The good old "Hey! Look over here!" never fails to distract the masses from what really matters.
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In my experience, how many people vote tactically massivelly depends on the voting system and whether it's a presidential system or not.
The kind of utilitarian votes that sees one vote for somebody one does not like is not quite an Americanism because it doesn't happen only in the US (for example, the UK, even though it doesn't have a Presidential system, has a lot of tactical vote because they use First Past The Post for Parliament so each parliamentary seat is like a mini-presidential election where thare can only be one winner), but it's not really common in other countries.
As I said, I was involved in Politics in two countries, including canvassing and leafletting, and from talking to people (as well as observing how my family, friends and party colleagues did their "politics") voting it's far more often an affair of the hearth than of the head, starting by how people chose which politicians to trust given that they all promise nice things to them.
The cold and rational pondering about who to vote is not actually that widespread and many of those who try are still being swayed by emotional factors (for example, via who they chose to trust and how much) and people tend instead to vote on who they like and trust (or dislike and distrust all of them hence refuse to vote).
Further, even the cold and rational pondering is often not that rational because when it comes to such complex subjects with such a high level of uncertainty and misinformation, most of what one choses to believe as informations and one's own most favored forecast, is chosen based on less that scientific proof. (There is so much misinformation, disinformation and outright lying that chosing not to chose - i.e. not to vote - might be the most rational option of all).
What I've learned from decades of trying to go at things in a rational way is that we can never be fully Objective so it's a good idea to be aware of and keep track of the Subjective elements in one's decision making. Sure, it's valid to try, just don't decieve yourself that you have a perfectly logical decision making process and that everybody should be reaching the same conclusions as you.
From were I stand, your idea that you have a valid tactical approach and that it THE superior approach without question is just you misleading yourself about the nature of your information gathering and your thinking processes, hence you passing judgment on others for not going through the same obstacle course you do to end up making a decision which was de facto contaminated by subjective elements such as your choice of what information to trust and what forecasts you judged more likely, is like the blind criticing others for not seeing.
You really are not standing on top the moral high ground you think you're standing on.
Soon Twitter will complete its transition to Nazi Bar of Social Media.
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
Not just me. This is common in other countries. People most definitely do not treat their vote as an endorsement. You can believe me or not or say I am bad, but this is a matter of fact.
Being from an "other" country, having lived in another 3 of said "other" countries, an even having been involved in politics in 2 of them, what you wrote is complete total bullshit.
Plenty of people do indeed have an utilitarian view of their vote, but lots of people, maybe even most, treat their vote as an endorsement.
In fact from my own experience in various countries the utilitarian view is more common in countries with less Democratic voting systems with few actually electable choices, similar to the US (so, for example, Britain) whilst the endorsement view is more common in countries with highly Democratic voting systems with lots of choices (such as The Netherlands, which has Proportional Vote).
I'm sorry but whilst you having an utilitarian posture is perfectly valid, your idea that it's the only valid posture and other people don't have different postures is complete total mindless self-centred bollocks.
Israel is literally a "Nation for Jews" in its constitution were it says roughly that all Jews and only Jews are entitled to Israeli nationality, hence why any Jewish person can just land at Tel-Aviv, ask to get Israeli nationality and get it.
That said, Israel, pretty much uniquelly in the World, separates Citizenship from Nationality and assigns different rights to both, so non-Jews can get Israeli Citizenship but not Israeli Nationality.
Limitations on the rights that people get from having Israeli Citizenship without the Nationality include, for example, limits to where they can live.
Appartheid in Israel is already officially implement, since the very beginning, so even if the Palestinians were given Israeli Citizenship (highly unlikely given Israel's track record on this: for example tens of thousands of Arab residents in Jerusalem have for decades been refused Israeli Citizienship even though they were born there and lived there their whole lives), they would still have less rights than Israeli Jews or in fact any Jew in the world if they came to Israel.
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And for those on the other side of the Atlantic, there are several computer shops that will just put a computed together for you without an OS.
