sunbeam60

I’m all for figuring out the balance between creator compensation and AI training.

But this ain’t it.

This is an attempt to own the internet and should be treated as such. You think Cloudflare is doing this without taking a cut? They want in on the game, not change it.

If this succeeds we’ve opened up to non-neutral pipes. This is the end game of what non-neutral carrier ecosystem looks like.

You’re assuming they need to feel like they’re doing good? Some people don’t give a crap and will trample on anyone for a buck.

I 100% agree that the EU has a democratic deficit.

It’s by design, though. The council represents the countries, the commission is composed by the countries - only the parliament is directly elected and it has no power to propose legislation.

This is all to keep the member countries in charge of the EU’s direction and governance. As a result it can feel remote because you vote for a national parliament, who proposes the commission and sits on the council. Even the commission must have a commissioner from each member state. It’s all about the EU being run by individual states.

I would much prefer the commission to form from the parliament and then have two chambers only - one directly elected, which proposes laws & forms the commission and then a chamber of member states, similar to the council today, which must also approve regulation. In that way it would be much simpler for people to understand and it would have much less bureaucracy and sense of back room deals.

Every time that’s been proposed, though, one or more member states have rejected it. So we have the EU we are willing to have.

Yeah I know the story very well. If we want the spitzenkandidat system to be law, then let’s make it a law. At the minute, it’s convention.

The parliament threatened to reject a candidate that wasn’t a spitzenkandidat but in the end they did actually approve UVDL. It’s not like the system is enshrined in law, it’s just convention which has been near to crumbling before and this time even Parliament accepted the change.

I am definitely open to the Pfizer story being on the edge. But I do think there a damned if you do, damned if you don’t element to that time. Every leader we’re desperately trying to save lives and no one knew what we were up against.

I personally would have loved Vestager to take the post but everyone wanted steady hands on the wheel, council, commission, parliament.

What are your sources that elections in the EU are rigged?

She was associated with the broader Berateraffäre in Germany, correct, but she didn’t flee German politics on that basis. Her conflict of interest was that her son worked for a global consulting company that she was partially involved in choosing. Her son would not have worked on the projects that the consulting firm was awarded so it’s pretty tenuous to be honest.

UVDL worked as a minister between 2005-2019 but she didn’t become a nominee for the president role through a German vote - in fact it was all other countries except Germany that voted for her. In both cases she wasn’t “promoted” by Merkel - she had to be nominated by the indirectly elected council then approved by the directly elected EU Parliament.

There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell she’ll go here. There’s enough votes to trigger a vote but not even the most remote chance there’ll be enough votes to actually present her with a no confidence majority. That’s because, unlike the article quoted which is written by someone fairly far outside the broad political spectrum (combining a unique blend of socialism, far right talking points and COVID skepticism) there’s a fair degree of confidence in her leadership, both in the council, the commission and parliament.

But go ahead, let’s cast some unsourced aspersions and make everyone lose a little more faith in our reasonably well functioning European democracy.

Yes, CTRL+Z undos, CTRL+S saves etc

Although micro already exists for this.

Same. I occasionally happen to leave the house with only sunglasses and then I’ve got no other choice if I want to look at a menu behind a counter or somesuch. I still tend to take them off first inside and then go through this little dance in front of the staff where I theatrically put them on in an attempt to ensure that everyone understands my predicament. I’m British after all.

The vast majority of tax in most countries is paid by those with higher incomes. In the US the top 1% of earners pay more than 40% of the tax collected and almost all the tax (97%) is paid by the upper half of earners.

In the UK the numbers are a little different, but tell the same story (top 1% pays around 30%, top 10% pays around 60% of all tax collected).

So while I know you mean relatively and not absolutely it’s still worth spending at least one minute to consider how much of the tax burden is actually shouldered by the wealthy.

I come from a Scandinavian country and I’m ALL in on redistribution, free education, free healthcare etc. But let’s not have politics ignore the facts.

That doesn’t sound like the 1%. There are 3.6 million 1%ers in the US alone, by definition. Being in the 1% might you very comfortable but it won’t necessarily make you an evil overlord. For that I suspect you need to be in the 0.001% (meaning there’s 3600ish in the US, a more manageable group of absolute bastard. There aren’t 3.6 million disgustingly rich people in the US.