I'm feeling a bit better. Starting today, I'll be returning to work as much as possible. This week will likely be spent catching up on tasks, replying to emails, reading overdue comments, etc. I also need to work with Piotr on instance infrastructure. I'll be more actively handling spam as well, but it's clear that we need...
Keep in mind that most of the people in this instance of Lemmy that are going to reply to you are actively hoping for Biden (and for that matter, America) to lose.
While it’s absolutely your right to research and find a candidate that aligns with your beliefs, I hope you take most of the replies here with a grain of salt.
You act like the Japanese didn’t want to lift their people out of poverty. That the people within SONY didn’t aspire to be one of the largest corporations in the world.
The Japanese owned a significant amount of real estate within the US at their zenith (kind of like China today). They faltered because it started to cost more to import certain materials then it did to improve those raw materials and export them. Econ 101, cheaper markets existed for that type of manufacturing. It took some time to transition to a service economy. They still excelled at heavy industry and still do. They’re still one of the predominant ship builders and car builders in the world.
Japan was also one of the first countries to be hit hard by an aging population, partly because of xenophobia, but I think mainly other cultural factors. It’s challenging to try to keep your economy going when the workforce is shrinking and more of a country’s wealth is going towards caring for the elderly. I think anyone with aging parents can attest to that.
It’s not always America ruined their lives, plenty more nuance than American geopolitics. Lest we not forget that America helped to build them up after the war in the first place. And not having to fund a military can do wonders for a country’s growth (you know, so long as they aren’t invaded).
Your hate for America and capitalism has distorted your world view. I’d prefer to live in a world of opportunity rather than a world of schadenfreude.
The Senate approved a package of six appropriations bills ahead of a late-Friday deadline and sent it to President Joe Biden to become law after some haggling over amendments.
To put it simply, this is just not how the legislative branch works. Most of their power derives from the power of the purse. People who are only in power for 2 years are not going to cede the main power that they invested so much time and money in order to obtain.
Moreover, 10 years is a lifetime in politics. Our government already moves slow enough as is.
Instead, I propose a few changes:
Get rid of the debt ceiling fight. We already agreed to the commitment of funds.
3 people per house seat, based upon top 3 ranked choices. This will encourage minor parties and cooperation.
I get that laws need to be long so that they cover loopholes, nuance, interpretation, sausage making, etc. but laws should have simple summaries that the general public can understand. At least one of these summary pages should read like a change log: new features, bug fixes, changes to existing stack, deletions, etc.
Robust Sunshine laws for office holders and staff, except where classified for national security
Continuing ed: Politicians or at least their support staff should be educated and qualified to understand what they are legislating on.
Computer generated, panel approved district maps
The fed has a dual mandate, something similar should be developed for politicians. Spend I’m lean times, save in boom times, but never stop aspiring to do great big things.
I see nothing with this other than the title is semi misleading. Latvia is training these draftees to be reservists, not professional military members. They are intended to augment the professional military.
As much as I would have hated this when I was young, looking back it could have helped me and a lot of other folks. I wish we had a two year requirement for public service, though I wouldn’t limit it to military. I’d expand it to forestry, trail building, boys and girls clubs, trade guilds, etc.
Service encourages civic engagement, it’s fosters a sense of duty to one’s country, it teaches a skill or trade, and maybe, just maybe, it will foster some sense of pride and discipline as well. Two things lacking right now in the states are a sense of comradery and civic engagement (I’m not talking about the whiny social media kind).
Afterwards, perhaps an additional incentive would be that it would count as one year of core curriculum at a Uni, and/or maybe a discount to tuition. For the trades routes, it would count as years towards journeyman, etc.
Moreover, I don’t think this is really a unique idea, Israel employs it. I think the Soviet Union did to some extent as well.
I’m 20 years past the time when people are typically conscripted, so I’m likely at no risk of mandatory service now, nonetheless I’d gladly serve as a mentor and pass down the knowledge I’ve gained over the years to a group of youngsters.
So that all is to say, just as the Latvian foreign minister is saying, there can some real advantages to employing some flavor of conscripted service, and, if employed well, I think we’d all be better for it.
Unfortunately at the geopolitical level, things are not always so morally easy, as I suspect you already understand.
