Watched it for the lolz. Lots of rhetoric aimed at their bases, with very little in the name of actual policy, outside short slogans that got repeated 3 or 4 times over with next to no detail. Each trying to 'gotcha' the other and each tried to miscategorize the other a few times. Each echo chamber will claim their person won, yet as an outsider and non-American with no skin in the game, I would say they both did pretty poorly with both stating a couple of valid comments, but few and far between. A couple of ABC commentators later said the same.
Looking forward to the headlines cheerleading their pre-selected person on Wednesday. Each camp trying to out meme the other. Lastly, weren't the microphones at the debate supposed to be muted when the other was talking? 'Cause they weren't at times. This made the thing funnier. Would have been better with an actual audience. Otherwise, it looked so fake and performative.
""Harris also wrote that she supported taxpayer funding of gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.
Harris was asked if, as president, she would use “executive authority to ensure that transgender and non-binary people who rely on the state for medical care – including those in prison and immigration detention – will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care.”
Harris replied, “Yes.”"
Alien and prison, taxpayer paid surgeries are on the menu, boys. Break in illegally or commit a crime, and your next surgery is free!
On my laptop, I update my bashrc on Excel, in Wine, then export it as a PDF, OCR to .md, Pandoc it to an .Org, and then finally, write it down on paper and re-type it on my phone's Termux's Emacs instance, then TRAMP it to my PC, in the other room.
I use biebian, btw.
Personally, I like it. Usually I will have something playing, music or the like in another tab or will have multiple media tabs, so I will have a small PiP on the bottom right hand side, makes it easier to manipulate on the fly. Alternatively, I will just push the tab with the screen onto the sidebar, since this is what I did before this option became available.
What does not get easier to handle in life? A life worth living.
The US follows the Super Power playbook, which is, they will invent some ridiculous, random, flimsy reason as to why they can allow themselves to break International Law. I mean, what is anyone else going to do? Invade them?
I mean, is not like invading Iraq, Afghanistan, among others, and covertly helping overthrow dozens of democratically elected Heads of State since WWII was like, 100% Legal.
If anything, at least more people see the blatant hypocrisy, now more than ever.
I guess if they are illegals than sure, why not?
Agreed. It makes sense that if you live in the West that you are going to get Western propaganda. What was a bit more surprising was the wall-to-wall level of psy-op grade propaganda coming from the Americans and of some of the other countries, like the Germans.
The reductionist mindset of a multi-layered, regional geopolitical situation was reduced to we, the Americans.NATO = the white-wearing good guys, Russians = bad guys.
I mean, it is not like this has not been done before and from all sides. Yet the level in which any valid criticism of what is essentially an exercise in NATO expansionism, and the repercussions of that push, which ends with the Ukrainians being used a cannon fodder as a way to weaken the Russian military is a prime example of a Machiavellian strategy, in my opinion.
Ukraine will be the one to pay the highest price, just like the Cubans have, in the inverse case, since the Cuban missile crisis. I was looking at a demographic chart of Ukraine and their population has taken a huge blow, either due to deaths or people fleeing the country. Now, who do you think is going to the all the contracts to rebuild everything back up, later on?
Sure, why not? I put sriracha on some the pizzas we get, or make at home.
Some Italians may find this offensive, alas not as offensive as lathering pizza in ketchup.
They are tropes because they literally happened. How many millions died due to famines or ideological persecutions say, Russia, China or Khmer Rouge? Please, provide a number.
Are you going to claim that current China is not a surveillance State, on top of that? With property that can only be owned for 50 years and homeless outside main cities? I mean, I could go on and on, video does exist of this. The point is that I have looked. To say that some of these regimes did not have at least some positives is silly, simply put, the positives in most cases do not outweigh the oppressive, propaganda State negatives.
Dude, I lived in Canada, know people in the Nordics, I know what I am talking about. You are wrong. Saying it is "false" does not cancel reality. Most Canadians enjoy a standard of living higher than 90% of the rest of the world in the aggregate. I lived in a major city and got tired of the cosmopolitan living and moved a small city, I look into a river every morning. I am not rich, albeit a bit lucky.
