Could not agree more. I’m a democratic socialist. I firmly believe that the ideas of that ideology, properly implemented, can drastically improve the standard of living for a huge percentage of the population.

I live in a country where our democratic socialist party is fantastically corrupt, lazy and completely bereft of any motivation to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. Consequently, I don’t support them. Results over ideology is an important mantra no matter what you believe.

Europe is primarily white people

Hah, that’s telling. Just FYI, there’s been generations upon generations of racism and ethnic hatred here in Eastern Europe. I guess we have the advanced racists: the ones who don’t hate you for your skin colour, but who your parents were, religion and primary language.

I’ll bet that if your dad grew up here in Romania, he’d be complaining about those sneaky Szeklers trying to steal Transylvania and Roma people being subhuman.

Also, he seems the type to pine for Europe because “We’re all Christian!”. Trust me, you haven’t seen “Christian love” like state religions persecuting people of the wrong sect. Orthodox Christianity is the state religion here, and Protestants of all stripes get treated like heathens.

That’ll last all of 1 week before a large percentage of new homeowners run out of money and start using the house as collateral with no hope of paying back loans.

The most effective solution I’ve ever heard of is the Norwegian housing first model, where the house itself remains under state control (at least at the start). As the occupant goes through rehab if necessary, retraining if necessary, is helped to find a job, etc, they can start paying towards the house and eventually fully buy it from the state. Meanwhile, the state can use that money to buy/build more social housing to help more people.

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert but that’s how it works as far as I’ve read.

Edit: Oh, fun fact, this is similar to how the rich made so much money during COVID. Throw money at the poor, they have to spend that money, money goes to companies, then the owners.

I appreciate his response to criticism of his city-run grocery store initiative. I can’t recall the exact wording, but it was something like “If it doesn’t work, we’ll cancel it”. I don’t mind an experiment like this as long as the people involved are results-oriented and willing to pivot if evidence shows it’s not working.

Yup. Did specifically say that I was missing tons of stuff in that super short summary of the formation of Israel. Also left out the Balfour declaration, the White Paper of 1939, the Buraq uprising, the Black Hand, Lehi and their attempted alliance with Nazi Germany, and much much more.

Here’s the long version.

Short version is that in WW1, the UK conquered Palestine from the Ottoman empire. 1922-1948, the British ran the territory, getting shot at regularly by both native Arabs, the tiny number of native Jews, and the comparatively much larger group of immigrant Jews. In the 1940s, the UK asked for and got US help with counterterrorist operations, especially against Jewish ones. Arabs and Jews pinky promised to play nice with each other if the UK left, so rather than continue getting shot by everyone in the region, they left. Arabs and Jews immediately started a war as soon as the UK army left. Then, every single neighbouring country attacked the newly formed Israel, which they somehow survived.

(Missing HUGE amounts of context and nuance here, obviously)

If you’re interested, the short version is that instances (A.K.A servers) are run by different people in different places. A reason to move instances might be:

1. My admin, the owner of the instance, has been doing things I heavily disagree with (bans, blocks, etc)

2. I don’t agree with the rules on my instance.

3. The instance is run in a country which criminalizes something that I care about, and so has to ban discussion of that thing (piracy, porn, etc).

4. I want to run a community on a specific instance for whatever reason, and so need an account there

This is what underfunding education for decades and TikTok does to a country. Romania has the highest number of TikTok users per capita in Europe.

Wolverine!

To me, “guys” has been a gender-neutral term for a while now. At least that’s how it’s used here in my little bubble in Europe.

Incidentally, I guess? Still a powerful neoliberal female leader. This was written based on Thatcher.

Don’t you think she looks tired?

Switzerland or Finland?

is it called Jewish or Jews in this case?

Jews. A thing can be Jewish, a group of people can be Jews. Another rule of thumb you can use is adjective vs noun.

There are plenty of anti-Israeli Jews. Don’t paint us all with the same brush.

Please don’t lump trademarks with the rest. Makers have stamped their goods with their mark since ancient times, both as advertising and to signify quality products (and not knockoffs). Swords were especially commonly marked with the smith’s trademark.

It was illegal to sell bread in ancient Rome without a trademark, for example. The punishments for doing so were harsh, as they wanted to be able to track down the baker if someone sold tainted bread.

In modern days, they’re useful for customers to know what company they’re buying from.

59 / 49 = 1.2 Hegseconds / Truss.

Alternatively, the Truss / Scaramucci conversion would be 49 / 11 = 4.45

I think for name recognition and not scaring off Americans who run in fear from the s word, maybe it should be called the Progressive Party?

There’s plenty of opposition parties in Russia, for example. They’re just all controlled. They use intentional gaffs to throw the election to the “correct” winner. If they start getting too uppity and stop following orders, they get banned from running on some technicality.

Navalny is what happens when even that doesn’t work, but he was very much the exception.

I know someone who got had by a spearfishing call. They knew all the details about his phone contract, sounded 100% legit. The scammer got thousands of dollars in prepaid SIM cards from his account.

After the police investigation, turned out that the scammer was actually a former employee of the phone company who downloaded a copy of the customer list when he got fired.