America had elections in 1944. It has no exception in its Constitution for war.

I had “Ukraine is fucked” as the first thing on my list of outcomes if Trump won the election. Does that count? 😔

Until recently the US supplied a lot of weapons to Ukraine. That did give US official opinion a lot of weight.

Since Trump and his Republican followers have stopped all aid to Ukraine this influence has evaporated. Why would you care about the opinion of someone who has literally just left you to die?

As new technologies arrive they destabilize societies. This can be good (the pill giving women freedom from unwanted pregnancy), bad (distilled alcohol leading to widespread alcoholism), or mixed (the Internet).

There are always people in the upper echelons of society who yearn to be in charge. They seize any chance to take over. Sometimes this requires support from the masses. One way to do this is selling a dream of a better future for all. They may even believe it!

If the power balance shifts there may be a time of genuine progress, but eventually the people with power figure out how to exploit the new system, and everything new is old again.

Like when Trump published the minutes from his “perfect phone call”.

Obama could have pardoned the prisoners and apologized for holding them for many years without trial, in blatant violation of the plain text in the US Constitution.

Am I the only one who was reminded of the opening video in Fallout 2?

https://youtu.be/0_BYycHO_6A

Yeah during Trudeau’s speech the only thing I was thinking when he was listing all of Canada’s resources is, “are you trying to encourage a US invasion?!”

Interesting! I looked it up and the lizardman constant appears to be 4%; not too far from the 6% of Greenlanders in favor of selling their country.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#Lizardman’s_Constant

If you work in a country the US considers friendly then you can deduct some large amount from your foreign salary before you pay taxes to be the US (like $90k or so?). If you make more than that you can deduct the foreign taxes paid from the remainder. Since taxes are higher in most European countries, you don’t end up paying tax twice (Switzerland has lower taxes I think, and maybe others).

Turkey hasn’t wanted to join the EU for decades.

I wish!

你说汉语吗？

Population growth hasn’t been exponential for a while.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File%3AWorld_Population_Prospects.svg

In both the US and China software developers get paid a lot more than an average job. Not so in Europe.

Dutch population started to decline a few years ago it you just look at births and deaths, and discount immigration and emigration.

Let me try again.

People cannot find places to live.

The government decides that is because landlords cannot make enough profit.

So the government tries to remove protections for renters, to benefit renters.

I have no idea what the situation is in Switzerland, but in Holland we had a pro-business, center right government for many years before their neglect of the common people caused so much rot that the far right has taken power and begun trying to smash up everything.

Anyway, their neo-liberal approach was that there must be a market solution to every problem. So, not enough affordable rental properties must mean that landlords don’t want to rent their properties because renters have too good of a deal. So the only possible solution must be to deregulate the rental market as much as possible, including getting rid of renter protections.

Again, I have no idea about the motivations or history in Switzerland, just sharing a perspective from a lower altitude.

If your goal is to act as a deterrent then harsher sentences do not work, at least according to research.

At this point, we think it is fair to say that we know of no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall body of research literature on “deterrence through sentencing” who believes that crime rates will be reduced, through deterrence, by raising the severity of sentences handed down in criminal courts.

https://www.crimsl.utoronto.ca/research-publications/faculty-publications/issues-related-harsh-sentences-and-mandatory-minimum

I mean… if something is illegal but the penalties are low or enforcement nonexistent then it’s more like a recommendation. Fines become a “cost of doing business”.