Curry in India is usually a side-dish served with rice or chapathi (flatbread). It contains a lot of vegetables, various herbs and spices, and optionally fish or meat. But the rice itself is not a part of the curry. Also we do use curry powder, mainly when we don’t have time or space to mix the spices properly.

I think British people have a very different definition of gravy - more like meat juice thickened with flour and optionally some other stuff like caramel and onions. As I understand, they don’t put vegetables, herbs or spices.

In India, usually they don’t demand a bribe. They will process your file slowly, with the understanding that you can speed it up by bribing them.

From what I understand, Pakistan does not properly regulate weapons. But it would still be rather stupid to threaten a public servant. If you are that sort of person, smiling at the official and remarking on his good health might be a better idea. A less aggressive trick is to let them think that you are from the press / have a camera or microphone / have marked currency.

As a Linux user, I was rather surprised to learn that Windows doesn’t have a good pdf viewer. (Sumatra was the closest I could get.) Scientific software I can understand, but pdf viewer? Wtf?

Palestine is recognised by the UN. Hamas are not.

Not all languages have scripts, and not all scripts are on Unicode (yet). So in this example Tulu speakers would use either the Kannada or the Latin script, both of which are on Unicode.

Carrot guy is Lukashenko of Belarus.

No idea about China, but the Indian government relaxed a lot of safety rules during Covid so pharmaceutical companies could produce medicines as fast as possible. This has resulted in many companies making substandard or even harmful products.

Software you can use, inspect, edit and share. Some examples are Firefox, Chromium, (GNU-)Linux, Android (except GApps) and VLC.

Companies don’t need to follow laws?

Many do follow the law, but have the law written to their convenience. Why bother stealing data when you can get it for free from people who don’t know any better?

It happens with any first-past-the-post voting and two parties is the eventual end result.

39 parties are represented in my country’s Parliament. The UK has 10, Canada and Russia 5 each. Electoral systems like FPTP that produce a single winner tend to favour a two-party system (Duverger’s law), but it is not inevitable.

Fair point. But if a foreign government can use Facebook / TikTok data to undermine society, can’t big companies or other interest groups do the same? More importantly, can’t Facebook or TikTok do the same? At least governments have checks and balances, and are at least theoretically accountable to their people. Companies can do whatever they like.

Oh yes, I forgot about the insurgencies. That’s probably the bulk of the guns.

The more a company knows about you, the more money they can make out of you. For example, cab companies have been caught increasing prices for customers whose phone batteries were dying.

Unless you are a journalist, high-ranking civil servant or military officer, foreign governments aren’t usually a huge threat. You are most likely not worth their time, and (apart from maybe the US) it’s not like they can actually do anything to you.

India has 5.3 civilian firearms per 100 people.

That’s higher than I expected. I haven’t seen a gun outside of CISF or armed police. Is it UP skewing the numbers?

Well, that’s the problem with bottom-up government, isn’t it? It is better in most ways, but the local empire will invade you at the first chance they get.

If I remember correctly, the fall of the Paris commune to a Franco-German alliance was what led the early Marxists to embrace a centralised system. Of course, that brings its own problems, as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴.

Those have been tried, but they often tend to get liberated by the CIA. Or in some cases, the KGB / Red Army.

To be fair, they couldn’t industrialise before they split off. Their industries wouldn’t have been competitive with the well-established ones already existing in the north. Only ways they could become competitive were (a) secede and put up tariffs, or (b) get a huge aid package from the federal government so they can run things at a loss for a few years. And the northern states would not have been happy with (b), so …

Many medicines have low uptake efficiency. It just means you need to take 3-10 times the dose you need. Like if your body needs 10mg, you might need to take a 30 to 100mg pill.

If there was a life form that could eat me it would, and I’d have to accept that.

So you don’t eat medicines?