@Mitch Yes, it feels undemocratic to have a single top ruler for so long

We've had Putin since the summer of 1999. The Medvedev rule was a sham, of course, it was still Putin who ruled.

@Mitch Well, she doesn't have that much power.

Besides, how is long tenure ademocratic, except in the sense that autocrats tend to secure long tenure for themselves?

@Cerberus A long tenure provides more opportunities for entrenching yourself and your friends in power.

Thus it should be avoided.

In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat

We, the simple folk, used to be manipulated by churches, but huge corporations took their place stealthily in the latter half of the 20 century

@CowperKettle Well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's ademocratic.

If the people vote for your continued tenure, would it not be ademocratic to ignore the people?

I think what you might be saying is that a long tenure, while not anti-democratic in the short term, may lead to problems threatening democracy in the long term.

In a country with a strong democratic tradition, however, and concerning a function without power greatly exceeding that of a minister, I'm not sure whether this risk is at all realistic.

@Cerberus yeah it's a correlation thing, not a . . . deduction?

@CowperKettle Anyway I think the number of people is not that important. If you have a vocal fringe group in a party that call other members "party member in name only" and if the leader is always going to be chosen from among the members of the group and said leader will always have the interests of the group in mind ahead of everything else, including personal whims, then you have an oligarchy in your hands, which is probably worse than any sort of autocracy, because a group is always smarter

and more malicious.

I'm not referring to any real life examples of course. Not at all.

So anyway I'm saying that's always been scarier for me. A group is going to be more controlling and more evil than a single person

The actor who played in the movie Kes! I recall watching with subtitles on, because it was impossible to make out the heavily accented speech of Northern Britain.

Current weather to the south of Yekaterinburg

A new "criminal case" has been opened against Alexey Navalny today, the fourth one since he was poisoned on Putin's orders.

Under the new case, he is charged with heading an extremist organization, and may face from 6 to 10 years in jail.

@Cerberus 1) I really don't know what power is or much about German politics/gov so can't judge

2) I think I qualified it with "superficially, time in office is correlated with corruption"

@Mitch imto my conputer

Ostensibly Putin is democratically elected.

@MattE.Эллен Putin it right in

It felt really strange to have Kohl and Mitterrand for so long. Was Chirac in for 14?

Maggie Thatcher was only 11

I can't tell if that is better or worse, to have at any time the possibility of being voted out

Well

Put that way it sounds much better

But if you can build up connections along the way, the less and less likely it would be to be voted out the longer you're in

so long as you're outwardly perceived to be doing a good job

People seem to love Putin

Also poutine.

I love that stuff

and pouting

Putain

Sorry didn't mean to swear. I just stubbed my toe

:-o

which toe?

Little pinkie toe

Caught the edge of a door as I was walking through

oooo

nasty

Wait was that french guy from WWII in Vichy, was he Putain?

In other news my toe is fine and no door was kicked. It was purely for the Putain de merde joke

Sorry if I caused any visceral or vicarious tarsal pain

I'm sure there's research on hypothetical pain vs real pain. I'm not going to look it up though

Omg

Pétain

Pé

tain

Pas poo

tain

toe pain / poo tain

I think we just won the internet for the day

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body, potentially bad asn for hostname in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body (101): How can i translate thí article in to english by Phuc thinh on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (71): How can i translate thí article in to english by Phuc thinh on english.SE

Radioactive fallout makes you prefer hentai

Or vice versa

Interesting. It was previously thought that children pass this threshold at age 4.

I failed to understand why the child will pick the wrong box in the author's second experiment, where the mother does not change the location of the chocolate bar.

I will read the original article later. Curious.

@CowperKettle The most severe fallout seems to be in a 'mature' province?

If a correlation does not hold up when you zoom in, that is a clear sign that it is probably a coincidence.

@Cerberus Ah, yes! Indeed.

Clearly more experminents are called for.

To wrinkle out inconsistencies.

On live specimina?

With radioactive materials and pornography?

Why are these things showing up in my YouTube feed? Is this some kind of meme I'm supposed to be aware of?

Well, apparently it is a meme.

I guess I should be happy in my ignorance.

OK, this one I don't get. I like women as much as the next person, but when I go to listen to music I don't decide beforehand that there should be a specific gender involved.

Besides, it's kind of sexist to choose music that way, innit?

It is positive discrimination.

And how it is "equal" escapes me.

@Cerberus that's how experiments are done

@Robusto nobody is actually -thinking- when they pick music

To be extra cynical, the people who pick that channel aint listening to Rod Stewart and Led Zeppelin anyway