Here's a random example "configure your own computer" from a computer shop in France. In this one the OS (Système d'exploitation) is not included and you have to pay extra for it.
In my experience with custom assemblies like this the OS is never included.
When I live in the UK at some point I've even used of these kind of stores there to get a custom notebook.
It's basically an "assemble your own computer" for people who don't know how to do it and aren't confident enough to try (understandable given that the parts value of a whole desktop PC adds up to at least €1000 so there generally is some fear of fucking it up if you've never done it before).
True, good point on Israel.
Liberal politicians are the ones who are "Relaxed about Genocidal ethno-Fascism", whilst it makes sense that genuine Liberals (so, Liberal out of principle, not merely political followers), would also be against what's going on in Israel if only because killing people is the ultimate reduction of their freedom.
I should have been more clear about meaning Liberal Politicians when I used the word "Liberal".
I don't actually think Identity Politics is Liberal, I think it's something build on top of Liberalism by politicians, in the best cases out of convenience - it's far easier to address certain things by reducing people to identity groups and then fighting for entire groups and/or passing measures that affect all of a group equally and it actually works up to a point - and in the worst cases just as pure hypocrisy and even greed - it makes for simple slogans that politically work well and are easy to sell, brings them votes and if a politician happens to be a member of an identity that person can advance their own personal upsides by claiming measures that benefit them are for the identity group (this by the way, is also how the Far-Right tends to use identity politics, only they use different identities).
That said you're at the very least misreading my words on the whole "oppressed becoming the oppressor" - what I wrote is that all groups contain people who will do bad things when they have the power and no accountability. At no point did I claimed they were oppressed, oppressors or one of them who had become the other, much less part of "THE oppressed" or "THE oppressor".
Sure, sometimes the tables turn and people who are themselves oppressed and members of a group containing mainly oppressed get power and then become themselves oppressors, but that's not related to any identity and it's not even needed that the whole group stops being oppressed, just that individual: it's simply that assholes who are powerless usually risk a lot by acting as assholes, whilst people in positions of power can often act as assholes if they so wish and get away with it, so assholes will do it.
Further, there is no need for those people to be in a grand category called "THE oppressed" or "THE oppressors" - often assholes who behave meekly when faced with somebody with more power will behave as assholes towards those with less power: such double-face is a pretty common dynamic in schoolyard bullies or even company bullies (look to middle and lower level management to find those). Such people are both oppressed and oppressors - in other words, even at this level the trying to tag people as something isn't helpful: both the oppression done to that person in the middle and the oppression that person themself does are wrong and should be stopped, and an "oppressor" tag here just muddles a situation were there are two wrong actions going on and the victim of one happens to be the perpetrator of the other.
Just to add a little bit to it:
"The greatest good for the greatest number", a basic leftwing principle, sometimes collides with "everybody should be free to do what they want with their own things and willing adults", a basic liberal principle, for example when it comes to some people excessivelly hoarding resources or using their ownership of an exclusive resource to extract rents from others, because it goes against the "greatest good for the greatest number" even whilst it is aligned with the whole freedom to do what they want with their own things.
At other times both are perfectly aligned: for example when it comes to the freedom from discrimination for those with a different sexual orientation than the majority, since that freedom both fulfills the "the greatest good" principle and the "freedom to do what they want" one.
Now, if one really digs down on it, maximum freedom turns out to actually require different ownership laws (if exclusive resources have owners rather than being shared, then the freedom of the non-owners is being restricted), but in decades of following and even being involved in politics, I have yet to hear a single Liberal (even those who supposedly are not Neoliberal) even mention that specific form (probably the most widespread and highest impact one) of restriction on the Freedom of most people, much less suggest changing it.
Sometimes a point is well made even if I disagree with it, the conclusion in it or disagree with the path it suggests whilst agreeing with the objectives.
It's like how in Politics in better times (or less adversarial countries) one might respect a political oponent whilst disagreeing with them.
