18/20 because after that you ought to be able to be a candy-giver. This whole thing only works if we have enough candy-givers, and too late of a cutoff age skews the balance.

For easy indexing. Lots of influential literary works have this. There's a universal standard indexing for both the works of Plato and Shakespeare, for example.

Because of conservation of mass, children must have as much dumb in them as adults do, but because they're smaller, it makes up a higher percentage of their volume, so comparatively, the dumb has greater effect.

Simple physics.

Honestly, one of the best things you could do is use Linux Mint instead of Ubuntu. It's a lot more new user friendly.

Why make it a right vs left thing at all. Can't we just discuss things going on as they are without pigeonholing certain opinions as "right" and "left?"

I don't think x y z thing is true because I'm "on the left." I think it's true because it's my best understanding of reality, and that understanding of reality is generally described as "left." If you falsify my arguments, point flaws in my understanding, or present me with a set of premises that corroborates reality better, I'll align myself with that in a heartbeat. When you see something you disagree with, don't just think "oh that's leftism I don't agree with that," instead, try to figure out what you think the flaw is with it, and then offer that up in good faith. Worst case scenario, someone learns something.

Counterpoint: watching little green checkmarks appear when my PR passes a pipeline step gives me dopamine

I don't recommend this if you're looking for a good hobby to not be depressed haha. Something outside or at least away from screens is probably better.

Homie, which states have ever actually implemented communism? Calling yourself "Communist" means about as much as North Korea calling themselves a" Democratic People's Republic" if you don't actually implement it's ideas.

Additionally, all attempts at democracy, and all instances of capitalism, have resulted in tyranny, because it's just really hard to build a society that doesn't do that no matter what governmental system and economic system you set out to establish.

Even places like New Zealand or the Nordic countries which are much closer to a social democracy are tyrannical insofar as they participate, propagate, and benefit from a global network of capitalism that is only possible through the exploitation of hundreds millions, if not billions of people. Outsourcing your tyranny and exploitation to other places on the planet is still tyranny.and exploitation: it just has better PR.

That ignorance makes them pretty shitty.

I'm not saying they're fundamentally and permanently shitty, but they are being shitty. Refusing to become a more aware person is shitty.

It matters if you develop compilers 🤷,

Otherwise? Readability trumps the minute performance gain almost every time (and that's assuming your compiler won't automatically do branchless substitutions for performance reasons anyway which it probably will)