You don’t think it’s that too big a chunk of US voters are backwards misogynists? Wish I didn’t, but I do. I’m not going to get my hopes up a third time.

I honestly don’t think it matters how great or not she is. I just don’t think America will vote for a woman yet. They prefer a rapist fashist narcissist.

Yer, Brexit is our Trump. It hurt us badly and continues to hurt us. We have a more grown up party in power now, but they dare not question Brexit as the popularists will jump on them if they do.

See from here in the UK, both women seams good enough and miles better than Trump. I think it says a lot about the US that both times they choose Trump over these clearly competent woman. The US just isn’t as socially progressive as Democratic leadership seam to think. I agree there was more than just misogynism going on, but it seams like it was a solid chunk of it.

She looks great, but is it worth risking more MAGA on America voting for a woman? A third time? They think they were radical voting for “the black man”. Voting a woman seams beyond America even if the other choice is Trump or not voting. God know what the state the world is going to be in by the time another US election is due, let alone if it’s allowed to happen and be remotely free and fair.

It certainly feels like that, but “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

It rules!

If you shirk responsibilities that come with power, you lose that power.

If you abuse trust put in you, you lose that trust.

America is screwing itself.

Confirmed. No boom : https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/

Pretty sure there are professional right wing trolls flooding and popular social media. MAGA backed, Russian backed, etc

Amazon? They probably want Waterstone to.

To be honest, I don’t see them allowing a vote to go against them. It is if this shit can hold together without Trump. He’s old and doesn’t do diet or exercise. He’s the linchpin of it.

The thing that my stomach drop is the crowd cheered. Not a shocked intake of breath or booing. They cheered. He did a sieg heil and they cheered it. If you cheer a Nazi doing Nazi things, you’re also a Nazi. The US has a Nazi infestation. Even if they get another remotely fair election to correct this, it won’t be accepted, again, and insurrection2 will have been prepared for, for 5 years. I feel that sieg heil of the richest person on earth marked the end of American democracy.

It’s vendor lockin. Office file formats are not properly open. There is a “temporary” closed bit that they promised to open to get through ISO, but then never did. The whole ISO thing was a massive exercise in corruption. Let alone the fact the reference implementation is closed. Shame Groklaw isn’t as easy to search and link now.

The problem is that level of wealth should not be in anyone’s hand. Elon is demonstrating why, but Elon shouldn’t have been allowed to get into this position.

Pure is a nonsense absolutely.

I’d remove the monarchy, but right now it isn’t doing any harm. When it does, it will be removed from the system. That tension, that “sword of damocles”, the monarchy is very aware of and it keeps them in check. No one should be born into positions and I have no time for royals complaining of their gilded cage. At some point the UK will restructure I"m sure (federate and decentralise) and each time wil reduce the monarchy position.

I said “arguably the press was a bit too free”. That is not saying I think it is. Only that I see a case for the argument it is. Out of that and a totally state controlled press, free is better. Things fester in darkness. Unaccountable power corrupts. Fact free needs more consequences, but that isn’t the same as choking freedom.

Money drives China just as much. That’s OK. Money is just an expression of value we are prepared to exchange. It’s an intermediate used between goods. An abstraction. Even if we ever get to post scarcity, it will be with us.

Taiwan does want China. It can see what happened to Hong Kong. We all can. If China wants it, it will have to take it by force. Just like Russia is trying to with Ukraine.

Their wealth is going to end up with a lot of “stranded assets”.

So we agree countries are really a shades of grey. Personally, I would move more infrastructure to state ownership in the UK. Other countries it is up to them, though the US private health is clearly an epic murderous fail. As long as the setup doesn’t make trade unfair and start tariff problems.

In the UK monarchy is symbolic. They can’t take sides on anything officially. If they did, it would be a scandal. Most democracies with a monarchy are similar or have them not even symbolically part of the system. Their power is purely adversely and in networking.

Based on rumour and the queens dresses at the time, and family history, it is widely thought the queen did not want Brexit. But it happened anyway. It brought down the PM of the time as well. In fact it was the start of a series of short lived PMs. Mainly because Brexit is a batshit idea and the promises made are incompatible with each other and reality! Arguably the press was a bit too free. Free from fact. All suboptimal, but doesn’t back you ruling Bourgeoisie angle. I’m pretty sure we be back in the EU one day anyway due to demographics and economic realities.

I say again, it can only up to the people of Taiwan if they are assimilated into China. If they vote for it, (I recommended a 66+% super majority to avoid Brexit 52% nonsense) I’d have no issue. If they don’t and are just invaded, I have a big issue with it. Like I do with Russia invading Ukraine and Israel’s genocide.

The trueth is all the countries you are calling capitalist because are probably all mixed economies. With a lot owned by the state. Here in the UK that includes our health service, education system, roads, the electricity grid, and more. Rail is being renationalised and water probably will have to be too as its privatisation (by the Conservatives in the 80s) has been an epic fail. The key difference is these countries can peacefully kick out the government and the government is answerable to laws. Laws it sets. We recently had a PM brought down for breaking his own Covid laws. We have free press holding governments to account. All kind of freedom of information and transparency.

China started out more communist than if is now. More like the USSR.

Taiwan is mixed economy like western democracies, and doesn’t want to be like China. Which is why China is having to talk about inflicting it by force.

BSD and other permissively licenced code is used a load in games. PS4-PS5 are FreeBSD based I think. GCC is often the compiler used for these platforms. Though maybe Clang + LVM now. So loads of FOSS is used, but these is little community participation. That what non-copyleft allows. Maybe it’s better now. I left games over 12 years ago now and not really following.