I remember just after all this kicked off last October there was an interview with an ex hamas guy (who is now an anti-extremism researcher) about what their plan was with all of this.

He mentioned how their plan had always been to force a reaction from Israel and then use social media to build support among specifically both the Muslim diaspora and progressive non-muslims in Europe/NA.

The worse it gets in Gaza, the better it is for Hamas. Their support in Gaza goes up, and they gain additional support abroad, while Israel loses support. Win/win/win

My sleep-routine is that I read (usually my kindle) in bed at night.

It’s kind of great both because I like reading, but also because it makes me fall asleep.

I went through a pretty big libertarian phase way back in my late teens.

Not the ‘deregulate everything’ type, but rather more of a ‘everyone’s place in society is governed by the choices they make’ social-darwinist sort of angle.

Once I got out and experienced real life more (and learned about all the little nuances behind everything) I realized just how wrong I was.

Nowadays I’m a big leftist/socialist

To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.

The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.

Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.

Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.

Politics (especially among republicans) has become a bit religious, so it’s not really THAT different I guess

Just look at history though and you’ll see that most significant changes (both bad and good) happen abruptly and it’s often a bit messy.

Unfortunately it’s just the way that humans work

I don’t know anything about the campaign in Oregon, but most people are scared of things they aren’t familiar with.

Also I’m guessing neither party really supported this much, since they benefit from first-past-the-post.

Status-quo politics is dead, many major western parties just haven’t realized this yet. People want firmer political leadership that promises fundamental change and isn’t afraid of breaking things along the way.

It’s just fucking unfortunate that (in most countries) it’s only the far right who are ahead of the curve at realizing this.

Center to left parties need to reinvent themselves and focus less on pleasing everyone or fighting losing battles. They also need to present a much clearer vision.

This is 90% just a proxy for how their parents will vote.

Its only a very small portion of kids that age who are going to have substantially different views than their parents (not that they don’t exist!)

(Most) stocks represent partial ownership (read: control) of a company and most of their value is derived from that.

For an extreme example: if the stock price were to drop below the amount of money that could be made by just selling off all of the assets, then someone would (in principle) just buy all the shares, sell the assets and make a profit.

Each share represents a small bit of control over the company and their assets.

Personally I always always buy phones with two sim slots. It’s super practical if you travel semi-often.

Idk about apple, but basically all of the mid-range androids have this feature. I guess this is about the US though, so it’s probably Apple.

Yeah most of europe is waaaaay better when is comes to mobile plans compared to the US.

I don’t use use that much data, but my 8gb plan is just under €6 per month.

In the US, I had a plan like this for over $30…

Trams are the best! I’ll go out of my way to take a tram over a bus any day

They are just so much smoother

It’s not colonialism to prefer one culture (or certain cultural traits) to another. In fact, it’s natural.

I’ve lived in a number of countries and each had their own distinct cultural norms. Each has had aspects which I perceived as either positive or negative.

Add it all together and I definitely have preferred certain cultures, not because they are “better” but because they more closely match my own preferences. Other people would prefer different cultural norms.

Not a raspi, but I had similar issues on my opensuse HTPC which turned it to be related to issues with (or missing) media codecs in Firefox.

After (re)installing all of them, it worked like a charm.

Do you mean the exoskeleton?

Why does it need to be equal to population?

I’m not saying that all immigration is bad, but rather that above a certain level it gets difficult to integrate people. For european countries this is a much lower number than the US, since populations are much lower. At the same time, there are many more refugees than in the US.

It’s a genuine challenge here in Vienna, for instance, at the moment because recent immigrants make up a large percentage of school kids, who often have few language skills, tend to be very religious, and have extremely conservative views on things like feminism and gay rights. Unfortunately, their views tend to self-reinforce rather than become milder over time due to being the majority view among their peers/in their school/community.

You can’t really blame the kids, obviously they are just a product of the culture they grew up in, however you also can’t just ignore the issue. There isn’t any mechanism for preventing immigrants groups from clustering in specific areas (and I don’t think most people would be in favor of anything that draconian)

In an ideal world, maybe there is a perfect solution, but the reality is that the current system is facing a huge challenge. Like it or not, this is directly tied to immigration rates.

The issue is though that “segregation between state and religion” is a cultural trait. It’s not something that every culture values, nor is it something that inevitably happens.

In fact, it’s almost certainly a minority opinion on a global level. Particularly in (although not exclusive to) poorer non-western countries which tend to be much more conservative and religious.

A small number of conservative immigrants won’t hugely impact views in the host country, but a sizable number (particularly if they are concentrated in certain areas) absolutely can.

You know there are other countries tries right?

A lot of european countries are only a few million people…

Just have everyone use UTC!