Email chains can fail to converge. Yeah, the meeting could have been an email, but what if it was going to be 20 email back-and-forths? And not everybody is responding quickly?

You ask three people what we should do about a problem. They float ideas. You think the discussion is converging on a solution, and then one of them (who hasn't been heard from for the last three days) suddenly protests where the group is going, saying that they don't agree at all, that they have several concerns, that nobody talked to this other group that needs to be consulted, and so on. Then for that other group, nobody responds for a week because they're busy on something else.

A meeting can force people to say what they have to say, now, or be ignored. That forcing function has value.

And it's not (just) that "people refuse to do anything". It's that multiple people, doing things asynchronously, on different time rhythms, sometimes means that the group consensus advances v e r y s l o w l y, if at all.

Re your last sentence: US politics is "WWE style", certainly. Is German politics like that? Or are they more... European or something, where there's still decorum?

The EU is a little bit more tame than the US, but not by much, also those are private emails, not public statements. My point is using such language is (unfortunately) not something "scandalous".

That sounds very much like racism.

Where exactly have I mentioned a race? There are lots of Arab countries, and there's a big diversity of races among them. What is the purpose of your comment, exactly?

Where exactly have you mentioned a race? Nowhere explicitly. Racists often don't, though.

"These people" very often codes for racism. "Arab countries" (as opposed to "Muslim countries") usually means countries inhabited by Arabs - and especially in a post that is talking about Saudi Arabia!

Look, you may not be a racist. I hope you aren't. But a racist could have written the exact same post, and then used "not a race" as a motte-and-bailey defense of their veiled racism.

So, at a minimum, be aware that the way you are writing is giving off that vibe.

No, I'm not going to watch a video to figure out what your point is. Either state it, or don't, but stop vagueposting.

No, not if his wars had succeeded. If the courts had rolled over, or if Pence had on January 6.

After Venezuela worked out - he was going for Iran, then Cuba, then Greenland, maybe Canada already. If succesful, I doubt there would have been many courts daring to attack him. Power is with those who succeed. He failed, fortunately.

And I hate to use that overused analogy, but in WW2, after the initial success of Hitler with the Blitzkrieg, there was not much criticism of him anymore (unlike popular believe, he was not a absolute Dictator but under serious pressure at various points). That only started again after they began loosing.

That's what "limited government" and "three branches of government" is supposed to be for, in the US.

And it's working... somewhat. Less well than I'd like, and less well than it did in Trump's first term, but he is at least somewhat restrained by the system.

I'm hoping something kicks in after the midterms.

> Because the semantics of a constructor is to bring an object into a valid state and you don’t expect it to perform any functionality.

No, I expect it to perform the functionality of bringing the object into a valid state - whatever functionality that takes. And if it can't, then throwing is the next option, because it's preferable to having an object in an invalid state.

What if the object can be invalidated asynchronously after the constructor has completed and before you get to use the object? For example by a remote connection dropping? You have to check that it still works anyway: you can’t assume it by construction.

I prefer to have constructors that can’t go wrong (except trivially for OOM that ends the whole process), and then manage their dynamic state after construction.

Well, what if a valid object has to have a semaphore, because it can be accessed by things from multiple threads, and the OS has a limited number of semaphores that it will create? The object won't be in a valid state without a valid semaphore, so the constructor can fail. (Or, if you want, the semaphore's constructor can fail, but that will mean that this object's constructor also fails.)

Look, for your problem, you probably want to do what the fine article said - to have "invalid connection" be a valid state of the object.

I’d initialize the semaphore and any other things that could fail in a post-constructor setup/startup method. It’s a little ugly and it violates RAII, but I think it’s worth it on balance. So yes, I’m agreeing with you that’s how I’d do it.

I've done it that way at least once. But, personally, I prefer RAII, rather than a "half-constructed" state.

I think you're overly worried.

Almost any attempt to change the sun's output is going to have a 0.000% change. It is very much not easy to affect something that size.

It would help if you (and the GP) actually read the article

> These technologies promise to reverse global warming by reflecting away a portion of the sunlight reaching Earth, for example by spraying particles of sulphur dioxide or some other manufactured substance into the atmosphere.

The global maritime shipping industry has already been doing this, by accident, and their stopping (going to better fuel oil with less sulfur in it) has detectably raised global temperatures. [https://cpo.noaa.gov/the-unintended-consequences-of-reducing...]

You don’t actually have to change the sun, “just” the earth’s atmosphere (or surface or anything in between).

"It is often easier to not do something stupid than it is to do something smart."

The Spanish Civil War, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The US put sanctions on Japan after they invaded Manchuria, and restricted trade of items that could help them with war. That's a big part of why Japan chose to attack the US.