[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 42 minutes ago

It is not, but I think that discussion about democracy in cultures that don't organise themselves into states is very informative because those societies basically have to be democratic. A state apparatus that can enforce its will is what allows a state to be non-democratic in the first place. If there is no state, people who don't like it can just leave.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Have not learned about the four stages of human population growth rukd

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Background: The US Constitution was a document that united thirteen different countries into a single one. Previously, the thirteen colonies turned states banded together to fight the British but the first American constitution, the Articles of Confederation, wasn't really a constitution; it was a treaty establishing an organisation to coordinate them. That organisation was the "United States in Congress Assembled", which functioned more as a diplomatic conference than a legislature, hence the term "congress", also used in terms like "Congress of Vienna". This organisation had no executive or judicial power. Compliance with its decrees was essentially voluntary. The Declaration of Independence is titled "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America...". Note that "united" is not capitalised, because it is not part of a proper noun ("Declaration" and "States" are capitalised following an old English convention that capitlaises every noun). They are thirteen independent states that happen to be united for the purpose of this declaration.

That being said, the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the US Constitution did so clandestinely. The Convention was called to suggest changes to the Articles of Confederation, not write a new constitution and establish a new federal state. To keep their work secret, they shut the windows to the State House where they worked despite it being in the middle of summer in a time before air conditioning.

As the thirteen states were, at the time, functionally independent countries, they could not be forced to abide by a constitution that they did not agree to. Many southern states had agricultural economies that relied on slave labour. Slaves were valuable property to those who owned them and the men who did were usually rich, powerful, and influential. It's understandable why they were not willing to give that up, even if it meant defying the idea of "liberty" that they fought for.

This was a cause of much squabbling in the Philadelphia Convention between delegates from northern states, which were not reliant on slave labour, and delegates from southern ones, which were. This resulted in the infamous three-fifths compromise, allocating representation in the US House of Representatives according to population, counted as the number of free people plus three-fifths of the number of slaves (the used the term "other persons" as a euphemism for this). Indigenous people were explicitly excluded from the count as well. Franchise was determined according to state law, which gave southern states the power to withhold suffrage from slaves.

This was considered agreeable to southern states and acceptable to northern states. Thus, when all thirteen states ratified the US Constitution, they permanently signed away their sovereignty and became a part of the United States of America, a new country.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

You are correct, actually. Not sure why you are downvoted. Several traditional tribal government structures of indigenous peoples were much more democratic in form.

However, besides the Iroquois Confederacy, it's hard to consider them as being sufficiently organised to be considered a state in the traditional sense. This isn't meant to exclude all indigenous governments; the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca civilisations were all examples of (non-democratic) highly organised states, especially in comparison to the North American tribes around and after European contact.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago

The best and most effective way to break people out of the fascist doom-spiral is to block all channels of information that make them mad and whose purpose is to arouse feelings of rage, as you have suggested, and instead push them towards things that make them happy.

I remember one Reddit user said that they blocked all the right-wing Facebook groups on their grandfather's computer, and then subscribed him to golfing and fishing groups instead, which over several months caused him to be a happier and less politically extreme person, whereas before, politics was all he thought about.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

...which was remarkably liberal for its time.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 0 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

You've basically just excluded ninety per cent of the Internet from being used. And it's not surprising that this is coming from someone with an account on the lemmynsfw instance.

If everyone followed your logic, you wouldn't even be posting this because your instance would have been defederated a long time ago to not lose users.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world -2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Work culture, especially in the US, is very conservative. The fact that you don't understand that it's better to be more conservative here regardless of consensus is astounding. Understand that the NSFW flag is a curation tool. You seem to think it's a form of censorship. It's purpose is to deal with the ten per cent on the far end of the spectrum who would take offence. And if your retort is that the majority shouldn't have to accommodate the minority, that's just a terminally online opinion that fails to recognise the fragility of real human interaction. It's analogous to saying that bridge engineers shouldn't have to accommodate the heaviest ten per cent of vehicles when figuring out what its maximum load should be when accomodating "most" vehicles is enough and that those vehicles should either lighten their load or find an alternate route.

I'm not going to argue with you over this because I don't believe you have the foundational understanding of why things are what they are.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

The scenario you described would not be breaking in.

Terms and conditions being agreed to are not relevant for this purpose. An exposed API is one that is welcome to be exploited. If you're not requiring an API key, you're essentially saying "This API is free for anyone to use" for security purposes, regardless of what you say in the terms and conditions.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Try showing it off at work. Set it as the wallpaper on your work computer and see how "safe for work" it is then.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 16 points 17 hours ago

Still clearly not safe for work.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 27 points 22 hours ago

Daily reminder to check out some local credit unions. They offer the same services as banks and are run as a not-for-profit charity. Most US credit unions are members of the Co-Op ATM network which allows you to use any other credit union's ATMs for no fee as if they were your own. Some also reimburse out-of-network ATM fees and even pay interest on checking/current accounts. Their fees are usually the same or lower than banks.

