.

Well, perhaps European countries should start to root for the Democrats — ssu

We should not root for anyone but to build a shield capable of protecting us from the coming high-voltage wave when the last pillar of their democracy finally collapses.

.

I am American. — NOS4A2

Sorry, my bad. I think I read you were Canadian somewhere in this long thread.


Fine. Thanks. We approached a similar point, and I hope it will be taken politely, but we can't know what the future holds.

I think you (as well as frank) and others have a weird obsession that we owe you something. A false belief that you are protecting us pro bono. I don't even understand your position since you are Canadian, not American.

NATO and other Western-like and American-ish institutions, like the International Monetary Fund or United Nations, were made to orbit to the side of American interests. It is even funny since the US was the only country in recent history to drop nuclear bombs on another sovereign nation. Hence, I think American foreign policy should have never been entitled to build 'institutions' of the free world. But I understand the context, and Europe was helpless and divided, so we were basically forced to accept the rules of your world.

What you can't do now is destroy what you imposed on us after decades. Dissolving NATO and trying to build an EU military organisation seems the most rational thing to me.

Alas, you guys will always be there. You don't trust the elites of Brussels unless your friends (AfD, for instance) are the ones in charge. It is sad how we always misunderstood Russia. Weren't they the evil here? Because now your 'elected' and 'democratic' politicians are the ones who are threatening. We did a damn effort dispensing Russian natural resources because they were the threat, and look how many economic sanctions our institution put on their shoulders.

Why haven't we done the same when you nuked Japan? Ah, got ya. Because the 'good' ones were acting in that case.

Decades of being a pain in the ass imposing how the world should act: McDonald's everywhere, Hollywood films and flawed Apple devices too. Now, you don't want the rest of the world as your favourite toy because most of us don't buy the paranoia of your convicted felon in charge. :groan:

"Why are we in NATO?" is a question Europeans should ask not you, mates.

One of my favourite authors was interviewed by an editorial of my country in Barcelona. Very cool.

Well said, Tobias. :clap:

EU countries were terrible vassals. They never paid any tribute. :grin: — frank

You guys are always obsessed with the same thing. :roll: What do you really expect? To just cut spending on social welfare to feed your paranoia of not trusting the rest of the world?

If your president even has the guts to threaten Denmark, one of NATO's founding states, what advantage is it to keep paying the tributes?

Now that a year has gone by, could you tell us if you finally got to be a professional roller skater? :eyes:

How much have you skated since then? The council of my town built a skate park, and a lot of folks do skate every hour there. But they are not pros, I guess...

Yes, but Sir algorithm also can show very poor and mediocre films. That's why I cheered when such a piece of art popped up.

Excellent! Glad to know that Criterion Channel has it on its watchlist. :up:

Hello Clarky, @T Clark

I was watching Asian films again, and I discovered a very good one: Majestic, aesthetic, and enigmatic. It gave me an inexplicable sensation of melancholy.

It is a 2000 Chinese film called Suzhou River.

It popped up on my screen randomly. One special section of Filmin (the platform I use to watch TV) is dedicated to commemorating films that turn 25 years old in 2025, so they were filmed in 2000. Suzhou River was one of them, and I applaud how randomness can lead us to art sometimes.

If you ever watch it, I would like to hear your thoughts on whether you think Meimei and Moudan are the same girl.

Mates, this has to be a farewell to fdrake; not your personal notebook where you write all the things you didn't like in the past. What is the point of being a killjoy? :roll:

Understood, frank.

I will not defend abusive people; so did fdrake I am sure. 

Sorry to step in. As I discussed before with being a moderator is not easy. I respect that you perhaps experienced things you did not like, yet it is not the time to exploit the situation. We can't just reduce fdrake's commitment to your negative experience with Mikie. We all deserve a broadly based assessment. It is not fair to point out one thing you disliked when his compromise lasted nearly ten years.

I'm not sure why, but I'm afraid now. See? Moderation is riskier than we imagined.

Trust Me Bro. — Arcane Sandwich

I wholeheartedly trust you, mate.

It's not polite to ask people to work for free. — Arcane Sandwich

True, but that must not surprise anyone since volunteering is already a free task. So, I don't see why it would not be polite to ask for doing it for free. We are talking about volunteers, not bankers. :rofl:

I have never thought of being a moderator on anything.

Philosophy of Religion? An interesting topic, indeed. But my knowledge doesn't go beyond Kierkegaard or Hegel. Very basic. That's why I appreciate the guts of those who volunteer to moderate!

Well, I'd say that you're my friend, if there's such a thing as Internet friendships. So, I have already given you the right to moderate me, informally at least. — Arcane Sandwich

I consider you as my friend too. But I don't want to act like I am a shepherd and you my loyal mastiff.

So is everyone, arguably. — Arcane Sandwich

Not really. I have seen some folks who control themselves and know to ensure eclectic positions in different topics. @Count Timothy von Icarus is a good example, and his appointment as moderator was a very good decision by the forum.

