smeg

It’s simple: they aren’t safe. They are a high danger to pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users.

They should require a special license and a legitimate need. No pavement princesses allowed.

Because they desperately want to co-opt the state to allow their surveillance capitalism.

Orthodox church is next weekend

If it’s anything like my workplace, Signal is where back channel communication occurs. Unofficial and with no accountability. Disappearing messages. No logging. No auditability.

While those features are great for privacy and a free society, they aren’t so great for a government accountable to the public.

MEPs: generally US-skeptical

Council: mixed opinions on the US, by issue

EU Commission: follows the US’ lead on everything

Shouldn’t the Commission be taking at least some of its cues from elected leaders?

It never goes well. They operate to complain about anything short of a dictatorship of their ideology, so will ruin the coalition’s ability to govern.

Because all media is owned by right-wing ideologues or the wealthy who are coordinating messaging together as a class?

American here (who lives in Europe). America has a system of sales tax, where tax is collected by the specific state at the point of sale. Sometimes, the municipality collects sales tax as well.

The US does not have VAT, where tax is added cumulatively along the production or supply chain. As long as the manufacturer is selling to an intermediate (a retailer or distributor), they pay no tax for producing the item (although they will pay a tax on their total corporate revenue, real property the business owns, etc). If they sell directly to the consumer, they must charge sales tax.

The sales tax is not listed on the price of the item. The reasoning is that the sales tax is not being charged by the retailer - they are only collecting it on behalf of the government. So the retailer only presents the price that they collect. Also, with the advent of internet sales, the price can vary based on the buyer’s location because sales tax is based on state and municipality; for internet purchases, the taxes are displayed on the checkout screen. This is the same in retail settings - the clerk will tell you the final price being charged to you.

States with higher sales taxes tend to have lower (or no) state income taxes. States with lower sales tax tend to have higher state income taxes or have higher taxes on other goods (like gasoline) or government services (higher fees). Or some combination thereof. Certain categories of goods are exempt from sales tax - groceries (unprepared foods), some medicines, and in a few states I believe women’s menstrual products.

Taxes and tariffs are applied to manufacturers and distributors only for international import and export.

My opinion: I think not displaying the full price is deceptive. I think not taxing VAT along the supply chain is a regressive behavior that places more of the burden of funding society onto the individual taxpayer while leaving corporations with lower tax bills. The US consumer is a bootlicker and repeater of corporate propaganda, so none of this will ever change.

I can’t understand how this has reappeared, basically overnight, after being rejected now twice in the last 6 months. What kind of banana democracy is the EU running?

required = yes

Easy to flag. Then Lennart Poettering’s startup van deploy the ID tech to comply with age verification laws.

We’re academic oriented American parents, so our instinct is to encourage academic success.

Honestly, the Dutch schools just feel less bureaucratic? I think that plays a big role, too. In American schools, kids feel like a car on an assembly line. Any exceptions or personalization along the way are treated with lota of paperwork and suspicion. The Dutch schools seem to treat kids like… kids? Human beings with individual character. It’s refreshing.

Most delivery trucks around here are electric. Most power generation is renewable, importing some nuclear. Some fossil fuels still in the mix, but if the government was smart they would phase it out.

In Europe, the price is mostly paid by the consumer. In America, the government subsidizes the industry to the tune of billions per year, both at the federal and state levels. It makes gullible people think American fuel prices are lower, when in fact it socializes the cost of fuel onto all of society.

Counterpoint: I live in Europe and pay €0 for gas. I walk, bike, and take transit. That’s literally impossible in much of the US.

My trains, trams, and buses are rarely crowded. Maybe at peak rush hour.

High frequency makes them not crowded. You’re complaining about a poorly designed public transit system, which is probably all you’ve ever encountered.

I moved to the Netherlands with my family last year. In the US, he would have entered middle school this year. He was becoming angsty, screen focused (no matter the limits and supervision), and resentful. Not a lot, but hints of it.

Now, it feels like he received a longer runway on childhood. The angst has diminished (mostly), he has physical freedom to bike wherever he wants (and he does so!). Part of it might be an adversity thing - he realizes the things he used to complain about seem childish compared to the challenges he has now as an immigrant. I’m not sure. The schools seem a lot more chill - they make a point not to tell when standardized tests are occurring “to not give stress to the children”. Kids are expected to be more independent, and most rise to the occasion to take advantage of that freedom. The school insisted that by my son’s age, the students should be bringing themselves to school alone after the first couple weeks, for example. The helicopter parenting behavior that is normal and encouraged in the US simply doesn’t exist here. The school connects families to after school activities, and pays for them if the family cannot, to ensure all children get the same advantages in life. Swimming certification is mandatory (which makes sense with all of the water everywhere), which gives parents the confidence to know their kid is safe when out on their own.

I credit a lot of it to physical safety - streets in residential and non-highway areas prioritize slow cars, intentional design elements around liveability, and discourages cars for short trips which means that everyone in society is a pedestrian or cyclist sometimes, and so treat their fellow human as a human and not an obstacle in their GTA race.

Also, the school culture tends to lend itself to an attitude of, “why go for an A when a C is passing?” Be efficient. Don’t put in more effort than necessary. Enjoy your life. Kids still learn, they still achieve, but it’s not treated like a competition or an arms race, and parents who do are treated like psychopaths.

This is the Europe community

I just want a conventional desktop paradigm that feels relatively integrated. For almost a decade I used Cinnamon until I found myself really wanting Wayland. For the past 5 years or so, I have used GNOME. It’s clean, and with a few tweaks it meets my needs.

Fire the execs and replace them with an LLM.

• Hollow and unclear communication
• Highly suggestible by the last person they talked to
• No human compassion or decency
• Poor mastery of facts

There’s no difference between the average executive and an LLM. Fire them all and save on exec salaries. Maybe they’ll be less excited by AI now.

So Russia gets 2 seats?

I like Fedora for my desktop. Close enough to upstream to get the latest features, but not so bleeding edge that it’s unstable.