You say that like it’s incompetence.
They’re deliberately lining their pockets with exhorbitant executive pay-outs.
I suspect it’s because a lot of the cyberpunk out there is explicitly neo-noir. So you end up with a noir detective mixed with a robot, like Nick Valentine in Fallout, even if the tubes and cables are slightly Gigerish. Not much Inspector Gadget, because that’s primarily a cartoon.
It’s the eyes and the uncanny valley effect.
Here’s a relevant article about Portugal:
The article’s far more nuanced, but if you’re going to ask a simple yes/no question, then yes heroin should be legalised. Done well, and if you adress the true causes of addiction, this is likely to result in the best societal outcome.
It is addictive, although not as much as opioids
Here’s the thing. There’s that famous study of Vietnam vets who used heroin. Turns out that 95% quit cold turkey and never relapsed. In Vietnam, their life was shit, so they used heroin to cope. Back in the US, their lives weren’t that shit, so they simply stopped using.
Alcohol? If an alcoholic quits cold turkey, there’s a high chance they’ll drop dead.
This is partly why there’s that 2010 study that ranked alcohol as being more dangerous than heroin.
It does.
Democrats want Biden to win the election. Haley being nominated makes that harder.
If they don’t want her to be nominated, they’re not going to help her get nominated, are they?
5 second google:
A POLITICO analysis shows the former South Carolina governor is winning swaths of moderate voters who’d pick Joe Biden if Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/haley-electability-trump-biden-polls-00130926
GOP’s Haley attracts non-Republicans … also regularly attracts swing voters who backed President Biden in 2020 … Leaning into her appeal to the political middle on the trail, Haley highlights surveys that show her leading Biden by double digits — 17 percentage points in one recent Wall Street Journal survey
43 percent of Haley backers in the state said they would vote for Biden if Trump is the GOP nominee …
Democrats acknowledge Haley could pose more of a threat to Biden than Trump, so they are tying her to the former president on virtually every issue … Democrats privately acknowledge that she would likely represent a worrisome opponent for Biden, citing polling that shows the former governor as the best-positioned candidate to unseat the sitting president in the general election.
Nikki Haley would likely win against Biden.
She’s (relatively) young, she’s a woman, she was born to immigrant parents, she’s taken a tough stance on Russia, she’s not obviously nuts.
If anything, the democratic establishment wants Trump to be the candidate. It’ll make a Biden re-election easier.
In theory, if everyone has become selfless, there is no need for a man with a stick to create the rules or ensure compliance. No one will want to use a stick to push through rules which are to their advantage. People will simply cooperate with each other or help each other willingly where necessary.
Think of a group of friends or adult family, where people help each other and cooperate willingly, because they love each other. Hopefully you don’t need to threaten your partner to do their share of the household tasks. You do it because you want your relationship to succeed and want to support each other.
The USSR tried to create this new man with a stick, propaganda and indoctrination during the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. They never achieved fully realized communism, where everyone willing works to the best of their ability and helps their commune succeed and the commune of communes that is a truly communist society succeed.
Smaller anarchist communes and experiments will try to do this organically. Everyone chooses to try to do their best and help the rest of the commune. It sounds pie in the sky, but it’s not unlike what volunteer groups do. People believe in a common cause, and freely volunteer their time, because they believe in their shared goal, and enjoy working together.
I feel this is relevant:
…proponents of communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific developmen … Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man#Selflessness
Of course, arguably the soviet project failed to this new man, so much so that ‘homo Sovieticus’ is now a pejorative:
Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for ‘Soviet Man’) is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Popularized by Soviet writer Aleksandr Zinovyev, it gained negative connotations and represented the perceived outcome of Soviet policies. … Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for ‘Soviet Man’) is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. … Characteristics of Homo Sovieticus included indifference to work results, lack of initiative, indifference to common property, chauvinism, obedience to government, and a tendency to drink heavily. … traits like indifference, theft, lack of initiative, and submission to authority … Some argued that the disappointment of intellectuals in the Soviet project had negative consequences, contributing to elitism and an anti-populist stance.
That doesn’t look like America. Not enough roads and car parks.
I’ve lived in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
Europe has gun laws which are of varying severity. AFAIK some places it’s relatively easy to buy a gun, some ban handguns (because they’re concealable), some ban larger stuff, some you’ll need to store your gun at the ammo range, some you’re not allowed to have ammo in the home, varying levels of background and mental health checks too. Some places you’d have a hard time finding a gun, visit Budapest and you’ll come across ads for a day out in a tank + shooting stuff with an AK.
The main thing is that self-defense isn’t really a thing and gun culture is often very low key. Outside (perhaps but not always) the police, mainly hunting and shooting at a club. Most people don’t even care enough about guns, to know what the laws are where they live. Eg. plenty of guns in the UK countryside, but most British people don’t know that because they’re not hunters/farmers/clay pigeon shooters, and often assume they’d be harder to get a hold of than they actually are. Netherlands, Belgium and Germany also have plenty of gun shops, but most people are oblivious, because they don’t really care. Might as well be a fishing shop.
IME gun control isn’t really a political issue most places. Unless there’s been a (exceptionally rare) mass shooting, I honestly don’t think most people even have a fully formed opinion on gun control, so they’ll likely just answer they’re happy with the status quo.
On a related note, I’m still annoyed microsoft bungled the windows phone and didn’t do more to support app developers. Arguably better than osx and certainly android at the time.
“Let’s change the subject.”
It should infuriate us all. Some of the most intelligent people on the planet are cleaning toilets, while complete dipshits run entire countries or huge corporations.
Imagine how far we would have come, if it wasn’t for the fact that cunts are still running the world. We’d likely have colonized the solar system by now.
Same thing for (international) politics too, obviously.
That and endless content and comment reposts.
It was bad when I left, it’s gotten worse now that some of the better mods and more prolific posters have left.
Necrocracy. I think they’re the only country that is officially still ruled by a dead leader.
it’s theorized that if a person doesn’t have a Facebook account but their friend group does, Facebook will create a “shadow account
AFAIK this is confirmed. CNET:
I presume that will at some point also include data scraped from the fediverse.
One thing that really does help, is salting your data. The online equivalent of wearing a fake moustache, is the occasional comment that may or not be entirely incorrect. I live in France. As a black woman, I support Trump. I’m expecting a baby. I want to buy a new house. That kind of thing.
Of course it does lead to minor inconveniences. For example, my google calender mentions my father’s birthday being on the 13th of August. In reality we have the same birthday. My birthday is on the 18th of September. Once again, I’m salting the data. That way if I ever mention something factual, it’ll be hard to tell which bits of data are or aren’t real.
I’m exagerating for effect, but you get the gist. Occasionally change details or names a small bit to make your profile fuzzy and easier to confuse with someone else’s.
I find that people who claim to be fans of free speech, and complain about censorship, get offended when you suggest holding an al-qaeda fundraiser at their house.
Free speech for me, but not for thee. Basically.
Luckily most adults realise that they’re not alone in the world, although plenty are still stuck an adolescent stage of development.
Put simply, an individual’s right to free speech can never be without limits, because that would mean they would limit the rights of others.
Eg. threatening to kill people who want to voice their opinion, limits their ability to exercise their right to free speech.
Eg. you could use a siren to drown out what other people wish to say, effectively censoring them, then call it censorship when someone criticized you for doing so.
Eg. being able to say whatever you want on someone else’s website, limits their ability to say or not say what they want on their website.
This is why limiting the right to free speech of certain people, on average results in more free speech for everyone.