FriendOfDeSoto

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Numanumanei numanumanumanei

Merz is in his 70s. He is not the most gifted politician. One nickname given to him by a journalist is “the unavoidable” in reference to him having no good competition for leadership in his party after a perceived century of Angela Merkel in charge who had successfully sidelined him. For a reason, it seems.

He is very good at dropping shit like this in the media and then having it walked back or watered down. I do not see this idea getting a majority in the country where Google street view is useless because people rebelled against having the public facing side of their buildings photographed for easier navigation. And I can see a few arguments that would occupy the supreme court for a decade, were this to become law.

Why? What’s stopping you from finding news sources you trust on your own and bookmarking them? I understand the defeatist stance for some local stuff where most of the news has hidden behind paywalls - although paywalls can often be creatively avoided. But when it comes to coverage of the continued American embarrassment that is 47 on the world stage, the world is your oyster. You have news from other English speaking countries, of which there are loads. And a lot of public broadcasters and news organizations that normally speak or write in something else will offer English language articles. If you stop at consuming what is presented to yourself by our friend Al Gorithn, that is a choice.

Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.

While the Kant certainly wasn’t referring to consuming news in the digital age, his abridged quote can be wiggled to apply as a motto in this context as well.

Get your head out of this “the media does this or that” gutter where they are maybe part of a big conspiracy by the man to keep us docile. Media has never been perfect, reporting on all stories fairly and balanced and all that. That’s an unattainable ideal. You have to pick and choose what you read. They always jump on the big stories and neglect the smaller ones, especially if they operate under a need to generate profits.

47 came up through reality television. He will stay on topic as long as it generates headlines. Whether he is heel or hero doesn’t matter. There is also the behavioral pattern of TACO, he looks to play chicken with the world but backs out of it again quite quickly. And BTS he works to make himself and other rich people richer. Anything he does can pretty much be explained through this prism, after the fact.

Greenland, like wanting Canadian anschluss, generated headlines. He looked like he had a grand plan, the real estate developer in him came through. There was opposition and with it attention, which he likes. And then even members of his cult were sceptical to critical about this neo-imperialist bullshit. If the world had rolled over and let him have it, he would have took it. But European leaders managed to group up on him and gave him the most face saving out out of this bullshit. And it took away attention from other things, like the famous pedophile case.

He is not a details guy. They say anything that cannot be put on a single page with lots of pictures he will not take in. The agreement the US has with NATO ally Denmark already allows for 99% of his grand plan. They packaged the info he never absorbed into something that looks like a win for the great deal maker. And they probably awarded him the clubman of the year trophy to please his ego. Good enough, for now at least. Now, let’s escalate tensions in Iran or kidnap a south American dictator.

If you dig for European sources, you can read about developments that are the long tail of this failed Greenland grab. Officially, no European leader but maybe Spain’s Sanchez will be on record saying the US are no longer a reliable partner for anything. But off the record, that’s their tune. Efforts are underway to de-Americanize the defense industry and spending. Another slow building wave is the European desire to break free of dependence on US tech firms. These stories maybe would made the news in North America, if there wasn’t the bigger so-called AI bubble inflating at the same time.

I appreciate the air of publicity this story brings.

You probably can’t trust your password manager if it’s compromised

In other headlines: water is surprisingly wet.

Would you agree though that there is a qualitative difference here? Platonically befriending a person and having an intimate, probably sexual relationship with a person are two different scenarios. And the question was about dating in particular. I’ll have a much easier time trying to humor a person I don’t share a bed with. People tend to not take one for the team to get them over their misogyny.

I suspect the lack of experiences of being with or even having a significant other is what drove the majority of these bastards to this proto-SA. Where they can be powerful grunt grunt and dress up in GI cosplay. There is this lordofthefliesification that takes place when all these frustrated men get together. Anyways, that’s why I suspect this is almost a trick question. How can you detect if you’re dating an ICE prick? You won’t have to. Chances are they are socially very awkward, behaviorally weird and therefore undatable. It’s this quality that set them on an authority loving, very likely misogynic, for various reasons chronically underfucked path in life where they thought hunting and terrorizing innocent people and shooting them if they can get away with it is a great career choice. It shows.

One thing that what they call agenetic AI will undermine might be a lot of the subscription based biggies of the industry. I’m thinking about Adobe in particular. They charge a monthly premium for having user-friendly, low learning curve software that often has become industry standard. But there are open source alternatives for many of their big hitters (Inkscape, GIMP, etc.). If the agenetic model needs a tool to design a logo or expand an image - and you probably already pay for the privilege of using the agent model - this may prove to be a boon to the open source development of these intermediary software tools. Because the relative difficulty to use them as we hear from Adobe heads all the time won’t matter to the computer. And they are free (with a request to donate). So a chunk of interest and probably money and effort will move from those subscription services to open source alternatives and their development. This is just one positive effect so-called AI could have for some open source projects.

Sadly, at the same time we squander resources and kill polar bears.

a few years ago

Like 15+ years ago.

They performed horribly

I mean, this is all a matter of opinion. They promised stuff they couldn’t do - like everybody else. They gave us a revolving door of PMs - like the LDP, the party that won all the other elections, does as well. I think what broke their back was having to deal with a big earthquake, massive tsunami, and exploding nuclear reactors. The LDP can consider itself lucky they weren’t in charge then so the stink of failure to deal with an impossible crisis didn’t attach to them. They really aren’t the more capable politicians.

