Unless the new Treaty properly covers Services and hence includes Freedom Of Movement (which is required for suppliers in one country to freely provide services which cannot be remotelly provided in other countries), not really.

One of the biggest arguments of the Brexiters was to be able to get rid of Freedom Of Movement so that they didn’t have to accepts all immigrants from the EU (all of which with time ended up with the funny outcome that now Britain still gets as many immigrants coming in as they did when part of the EU, only now they’re almost all non-white something which the Brexiters - who are almost invariably racist - find even more distasteful).

I very much doubt that the current, New Labour, government who are maybe the most rightwing Labour government ever and have even been blowing a couple of far-right anti-immigration dog-whistles will be accepting the return of Freedom Of Movement.

Something around there being a new toilet in the country but with the music from The Sound Of Music?

In Lutris there’s a “Command prefix” configuration option both per-game and one in the global config with the default for all games, which is where the firejail command line goes (basically for sandboxing with firejail you’re supposed to run “firejail firejail-options original-command original-options” and putting firejail and its options in “command prefix” does that).

Note that there are other sandboxing options that run in the same way as firejail but I found firejail to have more straightforward options.

Also note that this won’t sandbox the actual setup of a game, only the running of the game.

Yeah, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing - I have a windup radio and some electric network expert was explaining it.

Power has been back up were I live since about an hour ago but before I was listening on the radio as they kept announcing places coming back up during the afternoon and evening.

I run all my games in Linux and everything but Steam goes via Lutris which I configured to, by default, launch them inside a Firejail sandbox with no network access (plus a bunch of other security related limitations) something which I can override for specific games if needed.

It’s interesting that Steam games are actually the least secure to run in Linux and with a configuration as I have it’s literally safer to run pirated shit downloaded from the Internet than Steam games.

Yeah, it’s the same here, but what’s interesting is that the rest of the infrastructure for Internet connectivity to the rest of the World beyond that is still up.

At the very least the routers and the top level network cables connecting us to the rest of Europe (Portugal is pretty peripheral) and/or the underwater cables to the US are still powered up and working.

Curiously, we still have mobile internet ;)

We’re I am now (small city in Portugal) the water on the taps is already almost down to a trickle (guess the pumps use power from the grid).

Already cooked two meals worth of fast perishables (i.e. meat) from the fridge just in case the power is down longer than just today and in the expectation that the pumps for the natural gas network also run from the grid.

I’m curious about that too.

My life experience includes environments (Physics at University level) with a significant number of exceptionally intelligent people and in my observation they weren’t any more “flawed” than everybody else, just with different quirks than most people.

Granted “smart and perceived as intelligent” isn’t actually the same as high IQ, but I’ve also worked in environments with lots of people like that (Investment banking) and again they weren’t any more “flawed” than everybody else and just had different kinds of quirks than most people.

In general, one thing I did notice was that more intelligent people tend to have more “compensation layers” over their disfunctions than less intelligent people.

That said, all this is my opinion from my own life experience, so just as unsupported as the previous poster’s.

I would say the contradiction you’re showing in that hint at how you cannot genuinelly fight Discrimination by keeping on discriminating people on some characteristic they were born with but changing which “group” gets benefited and it should be instead done via fighting against any Discrimination (i.e. fighting explicitly for Equality for all).

It’s funny that the only place in the UK I worked in which had gender quotas was the most sexist of them all and women working there were assumed and treated as implicitly less competent than men and even, in some cases, as de facto little more than eye-candy for management (something which was fair for some but unfair for others). Meanwhile my experience in The Netherlands which is way more equalitarian than the UK was very different when it comes to gender discrimination (or discrimination of trans people or of people with minority sexual orientations).

Well, that’s not so bad then as this case can still be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights then.

I distinctly remember how one of the “benefits” Brexiters claimed for leaving the EU was not having to be a member of the Euopean Convention of Human Rights anymore (which is mandatory for all EU members), so I’m pleasantly surprised the UK hasn’t left it yet (I was an EU immigrant in Britain and left the country just before Brexit and didn’t really keep up with British politics since).

From having lived in several countries in Europe, including the UK, I would say that Britain is the closest we have here to the US when it comes to being a deeply flawed Democracy, possibly worse than the US since unlike it, Britain doesn’t even have a written constitution, so just about everything can be changed with a law passed by a simple parliamentary majority (of 50% + 1) and as the UK has a First Past The Post electoral system said majority can be had with a mere 34% of votes cast (the current government has such a parliamentary majority with only 33.7% of votes), which given the typical level of Parliamentary Elections abstention over there is less than the votes of 1/4 of voters.

Britain has wonderful propaganda helped by some really weird elements like the local elites sending their children to schools were they learn the fine arts of “managing apperances” (learned behaviours which in many other countries would be considered dishonest and deceitful) plus a media industry which is World class (probably the best Theatre industry in the World, IMHO) often used to project a very good image of the country (its almost a joke how every couple of years, almost like clockwork, out comes a new film about WWII portraying Britain as a great country), so from the outside most people have a good impression of of that country, but if you’re living there and get involved in Politics and really learn about their system, the more you learn the less Democratic it seems.

The UK doesn’t even have a written constitution, so everything, including “Rights” is really just one parliamentary majority (which with the country’s First Past The Post system can be had for as little as 34% of votes cast, which taking in account the typical levels of abstention means the approval of less than 1/4 of the population) or one Supreme Court decision away from being nullified.