36

This image is from Google Maps and depicts Maritime Square on Tsing Yi, the island where my grandmother lives. I chose it because I think it is the embodiment of the new millennium Hong Kong urban development.

The entire development is built by the MTR Corporation, a Government-owned publicly traded company that is primarily known for running the Hong Kong metro system of the same name.

The primary attraction of this development is the eponymous Maritime Square Mall, a large five-storey indoor shopping arcade. It is attached to Tsing Yi Station, a metro station on the overground Tung Chung Line and there is a small bus interchange on the ground floor.

The mall has shops including a grocery store, around a dozen restaurants, a Marks & Spencer, bakeries, clothing retailers, electronics stores, a few banks, and some miscellaneous other stores. Notably NOT in the building is a school, otherwise, you might even be able to spend your whole life without leaving it.

There are several towers extending out of the main mall complex which contain hundreds of units of (unaffordable) housing. I think there is a botanical garden on the roof, too. The entrance to these towers is inside the mall, where there's just a lift lobby where you'd expect a shop to be. The lift lobby is closed to the public; a keycard or code is required to enter.

I think it's a similar concept to a 15-minute city, but more like a 15-minute building.

57
submitted 2 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

The Pentagon has provided Ukraine with thousands of Iranian-made weapons seized before they could reach Houthi militants in Yemen, U.S. officials said Tuesday. It’s the Biden administration’s latest infusion of emergency military support for Kyiv while a multibillion-dollar aid package remains stalled in the Republican-led House.

The weapons include 5,000 Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, along with a half-million rounds of ammunition. They were seized from four “stateless vessels” between 2021 and 2023 and made available for transfer to Ukraine through a Justice Department civil forfeiture program targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Officials said Iran intended to supply the weapons to the Houthis, who have staged a months-long assault on commercial and military vessels transiting off the Arabian Peninsula. Central Command said the cache is enough to supply rifles to an entire Ukrainian brigade, which vary in size but typically include a few thousand soldiers.

87
submitted 2 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

The Pentagon has provided Ukraine with thousands of Iranian-made weapons seized before they could reach Houthi militants in Yemen, U.S. officials said Tuesday. It’s the Biden administration’s latest infusion of emergency military support for Kyiv while a multibillion-dollar aid package remains stalled in the Republican-led House.

The weapons include 5,000 Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, along with a half-million rounds of ammunition. They were seized from four “stateless vessels” between 2021 and 2023 and made available for transfer to Ukraine through a Justice Department civil forfeiture program targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Officials said Iran intended to supply the weapons to the Houthis, who have staged a months-long assault on commercial and military vessels transiting off the Arabian Peninsula. Central Command said the cache is enough to supply rifles to an entire Ukrainian brigade, which vary in size but typically include a few thousand soldiers.

23

Google eats 30% of in-app purchases so I'd like to donate directly if possible.

If there is a way to do this, perhaps add it to the community's sidebar?

63
submitted 4 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
132

and every fifth digit is just put in an odd place

345
submitted 4 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

tl;dr After local news aired the story, Tesla has paid the pie shop $2,000, the cost of ingredients for the cancelled order.

125
submitted 4 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
-26
submitted 4 months ago by NateNate60@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

The jump in distro versions, say, from Fedora 38 to Fedora 39, is not the same as the jump from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It's more like the jump from version 23H2 to 24H2.

Now, I'm sure even most Windows users among those reading will ask "wtf are 23H2 and 24H2"? The answer is that those version numbers are the Windows analogue to the "23.10" at the end of "Ubuntu 23.10". But the difference is that this distinction is invisible to Windows users.

Why?

Linux distros present these as "operating system upgrades", which makes it seem like you're moving from two different and incompatible operating systems. Windows calls them "feature updates". They're presented as a big deal in Linux, whereas on Windows, it's just an unusually large update.

This has the effect of making it seem like Linux is constantly breaking software and that you need to move to a completely different OS every six to nine months, which is completely false. While that might've been true in the past, it is increasingly true today that anything that will run on, say, Ubuntu 22.04 can also run without modification (except maybe for hardcoded version checks/repository names) on Ubuntu 23.10, and will still probably work on Ubuntu 24.04. It's not guaranteed, but neither is it on Windows, and the odds are very good either way.

I will end on the remark that for many distros, a version upgrade is implemented as nothing more than changing the repositories and then downloading the new versions of all the packages present and running a few scripts. The only relevant changes (from the user's perspective) is usually the implementation of new features and maybe a few changes to the UI. In other words, "feature update" describes it perfectly.

15

Still just plain rectangles with text.

200

Before someone asks why there isn't insane inflation from banks printing an infinite amount of money for themselves, the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar. In order to be allowed to print HKD, banks must have an equivalent amount of USD on deposit.

view more: next ›

NateNate60

joined 8 months ago