“As for coffee, tea, and chocolate, I know no good they do.” King Charles
Not the current one, a it was a long dead earlier King Charles who was quite convinced that coffee, tea, and chocolate were leading to moral downfall of England.
You might get overwhelmed by all the trolls. Don’t get discouraged. We also have @Chomsky on Nostr! And @TheConversationUS, @ZNet , and other progressive media outlets.
I’m excited about the group Audio / Video calls with signal. We need more easy to use end to end encrypted communication tools.
nostr:nevent1qqsrz0aq6umhzxdhdusxajmpzf3xjdeuppxe5r3jllyj4haheanuukqpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qy28wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hsygzz5svh33gukqrftgvdumyh2jusugyd6vwjs508c6gsfzvurt4q8chllhmq
So who wants to take bets about Elon’s X buying Truth Social? It’d be the ultimate way to buy the presidency. It’s a waste of several billion but Elon will get it back through government support of his businesses.
My sister and her wife asked about moving from Arizona to Uruguay because reasons. I went to look up the expat forums and they’re full of families with trans kids who have moved from the US or are considering it.
The fear is that progressive states won't be able to keep people safe with a Trump lead trifecta in DC.
More I was surprised to see post after post of parents of trans kids talking about relocating to Uruguay.
I think it’s people looking for a place with a lower cost of living (lower than the Netherlands, but not necessarily cheap) and easy visa processes. Uruguay is very socially progressive and inclusive. In particular, when they passed trans laws in 2018 and 2019, they made them proactive not only in bringing about equality but also in addressing past systemic harms against trans people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Uruguay
@Low Information Voter that map is interesting. But it also kind of answers your question. Uruguay’s quite close to the US. The Asian countries are more different when it comes to culture and values.
@Connie
Chile es más parecido a Estados Unidos, pero culturalmente más conservador que EE.UU. Uruguay es como un país europeo ubicado en Sudamérica.
Paraguay es otro mundo; primero, la mayoría de la gente habla guaraní o la lengua yopará, que es una mezcla entre español y guaraní. El estado usa español, pero la gente habla guaraní y yopará.
Hablo bien castellano rioplatense y no puedo entender a los paraguayos. Además de esto, es un país súper pobre que ha sufrido mucho.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jopara
And strong banking secrecy laws and bearer share corporations. It used to have stronger financial privacy protections but the US and IMF kept pressuring the government to remove those rules.
And drugs, abortion, and guns are legal. The latter is regulated.
Oh and if you work in tech and your income is from overseas you don’t pay taxes. The idea is you’re bringing money in to the economy in a clean way.
I’m not a fan of the term expat and rather just call everyone who moves to live in another country an immigrant. People immigrate for many reasons and it’s pretty hard to learn to live in a new country, culture, and often language.
Primal uses strike.me as a custodial wallet. Meaning they old the money and have to comply with US banking and money transfer laws. You could use a wallet which is non-custodial and it’ll work. Unfortunately it’s harder to setup. Maybe @calle 👁️⚡👁️ could help you figure out cashu for a nostr wallet.
Elon did such a bang up job when taking over Twitter, I’m sure he’ll do great with those exact same methods and people with the US Government.
https://archive.is/MLxVu
Twitter was taken private, no I don’t own any shares any more.
The thing is Trump said he’d do a lot of things in his first administration and mostly it was talk without being able to follow through.
Elon is also super impulsive and made a ton of terrible decisions in the way he took over Twitter. Him doing that on the scale of the US government is terrifying
The US government is actually on the smaller end of things in comparison with to other countries. Sure places like India and Afghanistan have smaller governments but they also have a lot of dysfunction.
Country Government Spending (% of GDP)
France 57.0%
Finland 55.6%
Italy 53.8%
Belgium 53.3%
Austria 52.7%
Greece 50.5%
Germany 48.4%
Spain 45.4%
United Kingdom 44.5%
United States 34.4%
Australia 26.8%
Ireland 22.7%
India 14.9%
Source: Trading Economics, Government Spending to GDP by Country
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spending-to-gdp
Are you saying there is some cost of government employees and contractors that’s not accounted for in the government budget? There are parts of the US government that make revenue from state owned businesses like Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley, and the Alaska oil field licensing. Others that could operate at a profit but choose to run a loss in order to subsidize parts of the economy like the national forest service which makes paper and lumber cheaper for housing and industry.
My point is that the government budget + debt sold pretty much does account for the fully encumbered cost of employees and materials. Some governments occupy about 15% of the economy, some do 50%. The US government spending is on the lower end of wealthy countries.