Even in my brutish example, it depends on the lens in which we see things. In an orthodox culture, it may be the parent’s duty to harshly discipline a child. Perhaps meddling would be seen as a faux pas. Or perhaps leaving matters to authorities would be considered cowardly. Even still, maybe it just depends on the day and who’s tribe witnessed the event. The human experience is paradoxically wonderful, isn’t it?
Hey, when the funds are stored in Russian banks, you are certainly welcome to freeze them all you want. But for some reason they typically aren’t. Huh, I wonder why?
You are walking on the street in the public square of your town. You encounter a child and someone who you perceive as a parent having a struggle. The struggle escalates and you see the parent start bludgeoning the child with their fists. Other than the absolute trauma of the experience, you fear the child is going to receive some long term injuries from this. How do you act?
The problem with giving away the assets, and I’m just parroting Simon Whistler here, is that they have never been used this way while in war time. This would be essentially funding one side’s war machine and could come back to bite western countries if they opt to overthrow a bad actor in the future.
For example, what if Bashar Al-Assad decides on the heavy use of chlorine gas on the majority Sunni in his country. The West opts to overthrow. The West are then the aggressors. Does Euroclear then freeze US assets and give them to Assad according to the precedent set by Russia v Ukraine?
The judiciary likes to follow precedent and consistency, it fairs less well when there is nuance and subject to interpretation. From a geopolitical standpoint, do we really want the judiciary determining who the good guys and the bad guys are?
I mean, I’m not a Musk fan in the least, but the article does say that the receivers are being sold through an intermediary in Dubai, perhaps unbeknownst to Musk and SpaceX.
Are you saying that Hong Kong, which was the first city to be an economic juggernaut in the region and afford a higher quality of life to most of its citizens, as well as improve the entire Guangdong/Macau region for over 75 years, was on the verge of collapse before it was transferred to China?
Do you really believe the crap you are spoon fed or are you so jingoistic that facts and history have no relevance?
“I contribute nothing to the conversation. After decades of festering in poverty and a perverse environment, and seeing how others are wealthier, smarter, better looking, and overall better people than me, I have become so jaded that I serve merely as a refined vessel of snark and pessimism.”
You are attempting to rewrite history. Russia was in a downward spiral. As a whole it had yet to show that it could be a full ally to the West. Moreover, it is extremely rare in history for ideologically divergent cultures to become allies within the short term (exceptions such as Japan and USA, UK and USA, UK and France come to mind). It takes time (and usually generations removed) for such things to occur.
Now, it appears the West's hesitation at the time to accept Russia into NATO was prescient. Yes, maybe things could have been different if Russia had been accepted, but the risk that the alliance would have been shattered due to Russia's entry was too much to bear.
I for one do hope that one day Russia and the West become will become allies, but Russia has some maturing to do in regards to liberty and governance, I think, before that time comes.
And the IEA, for its part, expects China to continue to be the sole meaningful over-achiever. It recently revised upwards by 728 GW its forecast for total global renewables capacity additions in the period 2023–27. China’s share of this upward revision? Almost 90 percent. While China surges ahead, the rest of the world...
Yes, the right to freedom of speech is a great achievement of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Indeed, such a right contributes significantly to the political and economic development of the state. I understand this well due to my age, experience serving in the Soviet Army, and my status as a historian. I have lived from the...
Some folks are commenting that this is the ramblings of an elder, I disagree. For one, you have had the opportunity to actually experience the events that most of us are only taught in history class. You actually have the insight and have lived the hopes and lies with your own eyes.
As an American, I sincerely appreciate your insight as your experiences with living in the Soviet Union and Russia are different than mine, as an outsider looking in.
As an American, we were taught that Soviets had to stand for hours in bread lines, that their yugo cars were death traps, but still only offered to mid level and above party representatives. That every transaction required a bribe. And honestly, if that we’re the case, it sounds like a truly awful place to live. However, as someone who has acquired, at least, some wisdom through life experience, I know there is more nuance than that.
