Free market per wikipedia definition:

In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. Proponents of the free market as a normative ideal contrast it with a regulated market, in which a government intervenes in supply and demand by means of various methods such as taxes or regulations. In an idealized free market economy, prices for goods and services are set solely by the bids and offers of the participants.

It's not equal to lawlessness, but it is lawless within market. These two are not equivalent. Still, that is not to say it is without order. Free market is entirely an economic system and not a social system nor any other plethora of systems in a country. So the topic of those other systems are simply out of the scope. Therefore, laws can exist in the society.

Robbery is part of the free market. Along with whatever happens like tornadoes, fire, murder, etc. Including the cost to hire your own security if necessary. Police is against free market because it is an intervention by the government. There does exist a grey area like if a robber becomes a gang and becomes a businesses' external authority. Then they are impeding on the free market.

This is how free market is defined. So, to reiterate, if there exists any body that is redistributing your profit, it is against free market.

Communism is not a share of labour profits. Communism is more than just an economic system. It's also a social and philosophical one. But assuming we're only talking about the economic parts, it still doesn't mean to share labour profits. Quoting wikipedia once again:

Communism is [...] a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need.

The keyword here is common ownership. Everyone owns the entire chain of production together. Your view on the concept of profit even existing is out of line with communism. From wikipedia:

Monetary relations in the form of exchange-value, profit, interest, and wage labor would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.

If we go with Marxist version, you already own everything together and nothing has monetary value. You can't have profit because there is no such thing as selling, and there is no money, so you can't profit on anything. The concept of the profit sharing would be anti-communism.

If we go with Lenin's view on state capitalism (which he said is not communism, but may be a necessary transition state to communism) where we accept that things have value but that only the state engages in capitalism, people still wouldn't get profit. Because people still wouldn't have money. You would simply have better status in livelihood in hopes that the state has used that money well for the benefit of the people.

Communism is not profit sharing, its very core purpose is to remove the concept of profit.

Sharing of labour profits at a nation level is called "labour share". And at a company level, it is called "co-operative business".

I haven't been part of the modding scene for a while now. But most likely, none of their public APIs were changed. Naturally, I could be wrong since I didn't read the patch notes, but that's typically not where it goes wrong.

Many modder, and I mean many, do not find Bethesda's provided APIs to be sufficient for their goals. So people extend those APIs further with their own libraries and scripting engines. Then other modders build on top of that extensions. These work against the binary code of the game and contain a list of pointer addresses in binary. So even the smallest changes to the game binary ends up making all of these extensions to stop working.

These mods have a headache anytime any kind of updates are pushed. It's an API thing, but it's not the API Bethesda made.

Japan's birth rate isn't even that low anymore comparatively to other nations.

Take a look at South Korea. It's nearly half of Japan. Japan is like 1.3 (OP's article) and SK is at 0.7 (https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-fertility-rate-dropped-fresh-record-low-2023-2024-02-28/). SK is the absolute dead last in the world. Even China is lower than Japan now at 1.2 even after getting rid of the 1 child policy.

Think the west is any different? Canada also hovers at round 1.3. (https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadas-birth-rate-has-dropped-off-a-cliff-and-its-because-nobody-can-afford-housing - just sourcing 1.3, I don't actually agree with their reasoning) Canada's population only increases because of massive immigration they accept. And immigrants from poorer countries are more likely to have children than existing. So, might even rival SK if we were to not count 1st/2nd gen immigrants, though we don't have such exact data collection, only corollary.

Just pay for a good offline sudoku app. It probably costs less than a cup of coffee. Then we'll all be happier.

Not sure who these foolishly brave Americans are who think they can beat an elephant and a grizzly bear bare handed.

Article doesn't say no attorney would take the case. It says they talked to a lawyer. And they're in limbo. Meaning they're still deciding how to pursue this matter.

“We’re still in this process of figuring out what to do,” she said. “We keep pressing in different directions to see if something is going to happen.”

