We can hope that enough democrats win to cause gridlock and impede more harm. However, the democrats don't offer much in the way of substantive reform and have never demonstrated the stomach for taking bold stances. Whenever a candidate does come along and propose bold change, the institutional democratic party goes out of their way to sabotage or undercut them (think AOC, Sanders, Mamdani et al).
The democrat establishment doesn't seem interested in change, they are like a softer version of politicians getting bought out by tech. Well-mannered, but ultimately not doing long-term thing in the interest of the wider country.
Good. Countries the size of the US don't need bold change. They need stability with change accomplished by a gentle shift in direction.
What bold change looks like is Trump. An anti-Trump government implementing bold change in the other direction would be bad too. Not as bad because more of their change would at least be toward things that would be good in the long run, but there would still be a lot of harm on the way by taking it too fast.
They aren't going to be able to stop the next generation of candidates. And they aren't signing up to run to maintain the institution. This year and 2028 has the potential to be the Democrat's "tea party" moment (except for decent policies instead of destroying the government policies). And it's long overdue.
I very much hope so. I changed my registration to decline to state. California has open primaries, so I can still vote in them, but I couldn't stomach being associated with stubborn, institutional failure.
I've heard this since I canvased for Obama in 2008, before I could even vote. At this point expecting change through the electoral system seems worse than a waste, its a vacuum thats sucks up the radical energy we need to get real change.
The party is already being taken over by the energy we need -- AOC, Mandami, and more. Trump going full fascist fuck is a catalyst. We can have the left-wing reaponse to the tea party that really changes the country back to decency. Or we can just sit around all defeatist and whining, because that's worked so well in the past.
Framing all of us who voted for and support the President’s actions as ignorant is lazy and inaccurate. There’s plenty of us that objectively analyzed the state of the country, the state of the world, and agree with the vast majority of these actions.
this online discussion format is impossible :-( I can tell you with certainty I did not think at all what you just said.. I cannot even imagine how you get that impression
I would so much rather use arm twisting in background political discourse to open and public threats of military invasion on a nato ally. Those two are really not even comparable
The end result is the same - we have committed for 15 years now that we are pivoting East. And given some of the recent announcements in both the US and China, I think 2028 is going to be a very bleak year.
Edit: can't reply
> In one scenario nato breaks up...
It doesn't matter if we are in a US-China war WHICH HAS BEEN MY AND EVERY NATSEC STAFFER'S POINT SINCE 2009.
We do not care about Russia - you guys can easily handle them yourselves. On the other hand, you guys cannot support us in Kinmen, Luzon, Yonaguni, or Gageodo.
The EU actually has a great track record, it has been a massive unifying force. I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago. I really hate this constant shitting on the EU for no concrete reasons.
It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons. People act like 'EU politicians' should solve everything overnight, but the reality is that it is out of their purview in many cases. Only federalization would resolve this issue.
> I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago.
About thirty years ago a European family could survive on a single salary and get by decently. Now they can't. So, I'm not sure what are you talking about.
> It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons.
IMO it's crippled by the amount of poor decisions making and complete inability to handle even small-scale crisis somewhat successfully.
> Only federalization would resolve this issue.
On this, I agree. But given the decision making the last 15-20 years, that option is dead on arrival.
I'm sure you consider yourself a clever person, ever consider that the situation was more complex than your one line comment? That maybe it's possible the German banks were so happy to see a country that suddenly had the backup system of the European Central Bank, i.e. a country full of customers they could lend to, that they flooded it with offers of loans? That Greeks, like the sub-prime borrowers of the USA, thought "Well, if everyone is saying the future looks bright, why not borrow money and pay it back with the promised future income?".
That, if I knew my friend was going to be irresponsible with money but their parent was going to bail them out, why shouldn't I lend them money with interest? Is that irresponsible of me? Do I deserve to get all my money back, instead of suffering some of the losses as well? (In this highly simplicized example, I = German banks, my friend = the Greek society, their parents = the ECB. Not saying all of Greek society was irresponsible, but in aggregate, it was a risky "investment")
A lot of the Greek bailout could be summarized as the German government bailing out German banks with EU taxpayers' money...