There's also a trait in some cultures were people tend to try and poke holes on other people's ideas and point out the bits they find incorrect, not because they're against it, in disagreement with it or to put down that other person, but to try and help improve that idea even further - in other words, genuine constructive criticism. A downvote isn't constructive, and sometimes people deserve an upvote for trying or for how far they got, even if the end result could be better.
Maybe they're premium ads because the advertisers pay extra for access to a pool of self-selected suckers.
Well, White Supremacy is also the politics of identy, i.e. Identity Politics.
The Racism is the seeing of other human beings as defined above all by the genetics they were born with (i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation), the religious affiliation they got from their parents or the geographical location they were born in and then presuming things about them based on that (which is quite literally Prejudice), it's not in which specific race/gender/sexual-orientation/religion/nationality you see as good/victims or bad/oppressors.
One is not any less Racist when, for example, the race whose people one presumes are "good people" is not White - the Racism is the making presumptions about people based on their race, so the specific races such a prejudiced person thinks are "good" or "bad" are entirelly relevant in determining if the one making presumptions is a Racist or not.
Ultimatelly, all such "identity" groups have good people and bad people, and when they're in a situation with power and no accountability, bad people do bad things independently of their "identity".
This Racism of the modern self-identified Identity Politics practicioners was made painfully obvious by how the Liberals in places like the US and Germany reacted to the Israeli Genocide in Gaza - for years they've been prejudiced about people based on their ethnicity whilst passing that shit as anti-racism because their list of "good ethnicities" and "bad ethnicities" was different from that of the traditional racists, and one of the "good ethnicities" in their worldview was Jews and when it turned out that the self-proclaimed representatives of all Jews - Israel - was led by some trully horrible people who were mass murdering people based on their ethnicity, out came the Liberals in its defense because of the ethnicity it claimed to represent (and often being very overt about how it was all due to ethnicity, such as how Scholz in Germany and Biden in the US very overtly stating their "unwavering support for the Jewish Nation"), and further making their prejudices and racism obvious with the ultra-racist claim that Israel represented the Jewish Religion even when many Jews said it did not, and the even more extreme racist accusations of anti-semitism against those demonstrating against the Israeli Genocide (imagine how extremelly racist you have to be to claim that being against Genocide is being against the Jewish Religion, which logically is the same as saying Genocide is a Jewish thing). These self-proclaimed anti-racists didn't drop their support for Israel as anybody driven by principles would have done based on their actions, they doubled down on it and did it very overtly based solely on the ethnicity that country claims to represent, exactly like all the other Racists act.
This shit is no less Racists than supporting the government of Appartheid South Africa because of them being though of as White.
Anyways, the fairest and real Leftie take on unfairness and suffering is to correct the unfairness and suffering and go at it by descending order of intensity (i.e. start by going after the biggest ones), quite independently of the genetics the victims and perpetrators were born with or the "reasons" why some assholes - the tradition racists - go around inflicting pain on others: the action is that is wrong and must be punished and the hurt and harm to the victimed corrected and grabing the "logic" of the aggressor and twisting it around keeps the agressor's way of thinking alive and hence the unfairness of treatment, and just moves the unfairness around rather than stop it.
I don't think the sensors really matter for a server but the rest makes some sense.
Still, 80 bucks will buy you quite literally a Mini-PC (a really crummy one, granted) which can run more server tasks because it has as much or more memory and storage and isn't hindered by there being an Android OS layer there doing nothing useful, and which is absolutelly and 100% under your control because it boots into your OS of choice.
Half than that will buy you a crummy SBC which probably de facto has as much capability to run server tasks as that Oneplus (it's weaker but doesn't have Android there eating up resources) though in my experience those things tend to be a bit finicky.
I don't think it's actually worth it to spend $80 on an used phone to use as a server (unless you do need UPS-like features or built-in mobile nertwork access) since you quite literally have better options brand new for that money, but if you have one around it can make sense even if it's a bit more work getting it going and is not fully under your control (unless we're talking about something jailbroken where you can install Oxygen or Lineage on, so a Pixel would probably be a better choice).
