voting for more power of capital unbeknownst to them or not, just as they might vote against their interests on other things. The fact that you have to convince so many people, who hopefully do have some degree of education, makes it a lot harder though, for big capitalists to reach their goals, compared to less direct systems. And I know of several examples, how such a vote did not go in favor of big capital. What usually makes the difference is whether they succeed in portraying their advantage as the advantage of all.

I’ve waited 239 races and this is what I get?

Let’s reverse roles for a second. You’re the employer. What reasons would there be, for you to advertise an opening? Could your primary motivation possibly be paying people money? (Rhetorical question) Considering you already have a team, what kind of person do you want to fill the position? What profile should they have? And how would their motivation reflect on their expected performance?

P.S. I’m not saying, not to talk about money, but there’s a time for talking about that vs. finding out, whether you’re a fit. And answering a question about your main motivation on why you want to be part of their team with money, doesn’t reflect well on you or any expectations of you.

It’s funny to read back the thread. It makes it seem as if we disagree, when we clearly agree.

The overtaking rules were recently changed because of the way one driver exploited that set of rules

Yeah. But we don’t know how, because they only changed the unpublished guidelines… probably. We can’t really know. And you are probably correct that they want to maintain their leeway for nuance or/and manipulation, as can be witnessed nearly every season.

The kicker of this one driver’s behavior last season: it’s a clear breach of Appendix L Ch.4 2. b), c) and d). But all that has to happen because of that is a reporting to the Stewards. Everything beyond that is - by the rules we have access to - fully up to them. That’s all I’m trying to say. The actual rules don’t just offer grey areas, they lack any enforcement. It’s like if the lotg say, that if the ref sees a foul, he can do as he pleases. And these problems and discussions won’t cease until there are clear limits within the rules and guidelines and the public can finally see them. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t allow for nuance, but this is just ridiculously arbitrary.

I agree with the overall point, yet we have to be careful not to conflate the rules with the stewarding/refereeing. You mentioned the expression grey area and I would like to point out that the football rules have been revised in the last 10 years or so, to finally shrink the scope of interpretation. There is still a lot of ‘freedom’ for the referees and their interpretation, but I agree, that more clear boundaries have been established. I would point to some glaring examples to the contrary, but prefer to come back to F1, which has the exact opposite situation.

The rules for football (laws of the game) are widely accessible and available including how transgressions are to be punished. In F1 on the other hand the whole thing is absolutely opaque. We can’t really say, how much room for interpretation there is, because the FIA won’t publish their Driving Standard Guidelines (may I present a version back from the Imola GP 2022!). So we have no real reference to measure the Stewarding against. What this year’s exact wording is concerning the mirror of the overtaking car being alongside the axle of the other or whatever it is, we simply don’t know. The only thing we have is the International Sporting Code (ISC), and from that Appendix L is usually the one cited in the decisions, because it handles overtaking. But: There’s only a mention of a penalty points system in there, not how it is handled, nor what exactly gives someone a “right to the line” or anything in that direction.

For unsafe releases, we have ISC App. L Chapter IV 5. d) which states that “Cars must not be released from a garage or pit stop position in a way that could endanger or unnecessarily impede pit lane personnel or another driver”. The penalties for breaching this rule (or anything else in the ISC) is handled somewhere else (The same goes for the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, where the unsafe release is defined again with a few specialties to F1). In Appendix B (Stewards Penalty Guidelines) they very vaguely describe, that Stewards have the authority to enforce these rules and that they “retain the discretion (…) to tailor the penalty to the specific situation.” (i.e. to judge mitigating/aggravating circumstances, etc.). Again, no clear reference to measure against. As an example for the seeming arbitrariness: In the decision document around Max’ 10 second time penalty and 3 penalty points, they mention the infringement of App. L Chapter IV Article 2 d) of the ISC, but as we’ve seen, there isn’t anything concrete in there relating to the severity of the penalty.

If we go back to Miami, Max got a 10s penalty in the Sprint for an unsafe release with a collision as a result. In their decision document the stewards write: “The Stewards acknowledge that the driver did everything he could to avoid the incident and therefore no penalty points are issued in this case.” So it seems that the Stewards could theoretically issue penalty points depending on the incident at question. But again, we have no possibility to actually know. In Oliver Bearman’s case in the same race, the time penalty was only 5s and there wasn’t anything mentioned about any penalty points.

So regardless whether we think the rules should be penalty points for unsafe releases or not, we can’t even tell how good of a job the stewards are doing, because there’s a lot of uncertainty within the rules, and we don’t even have access to all the relevant publications of the rules and their clarification.

consistently making mistakes no matter how minor should be getting a ban

We can find equivalents of this in other sports too. E.g. in football, when you’re cautioned twice, you’re sent off. And if you keep committing normal/non-cautionable foul play, you’ll be cautioned. But: Just like you can’t get cautioned for being off-side all the time, there’s a certain level of breaching the rules in F1 as well, that leads to penalty points in the first place.

I know unsafe releases are the teams faults but its not like fines have actually reduced their occurrence

During races unsafe releases are penalized with time penalties. So there’s a clear deterrent there, even if there aren’t any penalty points. I’m not sure about qualifying. The fines are certainly levied during free practice sessions.

lol yeah. They didn’t edit out all the flirting though or all the embarassed or indignant reactions by the characters around them, which presents those “cousins” in a really interesting light ;)

The US version of Sailor Moon was also censored and edited in different other ways. IIRC:

• All Tokyo references were changed to New York. So they’ve changed where the whole thing took place.
• They changed all Japanese writings (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji)
• Multiple characters had their gender or sex changed as to avoid homosexual relations.
• The music was completely changed for some reason
• They took out many scenes or even whole episodes if they thought, they might vaguely get into conflict with the FCC.
• They scrapped a whole season, because the Sailor Starlights (I think that was their name?) changed gender in their magical transformation.

The most infamous would be South Park episodes S14E05 and S14E06 named “200” and “201”. The central theme of the episodes: Censorship. Something South Park had been subjected to ever since its inception. And this time, they centered around the limits of what is allowed around depictions of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. For context: These episodes aired after controversies around such depictions in media around the world had people killed.

So in an attempt to protect themselves, the network engaged in censorship of the episodes and it is sometimes unclear, what was intentionally in there as a plot point from the creators and what was added by the network. Although some egregious examples are clear, such as the complete bleeping of Kyle’s “I’ve learned something today” monologue at the end. While Stone and Parker inserted clear plot points like characters like Moses of all people asking, whether something was OK to show or say. I’m still uncertain whether the huge censorship bar over the Prophet is a plot point, or censorship or both.

The kicker: Prophet Muhammad had been shown in earlier episodes already, without sparking controversy and in “200” and “201” they even reference those episodes. As expected, they received death threats after the airing of the episodes and later pulled all five episodes with Muhammad depictions from their streaming sites (Super-Best Friends, Cartoon Wars 1+2, 200, 201).