Here's a long article about what happened when Germany got flooded with money in the 1870s: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/michael-pettis-syriz... . It's longer than your one line, maybe you'd rather hold on to your more succint (and maybe more intelligent) summary...
There is no right party, unfortunately. The Duopoly of Democrats and Republicans rely on this illusory idea of "the other side" to maintain a stranglehold on power for both parties. The sooner we give up that idea that one side is better than the other, the sooner we can hold "both sides" accountable. The Democrats are an absolutely corrupt shit show. As are the Republicans.
Each expansion of executive power is treated as unprecedented until it becomes normalized. Before Bush, indefinite detention without trial was unthinkable. Before Obama, the executive assassination of U.S. citizens without due process was unthinkable. Before Clinton, routine humanitarian war without congressional declaration was unthinkable. Each step is later reclassified as “different,” “necessary,” or “less bad,” each step decried by the "opposition" but excused by partisans.
The danger isn’t that one party does uniquely shocking things. It’s that both parties participate in a ratchet where norms only ever move in one direction supported by the rank and file. What looks like a false equivalence is actually a cumulative one: today’s outrage rests on yesterday’s precedents.
And it’s not even mainly about presidents. Fixating on the occupant of the office misses how much of this is legislative and bureaucratic drift. The real damage is often done through laws that quietly expand state power, normalize surveillance, weaken due process, or lock in perverse incentives. Presidents sign them, but Congress writes them, renews them, and funds them. That’s where the ratchet really lives.
USA PATRIOT Act (2001), Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), FISA Amendments Act (2008), National Defense Authorization Acts with detention and secrecy expansions, Telecommunications Act (1996), Controlled Substances Act (1970), Defense of Marriage Act (1996), Welfare Reform Act / Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996). All terrible. All drafted and passed by both parties.
This is why “no one did X before” is the wrong metric. The system advances through laws and precedents that feel technical, temporary, or defensive at the time. Each one lowers the bar for the next. By the time something looks outrageous, the groundwork was laid years earlier by people insisting they were the reasonable alternative.
We can’t. It’s over. Laws don’t mean anything anymore. Even if we had a full democratic congress, they would just be ignored. The Trump administration has already been grooming people to accept congress is useless, beginning with the month long shutdown. And the Supreme Courts will just go along with whatever the president wants now.
The only thing congress can do is impeach and convict trump and his administration, thereby stripping him of his authority. Laws have been passed, judges have ruled, but all those are ignored. however, if he has no authority, then we get to find out who's on the side of the constitution and who is with trump and his allies.
There will be many loyalists who will just side with the Trump administration. And then what?
Turns out, when the law has failed, the only solution is a fight to the death. And after such a fight, we do not return to our normal state and live happily ever after, we remain deeply unstable and untrustworthy for decades to come.
If the Senate convicted, things would change. For one thing, I'm confident the military would not consider an impeached and convicted president as its commander in chief. And the prospect of the consequences of continuing to side with such a one would largely evaporate the availability of the administrative apparatus. Civil war would be a possible result, sure. But I disagree that such a Congress would simply be ignored and that ignoring it could be done while maintaining the means of continuing power.
This is catastrophizing, not analysis. If you genuinely feel this hopeless, that's worth examining as a signal about your own mental state rather than treating it as political insight.
Part of the reason we’re in this mess is that Americans bristle at getting told which is the “right” party to vote for by internationals, the media, existing politicians, institutions…
You know, if everybody shouts at you to not do a certain thing, maybe, just maybe, they could have your best interests in mind? But instead they are being portrayed as "globalists" or whatever the mouthbreathers in the flyover states spin up today.
