A lot of countries in Europe already have their own country-wide payment systems.
What we’re seeing now in Europe is the stage where those multiple country-specific systems become interoperable and a new international payment system appears.
Canada only needs the kind of thing which has been not just available but actually dominant for decades in countries like The Netherlands and Portugal.
At least in Europe housing is at the moment proportionally to incomes just as bad as in the US.
Totally agree on Health, though.
Having lived in a couple of countries in Europe, from The Netherlands which has Proportional Vote system and a thus a multitude of small parties to Britain with a First Past The Post system like the US and thus pretty much a Two Party System, I’ve concluded that at least in Politics stability is just like standing water - it invariably turns into a swamp.
We need some amount of constant change to bring up and flush out the rot that innevitably accumulates in the murky waters of a system were power is always in the hands of a subset of people who are all in the same social circles, went to the same schools and whose sons and daughters marry each other.
Not “Daily Revolution”, just regular change so that any funny business going on outside the public eye risks being brought to light, destroyed and the guilty people punished because power has changed has to people who aren’t mates of the crooks that did it.
Just want to point out that in my experience, outside Germans the “Euro” public are generally against what Israel has been doing in Palestine. Those more politically aware who know what that is are against Zionism explicitly.
The exception is of course for the Far-Right types who, of course, love the whole white-colonialist thing.
IMHO:
Germany has massive issues with still holding hard to the mental framework from the “good old days” were people are just deemed members of etnic groups based on things they were born with, and are treated above all based on the ethnic group they “belong to”, rather than Modern Humanism were people’s deserved treatment is based on their need and their actions.
Because of this profoundly backwards Prejudiced and Racist foundational element of moral thinking widespread in German, it was a lot easier for the ethno-Fascist Zionists to subvert guilt in Germany into support for Zionism and the Zionist Genocide, as well as cultivating Islamophobia.
The same backwards moral fundational element also explains the ease of expansion of AfD and their ideology in Germany.
Not to say other countries in Europe don’t have Prejudice, Racism or even support for 19th century style white-colonialism, just saying that Germany seems to have a far more insidious problem than most in that regards due to this specific foundational piece having been repeatedly reinforced in the broad political discourse in Germany even while in other countries in Europe openly singling out people’s ethnicity and demanding ethnically-discriminatory treatment (either “positive” or negative) was frowned upon.
Just want to point out that I don’t at all think all Germans are like this.
Not even close.
My point is that this kind of thinking is more widespread and normalized in Germany, were it’s constantly pushed by the Press and Politicians of most colors (which is why even the Greens were pro-Israel during the worst of the Genocide in Gaza, unlike any other Green party in Europe)
It’s either:
I’ll leave it to the audience to figure out which is the most likely explanation.
Have a look at which group I used to moderate, or recents posts, before you further plunge your foot in your mouth.
The AIPAC shit in the US would not have been possible without vast wilful cooperation of Americans and their buying of politicians there would not have been possible wthout those 100% American politicians being extremelly corrupt.
Oh yeah, I got it.
Those people are people like my parents, my uncles and aunts.
The thing is, from my own experience being involved in a small leftwing party in Portugal and with my own family, it’s pretty much only those who were politically aware back in Fascist days (and Fascism had things like Censorship, so most people were not politically aware and thought of Fascism that “it’s the way things are”) that still hold strong to traditional Leftwing values. Further, the level of Education of people seems to be positivelly correlated with how much they understand and value Democracy, and back in the days of Fascism most people were either illiterate or had about 4 years schooling as that was the mandatory level of schooling until the late 60s.
Meanwhile young people’s politics are the product of growing up during the Neoliberal era, with no real strong well structured ideologies beyond Neoliberal-Capitalism providing a framework of thinking and policy making and instead with tactical, one-problem-at-a-time, “moderate” politics with no clear vision for the future or strategy, so they don’t really have top-down thinking hence even their Principles are easilly misdirected and subverted (such as how the fight for Equality For All has been transformed by Neoliberalism into a “divide and conquer” version were people are grouped by characteristics they were born with and then treated as differently deserving of their “equality” being fought for depending on such characteristics - so, an unequal form of equality, thus not really Equality - which very purposefully avoids talking about the greatest inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - and is called Identity Politics).
