Great information. I made a very general analysis, with the aim of covering the majority of territories and populations, not of exhausting every local specificity. Hinduism is not a uniform religion, as i said, but a very diverse one. But still, there are common traits that unify the vast majority of Indians that makes the situation very different (less diverse) compared to the historical European polytheism. The vast majority of Hindus believe that religious knowledge and rituals must be studied and performed by a specific social group, the brahmin caste. Or will you tell me that a random foreigner or a Dalit can enter any temple in north or south india, study sanskrit and rituals, and start preaching and performing rituals ? Not by a long shot. Hinduism and local religions have a diversity of holy texts, but the important aspect is that in each tradition and place there is a good degree of codification and formalization: at least one set of written (fixed) texts that people will adhere for doctrine and rituals, not for instance an exclusively oral tradition that changes radically in each house of worship, over time, and over the next village (old polytheism). This is stuff that only a developed urban civilization makes, that makes a religion have more ‘capital’ so to speak (to spread and be reproduced over time).

The muslim rulers also did not immediately convert everyone to islam in the conquests over persia to north africa, but due to the characteristics of traditional polytheism (along with the conquests and violence), Islam converted and spread over time, including to places christianity had not reached (like interior Egypt). This did not happen with indian religions because of the higher degree of formalisation and codification, that allowed it to at least keep up ideas and rituals with a more equal power degree in syncretisms.

Besides the other reasons mentioned here, i think there is a strong factor in the social and intellectual sphere. Christianity was a cohesive standardized institution with a written holy book (or set of texts, before the council where they canonized which books would go to the bible), and later became a part of enforced state policy. That mixture of standardization and officialdom allowed it to essentially accumulate ‘capital’ to such a degree it could (after absorbing lots of ideas and practices) overwhelm the local polytheistic societies and religions.

Local polytheistic religions were extremely varied, and each village tribe or city had its own gods, beliefs, etc. The mess of beliefs meant that the religions spread organically, not in an institution with quasi industrial ways (standardized beliefs, practices, texts, even rows of clergy trained in the same ways on churches and monasteries). They could be challenged and be overwhelmed by the bigger faith, in intellectual ways (evangelization) or by demographic superiority. Or just by immigration to other regions (which many people did, like the barbarians in late Rome or Imperial legions and soldiers since always), where multiple contradictory faiths coexisted, until a cohesive unified alternative popularized.

All that is inverted in India. Hinduism was (is) varied, but way less than paganism from ireland to iran, and it is a formalized institution with written holy texts supported by the state (or by castes, specially the Brahmins), very constant and stable over many generations. That inertia even allowed it to not become muslim majority (except in a few regions).

Other countries in Asia actually have Buddhism as the main religion or state religion (or main historical religion). Even if buddhism absorbs lots of pagan deities, ideas and praxis, the core institution is solid and formalized, and dominant. Japanese Shinto is very different from pre buddhist times. China had buddhism, and confucianism and taoism as also very standardized formalized state institutions (aka not a different religion per village). So asian polytheism is very reduced compared to european one.

Since i’m in south america, i will grab the popcorn and watch the gringos fighting with brown people for the nth time.

i think that one is not a screw up…

Brazilian system is the most simple: It is already the final price (not counting shipping, which might be many options), with EVERY tax included. Period. What i see is what i pay. Even Aliexpress shows numbers with all taxes included in the final total price now.

The Yankee system is honestly both insane and fraudulent, nothing is ever the price that the webpages or stickers show, i always have to guess it’s somewhere between 10% and 20% more. The european system is also more honest, unless they also have other taxes besides VAT that they don’t show.

So, not that much more expensive, i bet west european countries get near or equal that price, it’s electronics in the US that are cheaper than others (including rich countries). and it’s more that we are poor.

There are plenty of games that you can’t buy on Gog or Steam even today (like any emulation ISO from console games), and sharing is caring for others that can not afford it.

R$ 5.460,00 (Brazilian Reais), the first comment is just exaggerating and having a ‘mongrel complex’ take. It is nowhere near the price of a car even today.

The Witch (2015)

Since you asked the favorite, i will have to describe it, trying to avoid the spoilers.

It is a masterpiece on many aspects at the same time. It is a historical movie, focusing on an isolated devout settler family living on the frontiers in the beginnings of US history. It is a dramatic and heavy movie with believable people, showing their realistic hardships in everyday living, how they really live and think the world through their strict religion, and how they react realistically to the supernatural events that unfold. It is a Horror movie that gradually builds the mystery, tense and fear thorough the relatively long stretch of time it takes (months i guess), and the actual terror moments felt deserved (i.e. not a cheap scary gag).

For all that, it is considered one of the more ‘artful’ horror films out there, and i’m sure it will (or already is?) considered one of the Greats in the genre with Dracula 1932 and The Exorcist 1973. It however leans on being slow and heavy, not good if you seek a lighthearted film.

Without water, humans last only 3 days maximum. If you can drink any water (rain, river, lake, etc), then you can last 3 weeks without food.

Don’t forget to unlock the bootloader on products that have an operating system, so that people can also flash a replacement for it. So many Ipads and Iphones being wasted now.