Not every moderator has to moderate every single topic of discussion. Maybe your talents and knowledge are better suited to moderate topics in Philosophy of Art, for example. You don't have to moderate political topics if you don't want to. — Arcane Sandwich

That's interesting.

I don't know if you already notice that there is a short story contest once a year. The previous contests were based on a system of poll voting, but readers were not forced to read and leave feedback. Thus, explaining why they gave a 2 instead of 5, for example. I disagreed with this, and I remember putting a lot of effort into supervising that each author had the feedback they deserved, but I ended up mentally exhausted. My aim was just to keep the contest up on an optimal level. I care a lot about the contest, but caring is not the only important feature. If I take personally the way some folks treat the short stories or the contest itself, I couldn't be a good mod because my attitude is obviously biased.

But first I should ask myself: who am I to moderate you?

I admit that I lose my control often, and I am biased on explicit topics. For example: I can't see myself as a good mod in Gaza thread because I root for Palestinian people, and I am not very fond of Israel.

A mod should act as we expect from judges: objectively.

I didn't know that. Perhaps someone who wants to help with moderating should ask the admins. But I can't see myself in such a plight. It is just that Javi is made for writing nursery rhymes, not moderating discussions. :sweat:

The job is time-consuming and messy. It takes a certain kind of person to do it well.
Sometimes, we get to see timely interventions. Other times, not so much. Work is behind the scenes, not recognised and not given enough appreciation. — Amity

I agree Amity.

It is true that a mod's job is behind the scenes, and it is not always recognised. I even remember some bleak members who tried to make the ambience even worse, and they confronted the mods.

I will be honest: I also did one or a few tantrums. I didn't like when some threads were put in The Lounge, my endless discussions with universeness, or how I personally take the short story contest. I know I am not an easy fella. I appreciate the generous behaviour they always had, and I am aware that banning a member is not easy.

Honestly, being a mod in TPF could be one of the hardest tasks to do. It is not always easy to track the endless chat in each thread; furthermore, regarding those threads that are mainly political, it is complex to find out a balance on both sides of the debate. I was never asked to be a mod, and I am lucky because I think I will not be up to the required standards. So, I appreciate the job done by fdrake and the current mod job by the rest of the team.

Your commendable job on moderating will never be forgotten. Thanks! An era comes to an end.

Wouldn't it be more appealing to know who the ghostwriter is who received @Dan's 5% fee? :smirk:

I have been watching Coronation Street for the last couple of days. It inspired me to write the small play that I posted in The Shoutbox.

I think I always watched soap operas without realising they were soap operas. Since the plot is not very deep and the characters simply represent ordinary families facing platitudes, I mostly hooked on to this famous British TV show because the accents of the actors are unique. I thought it was recorded in London, but it turned out to be in Manchester, which means that they are Mancs as the English say.

Who knows if the ITV franchisee will like to hire me as a screenwriter in the future?

You see the sun rise in the morning, and impose an idea that time has passed. Nothing has passed. It was the earth which rotated itself by 1 turn since yesterday morning. — Corvus

Well, I think something has happened. The sunrise is like an alarm, and it tells me that the day just started and I have a lot of things to do: take a shower, have breakfast, go to work, pay things, take care of my relatives, and a lot of things that I can't experience when I am in the night. When night comes, I feel the day is ended, and I have to wait until tomorrow to do new or the same trifling things. Therefore, yes since the sun rises there are a lot of things that happened.

Dogs don't care about time or numbers. Maybe they would do, if they had the concept of time and numbers. — Corvus

True, good point. But the fact that dogs don't have the concept of time doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We can flip it and see the coin of the reverse side: dogs bark yet we don't understand bark language. Does the message in the dog's bark exist even though we can't understand it?

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

And yet you posted that 19 hrs ago. — Banno

And yet Banno posted that 40 minutes ago.

And yet there will be more replies to this thread after mine in the next minutes or hours, making the thread longer. Therefore, time affects space.

Etc...

I agree that a celebration is in order. — Jamal

¡Viva! :party: :party: :grin:

All of us meet in Times Square in New York City. We can borrow that ball they use at New Years. — T Clark

Great! New York City is a lovely city. :smile:

Depose the moderators and watch the forum quickly descend into chaos. — T Clark

The Shoutbox is already chaotic. We can go there just in case we don't depose the mods!

Nothing. — T Clark

Oh, nada. My favourite.

Double Jamal's salary. — T Clark

I agree. Jamal deserves it; either with British pounds or Russian rubles.

Put Hanover on double-secret probation. — T Clark

I don't know what double-secret probation is but I think @Hanover will be one of the special guests in the 10th anniversary ceremony.

I agree, and I understand that time, as an entity, is complex to understand. Why does this happen? Why does something intangible, such as time, exist?

Well, we give relevance to something that, although it is not purely perceived by our senses, enters into our understanding of the world. I bet my dog is not aware of time, but I do, and when my dog was just months old, I called her a "puppy," but now that she is 6 years old, I consider her nearly "senior," yet she doesn't care about these facts.