So yeah, the old guezers still in leftwing parties whose political awareness came during Fascist days plus quite a bunch more of their age cohort are still a strong bullwark against Fascism, but party of those people have already been converted towards Fascist ideas (mainly because of immigration, as Portugal used to be an incredibly uniform country and in maybe 2 decades immigrants became almost 10% of population, which is extra hard to older people who grew up in those days when everybody shared the same cultural background are thus are nowhere as socially and culturally flexible) whilst the younger generations often think Neoliberal Capitalism “is the way things are” since that’s all they’ve known their whole lives and even the ones with Leftwing principles, having confused messaging pushed by the not-quite-as-righting neoliberals from places like the US and UK with leftwing ideas and are busy pushing the divisive “Equality” of Identity Politics that pits parts of the Left against other parts of the Left AND against the mainstream depending on which Identitarian Group they feel should be more protected which fuels the kind of environment were Fascists can pedle their ideals (the subject immigration has been especially useful for Fascists in this, especially given that as studies have shown Immigration lowers salaries for unspecialized occupations, which is exactly were the poor and the poorest working class sits, so they’re naturally drawn to anti-immigration discourse).
TL;DR
In summary:
So the bullwark against Fascism was never as strong as it might seem, is naturally eroding as those people die and due to imported supposedly “leftwing” political frameworks which are really just a Neoliberal perversion of core Leftwing ideals it’s not actually being rebuilt but actually is being eroded even faster.
(Most of that 50 year extra period after Fascism for countries like Italy and Germany over countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece was during a time were the Leftwing was far more effective and created things like universal healthcare, universal education and social security, things which generally have been slowly destroyed in the last 4 decades)
IMHO, just like American-style “Liberals” are de facto facilitators of Fascism, the ideas they have exported during their period of cultural dominance in the West are also weaking the capability of being a bullwark for Fascism of the newer Leftwing generations elsewere.
Guess were most of the money for Cambridge Analitica came from …
It’s the neolibs’ version of “blame the foreigners” - instead of blaming immigrants for the problems of one’s country like the fascists, the neolibs will blame “foreign interference” for the problems of one’s country.
Meanwhile Occan’s Razor tells us that the 100% local people who have power in one’s country are the most likely explanation, yet, “curiously”, the very politicians who are supposed to properly manage the country (and are clearly not doing in a way that serves the interests of most people) end up blaming foreigners in some way or another.
And I say “one’s country” because this propaganda technique of the dominant mainstream politicians is hardly a thing that only gets used in the US.
A lot of countries in Europe have widely used country-specific payment systems.
The problem is those which don’t as well as the system of one country not being usable in other European countries so it falls back to VISA or Mastercard to use your card when abroad or for online purchases from businesses based in other countries.
I wouldn’t be so sure.
Look at Germany, not just the obvious part with AfD but also the unwavering support for a certain middle-eastern nation dominated by an extremely racist ethno-Fascist ideology whilst they were committing Genocide in Gaza.
(Also look at Italy which currently has a far-right government).
Given enough time that protection against a certain kind of authoritarianism because of a nation having been through it, fades away.
Unlike in Germany were it was foreigners that kicked the Fascists out, in Portugal it was actually the Portuguese that freed themselves from Fascism, so hopefully that protection will last a bit longer in Portugal.
I think it’s a very important power relative to all the powers he has, but that’s mainly because he has so little power and is mainly just the top diplomat of the nation.
But yeah, he can’t solve Portugal’s problems, not even close.
That’s my point - it makes sense for high demand for GPUs and RAM to leak into lower supply and hence higher price for other high density microchips that use the same process and are made in the same fabs - something which your experience seems to confirm - but HDDs are mechanical magnetic storage devices were the only microchip is a pretty basic controller.
HDDs are about as related to GPUs and RAM as power sources.
Yeah, well, in the first round of the Presidential Elections the Fascist candidate had the 2nd largest number of votes and the one from the Hard Neoliberal Party (who in their early days wanted to privatize the National Health Service until they discovered that was incredibly unpopular) had the 3rd largest number of votes.
The Revolution was over 50 years ago and a lot of people have forgotten how things used to be before that or simply don’t value genuinely Leftwing conquests like the National Health Service and Universal Education (which have been slowly undermined in the last 2 decades or so) from the short post-revolution power when Leftwing ideals were much more dominant (before things slid into the “2 main parties dominance” system that voting systems with electoral circles and no proportional vote invariably create).