As an aside, I also want to mention that the West didn’t completely abandon the Soviets. For one, there was the lend-lease act which bolstered the Russian military during WW2. While yes, the Soviets and the West were ideologically different, we were still brothers against fascism.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we were taught that the West was a reluctant, but supportive partner. We wanted Russia to be our ally, optimistic even. But, transitioning from the means of production owned by the state to one that is owned by private entities is extremely, extremely, challenging, especially to try to do it in one decade. There are pitfalls, and Russia unfortunately fell into some them. From oligarchs, to the KGB, to other oligarchs - and eventually, to a dictatorship that aligns with those oligarchs.
It’s an easy path to fall into. Many counties have failed to transition into a democracy. The US, and the West, are fragile exceptions.
And dare I say, that the US is just as susceptible to falling into such trap. The next election, I fear, will demonstrate whether or not our principles have changed, and my worry is that our principles have indeed eroded.
One day, and I mean this sincerely, I hope that the citizens of Russia and the West become brothers. I just hope that the brotherhood is in support of democracy and the advancement for all of humanity.
The New York Times is one of the newspapers of record for the United States. However, it’s history of running stories with poor sourcing, insufficient evidence, and finding journalists with conflicts of interest undermines it’s credibility when reporting on international issues and matters of foreign policy....
Yes, please further insulate your personal worldview from any media source that differs from it. This will be good for society I’m the long run.
I don’t care if you’re communist or whatever most of y’all are on this server, I even agree to some extent with some of its tenets. But the world needs more awareness of psychological bias, not less. Fuck the power brokers. We, the civilians, are more alike than we are different.
/kbin March update
I'm feeling a bit better. Starting today, I'll be returning to work as much as possible. This week will likely be spent catching up on tasks, replying to emails, reading overdue comments, etc. I also need to work with Piotr on instance infrastructure. I'll be more actively handling spam as well, but it's clear that we need...
Trump criticizes Fed Chair Powell for considering interest rate cuts this year to 'help the Democrats' win elections (www.businessinsider.com)
Trump accused Fed Chair Powell of making politically motivated decisions on interest rates....
President Biden holds country supplying weapons responsible for casualties inflicted by those weapons (www.whitehouse.gov)
U.S. Rejects Putin’s Latest Call for Ukraine Negotiations (www.nytimes.com)
Archive: [ archive.is/z7xcs ]
US officials: "We realize that efforts, implied or explicit, to shape or change the PRC over several decades did not succeed" (www.whitehouse.gov)
Biden signs major government funding bill just in time to prevent a shutdown (www.nbcnews.com)
The Senate approved a package of six appropriations bills ahead of a late-Friday deadline and sent it to President Joe Biden to become law after some haggling over amendments.
1st look at asteroid Bennu samples suggests space rock may even be 'a fragment of an ancient ocean world' (www.space.com)
Let's fight the spam by submitting actual science stories
UK and other NATO allies urged to consider conscription as Ukraine war enters third year (news.sky.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/16042241
Biden announces 'emergency' US military mission to build pier off Gaza coast to deliver aid (abcnews.go.com)
Euroclear, which holds 191bn of 260bn in frozen Russian assets, warns against G7 plan to backstop Ukraine debt with Russian assets (www.ft.com)
Russia deploying Starlink in Ukraine—reports (www.newsweek.com)
Hong Kong is becoming less of an international city (www.economist.com)
Document From 2022 Reveals Putin’s Punishing Terms for Peace (www.wsj.com)
Capitalism Can't Solve Climate Change (time.com)
And the IEA, for its part, expects China to continue to be the sole meaningful over-achiever. It recently revised upwards by 728 GW its forecast for total global renewables capacity additions in the period 2023–27. China’s share of this upward revision? Almost 90 percent. While China surges ahead, the rest of the world...
Freedom of Speech!? (media.kbin.social)
Yes, the right to freedom of speech is a great achievement of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Indeed, such a right contributes significantly to the political and economic development of the state. I understand this well due to my age, experience serving in the Soviet Army, and my status as a historian. I have lived from the...
The New York Times should not be considered a reliable source of journalism.
The New York Times is one of the newspapers of record for the United States. However, it’s history of running stories with poor sourcing, insufficient evidence, and finding journalists with conflicts of interest undermines it’s credibility when reporting on international issues and matters of foreign policy....