Fuck Israel and all, but Iran is far too weak to retaliate in a meaningful way and start ww3

I remember the time before everyone and their mother lived chronically online and were constantly bombarded with (fake) news. Terrible stuff - wars, famine, whatnot - has always happened, now we just know about it instantly.

Absolutely a nuanced area. But on top of not modelling random people as full individuals it’s hard to determine what spying on people might actually mean. I don’t really want to defend working for a company as nefarious as Palantir - even if I honestly hardly knew them before Trump #2 - but convincing yourself that gathering people’s data isn’t problematic is quite easy, and we all inherently accept a wide array of surveillance measures as - willing or unwilling - members of state entities, be it a video camera in a clothing store or governments logging our tax data. Then comes the fact that employees below the level of “board of directors” usually don’t know everything going on in the company; I wouldn’t fault a junior dev choosing to work for, say, ‘cool’ Google or Apple in 2017.

Of course it’s relevant that humans are egocentrical animals; I wouldn’t give my own life to save five people that I don’t know in Moldova. Being too empathetic is a poor trait in a dog eat dog world. Of course we need standards and to hold others up to these standards; I don’t know your friend, what he does at Palantir or when he started working there - maybe he’s a lazy ass that holds them back haha - and I do think, especially with all that’s transpired the past 5 months, that it’s a problematic company to be part of - I just wanted to discuss that I don’t think it’s just lack of empathy

As a non-American I don’t think I’d buy US residency even for five dollars. But do come cross the Atlantic!

“Happy winter celebrations, fellas!” “I hope you’ll enjoy your Germanic pagan traditions”

Sure he does, intellectually, just like I understand the ramifications of buying a smartphone, clothes “made in Bangladesh”, or using a public AI model. Still the human conscience doesn’t apply too much significance to something that abstract. It doesn’t keep me up at night that my lithium is mined by Congolese children - but if I had to buy it personally from a one-armed indentured labourer I’m sure I’d stop immediately. “Out of sight out of mind” isn’t an excuse for committing heinous acts, I’m just saying that it’s not simply that he “doesn’t care about other people”

Jeg havde sgu heller ikke hørt om det før, indtil jeg så en lille spalte i avisen om det forleden

A couple dozen of Danish municipalities are working on replacing Google and Microsoft entirely in schools with a project called OS2Skole (skole meaning “school”). It’s expected to save them around €3 million in yearly and the intention is to de-Googleify and de-Microsoftify children already from an early age and to make it open source.

https://www.os2.eu/os2skole

Mind you that the project was started before Trump got re-elected.

I think it can be difficult to relate to such abstract concepts and consequences that you don’t feel directly. After all, it’d be much easier to press on a button that’d kill 10 000 people living 10 000 km away from you than to stab one person to death. Out of sight out of mind.

My point being that I don’t think he’s indifferent to people that he doesn’t know, he’s simply not able to process all the ramifications of this particular thing. The effects of data collection and manipulation is quite subtle, after all, like the frog in the slow burning pot

It’s a case of a few opportunists ruining it for the many. As with football celebrations, street parties, or anything. It’s a damn shame that their greed ruins the legitimacy of protesting though

I’m from one of the countries that the US has consistently threatened and badmouthed. Conceptually, the US is dead to me. I have no doubt that the people - and even our governments - no longer view the US as allies. But the country is too rich and powerful not to be an important factor globally no matter how many bridges they burn during this authoritarian and regarded spell

In some ways, yes. American soft power and trust in the country just got fully tanked, but I see it as unrealistic that the country won’t still be a superpower trying to insert itself into everything… it just won’t have a lot of allies. But then again they control all of social media (minus Tiktok) so I’ll bet they’ll sway some assbrains around the world anyway, like with the election in Poland.

The tech and military industries in USA are too powerful that it’ll lose all of its relevance. Of course, the people will live increasingly worse lives - I just hope it’ll at least hit Republicans the worst

Most of all the Russians simply can’t stomach a reality where they’re not a feared global superpower, to such a degree that they’d rather shoot themselves in the foot and be a shithole rather than just a regular better functioning nation

I’m impressed by how many narratives you’re able to tie me to out of the blue. And just for the record my parents are from Iran so take your “Europeans and people of European descent” bla bla narrative somewhere else. Geopolitics is filled with nefarious actors and calling out any of them is never a problem. You’re a problem.

I’ve only ever tried to watch travel videos, yet they still feed me the occassional far-right propaganda and even islamism

And the Taiwanese 😂

So when a person shows up at your house with a gun, you should also just move out and hand it over?

Of course he was always a jerk, but I still think of a reality where Elon never went (officially) Nazi and just stuck with his otherwise important companies. Tesla being an important early mover in EVs, especially in such an oil-dependent country, and all the cool stuff SpaceX has been up to.

Governments in any nation - France deefinitely not excluded - are self-serving and following the wishes of the rich, but the common French people have always had balls!

You know that their Asian neighbours also have low birth rates, right? Then it’s simply shifting the issue to another area.