The old Top Gear with Clarkson, Hammond, and May. I feel weird watching it because Clarkson especially has become such an insufferable reactionary, and old shows really go hard on climate change skepticism. But when it’s at it’s best, I find watch three friends having a fun trip together to be very relaxing.
I certainly don’t disagree, but I think it’s very useful to highlight how this has changed (IMO) in recent decades. I think there was a time when the boomer generation was earning relatively good incomes that allowed them to live comfortably and accumulate wealth (mainly in houses and the stock market). I think this arrangement between capital and the (predominantly white) working class created a situation where even those workers without much wealth could be “bought off” and swear allegiance to capitalism. This wasn’t sustainable of course, as the postwar industrial boom and then the gains from neoliberalism were never sustainable. Couple that with the fall of the Eastern Bloc and with it the “threat of a good example”, and I would say that this arrangement lasted as late as the GFC at most. I think this helps explain how older people today - even if they are solidly working class - might still be hostile to anything they think is “socialism” while younger generations do not share those opinions, it seems.
I was reading Michael Roberts’ blog the other day, and he pointed out something similar. The official calculations for inflation significantly understate it for various reasons. However, if you look at actual labor hours needed to cover the essentials of life, and you use the median income amount from 1950 (for the US), then that number comes out about $102k per year. Said another way, for a standard of living based on real life, to have the standard of the median American in 1950, you would need to earn over $100k today. But if you take that 1950 median income and just adjust it for official inflation, you only get to like $42k.
I think this is often the case with Trump. However, when this does happen, at some point along the way there’s usually hints dropped about what kind of “deal” could be made (like agreeing to buy a bunch of US military equipment). But with Greenland, there has been no indication at all that Trump is interested in budging from full ownership of the island.
“Sadness is a weapon of bourgeoisie” -Iosef Lilianovich Dros
Thanks - I’ve seen Winboat mentioned several times in the comments, I’m going to try that first.
All Cuba has ever wanted, for decades, is for the US leave it alone and be allowed to trade with the rest of the world. Cuba has no means to fight back, so of course Trump and Rubio will pick on them.
This is Rubio, I think. Toppling Cuba has been his #1 goal his entire political career.
There really are little to no economic concessions Cuba can make, given the status of the blockade on the country. If the “deal” was just to let Trump build his own hotels on the island or something, Cuba might even accept that. Given this and who is in Trump’s cabinet, I think it’s reasonable to assume the only “deal” on the table is to accept being governed as US colony with Rubio as the viceroy.
As brutal as cutting off oil from Venezuela will be, the Cuban people got through the Special Period, I think they will survive Trump.
I haven’t heard of WinBoat before, I will check that out thank you.
It’s been a few years since I tried making my Zune work on Linux, I should give it another try, thanks.
It really is a great little device. I believe there has to be a market out there for a Linux device similar to it, something just for music / radio / podcasts.
The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.
Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.
Because once the news broke of the Ellisons buying US TikTok (and their transparent reasons for doing so), it became clear to me that for the free and open internet, “winter is coming”.
Oct 7th and the global outpouring of support for Palestinians (and trashing of the reputation of Israel) was a huge wake-up call to the ruling classes. I think until then, they were largely content with controlling the narratives via traditional media spaces. The aftermath of Oct 7 taught them that social media and the internet cannot be ignored and in fact must controlled. It’s not like anyone under 65 is watching Fox News or CNN, and not many reading the NYT. All of the actions we have seen in the last 2 years - making sure Facebook / Google / Twitter / Reddit and now TikTok have tightly controlled messaging, requiring IDs and verification, etc - are pointing towards a future where free expression online is severely limited. I don’t want to be a part of that.
And I do believe that it’s important to get out there and discuss things that are important to me with others (Palestinian and indigenous liberation, communism, online privacy). I’m not happy to just retreat into my own bubble. That is ultimately the reason I joined (I was of course already included to using the fediverse as I’ve long appreciated FOSS and decentralized systems and non-commercialized things in general).
It should be possible for a people to say “We would like our autonomy” and expect other nations to say in response, “Understood, and we will ally with you to defend such a notion.”
It should. But then again, the people of Gaza wanted to not be genocided and the world stood by and let it happen. While I fully agree with your sentiment, the specifics of the world right now might require a less than ideal approach.
Europe should say that, of course. But their weak talk so far suggests they probably won’t defend Greenlanders even if they are a part of Denmark; and if so if Greenland were independent at the moment there’s no reason to think that would somehow give them more of a spine.
I understand and agree with the sentiment that Greenland is a colonized place that should be independent. I also understand that telling colonized people “not right now” and “it’s too dangerous” are the lines the colonizers always use. But that might actually be the case in this moment. The reality is that the US/Israel axis is acting as if the world is theirs. It feels like we really are in 1939, only the US/Israel axis has far more relative power than the Germany/Italy axis ever did.
They know just how bad it will look and how unpopular it will be if they just take Greenland by force. They’re trying to convince the Danes to sell it under duress to give it a veneer of legitimacy.
“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote in a rambling post flagged by Windows Central, arguing that humanity needs to learn to accept AI as the “new equilibrium” of human nature.
I’m starting to notice a recent trend in tech CEOs. They seem to be saying “yes, we know you hate it but too bad get used to it”.
For countries like Spain, Portugal, Ireland, et al… what’s the motivation to remain in NATO in the first place? I know it’s a joke to call it a purely “defensive” alliance but those countries do not face a credible military threat from anyone. Meanwhile they are rules falling into place that will require members to really pay up and increase military budgets at the expense of social programs.
The DPRK is showing that, despite global condemnation, they were 1,000% correct to pursue a nuclear programme.
Not a major point, but when an employee wants to resign they are saying that they want their PTO paid out, as they are entitled to under law or contract. That’s what those former employees were saying. Bondi is saying she fired them, but she will still have to pay out that PTO all the same.