A new twist on a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY

If you ask Americans about socialist policies without mentioning parties or ideology, then they overwhelmingly support them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah in Holland the average work week is less than 30 hours.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country

The “cannot serve two masters” argument was used as a reason not to elect the first Catholic US President, JFK. I find it to be pretty uncompelling.

The important thing is that the US not recognize any titles.

Both Reagan and Bush Sr. got knighted.

https://royalcentral.co.uk/uk/queen/the-us-presidents-knighted-by-the-queen-and-king-george-vi-125671/

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If your goal is to act as a deterrent then harsher sentences do not work, at least according to research.

At this point, we think it is fair to say that we know of no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall body of research literature on “deterrence through sentencing” who believes that crime rates will be reduced, through deterrence, by raising the severity of sentences handed down in criminal courts.

https://www.crimsl.utoronto.ca/research-publications/faculty-publications/issues-related-harsh-sentences-and-mandatory-minimum

There is no limit. At some point The Onion will make an ironic story about it that gets reposted every time a woman getting killed by anti-abortion policies makes the news.

This video is exactly why I am in favor of voting booths over mail-in ballots.

If you are unable to vote in person, then voting should be easy to do early. But we should try hard to get people into the voting booth.

Warning: Taken from decades-old memories of things that I wasn’t involved in or paying much attention to! Anyway…

In Virginia a man sued the state like 30 years ago because they wanted to charge him to change his name, when a woman could change her name free when she got married. The state could either have charged women or made it free for all. They chose the later.

In the Netherlands a number of cities were banning fossil fuel for deliveries in the city. It was in planning for years, easing into implementation.

Our new government just scrapped all of those plans because the largest party doesn’t believe in climate change, and another party in the coalition is the “farmer’s movement” party and opposes environmental regulations.

😢

I work at a company big into AI. We build our own models. Our senior management drank the Kool-Aid. We don’t have search on our Intranet any more, just LLM chatbots.

Our TLS certificate expired last week on our main web page. I tried to find the contact details for the team responsible and the thing just hallucinated e-mail addresses.

Needless to say, I’m less excited than you.

Sorry what’s the g-word?

I used this movie as the basis for at least three school assignments in high school. Brilliant.

I mean… if something is illegal but the penalties are low or enforcement nonexistent then it’s more like a recommendation. Fines become a “cost of doing business”.

I totally agree. In Holland we have woon corporaties, literally “companies for places to live”. Of course, these have struggled in the face of decades of center right, pro-business governmental policies.

Meh. I had much better luck with corporations than private landlords. The people working for corporations generally want to do a good job and keep people happy. Owners want to minimize costs and invade your privacy to make sure you aren’t causing too much wear and tear, since that’s money otherwise going in their pocket.

Both will end up with shitty carpet and cheap appliances, of course.

UK intentionally omitted from consideration.

The only nukes actually owned by a European country are French, which just disregarded the winners of the election and are ruled by a center right/fascist coalition. We’re fucked.

This is why the fantasy of asking AI to solve global warming will either end up with no benefit (possible) or with us being converted to carbon-neutral paperclips.

According to the Forbes article she later received a postcard in 1993, not that the groping occurred in 1993.