(Most) North Americans are the epitome of wasteful consumerism, even more than their economic kin in other global north countries (but sadly not by that much). They succumb like flies to company deals and propaganda that incentivizes throwing away functional stuff and replacing it with new shiny thing XYZ in ever decreasing intervals. Vance Packard’s 1960s book still being to the point. If environmental preservation is a concern to you or other reader, don’t incentivize an unnecessary tech and use your smartphone (that is a necessity) until it breaks beyond repair or usability (and buy an actually strong protection to increase the interval). I still use an iPhone 6S, and it works perfectly well for smartphone tasks (there is even functioning bank apps. security updates still appear once in a while, and bank apps are protected by the banks anyways. if you feel unsafe using banks in an old smartphone, create a 2nd bank as a ‘‘street bank’’ for daily tasks keeping only a low amount of money, and keep the money in a primary bank to be used via internet).

Imagine if we could just flash a functional android ROM on it, that hardware still is great and could last decades (replacing pieces once in a while). Anyway, the mainstream tech industry is definitely an enemy of sustainability, don’t ‘buy’ the green-washing.

Android still has F-droid and FOSS alternatives to mostly everything, while iPhone is walled garden 101.

Console Gaming is a lot less worse than Nintendo, but if you (or someone else) wants to be ‘pure’, they are also not recommended. Consoles are locked-down PCs controlled by the companies, not you, and they abuse their captive consumers by charging multiplayer online, having less promotions (and getting worse with time at that, by eliminating the physical disks), demanding subscriptions with ever more grades and higher prices, tying games to a digital account they can revoke, and not letting the users use the hardware as they see fit in general. PC gaming avoids most or all these issues, with steam excelling in everything (sans the digital license tied to the account, but even that is mitigated because their DRM is weak, and games frequently are found on the high seas if needed), and GoG (and itch.io, etc) respecting completely its customers (offline instalers, completely at your control).

Germany took ~150 years of Lebensreform movements (which itself had Freikörperkultur as one line of thought and action among many) to get there. As the articles mention, things that contributed a lot included the fact that they still had living traditions of public bathing in sparsely populated areas (add Scandinavia and rural areas to the mix), and that Germany was a very industrial and educated country, that had the infrastructure to generate what were essentially academics in academical circles theorizing and practicing all of these ideas first, and there was still a strong memory of pre-industrial life in general (that these movements saw as better in those lines of way of life, to react to the then novelties of industrial and urban living). How would we translate that german social environment to places and societies a lot different ? example, much poorer with less intelligentsia, no prestige or memory of premodern living, multicultural multiethnic societies with low cohesion, with outright hostility to all these nature-weirdos that want veganism, nakedness, primitivism, etc while the current media landscape is dominated by hollywood idolizing private wealth, luxury and puritanism (like the amount of sex in Marvel films, after Iron Man 1).

In case of zombie apocalypse, your best friends will probably be a bicycle (to get away from the zombies in almost any terrain and road condition, not be without industrial fuel the next day, and be able to do needed repairs with rough tools and scraps that can be found), a hunting knife, and maybe a crossbow if you can find one (weapons that can be sharpened and reused, and crossbow allowing random joes to just make piercing sticks (again with scraps that can be found anywhere) that work like an arrow, again weapons that do not depend on industrial infrastructure that will not be available anymore). Games that need electricity would be extremely hard to use, it’s better to buy card decks that have multiple rule sets for different games to play, like french decks and tarot, maybe a tabletop set that also has multiple games.

What kind of task made you use the shell in Linux Mint (and i only know Mint after 2021) ? Was it a common task a regular person would need to do, or was it a geek or pro task that regular people would not even know it exists ? I installed Nvidia drivers with a click-install GUI easier than the windows equivalent, the appstore that is only rivaled by Apple had every debian and flatpak program i searched, and all the configurations i could ever tweak are in the configurations manager (unlike the current Windows mess of control panel and worse control panel).

May i suggest for both of you to try Linux Mint (Regular Edition, XFCE MATE or Cinnamon) ? It is the only linux distro that has never failed me once, after also getting into unfixable messees with majaro, arch, endeavour, and also regular debian and LMDE not even booting up on my PC. It uses the Ubuntu base and several of its programs (like the extensive hardware compatibility and system stuff) but takes away the bad stuff in it (like the SNAPs, that loads of people hate both for not being FOSS and to replace the regular debian and flatpak, and give a worse performance in several cases like Firefox). I also agree every linux distro sans Mint is too rough for now, but Linux Mint is the magnum opus of linux, is already click-click-install, beginner-friendly and stable like rock.

Ubuntu, because it’s the base for my Linux Mint XFCE.

IF between the 2, Ubuntu in Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

It’s mostly an aesthetic choice, a choice between desktop environments.

Desktop environment (DE) is just the visual bells and whistles that you use to navigate the PC, like that quick animation when you minimize or maximize a program (Apple loves this), a start menu that has cute icons for each program and turns blue when you pass the mouse over it (or a start menu that is just a raw list of program names), etc.

Mint Cinnamon uses a DE that looks like Windows 7 reborn, Mint XFCE uses a DE that looks like Windows XP reborn, and Mint MATE uses a DE that looks like Windows Vista reborn.

People will tell you that these DEs will have a slight difference in consumption of RAM, where the most ‘shiny’ DEs will consume more RAM (XFCE<MATE<Cinnamon) by virtue of having more bells and whistles and some different programs that execute the same function, but the difference is irrelevant in practice (unless you are using a 2gb or less PC, where each 50mb of RAM counts). So it’s mostly what you fancy to look at. I just like the old-school visual of XFCE.