The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever “prove” they won.

Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they’re not, they’re very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.

That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.

But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it’s just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you’re talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.

In a huge country-wide election, there’s simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you’ve never met, and/or election monitors you’ve never met. And, since you’re not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you’re using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you’re not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you’re feeding it is correct.

Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it’s just a matter of which narrative seems the most “truthy” to you.

It is. It’s that plus an important process for living organisms rather than just burning something.

What makes you think there’s a threshold?

I remember the days when BioWare wasn’t EA’s BioWare. Those were better days.

Yeah, but I assume the poster was Canadian, so it’s $132, not 90 USD.

AFAIK this is different from the original auction house mount. That one had a auctioneer and a vendor who could repair things. This one comes with an auctioneer and a “mailbox” NPC.

For some people whose purpose in playing WoW is to make money trading, this makes it marginally easier. Instead of having to park your mount next to a mailbox, you can both post your auctions and collect your money on one mount. But, since most people doing auction stuff also need access to a bank, it doesn’t mean they can easily just abandon the city and live out in the country.

Many of the people who might consider this mount are already playing for free because they make enough money in-game to buy a token every month.

Also, it’s $132 if you’re Canadian, otherwise it’s 90 USD.

It’s $132, it’s only 90 if you pay in USD.

Who’s Chris Robert?

On one hand, sure, the British took a lot of things from other places when their empire spanned the globe. And, it sucks for places that had their stuff taken that it is no longer where it was.

On the other hand the British Museum is probably one of the safest places in the world for these things. The museum cares about preservation, knows how to do it, and has the funds to do it. And, while there’s undoubtedly corruption in the UK, there’s a very low chance that any of these things is going to disappear out of the museum and into some powerful person’s private collection.

Mohamed Salah is standing in front of a statue from Egypt, which was taken from Egypt to London. But, the British didn’t manage to take the Buddhas of Bamiyan from Afghanistan to London, and what happened? The Taliban blew them up. The British also didn’t fully loot Iraq when they controlled that territory, which meant that in the 2003 war the museum was looted but not by people who wanted treasures for a public museum. The poorer and less politically stable a country is, the greater the chances that their cultural treasures will be stolen or destroyed.

Despite the repression and corruption, Egypt is now probably stable enough that if any of these items were returned to Egypt, they would probably be well treated and put on display for Egyptians to see. The power of the military in Egypt and the level of corruption probably means a few small items would disappear from the museum, but the most important items would make it. But, is Egypt stable enough that the museum would be safe for another 20, 40, 80 years? I have my doubts. I do think London is probably safe for that long.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the number one priority should be preserving these things for the future. Displaying them for the public should be a lower priority. If there are items like scrolls or clothing that are too delicate to even display behind a glass case, they should be stored away. I know that’s how they handle things at the Smithsonian, and I assume the British Museum is the same. Because of that, my bias is that the most important cultural items should be in the care of the richest museums in the world, even if it means that they’re not in the places they came from.

Except the price?

It could be changed at any time, it might not resolve properly, the page could be hijacked, an ad blocker could decide it’s an ad and show something else instead…

That was something Disney Lawyers claimed, but was never actually agreed/enforced.

Disney backed down. They still believe they have that right, and no court has ever said they didn’t, but the bad publicity was too much for them in this case. They’ll wait until there’s a case that doesn’t get that kind of publicity before they try to establish that precedent.

You aren’t internet.

The EULA isn’t null and void, but it’s pretty meaningless. Not because you can’t reasonably be expected to copy that link into a browser to read it, but because there’s no indication that you should or even must do that.

The EULA contains no terms, it doesn’t contain any wording saying what you can or can’t do. It doesn’t say what your rights are. It just contains something that looks like a URL. So, you’re still bound by the terms of the EULA (as much as you’re bound by any EULA) but the EULA doesn’t permit or forbid anything. It’s effectively the same as if it were blank.

They’re bound to the EULA, but the EULA is meaningless because it’s just a URL. They’re definitely not bound by whatever’s at that URL.

This would be like having someone sign a contract when the contract was just a shopping list. Sure, they’re bound by the “contract”, but the contract doesn’t specify anything they can or can’t do.

In your imagination I bet people clap when you say things like that.

In your imagination, I bet you have big muscles.

Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to).

But, their business model doesn’t work unless those mods are working for free. So, while they may replace mods, unless people keep signing up to work for free to help a for-profit company deliver value to its shareholders, eventually it’s going to collapse.

You get to vote in socialist democracies like China, Cuba, USSR, etc

Sure you do, as long as you vote for the candidate that the state prefers. Again, look up “Wir gehen falten”.

It’s easy to be a hero in your own imagination. The real world shows that most people don’t actually do that.