Does the US government spend its money well? Doesn’t seem like it, $900 billion a year on the military is just under half of all money spend on militaries by all governments. And the US is particularly bad at government contracting for infrastructure, spending much more than Asian and European countries for the same work. I just don’t see any politician wanting to reform that because the money goes to contractors who then fund the elections of those politicians.
The reaction to Trump winning this time is so different than last time. Instead of being inspired to organize resistance there’s dispare and fear.
Maybe once Trump’s project 2025 starts to be implemented people will get organized. Maybe Trump will succeed in remaking America in the image of Orban’s Hungary.
https://archive.is/Orybg
While the countries are quite different, the political projects of Orban and Trump have lots of parallels. Their two parties have had many connections and talk often about their common cause. Like or dislike Trump, if you want to know with this new consolidated power, look to Hungary. Orban was able to transform his country and consolidate power, in ways Trump admires.
https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-orbanisation-of-america-hungarys-lessons-for-donald-trump/
I think the US constitution was a reactionary authoritarian document which was written 10 years after the American revolution. The document was the end of American democracy and the founding of the American republic. After the federalists consolidated power there were generations of activists who opened up the republic to some democratic governance over the last couple of centuries.
The Declaration of Independence happened a full decade before the US constitution. The latter represented a major setback. Restoring the American government to the original constitution is something many people want but they shouldn’t call that democracy. It’s a republic governed by a few wealthy men.
I don’t know if she thought she’d lose but I think she didn’t spend the money or campaign in the way which worked. Mostly the money went to ineffective ads and democrat party consultants. As a progressive I see this as a colossal defeat of the Democratic Party and failure to beat a deeply flawed candidate. I’m not sure the party survives this.
The parties have changed a few times in the past. And about 90 years ago the ideology of the Democrats and Republicans flipped.
Look at this. The coalitions have shifted a lot.
https://i.nostr.build/wnuj3rHA4krBCJvk.jpg
We have free public toilets across New Zealand. Part is we don’t have the homeless problem as the US has. The other counter to this narrative is that there are lots of pay public toilets in the US, I know Portland and San Francisco have paid public toilets today.
Syncing directly between clients where they have a local relay gives nostr the offline peer to peer functionality that exists in secure Scuttlebutt. That’s a big feature when it comes to true censorship resistance.
I’ve always wondered why the TBD web 5 project never connected more with Nostr. It seems like there’s some good interesting stuff there but I could never tell if anyone used it or if it got any developer traction.
We use it for content warnings. And Apple requires it for any app in its AppStore.
I agree it’s more useful for relay operators. I’m also less sure of the value of a content warning after having done some research in to them.
The 1984 events tend to piss off a lot of people, so they’re not having the intended effect of making the Nostr experience healthier.
I’m not opposed to algorithms if the user has agency over them with transparency. A chronological feed based on who you follow is an algorithm after all.
Look, Trump got 2 million less votes than 2020. The problem was that Harris got 14 million less votes than Biden. Democrats lost because they failed to inspire and turn out their voters. Not because more people supported Trump this time than last.
Trump did his thing. But this was a failure of the Democratic party to do what it needs to do to win elections. You’ve got to run for something that can inspire people, not just against the other guy.
Off the top of my head the only policy I remember Harris advocating for that was unique was a $25k subsidy for first time homebuyers. That wouldn’t do a damned thing to make housing more affordable. Oh and she’ll continue to fund the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Trump promised all sorts of crazy things like mass deportation, tariffs, no taxes on tips, and stopping imaginary in school trans surgeries. Doesn’t matter that the deportations are cruel, the tariffs and exemptions for tips are bad economic ideas and kids aren’t getting gender affirming care in schools. Hell, even project 2025 shows there’s a ton of proactive policies. Not good ones or ones i want, but lots exist.
I supported Harris and followed the election but can’t think of what she’d do if elected differently than Biden. She failed to get people to vote for her. That’s the long and short of it.
Yeah i think the assassination attempts were violent crazy guys and not something Trump would have risked. And yes he seemed particularly incoherent in the last few weeks of the race. And yet he still won easily. I’d bet he doesn’t live the full four years, he’s old.
@Mike Dilger yeah I mostly saw clips so I fully admit that I was likely seeing a distorted view.
Trump is clearly very good at campaigning and the media. I don’t like him or his politics but he’s incredibly effective. It works for winning elections.
I mean we both voted in NZ where we live. I voted for the Green Party, my guess is you voted National or ACT…. Neither are Democrats or Republicans. ;)
When Trump got elected the first time I started preparing and eventually moved to New Zealand. Only after I moved did my child come out as trans and we found a country with a tremendous support system for us. Better to prepared and not need it than the other way around.
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