Whether they were condescending or not “militant athiesm” is a ridiculous hyperbole - people are free to believe whatever they want, just as anybody else is free to comment on that belief system when theyre not a part of it.

this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry. In other countries with no nuclear infrastructure, renewables are definitely the better, cheaper, more scalable choice - but countries which invested big many decades ago are in a different position, and Germany’s deliberate destruction of their nuclear capabilities has left them dependant on fossil fuels from an adversarial state - easily a worse situation than small amounts of carefully managed nuclear waste while renewables were scaled up.

Only Melbourne was previously the official capital of the federated colonies which became the Commonwealth of Australia. Sydney was, and still is, the capital of NSW - but was never the capital of the country.

ignore anybody giving you grief about whatever distro you use - people need to realise that gatekeeping an OS over minor UI experiences is a dumb fight that discourages normal users getting involved. Whether ubuntu is your gateway into other linux, or the system you end up using for 10 years - you do you, whatever is working is fine. In any case, ubuntu today is much better than it was even 5 years ago - like the comments on this thread say, things just work. You’ll still probably have to use terminal more than you should, but linux is becoming very usable for everybody.

Not everybody who approaches the machine or walks past it is really consenting to their appearance being logged and analysed though - not to mention that “we don’t store data” is only true if the security is effective and no exploits manage to weaponise the camera now staring back at you as you try to make a purchase.

Ultimately vending machines are completely passive sales anyway, the collection of demographic data about who is buying from the machine are a little useless because it’s not like the machine can work on its closing techniques for coin based candy sales.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the issue is that the specific amount of caffeine was not originally disclosed - people with heart conditions would naturally exclude themselves from drinking energy drinks (which, although abused, should also NOT be drunk like water), but nobody would expect a panera bread lemonade to have that much caffeine.

The Mcdonalds lawsuit is an interesting parallel, because there is a lot of myth and legend around the specifics of the case. Mcdonalds are pretty unanimously regarded to have been in the wrong on this one AFAIK. Check out Legal Eagle’s video on the topic here: https://youtu.be/s_jaU5V9FUg

don’t make conflations with the USA and other liberal democracies. There are plenty of transparent, effective democracies where popular votes matter massively, and saying because the USA is electorally broken that everywhere is only serves the narrative that true liberal democracy “isn’t possible” i.e., exactly what China and Russia suggest.