alvvayson @ alvvayson @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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2 yr. ago

Yes, and they just want to "own the libs".

They will find excuses to cut funding for the liberal universities.

Economic mobility is usually determined by things like IQ, EQ and other marketable skills. So I don't really know if your proposal is the right way to measure it. But such data would at least give some insight.

In the USA, most research I have seen says they have low economic mobility, because the rich have access to the best schools, etc.

But still, it's not zero. Both JD Vance and AOC are examples of economic mobility.

One of them still fights (or appears to fight) for the class they came from, the other is successfully recruited to serve the interests of the ruling class.

Were they born in 1908 (and ignoring race and gender for the moment), then probably both of them would have been leaders for the working class.

True, but nowadays most people don't work in factories.

The modern equivalent would be the cashiers of Walmart and the baristas of Starbucks.

Also, when it comes to Russia, Ukrainian intelligence is top notch due to historical ties.

But TBH, I do think Europe needs to find a way to make peace with Russia and with the Middle-East, specifically Turkey, Egypt and Iran.

They are our direct neighbours. The cold war idea that we could have a powerful friend across an ocean, while having strained relationships with our direct neighbours just isn't going to be a good strategy going forward.

Correct, but there is a lot of nuance.

Indeed, when things get bad, the public is willing to take risks. When everything is good enough, they don't revolt.

However, successful revolts do require intelligent and capable leaders.

What the rich have realized, is that if they ensure smart and skilled kids get picked out of the drudgery and get comfortable working for the rich, then the exploited class will not really have anyone to lead them.

Put another way, in 1908, every factory had a few leaders working at the lowest levels. And they are the ones who spearheaded strikes and such.

Nowadays, society is really stratified in terms of skill.

Anyone who grew up poor, but had talent to organize, probably ended up in some kind of middle management or professional job and makes 2x the average.

Convincing these people to have class solidarity is difficult. Only a few of them actually see the bigger. Those tend to become middle or upper management or politicians, making 3-5x the average workers salary. And of those, only a very select few are willing to fight for the common man.

So yeah, the rich engineered a system that they can control. To actually change anything is going to be very difficult.

I agree.

Ideally, there are two types of profiles:

Archivalists who have a lot of storage and need pretty good uptime, but no need for high bandwidth. They should be rewarded for archiving, because they don't really get a lot of upload credit.

Distributors who need low storage, high bandwidth, robust connections when online, but not necessarily high uptime. They just distribute the new and popular stuff.

I think the better private trackers recognize this and have systems in place to provide credit to people who seed rare torrents.

I consider myself someone who is always in search of truth.

When I realized evangelical Christianity has some hardcore lies and hypocrisy, I left it.

I did eventually find my way back to a more traditional version of Christianity that is interested in truth and love.

I read up on it. I think the main thing was the many Kurds, especially Turkish Kurds, don't want to fight Turkey anymore. The PKK had a lot of trouble recruiting people. And many Kurdish leaders are actually allied with Erdogan. I believe Erdogan has two Kurdish ministers.

But with their autonomy in Syria and Iraq, the hardliners were still holding out and hopeful.

However, in Syria, Turkey dealt them quite some hard blows these past years and got the US under Trump to abandon them. The final piece is that the new Syrian regime is allied with Turkey and Trump is back in office.

So they basically have a choice, stop fighting or look forward to years of fighting against bayraktar drones.

Of course, I am sure Erdogan put in a lot of deal sweeteners that we don't know about. At the end of the day, Turkey and Syria both need peace with the Kurds for their own stability and growth. And the Kurds have significant leverage, even if independence is not in the cards.

I do agree, but it does take 3-5 years, unless the EU is willing to turn into a wartime economy. But the political will for that is just not there.

I thought Googlers were paid $500K+ and already worked 60-80 hours weeks?

We (Europe) already did most of the heavy lifting for Ukraine. The US mostly gave old stockpiles of weapons that they would've needed to destroy anyway. We are the ones actually paying cash to keep them afloat.

The problem is, in the post-WW2 order, our defense and our defense industry was made dependent on the USA by design. And even up until last November, Europe didn't want to challenge this arrangement and just went full steam ahead with this arrangement, ordering US made weapons. I think Europe was in denial that Biden could lose or that NATO could ever end.

Only France, and to a limited extent, Sweden and Turkey, have independent defense industries.

In the future, we will have it again. And Ukraine will actually be a key player.

But in the short term, there is no magical button to press that can produce the arms.

Undoing decades of integration isn't going to be easy.

Free would be a bargain compared to what US taxpayers are actually paying lol 😂

The money for these "sales" is aid from the US government.

Israel is unique in that they are the only country that gets its aid from the US government on January 1st, with interest, in cash. They have to use a part of it on American weapons and the rest they just get in cash.

I'm sure Sanders also has a bill or intentions to stop that, but that would be a separate bill.

And quite frankly, among (young) progressive people, getting attacked head-on by Trump is somewhat more predictable and less emotionally taxing than getting backstabbed and gaslighted by liberals.

Which is why a lot of them didn't vote for Kamala.

I don't yet know where the American political realignment will end, but the liberal/progressive coalition that elected Clinton, Obama and Biden seems to be irreparably damaged.

In what world could someone who is already elected president not arrange some kind of democratic primary for their second and third terms?

You could also abolish the whole primary process and go for a French two-stage election.

Anyway, sky's the limit for finding a new system.

Since we are talking constitutional amendments, anything can be added as a requirement.

The way things currently work are not a restriction.

Obviously, they lied about his dad being Hamas.

But what I don't get is, how does it even matter who the father is?

He is 13 years old.

But thanks for the mirror.

The Dems should call his bluff and propose a constitutional amendment allowing three terms, perhaps under the condition that sitting presidents must win an open primary to be eligible for a second or third nomination.

FDR had three terms, plus a few months of a fourth term.

IMHO, the bigger issue is not having three terms, but the fact that sitting presidents can get the nomination without winning a primary. This practice removes an important opportunity to replace them.

I agree with this take.

We are wired to find the next problem and to solve it. Enjoy our work for a short while and then start looking for the next problem to solve.

Whether it is cultural or genetic, I don't know, but it's definitely very deep in our western psyche and it will not be going away any time soon.

The main problem I see is that a lot of people in Western society nowadays use complaining as a substitute for action, and so problems don't get solved, but people convince themselves that they took action by complaining.

Israel knows they have the US by the balls.

Iran has enough missiles to wreck havoc on tiny Israel. It's only the threat of retaliation by the USA that holds Iran back.

No other country would retaliate against Iran on Israels behalf.

And to make it even more idiotic, Israel really doesn't have bunker busters that are 2x better than the best the USA has. So they can't actually destroy any significant part of Iran's nuclear facilities.

So it would just be an empty show of force that would force the Iranian regime to retaliate to save face, which then lures in the USA into yet another war in the Middle-east.

I hope Americans are ready to throw another $10T into yet another MENA war.