Back when the UK was still a member of the EU (to be an EU member one MUST be a member of the European Convention Of Human Rights), this kinda stuff ended up in the European Court Of Human Rights (which is not an EU court, but instead is the court of last resort for members of the European Convention Of Human Rights), but nowadays maybe that’s not so (I’m not sure if the meanwhile after Brexit the UK has already left the European Convention Of Human Rights, but being able to leave it was one of the things the Brexiters claimed was a “benefit” of leaving the EU).

(Edit: it turns out the UK is still a member of the Council of Europe and hence the European Convention Of Human Rights, so maybe this can still be appealed to the European Court Of Human Rights)

I’ve lived in a couple of countries in Europe, including the UK, and found the UK the be the least Democratic of all (frankly I’m not even sure what they have is a real Democracy rather than a “managed” Theatre Of Democracy to keep the riff-raff thinking they have real power).

One should be have been assuming since Windows 7 and automated online updates that the Microsoft key used to sign OS updates is in the hands of at least the NSA (and hence probably the Israeli equivalent) and they can push whatever they want to your computer as an OS update, bypassing all protections.

In fact the same applies to Linux updates of certain distros - if they’re maintained by a company based in the US they can be forced by FISA courts to provide the signing keys to the US Government.

More in general, just go read about FISA courts and their secret court orders - companies based in the US or hosting things in the US can be secretly forced to just “give the keys of the Realm” to parts of the US Government.

Since things like the Patriot act one should be treating companies based in the US as just as untrustworthy as companies based in China.

(By the way, some other supposed Democratic countries have similar or worse systems - for example the equivalent of FISA courts in the UK have things like secret court sessions were the side which is not the State is not authorized to have a legal representation, see most of the evidence or even know the decision of the court).

Have people already forgot most of what came out in the Snowden Revelations?!

Also one might be aware of the problem but not actually understand the underlying causes.

One can be a bloody genious and still be unable to self-rationalize one’s way out of certain negative behaviours because they’re driven by things at an emotional level (fear, pleasure, habit, need for approval, low self-esteem and so on), because they became entrenched as behavioural patterns when one was too young to understand any of it (as a child or teenager - it’s not by chance that a lot of Psychology “blames” one’s parents) and because without the distancing that comes from looking at it from the outside with no interest in seeing certain things rather than others (it’s generally emotionally unpleasent to notice and admit that certain elements of one’s personality are negative) it’s extremelly hard to spot certain things which for an observant trained independent outsider are very obvious.

Also I totally agree that one shouldn’t be going into it wanting the therapist to like you: people who worry about the impression they make on the therapist are likely not being fully open and honest about themselves to him or her, which kinda defeats the point of going to theraphy (if one was 100% perfect and all qualities, why go to theraphy).

The sheer perfidy of the Norwegians, with their dastardly scheme to lure researchers away from US universities … by not treating them like shit.

From my own impression as a member of a small political party in my own country who joined not out of tribalism but simply because they seemed to mostly want the same things as I do, party members live in a bubble of people who are heavilly into politics and understand the importance of politics, whilst the leadership specifically in addition to this are also mostly surrounded by generally unquestioningly hero worship from the common party members plus they tend to have quite limited life experience outside the party as they’ve joined it as young adults (maybe when they were at university and involved in student movements) and it and its internal environment have always been a large part of their lives.

Those people usually see the supporters of their political adversaries in the same way as fans of a sports club see fans of other clubs, and don’t really “get” the point of view of people who don’t vote at all.

It’s not just the US of course. Everyone everywhere will be paying more for everything. Tariffs just suck.

How exactly will somebody in, for example, the EU, pay more if the US are putting high tariffs on imported Aluminium?

Absolutelly, behind the tariff wall (i.e. inside the US), imported Aluminium will be more expensive (since there the imported stuff costs original price + tariff and the local stuff will tend to rise towards than value), but outside, people are still paying for it tariff free (so the original price with no extras). In fact, it’s quite possible prices outside the US will go down for some things were, seeing reduced demand from the US for their product due to US Tariffs, Producers lower prices to try and attract more customers outside the US.

The only things that would go up for that example EU customer from US Tariffs would be US-made products and services hit by EU counter-Tariffs and those represent a small fraction of what people in the EU buy, whilst, because of the “against everybody” way Trump raised Tariffs, US consumers will see price rises on everything imported, not just stuff from a single country.

The main impact of US Tariffs outside the US is not making purchasers pay more for stuff (since those outside do not pay that tariff), it’s making companies in areas where there was a lot of exporting to the US sell less because there is less demand from the US (which either hits them directly if they were exporting to the US or indirectly if their competitiors were and are now forced to try and sell more in other markets hence competing harder with them).

I think it’s more that the British Press in general is pretty political, heavy on the spin and hence one of the least trusted in Europe by the locals themselves.

When it comes to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine - which is very politically and geostrategically significant for the UK government - the level and direction of the bias of the BBC is no different from the Euromaidan Press hence for those who think the latter is not a “serious source”, the former is also not a “serious source”.

Mind you, on different subjects which are not related to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (such as the Israeli Genocide in Gaza) I fully expect the Euromaidan Press is often less biased (on this specific example, significantly so) than the BBC.

Just because the BBC is posh doesn’t mean they’re honest (in fact from my own experience living in the UK, posh more often than not means fake. manipulative and dishonest)

“Beware of shape-shifting murderous alien” would’ve required a bigger board, so it’s cheaper to put it like this.

What he learned is that there are no real consequences for such “mistakes”