On the other hand, I believe that most of us got used to living with 'illusions' or abstract features. Dreams, hallucinations, nightmares, etc. When we were kids, our parents used to say, Don't worry, they are just dreams. Like if a dream is not existing, while I disagree obviously.

Another point: time zone is very important, and its existence affects our online communication. We have to wait until our friends from America or Australia wake up to see your thread, and this is due to the solar system.

We say those things exist because they benefit us in different ways. What would be the point of getting rid of time? Space and objects are affected by the flow of time, for instance.

Years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds are just the social contracts on the intervals of rise and setting Sun on our horizon. Without the solar system operation i.e. the Earth rotating around the Sun in a regular manner, which the current calendar system is based on, there wouldn't be such a thing as a timing system as we know it. — Corvus

Well, think of the positive benefits of the time system. Everything would be a mess otherwise. Furthermore, thanks to the time system, your thread is at the top of the first page. If you think it is actually pointless, we can ask to put it on page 26 and consider your recent thread as if it were an old one.

Does magenta colour exist? Yet you need it to print things that exist.

Do "stop" signals exist, or is it just a code of conduct? Yet you need it to put order in trafficking.

Do civil laws exist? Yet you need them to put order in marriages or wills, for instance.

Etc.

this comment is attempting to suggest silence may be more than not sound. — kazan

Silence is a sound. It is proven that it is perceived by our senses.

A group of interdisciplinary researchers at Johns Hopkins University set up an experiment that shows that, indeed, our brain actively perceives silence in the same way it hears sound:

Honestly, I thought Australian politics had a different distinct perspective on China, but...

Australia bans DeepSeek from government devices citing national security.

Why doesn't any government trust Chinese AI? :chin:

What date in October? I'll put in my diary. — Amity

I could be mistaken because my guesses are based on pure investigation. I think it is on October 20th. Jamal started a thread about testing the site on that date. If not, I believe it is closer to the end of October.

Erm...I celebrate each and every day. With a big YAY! — Amity

I really like your attitude towards life, Amity. Always seeing the positive part! :sparkle:

I thought what @DreamCatcher wrote was a poem. A weird chivalrous poem, but still an interesting post. It would be nice if he logged in again and told more about what he had in his head when he wrote it.

What Is - by EricH

Truth is the sky is blue
Truth is my love for you
Truth is not a miss
Truth is what simply is.

Not a particularly good poem - pretty pathetic actually. — EricH

Pathetic your poem? No way. It is actually good if we interpret truth through a poetic context. I see the point you raised there; philosophy is very important, but we can gaze at the world with different perspectives. I know I could look a bit intrusive here, but since you felt you did something flat in your poem, I just wanted to let you know that you showed creative and artistic vibes in your post. Don't ever say again your poems are pathetic! :up:

Boyhood Island. My Struggle 3, by Karl Ove Knausgård.

I started to read Knausgård's series two months ago; I remember and me sharing a common thought on the deep narrative of his novels. These are not easy to read because they are laden with much pain and drama, but I started to get engaged with this Norwegian author for a lot of reasons.

Since Knausgård himself said that we are free in order to read his series, I decided to skip the second part (it is about divorce and love failures and I am not ready to jump on it yet), and then start reading the third part. It is about when the author was just eight years old in his mother's family home, in a random small Norwegian fjord.
Memories, nostalgia, unanswered questions, childhood friends, etc.

I remember missing more presence by the mother in the first part, and I guess this third part will lead to what I was looking for a few months ago.

Back to my hobby of watching black and white films.

I was busy the past weekends, but I was free this Saturday. I chose 'How Green Was My Valley' this time. The reviews I read on the Internet were quite good, so it encouraged me to watch the film.

The plot, actors, and dialogues were outstanding. I now understand why this film was the one that won Oscars and not 'Citizen Kane.'

I would recommend you watch it, but I guess most of you have already watched it since it is one of the top British films of all time.

Yes, it is an old prejudice that public servants are lazy. I also met hard workers in the public administration. I don't know how it works in Australia, but here you need to pass different exams to get the vacancy. I know we (I work in public administration) are not perfect, but I have never understood why some folks think it would be better if I (like other mates) were replaced by AI or we reduced processes to non-existent public intervention.
After Valencia's floods, the funds for reconstruction come from basically the state because insurance companies are putting a lot of obstacles. Now, who is the inefficient one here?

I remember watching a TV program from Australia. It was about lorry drivers going to and fro. It comes to my mind the vast desert, reefs, and highways of Australia where those workers were driving by. I hope those public interest services and goods are managed by the AU government with competent public servants.

We also do a similar management here. Our Constitution even states that the surface, coast, beaches, and economic platform belong to the state. In my humble opinion, a state loses sovereignty if their politicians decide to lead the administration of key goods and services to companies. I can't even imagine what would happen if those firms have foreign shareholders. Like our forests and shores have a price? No way. That would mean our countries would have a price too.