He can refer to the Constitutional Court any legislation coming from Parliament that he thinks might be unconstitutional.
This is important because Justice in Portugal is slow as shit (really, truly, world-beating, stupidly slow) so rather than some unconstitutional shit (probably designed to make some well-connected fatcats even richer) actually coming into effect as Law and spending 10+ years fucking people’s lives whilst it gets challenged in court and works its way up to the top court of the land with the Government spending taxpayer’s money to doggedly defend it all the way until that court finally throws it down, it can go directly from Parliament to the President to that court before it ever affects anybody’s life.
(Having lived in Britain which has no written Constitution, I have learned to value having a Constitution as a second line of defense against political abuse by parties which with a minority of cast votes have parliamentary majorities because the voting system is some undemocratic shit that does not give the same weight to all votes rather than Proportional Vote)
Personally, even though the President has flashier powers such as being able to bring down a government, I think that this specific more technical power of referring legislation directly to the Constitutional Court before it becomes the Law in effect can be far more important in terms of impact in people’s lives, especially in this day and age when politics is pretty crooked and money-driven.
The guy who just got elected, even though he hails from one of the two mainstream parties which have dominated politics in Portugal almost since the start of Democracy in 74 and are pretty rotten, comes from a faction of that party which is actually left of center and is not connected with the crooks that led that party for that last 2 decades, so I have great hopes that he will be more consistent than the last one in using these less flashy powers to stop the kind of unconstitutional shit that screws the many for the good of a few that the neo-liberals who dominate those mainstream parties have often pushed in the last 3 or 4 decades.
Punched Paper Quantum AI is the next Revolution in Computing!
You heard it here first.
Invest Now!!!
Worry not, some of what’s perfectly fine nowadays will eventually be forbidden because how harmful it is for people, from micro-plastics that are being found even in men’s gonads to the excessive amounts of nitrous oxides emitted by diesel engine that kill over ten thousand people per year in Europe alone.
We probably still breathe and eat a lot of highly carcinogenic shit, just different shit from back in the days when asbestos was considered a great fire-proof substance.
Unless things have changed recently LLMs don’t really used slow data stores with very high capacity such as HDDs, at least not beyond the training stage.
The prices that have been pushed up by AI are for GPUs and DRAM (price rises which in turn possibly feed onwards to other kinds of chip done in the same kind of fab), whilst this stuff is magnetic data storage on movable disk plates, a very different tech.
I expect these things at most will only be affected in price very indirectly (for example, if memory prices go up because of all the datacenters targetting AI applications, there might be fewer datacenters set up for other kinds of server side application which are more data-centric, which would impact demand for ultra high-capacity HDDs).
Not that it makes much of a difference to us run-of-the-mill techies as consumers - even if HDDs get cheaper, with many times more expensive GPUs and RAM we can hardly put together new systems using these things, so at best it might just get a bit cheaper to expand one’s large storage NAS (the slower kind just storing data that doesn’t get accessed often, as the other kind uses SDDs).
Yeah, that quoted statement definitly sounds like a massive cope for a profound feeling of emptiness and/or inedequacy.
I just want to inject here my experience in Britain during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath:
In Britain, the Finance Industry was 17% of GDP, so when the Crash happened the country was disproportionally hit.
After the crash the autorities chose to protect Asset Owners above all:
By 2015 the incomes of the top wealthier 10% of the population were growing in real terms 23% per year whilst the bottom 90% were seeing their incomes fall 1% per year in real terms.
This was roughly how things went for about a decade after the Crash. UK inequality is nowadays huge, social mobility near non-existent, average incomes when measured in a currency other than the pound - which went down following Brexit - have stagneted, overall economic growth is anemic and concentrated in highest wealth layers since that “growth” told by official GDP numbers is mostly asset prices going up.
This is the process by which the billionaires make sure they win: everybody gets hit more or less in a Crash, but in during the subsequent period when the state is supposedly trying to fix it, you get also sorts of “extreme measures required by extreme times” that, “curiously”, help the billionaires the most, so some years later everybody but the wealthiest slices of society are worst of whilst the wealthiest are much richer even than before the Crash.
I expect the plans of the billionaires who are cozying up with Trump is exactly to end up richer via this process.