I think it depends. I’m my experience, towels last longer if they get thrown in the dryer. Wouldn’t throw my cashmere sweater in there though, if I owned one. The quality of the clothes you own plays a part. And most of us tend to go for the bargain over quality.

I feel like this depends on your climate as well. If you have sufficient sunlight outside, why do you even have a dryer? If it’s humid and stuff takes forever to dry on its own, a dryer might prevent certain bacteria to build up in the fabric and thus expand longevity. Although any act of aggressively drenching the fabric in water and chemicals and then blow drying it ought to age it by default.

I know I deserve to burn in hell for stopping them. But I’m also not sure what was I supposed to do.

I’m not sure why you feel this way. It looks to me like you tried to do your best looking out in a reasonable way for a colleague in your group who was in a chemically altered state.

In the end, you’re not responsible for him. Don’t go partying with him again. If you end up in hell, it won’t be due to this stuff.

We live in a world where screens have taken over. Our children’s are showing early sign of anxiety, depression, eye issues , wearing glasses at young age because of being exposed to screens for long time.

I have a problem with this paragraph. You present this as fact and I don’t think it is. Anxiety and depression are not caused by screens. More known cases can also be attributed to people caring about this more than ever. More kids with glasses may be more due to improvements in medical care. We’ve been getting more short sighted as a species ever since looking out for the sabertooth tiger wasn’t a survival issue any more. If you want to get people onboard the arguments need to work and these don’t do it for me. 80s kids didn’t get squared eyes from watching too much TV, 90s kids didn’t all turn into homicidal maniacs due to video games - this strikes me as arguments along the same oversimplified lines.

I’m not opposed to regulating screen time for children. What I don’t think works is a government mandated restriction. How would you even enforce that within a family home? An unintended side effect will be the need to ID every user, taking away the opportunity to use the web anonymously, and risking the leak of personalized information from giant data bases. The risks outweigh the usefulness for me.

I understand your rage. Has being enraged made this situation better? Management brushed you off. You could try calling the cops but I wouldn’t pin any hope on that. What else are you going to do? Keep in mind that if you’re the party that keeps playing loud music at odd hours you will probably end up the subject of a complaint by your direct neighbors.

We live in a society. Society includes among other things dicks and injustices. You have come across the former and suffer the latter. I understand why you’re pissed off. Every action you take that isn’t the measured response of an adult will decrease your chances of solving this problem. Not having gotten in touch directly with your neighbor - that should have been step one, which you have missed. Petty retaliation - as much as I get the urge - is another misstep.

As far as I can see it, you have three choices:

(1) Continue escalation, which will feel good in the moment but has only a very low chance of succes.

(2) Move apartments.

(3) Follow the advise by a golden_zealot@lemmy.ml in this thread. Keep in mind that your position in that is strengthened by being a flawless, rule-abiding victim.

There is no point in telling me how they are weird hermits or about whatever assholery they also get up to on the reg. I don’t care if they also eat puppies for dinner. You already have my sympathy here. You need to calm the fuck down for a second to realize that (3) is your best strategy if you’re not willing to move. And if you cannot resist the urge to argue with me about this in all caps, then I wish you all the best.

I would tread very carefully. If she just seems interested but doesn’t cross the line into stalking territory, I would do nothing to confront her about it. If she doesn’t take it well and goes to HR as an unrequited love revenge move, you’ll be sitting in unnecessary hot water. You can do everything right and still lose.

Treat her neutrally. If you can send down the office grapevine how you’re interested in this person outside the office, that’s about as aggressive as I would get. Try and keep a physical distance. Discourage physical contact and avoid situations where you’re alone with her.

At this point in time, let them see what it’s like and if they join, great. If not, no biggie. The fediverse is not depending on user growth like any of the corporate platforms. And it is hindered by people having to learn to be their own algorithm.

Yes, it would be nicer to increase the ranks in certain Lemmies or on Mastodon. But I haven’t felt it’s tumbleweeds in any of my feeds lately - this may be very subjective. And I feel reddit or the Melon are doing a lot of the convincing for us at the same time.

Neighborly disputes will most likely no be solved by this provocation meets counter provocation strategy. I would strongly suggest you deescalate. So he drops his weights loudly, then you play loud music, then he lights a turd in a paper bag on your doormat, and then you … This won’t end well. You still have to live there and all you’re doing is making a bad situation worse. You’re just retaliating because you feel powerless to stop what’s bugging you. And with this sort of dispute statistics are not on your side in terms of success.

Did you ever talk with him directly? Or put a kindly phrased note under the door?

30-60min twice per day - could you not just hide under some headphones for that time?

Get off the internet and find IRL help. Be that family, friends, and/or a mental health professional. The latter is highly recommended though.

There are apps for that but I just stuck with the stock Android app. You deactivate all the Google servers and just stick with the DAV ones.

But then again I rarely do anything with contacts.

I’m not an Apple user so I cannot answer your question there. I just wanted to add another way to get ad-free podcasts. If the podcast offers a patreon feed, any RSS-based podcatcher anywhere will be able to do this.