It’s fair to judge people for the collective actions of a group they’ve voluntarily joined—a political party, a military, an occupation, etc.

But when you look at the behavior of a whole country (or any other group that people belong to by birth), you’re seeing what any other group of humans would do when raised in similar circumstances. You can judge their institutions and their leadership, but when you judge them as people you’re judging all of humanity.

30 years ago?

So right about the time The Truman Show came out?

Did your friend perhaps watch it while high?

Other comments are correctly stating that the sun is white, but appears yellow/orange due to the blue light being scattered—but that doesn’t fully address the issue, because objects seen under a white light with an orange filter in front would still have an orange cast.

The difference with the sun is that the scattered blue light is still reaching objects via the light from the rest of the sky—it’s the orange light from the sun combining with the blue light from the sky that makes things appear white.

That, and Spain (or whoever else) wouldn’t be coming in fresh off the surrender of Granada, with the attitude that all non-Christian states must be conquered as a matter of principle.

Columbus’ return to Spain.

His failure to return discourages further attempts for a while; and when contact is eventually made, it isn’t Spain in the immediate aftermath of the Reconquista looking to continue its momentum.

Meanwhile, the New World is made aware of Europe and perhaps acquires some resistance to Old World diseases before any larger confrontations.

Convincing people to dismiss their crimes as “white collar crap” is the most insidious trick of successful criminals.

Research isn’t advice, either—it can provide the data to make an informed decision, but you still need to figure out what information is relevant to your particular case and how it applies.

In particular, you shouldn’t read a random study or research paper and take it as an actionable recommendation—you need to be familiar with other similar studies, and how they fit into the current state of the rest of their field.

Most of the underlying concepts are left wing, but the people using the label aren’t.

(The main example I can think of is Foldvary, who I’d hesitate to call either left- or right-wing).

It’s basically a version of Georgism, rebranded to avoid Georgism’s left-wing association.

Is [contingency] something that may be contingent on other things that may take time to verify?

Lots of actors never get into drugs, and lots of other people do anyway. We’re just more aware of the actors because they’re living under a spotlight. (They probably also get more attention because they contradict the stereotype of drug users being poor and unsuccessful.)

Also, plenty of actors do volunteering, charity, and activism too.

I guess it’ll be when the majority of the working population is Gen Z or younger.

It was a ritual of social inversion (a fool was crowned king, the ruling class was mocked and identities were concealed, religious and social rules were relaxed, etc.)

There are differing views, but one theory is that it served as a reminder to both lords and commoners that the social order could be overthrown if the lords became too oppressive.

Carnival.

From the wiki article on Public.Resource.Org:

Malamud called for increased awareness that Westlaw was a commercial broker of the United States Federal Reporter, Federal Supplement, and Federal Appendix. While Westlaw had been adding value to the content by indexing it with their proprietary West American Digest System and accompanying summaries, the purchase of their products was the only way to access much of the public domain material they hosted.

New Year’s is celebrated by everyone

More so than Christmas, perhaps—but you still have people with different calendars (Chinese, Jewish, Muslim, etc.).

“Feeding the trolls?”

Water Chestnuts are a fantastic substitute if you like the crunch.

Your opinion of celery vs water chestnuts is apparently the exact reverse of mine.

In the sense that the original organic material has been replaced by minerals? I guess that’s a version of the old Ship of Theseus question.

We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:

1 N = North
i N = West
i² N = South
i³ N = East.

And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance or speed… or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.