That's of course a totally valid reason to destroy your institutions, international reputation, and of course the lives of many poor people in your country. Makes sense /s
Adding that there will be upwards of another 10,000 executed on Wednesday per the Iranian government. They are already lining streets with body bags of people to discourage anyone else from protesting but I suspect that will only increase the protesting.
The protestors are the ones being executed. They are being taken into a large metal corral of sorts and one can hear the AK-47. The plan for Wednesday was to hang a bunch of them. Iran has strict control over firearms so most of their citizens are mostly soft targets since they do not appear to have enough combined combat knowledge to take the guns from the police.
We are basically just waiting on Donald Trump to uphold his promise he would do something but thus far that has just been sanctions.
You're making it sound way more dramatic than it is [1]. And yes X is a far right echo chamber that twists the narrative so that the extreme right get the most support out of it. X is the biggest help for foreign power to sow discord among us [2]
I'm unsure why you're spinning a discussion about foreign interference in the EU into a discussion about Republicans vs. Democrats.
To the EU, it doesn't matter much if it's the Republicans or the Democrats doing it. What matters is that the USA is trying to interfere with the EU's political landscape.
It would be bad if they pushed the extreme left, too. They just happen to be pushing the extreme right.
>The reason right-wing political violence is more talked about in the EU is also rather simple: It is much more prevalent.
Ah yes, data of left wing government in power shows that the big problem is only the "hate speech twitter comments hate crime" of their growing right wing opposition that threatens their power.
100% trustworthy and unbiased of them.
Just like to UK government denying grooming gangs were not real and only due to "far right white supremacists", until they couldn't hide it anymore thanks to the backlash on social media they're trying to ban right now.
Always believe what your leaders are telling you, as they have your best interest at heart and would never lie to you to protect their own interests.
You consider the current German government to be left-wing?
The current government is led by the CDU. The only popular party that's even further right, the AfD, has merely 20% of the vote. Or worded differently, 80% of voters voted either for the current government or further left. This clearly places the current government in the center, maybe even a bit on the right wing.
The current government can only be considered left-wing if you completely disregard the democratic will of the German people.
Edit: Realized I should have checked before typing up a response. This is an 18 day old account pushing lies and propaganda. Were wasting our time on bots again
> ...that lead to brainwashing of Charlie Kirk's shooter.
Oh, you have evidence of his political views now? Last I saw members of the admin were declaring them an antifa trans super soldier until it came out that he was a mormon from a conservative family which muddied the water and suddenly they didn't want to talk about it anymore.
If you want to make a claim about far left echo chambers you should reference a group like the Zizians.
> It's funny you say this when the BBC in the example from your first point was caught cutting and splicing Trump's Jan-6 speech to make a fake statement he never said[1] and is now facing defamation. Biased and coopted legacy media institutions like the BBC are the enemy here and why X is growing everywhere.
Ah the video from the speech that was edit to make it seem like he called for violence on J6 instead of the full length speech, where he called for violence on J6.
Yes, don't focus on critically thinking WHAT is being said in a comment, focus on how old the account is. That's the objective way to judge an opinion. Jesus, no wonder politics is cooked and getting people killed.
Have you thought about the fact that the reason you don't see old accounts with conservative opinions on HN is because they get banned/flagged/downvoted into oblivion due to abuse by political bias like yours trying to push and mention their ideology while suppressing the other?
But that would require you to have critical thinking skills.
The version sold in the Steam store runs the Windows build via Proton. (Valve's whole philosophy is you should build one version of your game, and their compatibility layers should be so bulletproof that it runs flawlessly everywhere.)
In this case, I had the Game Pass version. It depends on a custom shared object `love.platform` that talks to Microsoft's cloud APIs to save/load your game and achievements. I used Gemini to write a bridge that implements all the `love.platform` calls in pure Lua, and then use the Linux build of LÖVE to run the game natively.
Works great in KDE. Crashes when launched from Steam. Haven't gotten to why yet.
Not just them. For example, Qt self hosted cgit got ddos just two weeks ago. No idea why random open source projects getting attacked.