In general, the Nordics have it better. You should go visit Iceland, albeit it is expensive, but at least you are not going to risk getting robbed as you would in many parts of Mexico or Honduras. Colonialism is a silly claim, all human beings, and most civilizations have done this since the beginning of time, just colonizing each other over resources. You think the while folk invented this? It has been done by all, often brutally. Did you think the Mongols, the British of the Muslims during the early Islamic conquests got where they get through hugs and kisses? Alexander the Great got to India by whispering sweet nothings into the armies they destroyed along the way? Surely. Africa and the Americas were killing each other all the time and had slaves before any white person got there. Who do you think sold black people to the Europeans? Other black people.
My point is that the Nordic countries can afford to have socialized services because they enjoy the protection of USA imperialistic or militaristic hegemony. Never said that was a good thing, nevertheless, that is just the current reality. They do not have to worry about paying for large standing armies because the USA would not allow it. Since it is simply not in their best geopolitical interest. Same reason why Costa Rica or Panama do not need large armies, either.
In a true Communist state, as in like what Stalin wanted and aimed for, there was no room for private enterprise. Mao and current China has their fingers into all so-called private companies. Not really private, really. What if your name is Jack Ma, and are a full blown billionare, and get a bit lippy in the wrong think, you just disappear for 3 months to be, straighten out. So, not sure if that is really "private."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64781986
Cooperatives operating in a capitalistic environment, is very different than one existing under a Marxist or Communistic one. I mean, I cannot believe that this has to be stated. So, no, your answer is as vague as every other communist/marxist/socialist/etc that I have honestly asked, who themselves usually throw all the tropes of some type of communist paradise that has never existed in the form they suggest, while ignoring major aspects of history, the human condition and how said humans actually work and exist because we are all very different people. With different abilities, and qualities and many do not like to play communism or Marxism. I mean, Marxist and more specifically Leninists do know this, otherwise, they would not have invented the underhanded concept of Vanguard parties in order to manipulate the populace in a particular direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism
What is not rocket science is what has been done historically, and of how badly treated and persecuted people who did not want to LARP with their communist-minded citizens or who were found guilty of wrong-think. These stories can be found throughout most of the 20th century in Russia and Eastern Europe and, behind what we would call the iron curtain and China and elsewhere.
I was honestly asking a question, which you could have answered in good faith, rather than coming off defensively as if I had not done my homework. You do not know what I know, so you should perhaps not assume, friend. Keeps conversations better. Would you wager to try again?
I do not know either. But with the recent Google, Anti-Trust ruling, there is a chance the Courts could force Google to break the deal they have with Mozilla in the future. I assume Google will appeal, but if that goes, so does 80-85% of Mozilla's income. Selling Mullvad's VPN is not going to cut it, so maybe they think they can cash in with "AI" somehow. Since you are right, maybe the best VPN's aren't dirt cheap but they are certainly not expensive in most Western countries. Besides, most users do not use VPNs. As of 2023, only about 31-33% of all internet users do.
Fair. should have been more clear. I use Betterfox with my own tweaks, essentially a mix of AK and BF. Since BF is just based off AK. The AK maintainer has stated in the past that he just steals it off him. However and as you said, when jumping to site to site, AK is more likely to break things, which requires a bit more troubleshooting. Which I do not need for work since I know most of the sites I will be on. So outright privacy is not the primary goal there.
I used BF and tweaked upwards, rather than to undo AK settings. It's just less of a hassle.
If I want AK, I use LIbrewolf since it already uses a lot of Arkenfox, along with my own tweaks for personal use, where I take privacy more seriously. Each browser has different uses.
Use more than one.
On PC, my daily driver is Firefox Developer, patched with my CSS along with Betterfox for enhanced privacy over ArkenFox. I am an Admin and run a number of sites, so this helps.