So they're looking for the best approach. Not that there is a lack of approach.

An attorney would happily take a losing case. They get paid either way. Their job is to get the best outcome possible, not to win a lawsuit--though that may end up being the best outcome.

This is a false narrative people keep pushing in order to ignore the reason pandas became threatened. Their population decline has one and one reason only, that is: habitat loss. In other words, as usual, it's human fault.

Pandas mate and pump out healthy babies perfectly fine in the wild. They only refuse to mate in captive environments filled with onlookers. This is a very common behavior among captive animals of many different species, not just pandas. Probably most humans too.

It is actually a deliberate corp strategy. Plastic straws were never a real concern, save for that ONE turtle. Plastic straw make such a negligible amount of plastic waste that stop using it will have virtually zero measurable impact in amount of plastic waste we create. All it ever was intended for was to make us feel like something was being done while doing absolutely nothing.

That's not to say all plastic reduction initiatives are pointless. But the straws definitely belong in the least environmentally impactful category.

I've actually started... walking to work. It takes me like 45min. So it's not a short walk, though it's a very short car commute. But the world is so different now that I'm walking. Having lived in car dependency vs walking is so different. And it's healthy for you too. More people should try it, if i's possible.

Not sure what the meme is referring to, but this is actually true in some aspects.

If there are 100 people in a room and 1 person is just super loudly talking the entire time, it silences out 99 people. The ability to talk of the 99 is silenced by the 1. If you limit the amount the loudest can talk, you give the other 99 more freedom of speech. From a utilitarian view, you gained more freedom of speech as a whole by reducing the freedom of speech for one.

People who say things like these generally conflate the concepts of "I want to remove others' right to freedom of speech" with "my freedom of speech was taken away" when they often want to do the former.

Depends on how you define VPN.

First, lets assume they have internet there. Not satellite internet. Literally connected permanent internet connection. I don't think this is a safe assumption because it's a literal island. Second assumption, we're talking about IP geolocation and only that. Not other methods of geolocation because then VPN is irrelevant.

Can you setup a VPN on Little Saint James island, connect to it, and use it? Yes.

Can you get an IP that when you geolocate, it will say: Little Saint James island? Extremely unlikely. So much so that I would say no.

Would an ISP actually assign a block and geolocate that to that specific island and nothing else? Probably not. What does that mean? It means the IP address that gets assigned to a more general purpose "Virgin Islands" kind of geolocation rather than a specific place.

Take this example. Houses with street number 1 to 100 is in queens. And 101 to 200 is in Brooklyn. And ISP decides, we have blocks of 64 IP assignments. So it gives houses 1-64 a Queens geolocated IP. Then houses 65-128 also Queens geolocated IP. And the rest is geolocated to Brooklyn. Then if you lived in #120, your IP will say Queens even though you live in Brooklyn.

That island is TINY. And it's likely a single subscriber of internet. It's a single owner and might get a single IP address, why would you even assign multiple? There's no need. And there's virtually no chance any ISP is gonna bother to geolocate a single IP. Ain't nobody got time for that. Even my example of 64 is just an example and is incredibly high fidelity that's rarely done.

IP geolocations could even be entirely wrong and say it's Chicago when it's Queens. This kind of stuff happens all the time for various reasons.

IP geolocation is not an accurate thing to begin with. ISPs will assign large blocks of IP to a specific geolocation. It will be shared and it doesn't even technically have to do with physically same region. It doesn't have to be correct. They just want it somewhat accurate.

So to answer the question more simply. Even if you set up a VPN there, it won't say it's there.

This isn't whataboutism. Whataboutism isn't about using the words "what about", it's about misdirecting the conversation to a seemingly related but actually an unrelated topic in order to counter argue the point. It's a sub-type of ad-hominem attack, a fallacy.

The person you're responding to is directly answering why people need to eat fish (I'm not validating the claim, just explaining) with sarcastic questions starting with what about.