infuziSporg [e/em/eir]

Good question.

If the one party is founded and sustained by people who are sworn enemies of said corporate interests, there ensues an existential power struggle between the party and the corporations (foreign, domestic, or most often both), that typically ends up reaching beyond the borders of the country in question.

If the one party quickly becomes captured by foreign interests, chances are the party was founded with that intention.

Apply this lens to the last 107-119 years of history, and most of it will become much clearer.

So who watches the watchers? In a way we all do. But instead of this being a mere idealistic aphorism, there are mechanisms in place to ensure it. We enculturate people to value equality and not valorize themselves above others, we minimize the potential benefits of corruption and keep the punishments consistent, we ensure that the watcher is not a lifelong position, we ensure that watchers do not become a separate class, we subject the watchers to oversight and approval of those who are watched, and we set up the processes so that they only function when people are working together.

This is so much more extensive than the asymmetric and byzantine setup that passes for “checks and balances” in liberal democracies. Is it still possible for things to go awry as a few bad actors try to bend the framework to favor themselves? Yes, absolutely. And that is a challenge to the people setting up the framework, to keep the wrong people out initially and to make it strong enough that it can keep its integrity once the founders are gone.

Employers hiring for 40 hours a week (empty line)

Employers hiring for 35.9 hours a week (crowded queue)

This is only a few paragraphs in; on a larger screen you don’t even have to scroll.

This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices.

What is so objectionable about that, or so hard about copying it?

Being required to read something for less than 60 seconds isn’t a violation of your rights- in fact, this is less than 1% of the time a EULA or ToS takes. It also takes less time and bandwidth than many of the AI-training Captchas nowadays.

If you have a problem with reading 30 seconds of something you have a feeling you might disagree with, the real problem is you not being willing to peek outside your bubble.

I’m not sure that fitting Earthlike habitats in giant spaceships would make sense without limitless exponential growth. Wouldn’t it be more feasible to put something on the surface of a planet?

No matter how advanced our technology gets, we are not going to get around the basic constraints on energy.

you really can’t make this sort of assumption

That was the original point about gendered language but you seem to have flipped it on its head.

As soon as I realized that it was similar to the Costa Rican flag but with 1 inversion, and switching the vowels of the latter out yielded “Cis”, I had to make the pun.

If it’s an ambiguous name you might have to check. Fortunately, Edie is an unambiguously female name, and the clear majority of binary trans people pick clearly gender-coded names.

What did you think it was… the flag of Cista Roca?

I am tickled by this and fully support your TIL process.

Source: The clouds.

You’re thinking of bigotry. White people don’t experience systematically unfavorable outcomes from the perception of their skin color.

The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Never had that problem, maybe because I have the thigh-gap body type.

If you like doing your job and going home

You enjoy your employment and you even enjoy your commute. Then what’s the problem? Are your coworkers having an even better time at work than you are? I don’t understand.

hits the bottom with a D

Oui… hon hon hon… OUI!

Missed opportunity to make a President Birden acc tbh

We had a user who would uncritically support Russia and Operation Z. A “Z poster”, if you will. They were banned on several accounts and no one really missed them.

Some of us tepidly support the CPRF, which is largely controlled opposition. We recognize that counting since 2014, there’s a lot of propaganda, civilian strikes, and land mines coming from both sides. Most of us favor an immediate armistice along the present LOC that follows pretty closely a “dividing line” for the plurality ethnicity as evidenced by the past 30 years of linguistic, electoral, and poling data. And we favor quick peace as opposed to continued hostility that likely will go nowhere.

It sucks that Ukraine’s self-determination is being jeopardized by Russia. It sucks that Luhansk’s self-determination is being jeopardized by Ukraine. It sucks that there’s a geopolitical standoff between the two strongest military powers that overlays this. It sucks that the only imaginable ruling party in Russia is a reactionary capitalist one that was ushered in by Clinton’s intervention. And it sucks that they’re all probably just going to die in a field to resolve it, and make the situation in Bosnia look like a vacation resort in comparison.

There is a silver lining in that we are seeing a great power struggle to subjugate its neighbor, and also in that the wearing down of NATO and Russia allows the less belligerent, more progressive, emerging superpower to have more sway in the world. Some might say that makes it “worth it” but I certainly don’t.