Librewolf as general backup. Mullvad as second backup but I find that I am not the best use case for it, on top that I use different VPN services. It is for non-tech users, is not bad, just not the best tool for me but it is what I will tell people to use when using my PC since the other two have very UI minimal, heavy keyboard-centric setups. Tor for when I need more privacy/testing. Keep a copy of ungoogled Chromiu, mostly vanilla, only uBlock, again for testing and the off-chance fuzzy site but barely ever use it. They all, aside UG, sync bookmarks via Nextcloud instance so I do not need to sign into FF sync.
On Android, Mull, or CookieWeb Preview because the excellent extension management due to their pop-up window. Great for things like uBlock on medium mode, otherwise medium mode on mobile is a pajn to use, on Mull I keep it on Easy mode. Nevertheless, uBlock is a must in today's internet. Tor for when travelling abroad and do not need to sign-on to anything. Keeping extensions to a minimum. Each browser connects to different DNS services to minimise overlap, along rotating VPN servers from non-5 eyes countries as the minimum. Sounds like a lot but once you set it up, it is mostly set-and-forget.
Is there an example in history where this has attempted and implemented as such and not devolved into straight up persecusion, authoritarianism, cult of personally or tens+ of millions dead? And general lower standards of living to most, outside the party or political class like the Politburo? Could not find any. The Nordics and Canada are capitalistic with some social services. They seem to have a good valance but that is only because the USA military protects them out of geopolitical interests.
I am all good with say, limiting wealth of the rich, they can be rich but not stupifyingly rich and some socialised healthcare and the like. Coming from a third world, I have seen that abolishing private property is just oppression with extra steps, overtime. Most 1st world people have no idea of what they are asking and of how it devolves, in practice.
In your mind, how would workers "own" the means of production? Shares? Votes?
You said replacing "capitalism," okay, with what? Other have responded with their take, already. So you do not have to.
Although true. The root is that no super power likes another super power or its proxies on their borders. Russia does not and stated as such for decades. Hell, China literally helps fund the NK government and puts up with it, so it does not have SK, and its American bases on its south border. The USA put an embargo on Cuba for over 60 years because they put Russian weapons 90kms from Florida and Cuba would not capitulate. So much for the Cubans and the USA's hypocrisy to memory hole this fact.
Yet somehow many Americans are so blind to not understand that Russia does not want Ukraine as an USA puppet next to them, which they would be. They see it as a clear and present danger --whether others see it or care, does not matter-- just like how the USA saw Cuba. I think we can all agree that Putin is a despot but to not see and understand of just how obvious Super power Geopolitics works or only see the one side of the issue because it is convinient is quite the statement on USA propaganda and the ongoing push for expanding of the Monroe Doctrine as status quo. Operation Condor comes to mind.
Super powers actually care little about smaller countries if they so not fit or push their specific geopolitical interests. No exceptions. Despite the real loses of human life, to the American government the Russia/Ukraine conflict is a but proxy war meant to weaken Russia for its own geopolitical goals. Some politicians stated as such already, despite the previous humanitarian PR. Calling any of this so-called Russia propanda as a way of side stepping by some, does not make it any less correct. Sadly.
The most annoying thing is that the peace accords back then where known to be derailed by the USA and UK, like it was 100% not a secret, absolutely public knowledge if you actually cared about the actual geopolitical region and were paying attention to what was going on outside general news media. Academics were saying the same as well.
The Western media utterly, and seemingly in conjunction decided to under report this to well, mostly to Americans. So your average Americans were kept in the dark of how instrumental they were in escalating this war. And painted anyone who stated actual reality as merely Putin puppets. The manipulation was strong since it seems to have worked wonders.
I fail to see how the USA and by extension the UK are any different when playing the disinformation and misinformation game. Everyone blames everyone else and claims they do not do any of it.
Nuland is just a war criminal but one that has the approval of the American military and political complex. I trust people have listensed to the leaked phone call from years ago where she cherry picks Ukrainian politicians to exalt into office? Go democracy.
Okay, and replace it with what, exactly?
Although correct, an also pressing question is 'why' they do it? And why most people do not care, or are not aware of this type of thing that has been going for decades?