No! Who will control the Congo then…

The one kid smashed a kid’s face into a toilet till it broke, toilet and kid’s face, and news crew came filming where we found out almost all our classes are made out of asbestos, late 2000s

So disappointed that no meteorologist said: “a meteor probably”.

Well I was not even focused on the USA in my reasoning of why in Mexico it is a bad thing to extend the democratic process to the election judicial branch of government or generally every decision to the public.

The USA has issues in their democratic elections, gerrymandering in certain states being one, the electoral college giving most or all the electoral votes to the winner and not a portion in relation to votes, propaganda being openly discussed on “entertainment” news channels. Then there is even lobbying that is allowed, politicians being able to buy and sell stock based on insider information, paid speaking events.

And the ruling by elites will in any system be an issue, even oppression by the majority can be an issue, that is usually why you have a good constitution, that lays the foundation of how government should work, the different spheres and how it should protect the most vulnerable in society. It has mechanisms to protect against an interest group gaining power to basically twist the system to their will and finally the last resort is the democratic vote of the people to ensure accountability.

After these mechanisms have failed there is no pretty answer on how to easily get back to a fair system. In my country South Africa, where we had a system that disenfranchised the majority of the population, I am glad that we had a bloodless coup d’etat and now we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but even that wasn’t enough again from a connected small majority from almost ruling the country. Luckily in our last election, in the first time in 30 years the ruling party lost their majority and now we have a 10+ party coalition ruling majority government, and in my opinion things are going good, but we know how fragile our democracy is and try to be as engaged as citizens can be.

Agree, but there are many flavours of it. For example we began the discussion on how Mexico extended their democracy to now include the judicial branch of government, others can be how they vote, for example electoral college in USA, ranked choice voting in some European countries like France or my country, South Africa, we have proportional representation and cannot even vote for our president

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these “healthy” foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.

Well it’s too far for Netanyahu to turn around now. He is being rewarded politically and I feel like he has already put all his chips into the destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, no matter the collateral. The sad truth is that October the 7th basically was a golden ticket for Netanyahu politically.

Well America and the EU are probably Ukraine’s biggest backers, economically and military aid wise. Thus we have a proxy war again and it is East vs West.

As a dog person I see cats as being apathetic towards their owners. Oh you arrived from work or a 3 month holiday, well I do not really care.

Where my dogs in my mind, which is based entirely on my feelings, will take a bullet for me if they could.

I love Mint 22 so far, it really has matured where my home computer is running Mint is more stable than my work computer running Windows 11, luckily my company uses CrowdStrike so nothing to worry there.

But really I now recommend Mint to my non tech savvy friends and family, as a person who uses Linux should! But joking aside took my sister’s old laptop running Windows 7, slapped a SSD and upped the ram to 8 GB into it with Mint and she has been happy

Oh I have seen many photos of faces. Best one still is an MTV show just the tattoo of us where friends can choose what and where to tattoo on each other, there was a guy that got the full Trump portrait on his ass, and he loved it

Yeah, I feel that it is fake, but also I know how stupid and irrational a human can be, so I know there is a chance this is real

As a South African, I was unaware of this marvelous train. I really hope change happens so that such a train is not necessary in the future.

But for now and the foreseeable future may this amazing initiative have a wonderful future

You mean returning to historically Finish borders, or whatever revisionist reasoning Russia used in 2022

We will finally be able to tell, for the most part, who vaccinated and who didn’t based on their appearance of scar tissue

Sometimes the oppressed becomes the oppressors, take us whites in South Africa, after being put in concentration camps in the Anglo Boer war, which Nazis took inspiration from, became oppressors afterwards to protect Afrikaner interest. Now we realise the injustice of perpetuating injustices. Israel and Palestine really remind me of being oppressed, claiming to protect your people afterwards but letting other people suffer and becoming an oppressor.