There is a misconception that "divine right" of kings was a long standing tradition. It's a product of state centralization in 16-17th century Europe.

The hereditary rule of kings had to be justified somehow so a legal fiction of divine right was established. As to how many people actually believed in it we can't really know, however there was pushback almost immediately, for example Republicans in English Civil War, Dutch Republic, various Italian and German states... Meaning to say It wasn't a universal concept even during the peak of its popularity.

Earlier Medieval states often operated as elective monarchies, especially those of Germanic origins. Holy Roman Empire held on to the elective monarchy from 962 to 1804. In contrast France, despite common origins, slowly moved to the "divine right" concept, and pretty much pioneered early modern absolute monarchy.

There is much more to be said for states in the rest of the world. Although monarchies, Japan and China had completely different justifications as to why the king is a legitimate king (and fall very much in the divine right category). Then were are various Native American nations with government systems which seem unusual from today's perspective.

All this is to say that while some type of monarchy was the most common system before the Industrial Revolution, it wasn't universally accepted. And even when it was it wasn't necessarily of the divine right kind.

That's just so impractical. The point of business travel is to get something done. For that you need your devices, and access to relevant data and systems.

Setting up a clean device for every trip where you cross a controlled border is such a hassle it wouldn't really pass in any company. Well with the exception of defense companies, I could understand them being paranoid enough.

Maybe we just met a second speaker of the infamous bird/dolphin language

Just reminded me of an argument trying to explain that arithmetic with floating point numbers is not always correct to a coworker who was a mathematician just starting in software dev.

In a mathematicians mind the fact that an arithmetic operation can produce inaccurate result is just incomprehensible

Cold calling. And other proactive forms of sales when they seek you out and actively keep trying to convince you that you need their product.

Bonus points if the sales person is unable to actually explain the product and keeps talking about "we don't sell products we sell solutions"

Ok, now you have to explain for those of us who are not birdologists

Is water cooling for PC gaming still a thing? It's been 10+ years since I followed any trends.

Cauchy - "you can't have a party without me"

I think it's because writers take care to make the pronunciation guessable form the spelling. English is infamous for it's very inconsistent writing rules, however there are "rules". More like heuristics, but usually it's possible to write a word in such a way that others can guess the pronunciation, unless that specific word already has an accepted official spelling that is different.

"Nobody goes there, it's too crowded"

Some people are into extreme sports. Driving in Paris can definitely be classified as such

Those trains sure look dodgy, in a post-apocalyptic kind of way. Sometimes people jump to conclusions that it must be full of crime

I don't have an alternative. If i die I will stop existing. And despite all the pain I'm living through it's all caused by the desire to live.

It's sometimes superficially tempting but dying would not solve any of my problems. You can't solve wrong choices in life by stopping to exist. It's just logically contradictory.

Wow you're lucky. I've always wanted a job like that.

And for a while I had something similar but unfortunately rotten. We had a ping pong table, afterwork parties, no overtime, lunch, even a swimming pool. And we could use all of it.

However we were seriously underpaid, I got an 80% raise just by saying hello in another company. No remote work without any reason at all (most of my team was in other countries). And awful decision making by upper management.

Made me cynical if something like it is even possible. Glad to hear it is.

CBD does ... something. It makes me sleepy. So at least for some people it can serve as a sleep aid.

Not to me though I just tried it out of curiosity, I have no desire to be even more sleepy

How many times does the same mistake have to repeat? Communists didn't invent revolutions you know. Peasant rebellions were a thing in medieval Europe, and many different kinds of uprisings were tried during the centuries. And there's the same pattern repeating again and again - it either fails in bloodshed, or succeeds only for the winners to establish a new tyrannical system.

The only exception was started by rich landowners because they didn't want to pay taxes to the king. (American)

Note that I'm talking about violent revolutions - there were quite a few examples of non-violent or semi-violent revolts/uprisings that didn't end up catastrophically. India, South Africa, Portugal, post-communist Eastern Europe come to mind.

Revolutionaries thinking that only if they terrorize enough people a new better society will magically come into existence.

And of course they will be the new ruling class, never on the receiving end of the terror.

There should be another half with Hamas doing the same to a slightly different subset of the West. Both have tuned their propaganda to 110%, Hamas is even slightly more successful.

The only solution is a 0 state solution.

Not wanting to learn or not wanting to drive?

Knowing how to drive is a useful skill that can come in handy (vacations, emergency) even if you don't do it regularly.

Refusing to drive daily - absolutely, for political, social and economic end ecological reasons. Everyone living in range of an acceptable public transport should refuse to drive. And those who are not should not stop pressuring and voting local politicians to implement one. It's 2024, there's no reason to depend on cars for everyday transportation.

Oh I feel this so much. There's a range of jobs and environments where I do really really well. But the way most organizations are structured I can never find a place where my strengths are desirable in the long term.
And selling myself is not one of my strengths.