Hi, Eastern European here. We begged to join NATO. We kicked and screamed, wheeled and dealed, anything we could to get that coveted NATO membership.

You know why? Because we’ve been dealing with expansionist Russian imperialism for our entire histories. Different coats of paint in different time periods, but it’s all the same shit. The US is an empire, but at least here it’s preferable to Russia’s imperial ambitions.

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.

This reminds me of a story from “They thought they were free”. A Jew was accused of raping a woman. The judge heard the case and determined he was innocent. However, the gestapo were waiting outside the court to nab the accused as soon as the trial ended.

The judge decided to stick to his verdict instead of ruling guilty to put him in a normal prison instead of a concentration camp. After all, how could he justify ruling an innocent man guilty, even if that was objectively a better result for the man?

I think you misunderstood the commenter you replied to. The issue is he’s blaming Thor as if Thor singlehandedly killed the initiative, when in reality it’s a wider societal issue.

The article makes it sound like the issue wasn’t the connection to slaves: that was expected. It sounds like the original plan was to offer reparations to the descendants, but there turned out to be so many the finance department of Harvard completely freaked out.

I have a friend who does game QA. A lot of the time issues this major are caught, documented, and then management decides the extra delay to solve it isn’t worth the effort because “it’s not going to impact enough people to matter”. Then, once a firestorm erupts due to public backlash, they try and blame it on QA.

My friend has gotten very good at ass-covering, and makes sure every issue ticket is very explicit, not only in terms of what the issue is, the cause, reproducibility, but also how likely the average user is to hit it just to avoid blame.

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)

Read their comment and I’m left scratching my head. Their role in security with the straight android phone (not the /e/OS version) is simply pushing security patches as/when they get them from the Android team, as they’re using straight Android. Security is handled by Google for Android, not them. When it comes to /e/OS, no idea how good/bad it is, but apparently Graphene has some beef with Murena (the people who make it), at least according to their comment.

Not at all knowledgable about mobile kernels and drivers to comment on the rest of it. I do know Fairphone 5 uses an unusual CPU normally used for SoC as that was the only CPU that was both good enough to run Android reasonably while simultaneously providing very long-term driver updates (they’re aiming for a minimum of 8 years of updates).

If you’re in Europe, Fairphone is an option. I’m pretty happy with mine.

Downvoted for complaining about downvotes. The internet points do nothing. Everyone please downvote me so I can demonstrate how little it matters.

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!

You know you’re old when the gf/wife wants to accompany DnD with a cheese board and a bottle of wine for the guests :))

The key is sharing a hobby. For me, it’s board games and TTRPGs. Much easier to hang if there’s an activity.

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.

/me eating popcorn as a nano user

Don’t worry, you can say Luigi Mangione here.