That said, there is a certain technical elegance in the whole notion of repurposing an Android Phone to be a home server.
I think you're seriously overestimating the technical prowess of the average law enforcement officer...
Except the price, which is much lower for the SBC, way much lower if one uses one of the lower end Orange Pi or Banana Pi SBCs.
Also you can put Linux on the SBCs (which always come unlocked) hence do way more with them as servers than if one has to use Android as the OS.
I mean, I can get it if people with the technical chops, love for technical challenges and an old and pretty much worthless Android phone, configure it as a server if only because "why not?!", but it's not exactly a great option considering that a 40 bucks SBC can do the same, only better, more easily and with far more possibilities (given that it will be running Linux rather than Android).
PS: Actually somebody below mention mobile network connection, which, thinking about it, would be a good reason to use an old Android phone as a server since it has built-in support for 3G (unless it's quite old) whilst the SBC needs it add to it which might be a problem for the cheaper SBCs (just wondering about how I would get around to do it, I think you need to connect a USB dongle to it and it has to be something compatible with Armbian Linux)
I think it would be obvious after 4 decades of Neoliberalism that you can't deregulate your way into prosperity and in fact the very opposite happens: you end up with consumers constantly swindled, widely sold products that cause long term problems like cancer, all manner of systemic problems having grown uncontrollably (most notably Negative Externalities) and lots of markets turned into cartels and monopolies (with prices up, quality down and improvement stopped) - enshitification is the product of deregulation, as is the housing market bubble, the internet access local monopolies in large parts of the US (and associated high prices for shit service compared to the rest of the World) and a lot of other things.
"Small government" is a content-free slogan rather than a solution: absolutely, in some areas there is too much "government" (for example, the oversized military spend), yet in others there is too little (a National Health Service would literally make Healthcare in the US consume half of what it does in GDP terms so "big government" there would actually be the smart solution business-wise). It's a problem of how Government is managed, which is a hard thing to do and solve and were the devil is in the details, not just a simple sounding "solution" of "just make it smaller" that sounds good but solves nothing.
Migration is a complex problem. I think that legal immigrants should be treated as guests because they were literally invited in, but that does not extend to illegal ones.
Immigration (as an economic strategy of a country) can indeed be a problem, especially if it's done too fast and with low integration because whilst immigrants bring themselves as workers, they also bring their needs for products and services and that's more works that needs to be done or in other words, more jobs - so when they arrive they are workers competing for jobs but over time they also cause more jobs to be created because they too are consumers buying products and services which have to be produced by even more workers - whilst the low integration is a problem because of cultural clashes between the immigrants and the locals (maybe more of a problem in Europe than the US) because people coming from different countries don't have the same assumptions as the locals on how on is supposed to behave in certain situations (some being small details and other much bigger) and hence can behave in ways that other see as weird or even anti-social, which in large numbers generates conflict. With time living in a new country an immigrant will adjust to be a lot more like the locals, but if the influx of immigrants is too many in too little time there are too many clashes with those freshly immigrated who haven't learned to behave more like the locals and people in a host country end up feeling that immigrants are unpleasant people , even bad people.
Immigration (the legal kind, approved by Governments) is being used to paper-over flaws in the way a country is being managed (for example, in my own country politicians caused massive house price inflation and other problems, mainly affecting young adults, so the end result is lower birth rates and hence an aging population, which is then made up with immigration, and this is so extreme that in this country literally half of university graduates leave the country and then they're replaced with immigrants with much lower educational levels) plus it's massively good for the wealthy (both because it increases worker competition for jobs when they arrive and because it eventually pushes up the size of the Economy as a whole, and whilst normal people's prosperity relates to the size of the Economy per-capita, the wealthy are the ones taking slices from the whole of the Economy so for them and them only, growing the Economy by adding more people is a gain), so problematic Immigration is really a consequence of problems at a political level (and that includes Corruption) - the country is not being managed for the good of most people and high Immigration is both part of that directly (it makes the Wealthy wealthier) and indirectly because it's used to paper over problems caused by that political mismanagement (like in my country young adults leaving or having fewer children because life is way too expensive for them here and salaries are low, so then immigrants are imported because there is a lack of workers).
