Don’t be ashamed of being a Luddite. The Luddites were actually fighting for a righteous cause.

You got me interested, so I searched around and found this:

So, if I understand this correctly, the only fundamental difference between level 4 and 5 is that 4 works on specific known road types with reliable quality (highways, city roads), while level 5 works literally everywhere, including rural dirt paths?

I’m trying to imagine what other type of geographic difference there might be between 4 and 5 and I’m drawing a blank.

If the jury returns innocent, there’s absolutely no legal recourse for those gunning for him (regardless of whether it was actual jury nullification, or they legitimately think there’s reasonable doubt).

That doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot in a country where extralegal kidnappings and concentration camps are happening, but that’s as far as the legal system goes.

As far as I’m aware, the closest they can get is to ask something like “Will you promise to carry out the laws of the federal government as written?”

He was also in favor of defunding the police in 2020

He’s still advocating that, just stealthily without saying those specific words. “We need social workers to deal with mental health crises and non-violent 911 calls” is basically defunding the police without the stigma.

Greek alphabet is different from Roman/Arabic alphabet, and pronounciation is different too. I assume the spelling would be indicative of where the cook is from.

Romania over here swapping sides every other day like they’re changing their shirts.

They had to work the whole day, dawn to dusk, just to survive.

I don’t think that’s true. At least the stuff I’ve read seems to show that about ~40 hours a week was pretty normal.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s good reasons to not want to go back to hunter-gatherer societies (the linked article goes into that), but raw hours worked isn’t one of them.

You’re not wrong, but from my limited perspective it doesn’t look like the capitalists are united on this.

There’s the “old money” types (think banks, long term investment, industry) who support the Democrats today because they want nothing to fundamentally change.

Then there’s the “new money” types (think crypto bros, short term hair traders, software companies) that support the Republicans for the crashing and burning of the economy in order to buy up what’s left at bargain bin prices.

Then the cyclist gets hit with an assault charge. Police response looked prompt and legally correct from the video, so absolutely the right call to handle it completely legally.

what the hell are they focusing on exactly?

Inclusivity and LGBQ+ issues (absence of the T is intentional). This is because those are issues that’ll get them some popular support while in no way offending the capitalist class

“ARABIC numerals? We only use god-fearing American numerals here! Get that Sharia math out of here!”

Or spent more time debugging what it produced than it would have taken to write it themselves.

Could not agree more. I’m a democratic socialist. I firmly believe that the ideas of that ideology, properly implemented, can drastically improve the standard of living for a huge percentage of the population.

I live in a country where our democratic socialist party is fantastically corrupt, lazy and completely bereft of any motivation to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. Consequently, I don’t support them. Results over ideology is an important mantra no matter what you believe.

Europe is primarily white people

Hah, that’s telling. Just FYI, there’s been generations upon generations of racism and ethnic hatred here in Eastern Europe. I guess we have the advanced racists: the ones who don’t hate you for your skin colour, but who your parents were, religion and primary language.

I’ll bet that if your dad grew up here in Romania, he’d be complaining about those sneaky Szeklers trying to steal Transylvania and Roma people being subhuman.

Also, he seems the type to pine for Europe because “We’re all Christian!”. Trust me, you haven’t seen “Christian love” like state religions persecuting people of the wrong sect. Orthodox Christianity is the state religion here, and Protestants of all stripes get treated like heathens.

Best of luck. Whatever else happens, I hope you manage to make it through to the other side.

Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.

In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.

Hi, Eastern European here. We begged to join NATO. We kicked and screamed, wheeled and dealed, anything we could to get that coveted NATO membership.

You know why? Because we’ve been dealing with expansionist Russian imperialism for our entire histories. Different coats of paint in different time periods, but it’s all the same shit. The US is an empire, but at least here it’s preferable to Russia’s imperial ambitions.

That’ll last all of 1 week before a large percentage of new homeowners run out of money and start using the house as collateral with no hope of paying back loans.

The most effective solution I’ve ever heard of is the Norwegian housing first model, where the house itself remains under state control (at least at the start). As the occupant goes through rehab if necessary, retraining if necessary, is helped to find a job, etc, they can start paying towards the house and eventually fully buy it from the state. Meanwhile, the state can use that money to buy/build more social housing to help more people.

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert but that’s how it works as far as I’ve read.

Edit: Oh, fun fact, this is similar to how the rich made so much money during COVID. Throw money at the poor, they have to spend that money, money goes to companies, then the owners.

I too saw Jimmy Carter. Him and his secret service detail had formed a heist crew called the “Cartwheelers”. I know because they hired me to be the getaway driver, which was interesting because I don’t have a driving license. They went to the bank with Jimmy Carter face masks to throw everyone off the scent, the ultimate double bluff.

The cashier, told to fill the bag with non-sequential bills at gunpoint, said “Mr. President? You sound an awful lot like Mr. Carter”, to which he replied “I told you to fill the bag, not speculate on who I might be!”, then pistol-whipped her. Anyways, long story short, we made it out of there ok. He left his calling card just outside the bank: a single peanut.