Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'?
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If you've studied history and/or anthropology then surely you've heard many uses of the term "savages" to describe groups of people that were considered to be less 'civilized' than whomever was writing that piece.
I was also just reading a book that described in detail some of the really horrible war crimes committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war including but not limited to: raging mobs burning people alive, murder and rape of civilians, use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, etc. Please note that in no way am I considering the people of Sri Lanka as 'uncivilized', just using an example of what seems to be 'uncivilized' behavior.

An initial thought that I had was "huh, I'm glad I don't currently live somewhere where I could be burned alive based on my ethnicity/religion/beliefs by a rage fueled mob of people", but then the history of the western world came to mind - some of those exact same thing happened less than 100 years ago to many non-white groups of people in America, including some things even worse (read: human slavery). From here came a flood of other thoughts poking holes in whatever my initial definition of 'civilized' was. Plenty of things in present-day United States could be considered uncivilized. Yet one could make an argument that a more 'civilized' civilization might be one that allows many personal freedoms.

So, I want to ask all of you what you think of the concept of being 'civilized'. Is it a colonialistic-type term used to promote a higher sense of placement in the world that should be abolished. Does it have any merit in its use? If so, what do you think makes a civilized group of people and does one exist?

SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct, Signal, Wire, Wickr, Telegram, GroupMe, Viber, Threema, etc.

There are dozens of competing messenger services out there, each of which is either supported by or suffers from the network effect. Futhermore, each seems to come with its own pros and cons. I'm curious about not only people's current use, but where everyone thinks we are headed. As such, I have a few questions:

1. Which messengers do you currently use at the moment? What are their advantages and disadvantages?

2. If you could magically switch all of your contacts to be on one messaging service, which would it be and why?

3. Do you think we'll ever see a realistic convergence of messaging, or are people destined to use different platforms for different contacts?

Some books are adapted to the medium of audiobooks better than others. A mediocre narrator can taint what is otherwise a great story. Likewise, an outstanding narrator can uplift what is an average story.
For me, His Dark Materials is the best audiobook I've listened to. It's read by the author, and has a full cast of (fantastic) voice actors for each character, it brings the story to life so wonderfully. To the point that even if I read the book now, I hear a good amount of the voice cast speaking for each character.
If you haven't heard it, I can recommend it! Honourable mention goes to Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter series.

What is your favourite audiobook?

I see a lot of posts referencing NY Times articles.

NY Times is behind a paywall.

Are there a large number of folks paying to subscribe to NY Times? Are there other more nefarious methods for reading the occasional article?

So, tilder person. What is your lifting/exercise routine right now, what works and don't for you, what you did in the past, what method, what supplements, anything.

Let's trade ideas, rants and nude pictures of our sculpted bodies.

I just woke up from a nightmare. I will go back to sleep and post my part later.

I think it'd be useful to merge duplicate threads when there's two topics that are very close to each other. I don't want the stackExchange style "closed as duplicate of x," but I think it would be worthwhile to simply have the comments moved to the oldest thread and transfer any votes that are different users on each topic.

This way, we aren't losing discussion by flat-out deleting topics that are dupes, and we're also able to take some sort of action on threads that are dupes.

Just a thought.

What artists that you know of were written off as one hit wonders or drifted into obscurity, despite them having great music and being talented musicians? I'd like to Nominate Better Than Ezra for this title. They're really only best known for Good off of the album Deluxe, but that whole album gives off a road trippy vibe that I haven't been able to find elsewhere. Also Barenaked Ladies, despite their goofy reputation, are great musicians and have a great vocalist. Conventioneers and The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel are both really good songs.

People are regularly using regional tags like "south america", "europe", "asia", and "africa" on posts... but almost never "north america". If we're going to use tags based on continents, should we be consistent and include North America as one of those tags?

On the other hand, are continental tags even relevant? Should we just drop them, and use only country-specific tags?

(previous discussion)

There are a lot of "eu" tags being used, which leads to ambiguity about whether it's "europe" or "european union".

I think we should stop using "eu" entirely, and use only the longer, more informative, tags.

(previous discussion)

EDIT: Typo.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!