Immigrants themselves, however (as I say, the legal kind, hence people like you and me who were invited and changed their whole lives and invested time and effort in the country they came to) shouldn't be treated as the problem - they're just people doing their lives the best they can in a perfectly legit way. Look at the Politicians for the people to blame for Immigration reaching problematic levels.
Anyways, the more general point I'm making is that a lot of the problems you see have been created by very much local people in positions of power doing what's best for themselves and for those who will pay them (and most definitely politicians in the US are Corrupt as fuck), and afterwards scapegoating the problems they themselves caused on something or somebody else and the easiest target there is are the most powerless people in the country (who don't even have a right to vote) - immigrants.
You're participating in the same circle jerk.
You've concluded that Trump is a huge Fascist and a danger beyond all other considerations (but not the Democrats, even though they're giving weapons to an ethno-Fascist regime committing Genocide which is literally "supporting Fascism") and you reached that conclusion from consuming Democrat propaganda in places like Lemmy with no actual use of skepticism, so now you repeat it.
Meanwhile all those people who don't think like you and all the posters whose posts you read here, had very different levels in the like-hate Trump scale, and the like-dislike Democrats one, and the trust-distrust what the Democrats/Republicans say scales, the politically engaged scale, the thinking that my vote makes a difference to my life scale, the what matters to me most in life scale and other such scales in human belief and behaviour that together add up to make them or not go vote and for whom they vote, which in this election also included things like the flexibility or inflexibility of one's principles thanks to the Democrats activelly breaking a really strong set of principle for lots of people when they supported with weapons the commiting of a Genocide in first Gaza and now also Lebanon.
The "incompetence" was the Democrats with their words and actions targetting a point in all those scales that turned off a lot more people that it turned on. The 14 million less Democrat votes make it undeniable that it wasn't Trump that conviced those votes to flip, it was the Democrats that failed at convincing enough people to vote for them, so clearly their words and actions turned off from voting a lot of people.
The "entitlement" is the idea that everybody is equally politically aware as you, trusting about what the Democrats say of Trump as you, fearful of Trump as you, trusting that voting maters as you and so on. I've been a member of two different political parties over the years (in two different countries) and this blindness is incredibly common amongst party members: such strongly politically active and highly tribalist people just don't get it that most of voters don't think like them, not even close and it gets worse when they end up in circle jerks like the one here in Lemmy during the US Presidentials - they basically just strengthen each other's beliefs in that what's right or wrong, what will work or not work to help their side and what people think or don't think, all with no actual proof being involved just the say so of like minded people, a pretty straighforward "groupthink" situation.
(In fact it was my experience with canvassing and leafletting in those two parties and countries that opened my eyes to the reality that in terms of engagement and trust in politics most people are nowhere like you and me.)
Even more "entitlement" is the idea that your values, forecasts and interpretation of the world are the right ones and those of the ones who didn't vote are wrong, then compounded with the idea that others should just do as you think they should and if they don't they're wrong (all of which on display in this meme and all the type of posts here blaming the 14 millions) - this a pretty straightforward "I know best and others should follow my lead", pure entitlement.
The "stupidity" is that the kind of people that have been engaging in this sort of thinking and posture are unable to, now that it has been shown beyond doubt that is complete total bollocks, review their own beliefs, behaviour and ideas in light of it. Instead they just blame everybody else like self-deluded simpletons.
I'm truly, totally, completely shocked ... that Windows is still being used on the server side.
It's curious that the "terrorists" are actually targetting military targets whilst the military are killing civilians.