ITT, predictably: lots of boring cynicism and nihilism. In a democracy you get the leaders you deserve. It’s right in the definition of the term. If our leaders are bad, it’s literally our fault.
Of course, as with anything else in life, it’s always much easier to blame others.
Yes yes, downvote away. Cognitive dissonance is a bummer, right? Anything’s better than accepting responsiblity
So representative democracy’s not for you, then. What’s your preferred system and where has it been tried successfully?
If you mean salary, this is a common misconception. The best way to reduce corruption is to pay the politicians more, which makes them less vulnerable to lobbyists. Some of the least corrupt countries in the world pay salaries that are competitive with the private sector.
The world’s highest paid politician is the prime minister of Singapore (earns about $2 million). Singapore usually ranks in the top 5 least corrupt countries.
You’ll find that this is standard practice in all democracies. Especially smaller parties, which will want something back when one of them gets elected.
On the contrary. I personally know politicians who would have become much richer if they had just gone into the private sector instead. Politicians are like anyone else, they are motivated by many things besides just money. In this case status and power, yes, but also a sincere wish to improve things and serve their communities.
Caveat: by “politician”, this assumes you mean “elected representative in an advanced democracy like the USA”. After all, “politician” just means “someone who wields power”. In much of the world, politicians do seek power mainly in order to control resources and dispense patronage to their own in-group.
That is not the case of the USA, not yet. But beware: hopelessness and cynicism are self-fulfilling prophesies.
Sure, that’s fair. And of course the guy on the street is not waiting on a linguistics academy for permission to open his mouth.
But you’re gonna have a tough time persuading me that a change like this is somehow “good” for our language. Languages get poorer as well as richer through use. The envy-jealousy case to me looks pretty clear: most people never learned the difference at school, or didn’t understand it, or just didn’t care, and now the rest of us have to accept that there’s no word for “jealousy” any more. Coz the people is always right, innit? It’s this attitude that is really modern.
So many other examples. “To step foot on” springs to mind. Yes, yes, entirely correct, and logical (foot! step!), and probably already in the dictionary. But to me it will always be what it obviously is, really: a mishearing by a lot of people who never saw it in print because they don’t read.
While obviously you’re correct, this is not necessarily a good thing. The jealousy-envy collapse is clearly an impoverishment of language. These are two different concepts and it’s useful to have words for concepts.
FWIW: the doctrine that “whatever people say is by definition correct and wise” is actually a pretty Anglocentric and modern thing. Linguists didn’t always think this, and you won’t get people saying this for French, for example.
Quick primer. This is not the Parliament. This is the Council, the intergovernmental branch of the EU. Specifically, a meeting of national justice ministers. They sometimes vote but their real objective is to find consensus, since the EU is not a federation and it’s politically hard to pass anything against the wishes of national governments. If they can agree, then it goes to the Parliament, which definitely does vote and is obviously a bit more open to influence from ordinary voters.
From the agenda for tomorrow:
Ministers will also exchange views on the concluding report of the high-level group on access to data for effective law enforcement. At this year’s June meeting of home affairs ministers the Council welcomed the group’s 42 recommendations on access to data. At the upcoming meeting ministers will discuss the way forward now that the group has presented its concluding report.
Grainy things, quinoa, oats, nuts of varied types, dried fruits. Things in jars. Sometimes prepared salads that I buy the same day.
Eggs. Because I am not actually vegan! But it’s the only exception at home. And I also eat out a bit, and sometimes even eat meat!
None of this invalidates my point: domestic veganism is a way to simplify one’s life, ethical issues completely apart.
Lettuce is hard admittedly. Personally I don’t eat it. It’s mostly water, not very nutritious, and also a pretty good vector for pesticides given the edible surface area.
Spinach should keep for 2 or 3 days. Do as they did before refrigeration: put it in a dark, dry, cool (low) place. Shop regularly in small quantities - people alone in apartments tend to be in big cities where this is possible.
Here’s an unpopular one that will have people huffing and puffing with righteous indignation.
Go vegan.
Your food will keep three times as long and you will not even need a refrigerator. I speak with 20 years of experience of living mostly solo in small apartments. Not having to deal with highly perishable and pathogenic food at home is a major convenience.
Correct. This is the reason not to use Revolut.
Choose Wise instead.
Text communication is always going to be a challenge for human beings. We are just not evolved for conversation where you can’t see a face or at least hear a voice. It’s a constant minefield, the potential for misunderstanding is almost insurmountable. To pull off a fruitful discussion by text, especially with multiple participants and group dynamics in play, and have people learn things and feel that they’ve had a decent hearing - that really counts as a triumph, in my view. It is absolutely the exception, not the rule.
The best way to do it? In my view: to take an almost autistic approach. Stick as rigidly as possible to facts and to the topic. Assume good faith, even when it’s hard. Steer clear of humor and second degree. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the most civil, productive virtual communities (Hacker News, for example) are filled with IT types for whom these qualities come a bit more naturally.
Another rule I have: no swearing. At best it looks infantile, at worst it it just raises the temperature pointlessly. (Personally I often stop reading a comment when I see the word “fucking” - this is not a serious contribution that I need bother with.)
And I’ve also learned to try to avoid the word “you”. This BTW is a standard trick used to encourage civil in-person debate, for example in parliaments where people will address each other using the third person or via the speaker. It’s also why so many languages have formal words for “you”, intended to increase distance. It turns out the word “you” functions as a sort of low-level trigger for humans, a bit like eye contact for so many other animals. Best avoided.
As I was saying: text communication is just hard. I think we all need to make more allowances for this fact.
Of course you can. You said you live in Europe.
Unless you live in Russia or the Vatican, that means your country has signed the European Convention on Human Rights, of which article 8 commits it to respecting your privacy.
So, sure, you’re not going to bother suing. It’s not that important to you. But let’s go easy on the helplessness of “In my country you can’t do that”. Yes. You can do it.
OK, but that incident was well over a decade ago. I agree it was bad but to call it spyware or “malicious” is just spin. If you read the quotations from the time, it becomes clear they really thought users would love it. After all, it’s the sort of thing Windows exiles were probably expecting. So: bad judgement, mainly. They could have just put the feature behind an opt-in modal and avoided the whole furore.
They’re a private company trying to tune their business model in a delicate area under the watchful eye of privacy hawks like yourself. For the price of an occasional lapse like this, we get a rock-solid OS with literal salaried employees to maintain it and keep it secure. To me it seems like a decent trade-off.
No, adding something useful to the discussion should get you a vote. The fact that other idiots agree with you does not magically make your contribution thoughtful, or insightful, or productive in any other way.
Yes, it’s very different from the USA. Campaign spending is tightly limited. In most EU countries, political parties get the majority of their funding from the state, paid on the basis of past election results.
With this can-do attitude, we’re really gonna get things changing!
Agreed, it’s definitely a problem. And in fact it’s even worse because it turns out that today’s supposedly progressive and well-informed youngsters in fact get their news from TikTok and tend to vote for authoritarian populists even in western Europe.
Perhaps Sweden is different then. I have also worked in politics and it is certainly widespread elsewhere. Historically, communist parties did it as a matter of routine. For smaller leftist parties today, the cut from MP pay can be a serious form of income. From a British think tank: “The regular collection of a fixed salary share from parliamentarians is not just a widespread practice, but for many parties also a lucrative one.” IIRC even the former French FN had a policy of taking a certain percentage.
Anyway, you seem to have downvoted my comment so that will be the end of this discussion.