> but, by constitutional law, nobody, not even the king himself, could put off their turn indefinitely.
I'm not sure that any real-life moral imperatives could be based on made-up story about obviously utopian society.
For me, immortality does not sound as a good idea even as a thought experiment. We already have problems with wealth and power imbalance. The invention of immortality would just deepen these problems exponentially.
So solve the problems of wealth and inequality too. I fail to see why these must be intrinsically linked. If anything, the compounding effect of immortality on wealth inequality would almost certainly lead by itself lead to a structural revolution.
5 year's ago I've bought a 2-in-1 Dell Inspiron laptop.
2-in-1 functionality turned out to be useless and annoying in Ubuntu environment, so I almost never used it.
1 year after the purchase, WiFi signal on this laptop started to weaken rapidly.
After disassembling the machine I discovered that the cable connecting WiFi module (behind the keyboard) and WiFi antenna (behind the screen) was torn apart as a result of lid movement. It was almost impossible to fix without complete disassembly of the laptop.
I was amazed how bad that design was. It was absolutely not suitable for frequent 360 degree movement of the lid.
It's ridiculous how easily they traded visual appearance (metal casing) for operational stability.
Seconded. OP, this is the way to do it unless you want to build your own thing. Setting up a custom domain is easy and GitHub has a guide. You can use a public repo if you don’t have GitHub premium. The website is public anyway so there isn’t much reason you would need to keep the markdown files private. Backups are easy, you’ll have a local copy of the repo and an online copy with a fairly reliable provider.
10 EUR per tile? Shouldn't such maps be in public domain already?
It's odd how differently countries treat their cultural heritage. Poland, for example, has published a lot of archival materials in public domain [1]. But this is not the case for Austrian state, which, I guess, owns large fraction of the maps on OP website (Austro-Hungarian Empire). They also charge large sums for using materials from their digital archives.
I was researching maps for a certian area that belonged to the kingdom of Bavaria, which is included in OP's link. That map is also almost completely available and accessable from germany's offical geoservices via WMS, which is nice. And the accuracy of these maps is astounding. (Whereas the 18. century map is mostly inaccurate in details) They are military maps, so it makes sense.
However I dug deeper into the history of these (bavarian) maps and suprisingly found that there are a lot more maps that built the basis of the military maps. And boy, they are uncannily accurate. And of course scattered among archives, survey offices and libraries.
I even managed to find a map with the exact locations of buildings that are still standing today. Manually georefercing them showed that they are often only a few centimeters off.
And to get back to this comment: I had a hard time finding a general map from the same area. And when i found it the office that held the records. They also didn't hold one map, but several maps that were made over the years. However they wwere extremly expensive and I was even bombarded with several limitations. E.g. if I'd publish it in a journal I MUST notify the office with details.
Parent comment is right, that they should be in the public domain, however some administrative bodies still believe that they should be guarded as state secrets, probably because these maps were the basis of tax registers and most of the land units on these maps are still the same 150 years later. Even though the same office publishes WMS data of todays situation for free on their website.
Thank you very much for that link, it's a god-sent. I've managed to find an early 1850s plan of my city, Bucharest [1], which is quite rare in itself, at least I don't know of any such good rendering available on the Internet (or I didn't use to know until now). I've also been able to find other really nice resources about my country, Romania.
Even if it turns out to be a loss for the majority of players, I am still happy for the creators that got a chance to monetize their work. I think Beeple truly deserves the fortune he made.
My great-grandfather was traveling to USA for work back in 1912. He came back after 6 years and settled in his village becoming its head. Almost everybody in my family knows this story and it's indeed fascinating, because at that time people rarely moved anywhere.
And now we are fascinated by a man living in the same place all his life. It's funny how the concept of norm changes in 100 years.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. -- T.S.Eliot
A man living in the same place all his life has no basis for comparison. I would be more convinced that your great-grandfather's village is something special since he experienced elsewhere yet still returned.
I have lived in the same place only once in my life for 7 years and it was an exception because we raised kids, even then we ripped our kids out of school to move them to a different country just for the sake of "experience" and so we wouldn't get bored and comfy (as parents).
In my whole life (close to 50 now) my average years in 1 place was 3-5. I could numerate _all_ the countries I lived in but it would look ridiculous and make boring reading (but it includes some crazy places one seriously wonders what could bring one from A->B).
Only last night I sat on the terrace of my an old friend from childhood. We downed a few Guinness (imported and considered a novelty where we are). It led us to exactly this conversation because he doesn't like anything "fancy" or imported but makes an exception knowing I love it and knowing I'd come he bought it. He is the exact opposite of me and I've always looked up to him because he got the roots (and everything that comes with it discussed here) that I lack. I'd love to have roots and in my most romantic day-dreams wonder what it would be like having never left and still among the same people. (and with my siblings not spread around the globe but in the same town)
He has also often wondered what it would be like living like me, hearing about adventures from Asia, sometimes war zones, or more recently South Eastern Europe, always "trying to make it in a different way", sometimes thriving but quite often literally just surviving.
Despite knowing another quite well, we're only able to look at each others reality in a romanticized / idealized way because we have no idea.
"The grass is always greener ...." most importantly I totally lack the basis for comparison to _his_ life as much as he does to mine, because I've been wired and set up to be me very early in my childhood (and so are my kids who also had no choice but had to endure going through the experience of getting ripped out of school and moved to a new place every couple of years).
I think we are creatures of habit. And braking them is very hard regardless if the habit is to never make any changes, or must shake things up every few years to avoid going nuts.
My parents moved me between countries throughout my childhood. It resulted in lower quality of life, for my whole life. I'm 40 now. Trading your children's good childhood for your own adventure is a selfish choice. I urge you to move to a good place for your children and stay there until they are ready to live independently.
Don't most migrants have nostalgia for their country of origin? Where their roots are, no matter how much of a globetrotter they were. Sure, if the country you grew up in a beleaguered place, you wouldn't think of going back. But I've heard so many migrants say things along lines of: "oh, man, once I'm retired... <fill in blanks>".
"Disclaimer": migrant myself. Not necessarily my dream to go back "once retired". But my wife yearns for her motherland. And so do many.
What I found that is as migrants we have an idealistic nostalgic image of the homeland in our minds but in reality our homeland also changes quite fast so much that one is left with disappointment mostly....
My father grew up on a rural Irish farm, then came to America as a young adult. At age 78, he hatched a plan to move back to his family home, where his brother and a nephew still lived. After three years there, he came back to the US, complaining that it wasn't the Ireland he remembered.
I moved within my country but besides sharing the same language, it mostly feels like living in a different country (for good).
Sometimes I feel a bit of nostalgia, but along life I've learned that you tend to remember the good things and the bad things get opaqued by time.
So when I feel a bit nostalgic I have learned to get a bit rational and think back to when I was there, and to the times I've come back to visit parent and relatives (holidays etc).
I then rationally remember all the reasons why I left and all the reasons why I decided to stay where I am. And nostalgia vanishes, almost immediately.
But I could not fancy this imaginary community to scale up to even millions