> in the past 48 hours, code.qt.io has been under a persistent DDoS
attack. The attackers utilize a highly distributed network of IP
addresses, attempting to obstruct services and network bandwidth.
Probably some little script kiddie fucks who think they are elite mega haxors and use their mommie's credit card to pay one of the ddos services readily accessible.
I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit comment:
So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication (including sending unsolicited sexual photos to strangers). It also includes spreading false information that could cause harm or affect an ingoing investigation.
If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.
The arrest is the punishment.
Here is a man getting arrested and subsequently harassed by the Police for 13 weeks for just posting a picture of himself with a shotgun in America.
We’re basically seeing this story through media summaries and Richelieu-Booth’s own account, which means the narrative reflects either what he says happened or brief police statements. There’s very little publicly available that allows anyone to independently confirm or contradict either side.
Stories like this are designed to provoke a reaction, but the truth could be far more mundane: he might be a completely unreasonable person who was genuinely stalking someone, and police might have had credible concerns. We simply don’t have the full picture.
For balance, West Yorkshire Police do have a reputation for being heavy handed. the same force that used drones during Covid to shame people walking alone on the moors.
My point is: this isn’t solid evidence of Orwellian decline. It’s difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about Britain from a single case built on incomplete information and media amplification.
> with the situation causing him considerable stress at a point where he was also dealing with an inquest into the deaths of his parents, who had both died in a car crash in 2023
so for some reason, there was something going on about his parents' death two years later. The article also states:
> He said the complaint against him was linked to an ongoing business dispute.
My take is that someone used his pictures of him holding guns (illegal in the UK) as support for a claim that he is an armed and dangerous stalker. Whatever got flagged regarding the inquest into his parents' deaths probably added suspicion. Police acted quickly (as they should, but probably too quickly) and made mistakes, but it looks like they couldn't accept that they were being used, so they decided to continue pressing onwards with the investigation, hoping they were still right and wouldn't be on the hook for a false arrest.
Getting falsely arrested is always terrible, but the way the media spins this as some kind of witch hunt about a LinkedIn post is misleading at best.
> These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication
All of these attempts to "debunk" this statistic feel like they're missing the mark. How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests? Does it not seem strange that the second half of that list is worthy of arrest?
> If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.
This, again, does not help. Being arrested isn't a casual thing. It threatens everything from your job to your reputation and your relationships, even if you aren't convicted.
In many countries you do not get charged with every possible crime if there is a larger crime involve. If someone rob a place, they don't also need to have separate charges for illegally entering the place, destroying property when they broke the window, selling stolen goods, wire fraud for using the banking system, and money laundering for concealing that it is illegal money, and tax evasion. Each step is illegal on their own, but time crime statistics won't be written like that. The prosecutor may argue that if the accused are not found guilty for the primary, then secondaries may then be used.
The strange thing is that the UK are arresting people for abusing the telecom system, and not for the more serious crime like terrorism, death threats, harassment and sexual harassment.
> How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests?
In most publications: because the people reporting on these statistics can get more views and clicks that way. FUD sells. If someone online can defuse the statistics, the reporters that spread them also could've, but chose not to.
As for the second half of the list, "racist abuse, hate speech, and unwanted communication" are pretty common things to incriminate. Even the extremely liberal freedom of speech laws in the USA do not permit stalking ("unwanted communication") and racist abuse is criminalized in all kinds of cases (i.e. firing someone because of their race).
Thank you. I heard the number locally at a privacy conference. No hard data, but I saw them being terrified for 1984 becoming a reality.
Even if there's no sentence, the real result is self-censorship, which is NOT shown up in ANY statistics.
... following a police complaint about stalking, against a man involved in a business dispute, seemingly among other things. He may be innocent, but there's more to the story than the picture of the gun.
Ahh yes reddit the most accurate location of truth finding. Could you at least link the source of the comment or are we supposed to take a random redditor as fact?
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