!whatisthisthing@lemmy.world

For an adversarial relationship, as the one between EU and China, it was still one overall based on understanding and a degree of predictability. That just ends up being more attractive than an ally turning into a rabid dog and stabbing you in the back.

I think no one should be surprised by this.

Personally, I like “Scaled” and “Hot” the most, but I also check “New” to discover communities that may otherwise get lost (and, to ban spam/bot/troll accounts along the way as well) - and lastly, I also have a look at “Top/Day” at least once a day, to see what’s the “talk of the town”.

It definitely feels like we had some growth in proper, organic activity. Just a few months ago, it definitely felt like “Top/12hrs” was the best one for the amount of content that was being posted. But for a while now, “Hot” and “Scaled” feel much better than that one.

Pretty much the exact same story here, only my obsession was more with PC-DOS RPGs like Ultima, Wizardry, Goldbox games, thanks to my father and older siblings influencing me there.

Yeah, but here is the tragedy to all that: It is still also deciding, which things get the capital investments necessary to exist, and the livelihood of people has been entangled with that shitshow to an absurd degree.

Sometimes I almost love that I am already at subsistence level disability payments (in a European Welfare state, so thankfully, not in danger of starvation or anything) without any real wealth beyond day-to-day living expenses, there’s not that much for me to lose every time this shit happens.

Fun fact: When choosing my starter for the first time, all I knew about Pokémon was: “It’s a game I saw someone play at school once and it kind of looked like an RPG and I love those!” I genuinely just went with what looked cool to me and had no idea there were “actual” dragon Pokémon.

Also +1 on dom@lemmy.ca noting, that Gyarados is the cool dragon in Gen1

As a bullied kid that back then just wanted a cool dragon, I protest that insinuation!

At this point, I am convinced it’s a pump and dump scheme, still ongoing, too. It only takes a few people in the know of when and where the news break about the tariff supsension, to seriously make a killing on the market, on the backs of others. Trumpists can now also (for a while) feel like their God has saved them again and never steered them wrong, or curse their momemts of doubt, when they did not buy yesterday, as their prophet called for.

It is a mixture of incompetence, impulsivity, but I am certain at this point, a huge chunk of it is outright corruption and cult tactics.

Which is why, generally, taxing wealth and having the state invest it in supportive infrastructure and subsidising is the preferred option for developed economies that want manufacturing (back).

Sweeping, protectionist tariffs are usually a painful measure of necessity, if you have an economy without any developed industrial or service sectors, where initial investments are basically impossible due there being no taxable wealth and no market incentives, because of global players always being more profitable and cheaper, than any beginning industry that has to go through growth processes and learning experiences. (More selective tariffs or outright import/export bans of course also have their place for a multitude of political reasons, e.g. the EU not wanting a lot of artificially cheap and lower-health-standards US meat)

Yeah, remember that German philosopher? Immanuel Kant, whose last name is pronounced “cunt”? Who ended up kicking off the whole process of modern and ultimately postmodern philosophy? Who most likely had autism (non-judgemental) and some really weird habits (mostly non-judgemental, don’t hit your servants, dude) and ideas (somewhat non-judgemental, if you’ve never seen a person with darker skin in your life, don’t write about them).

It was all in the name!

Speaking of philosophers and licking cunts.

Why was the US funding FOSS projects? That strikes me as weird, inappropriate and suspicious.

A mixture of the elements within the US that actually believed the stuff about personal rights and democracy still existing behind the more sinister realities, as well as it being in the same pot of funded projects like Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty and the likes, which always were a mix of just outright propaganda organs, but also providing the scaffolding of free media access for some regions in the past.

So, it’s complicated, ultimately rooted in a mix of the cynical US wanting to support dissidents in other countries, and the idealist US also having people actually believing in personal freedom and privacy, even within their government/state structures.

Also, just in general, a lot of FOSS projects get funding from governments, US or otherwise. If I remember correctly ReactOS got a lot of funding from Russia, for example, because they saw a potential way to get away from Microsoft in it.

From what I gather, there was no open influence wielded over those projects, I at least don’t remember the OTF forcing a backdoor onto Tor Browser for the CIA or something like that - thankfully the open source structure makes that easier to control - but the weakness becomes apparent now, of course, because funds could now be withdrawn, as the government turned fascist.

Kind of, I wouldn’t really call them an international organisation in the way I would be imagining, see how easy it was to cut their funding when national interests turned openly fascist. Their affiliation with the US government above more independent, international organisations meant, that they would support privacy and a free and open internet, as long as it helps dissidents in other, non-aligned countries, but quick to cut it, if it reaches their own doorsteps.

Not the one you answered to, but I think I can understand the idea of US funding having been a toxic source of dependency, and it being better in the long run to get money elsewhere. That “elsewhere” is a good question, though.

Just me, personally, my dream would be an international fund, carried by the UN or maybe an independent NGO, that can get funding from both private and public funds, that prioritises free internet access the way the WHO prioritises health. But I think that’s still far off.

Yupp, seems that they quickly changed it back, too, lol.

the bears and shorts all entered this morning with their trades queued up from the weekend.

Yupp, that’s why it would be very fitting as a proper dead cat bounce from just the massive amount of shorting that had already been happening.

But you are also right - no one has a crystal ball here. Who knows where the volatile ride will stop.

They are doing their best with the framing, but I do get the feeling - considering how futures had been trading before - this is going to be a dead cat bounce.

I’m gonna be real here, just Realpolitik-wise from the perspective of “the West” sans the USA - China is currently proving that they are simply more reliable in geopolitics and even economically, and that is just damn important, even in an adversarial relationship. It isn’t even because they are a de-facto dictatorship, Russia is one too, and Russia is a mad dog. They just managed to keep their shit mostly together so far, still riding out their massive growth spurt. Even human rights abuses outside of Realpolitik don’t seem as the argument they were: internationally, the US has always had a more greyish record anyhow. But now, considering the US is quickly doing its best to catch up in domestic tyranny, that argument seems to be going fast, too.

Sadly, I don’t have huge hopes for China to be a proper “better” hegemon globally, if that should be what ultimately happens - they are facing crises of their own, and have been dabbling in their own brands of economic imperialism, and at least the way their military is gearing up contains a lot of stuff usually used for military imperialism as well.

I think the sad reality is: Criticism of the Soviets by now has been reduced to just a surface level “feeling” of their tyranny. Basically a thought of what made it tyrannical was the lip services to communism and the red flags - not understanding the actual problems underneath. In the worst case, some people even openly say, that it’s just that they put the wrong people into the Gulag, to then post memes about throwing lefties out of helicopters.

I think history has shown by now, both the Soviets’ criticism of US imperialism, and the West’s criticism of Soviet human rights abuses has always had huge hypocrisies within, both systems very much capable of the crimes of the other. We need another international class based movement, that doesn’t get caught up in national interest like that.

The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor.

Wow, even if we imagine some different situation where information about a new development, service or creation is needed, that’s what reviews and journalism are supposed to cover, not advertisement. (In b4: the observation that those have tragically been becoming more and more indistinguishable from advertising.)

“I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is constantly changing my financial reality,” said Alison Carey, 64, of Oregon, a freelancer in the theater industry. “Let the economy do its machinations, but don’t put me in the gears.”

Sorry you had to learn it this way, Alison, but “the economy” has always been grinding people up in its gears. The main difference is, that it is now reaching you, personally.