Could not agree more. I’m a democratic socialist. I firmly believe that the ideas of that ideology, properly implemented, can drastically improve the standard of living for a huge percentage of the population.

I live in a country where our democratic socialist party is fantastically corrupt, lazy and completely bereft of any motivation to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. Consequently, I don’t support them. Results over ideology is an important mantra no matter what you believe.

Europe is primarily white people

Hah, that’s telling. Just FYI, there’s been generations upon generations of racism and ethnic hatred here in Eastern Europe. I guess we have the advanced racists: the ones who don’t hate you for your skin colour, but who your parents were, religion and primary language.

I’ll bet that if your dad grew up here in Romania, he’d be complaining about those sneaky Szeklers trying to steal Transylvania and Roma people being subhuman.

Also, he seems the type to pine for Europe because “We’re all Christian!”. Trust me, you haven’t seen “Christian love” like state religions persecuting people of the wrong sect. Orthodox Christianity is the state religion here, and Protestants of all stripes get treated like heathens.

Best of luck. Whatever else happens, I hope you manage to make it through to the other side.

Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.

In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.

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 too saw Jimmy Carter. Him and his secret service detail had formed a heist crew called the “Cartwheelers”. I know because they hired me to be the getaway driver, which was interesting because I don’t have a driving license. They went to the bank with Jimmy Carter face masks to throw everyone off the scent, the ultimate double bluff.

The cashier, told to fill the bag with non-sequential bills at gunpoint, said “Mr. President? You sound an awful lot like Mr. Carter”, to which he replied “I told you to fill the bag, not speculate on who I might be!”, then pistol-whipped her. Anyways, long story short, we made it out of there ok. He left his calling card just outside the bank: a single peanut.

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.

And then the rest of society has to pay for the healthcare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to subsidize or completely pay for the healthcare of those less fortunate than me via taxation, but that necessarily has to be combined with a protectionist attitude towards food standards to keep costs manageable.

Also, if you get up at 11, you could just go get lunch.

In Romania, CFR makes DB look like the most competent shining lights of progress by comparison.

Track that hasn’t been properly maintained since the fall of communism (and we keep lowering max speeds because of it). Rolling stock consisting of hand-me-downs. Constant engine breakdowns.

And the worst part? Due to political shenanigans finding inventive new ways to siphon money out of the company, it’s still managed to find a way to go bankrupt again, meaning another government bailout.

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.

One of the 3 closest EU major international airports. Other 2 are in Greece and Bulgaria. Not sure exactly why Romania and not Greece or Bulgaria, but it is a logical choice.

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.