Theoretically, there’s nothing stopping any new country from joining getting a carve-out. You just need everyone to agree to it. And tbh, getting them to agree to let Canada continue using the Canadian Dollar is probably a much smaller ask than getting them to let a North American country into the European Union.

It may not be an issue anymore (I don’t recall hearing about it in a while, but I’m not sure how long), but it used to be the case that there were two countries that were often regarded as EU troublemakers, and by working together, even though they didn’t agree much of the time, they could veto any attempts to undermine each other. I think the other troublemaker was Poland, and I think it may have been before their last election, but that’s a lot of unsurity.

Suspension, fwiw, requires unanimity apart from the country in question, so one single dissenter can prevent it.

The EU requires unanimity among its existing members in order to add a new member. It’s not impossible, but getting Orban to agree to it is, I think, a much bigger stumbling block than the article implies. Any “concessions” Orban demands to accept Canada would themselves have to be unanimously agreed to by existing members.

Isn’t the premise that the life you’re now living is the coma? So tbh I’d welcome the wake up.

First, you’ll note that I started this conversation by conceding free will and concentrating my discussion of evil on evils that are not performed by humans, but by the planet itself, or by fundamental biology.

But as for “the concept of life as a test”…why is something supposedly omniscient performing a test? It should already know the result of said test, thus making the test itself irrelevant. That’s what omniscience is.

the charges have been inconsistent, randomly changed and clearly politically motivated

What’s your legal representation like? Is there any chance of an appeal on these grounds? (I know that in the general sense, penalties that are out of proportion with the norms can be grounds for appeal. But I don’t know enough about it to know whether that would apply for you.)

If there is no evil how can there be good?

Easy. You take the world as it is right now…and then remove the evil things. Evil is a metaphysical concept. We often use analogies of light and dark, but it doesn’t literally work that way.

the Abrahamic trio, so God is supposed to be all powerful.

The funny thing is, the ancient Israelites almost certainly didn’t believe this. It was a more recent invention that’s obviously not supported by the old testament or the talmud.

Yeah, the average person gets a pass on this sort of thing because I generally assume they haven’t thought much about it. But it’s particularly galling when biblical scholars do it.

I saw one biblical scholar whose schtick was debunking things evangelicals believe about the bible. He would happily admit it’s written by a collection of authors over a long period of time, who were doing so not literally but in rhetorical styles popular in their day. Things like that.

Once, I saw him describe how the early Israelites did not believe in the three omnis. They may not have even believed in a monotheistic god, but it was certainly not omniscient and omnibenevolent. Then he went on to say that despite that—despite the fact that the authors of the religious text and the society that invented this god not believing in three omnis—he nevertheless did believe god was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Wtf?

But why is that all good? Why couldn’t he have earth be good?

I’m upvoting because I thought this was done good engagement with the premise and you don’t deserve to be downvoted for it.

But fundamentally, you’ve missed a pretty big step. What if god just…didn’t create a situation where children get diseases that can only be cured with one rare tree?

Or, more importantly, what about diseases that cannot be cured? What about natural disasters? Yes, some types of natural disasters have gotten more common and worse as a result of human action, but they still happened before climate change, and if anything were more disruptive to people before we had modern building practices.

We’re talking about a god that is literally capable of anything. It could just wave its hand and delete all disease from existence. It chooses not to.

Because one of the many inputs to people’s actions, if we assume that their actions are deterministic, is their knowledge of how other people will respond, and how they have responded to similar things in the past.

What shits me is Christians (and Jews and Muslims, but it’s mainly Christians who do this) who just handwave away the problem of evil. Like fine, I can accept that some evils might arise as a result of human decisions and free will. Things like wars and genocides are done by people. It’s difficult to swallow even that much with the idea of a god who supposedly knows all, is capable of doing anything, and is “all good”, but fine, maybe free will ultimately supplants all that.

But what I absolutely cannot accept is any claim that tries to square the idea of a god with the triple-omnis with the fact that natural disasters happen. That children die of cancer. You try telling the parents of a child slowly dying of a painful incurable disease that someone could fix it if they wanted, and they completely know about it, but that they won’t. And then try telling them that person is “all good”. See how they react.

I find religious people who believe in the three omnis after having given it any amount of serious consideration to be absolutely disgusting and immoral people.

My take is that there is no free will, but that this fact is irrelevant and we’re all better off just behaving as though we do.

I think the solution to the problem with quarters is to say “calendar quarter”.

High speed rail is fantastic, but good inter-city routes are not a substitute for excellent local city planning. People should be able to live close to their work, and even closer to their daily amenities like shops, hospitals, schools, sports clubs and other social venues, cafes, etc., and should be able to get to them within a short walk or bike ride, without having to rely on long-distance travel like cars or even trains.

I’m repeating the words you used. What’s the relevance?

What’s the relevance of the founding fathers, then?

people could stop buying those big Rams and all that

I fuckin’ hate the popularity of big cars. I mean, I hate car dependency in general, but as far as cars do go, I’d much rather see small EV hatchbacks than this stupid fossil fuel guzzling yank tanks.

I’ve seen an ad going around from Kia in Europe, advertising their EV as being “not owned by Elon Musk”. Meanwhile, Kia Australia’s latest big thing has been the Tasman…yet another fucking wankpanzer.

They were clearly talking about the Union during the Civil War…