Actually, "right wing government gets elected and gets a huge omnibus bill passed that the parliament didn't even read" has been a worldwide trend for some years now. Closest example that comes to mind is probably Argentina, which managed to pass its own controversial right-wing omnibus bill in June last year [0]
Who would you say was the conscience of the Republican party in 2012? What were they arguing for? Serious question, not American, follow their politics from afar.
I'd argue that republicans lost their conscience with Nixon. It doubly got worse with Reagan.
Democrats lost their conscience with Clinton.
The last republican president with a clear conscience was probably Bush Sr. He was also crucified for it (hence the single term). He foolishly let reason about running a government get in the way of party bluster and that ended his career.
Carter was the last democrat president with a conscience and he also was lambasted for it.
Unfortunately in the US, principles and conscience haven't resulted in party success in the last 50 years.
McCain is probably who a lot of people would name. I disagreed with him about a lot of policy specifics, but do think he was genuine in wanting to do right by voters and the nation.
> If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.
This is a very Hollywood action film way of seeing the world. In the case of an American civil war, it's unlikely that it will be fought using nuclear weapons, and in that case, it's unlikely that they would use any on say, Chile, or Australia.
That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.
If you live in Chile, the main danger is not that the U.S. drops a nuke on you. It's that Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India, which then can no longer export rice to Saudi Arabia, where revolt breaks out, which cuts off the flow of oil, which makes Chile's economy grind to a halt.
> That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.
So it’s not the Hollywood action movie view of the world. It’s just the standard 2005 version of Pax Americana make-believe.
Meanwhile Israel has attacked Iran and its US ally said “we want to do that too”.
> Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India
India is also a nuclear state, so this is pretty unlikely unless the wheels really come off the deterrence strategy. North Korea attacking South Korea perhaps, but even that seems unlikely as it would greatly anger NK's closest ally of China.
In my experience with Linux desktop, this could be "have the touchpad work the same as it did on Windows", "plug in an extra monitor and have it behave somewhat normally", or "play this game". But yeah, I guess that as long as we only expect "average users" to only use a web browser to look at Youtube, it's fine.
> have the touchpad work the same as it did on Windows", "plug in an extra monitor and have it behave somewhat normally", or "play this game".
I have no idea how touchpads behave on Windows, but in, say, Gnome or KDE, you can adjust it through the GUI. Extra monitors work fine on Gnome. Steam works fine in general, across distros.
GNOME and KDE both have the same touchpad gestures as Windows 10/11, and the monitor extension logic is basically identical too (GNOME even has a Win+P accelerator). Game variety hasn't really been an issue since the Steam Deck came out, with apologies to League of Legends addicts that probably ought to move on with their lives anyways.
Like, I understand that my MRI operator can't just install Linux on their PC. But the majority of people are usually not dependent on Windows-exclusive software, especially in the smartphone era.
Everytime I tried touchpad on windows laptops I disered it worked as well as in Linux.
I know things have improved a bit after 10, but I used to say that it is easy to see who is using windows because they always brought their mice with their laptops.
I had to settle for a phone with no headphone jack. I thought it can't be that bad, I got a usbc adapter. It's a strictly worse experience:
- It disconnects easily
- It's much more uncomfortable to keep in the pocket with it plugged on, since it's longer
- I feel like I'm stressing the usbc port much more
- I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)
- If I don't have the adapter on me, I can't plug my phone in some music system that doesn't have bt. This has bit me in the ass twice already in four months.
- The adapter already seems to be breaking down (I didn't get the cheapest one available) and sending weird inputs to the phone which pauses the music or causes the assistant to tell me the time
So yeah, nothing's stopping me, but my experience is worse now for the sole reason that Apple decided they wanted to sell Bluetooth headphones
> I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)
Well, that's better than things used to be...
I had a Zen Stone that I used to play music in the car by plugging a cassette tape adapter into the audio jack.
For convenience, I bought a cigarette lighter adapter to power it, so that I wouldn't have to take it out of my car when it needed charging.
Except it turned out not to be able to play audio while charging. Not because it charged through the audio jack. It charged through a USB port. You just weren't allowed to do both at once.
I also had a Zen Phone (if that's what you meant) and it definitely played audio while charging.
All the phones that I have had with a audio jack would charge and play audio without any issues, ranging from a lot of different Samsung Galaxy to Wiko phones.
>(And that's not even discussing penal slavery allowed under the 13th Amendment.)
To expand on this, knowingbetter did an in-depth video on this topic[0]. The salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt, so that the Japanese couldn't use it as war propaganda against the US.
> the salient bit is that penal slavery was ended in 1941-1942 by Roosevelt,
No, convict leasing, one of several manifestations of penal slavery, was (formally) ended by Roosevelt then. Penal slavery continues in the US today, although some states have abolished it recently (though there is litigation in some of those states over it being continued in practice despite the recent formal abolition.)
Some nasal sprays have salt in them in addition to whatever drug they have, which unblocks the nose immediately but is extremely addictive. The ones that have just the drug don't have this issue in my experience
