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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: December 4th, 2025

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  • Americans look around at all the cheap commodities around them and think “yes, capitalism is the best system for organizing an economy”. What they don’t realize is just how much this lifestyle has been the direct result of exploitation of workers and resources in the global south, destruction of the environment, consuming at a level ~5x what the earth can sustain, not to mention US dollar hegemony and a military with 800+ bases around the world that can impose the will of capital (which realizes cheap stuff is needed to pay off the working class in the global north. When capital is no longer able to maintain this, I genuine believe workers will question this whole “capitalism is the best system ever” thing.






  • There numerous solutions to addressing child safety online that do not violate personal privacy. This is one example, there are others. Solving the problem when you want to address this specific problem isn’t difficult. But the reality is that all of these measures being pushed are not meant to provide real safety to children, but rather to be able to de-anonymize the internet, so governments can better identify “dissenters” (i.e. people who criticize Israel) and provide higher quality information to AI and online marketing firms.




  • Weydemeyer@lemmy.mltoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    When George Lucas was filming A New Hope he did not have the notion developed that Vader was actually Luke’s father, and that he only came up with it after the movie was released. There is no actual foreshadowing of this, no hints, and really nothing in A New Hope would even point to this possibility. To say Vader “killed your father” but to really mean “uhhhh I meant the ‘Vader’ persona metaphorically ‘killed’ the person your father was” is such a ridiculous stretch I just don’t get why more people don’t ever call this out. The much more straightforward explanation is that Lucas came up with the idea as a way to build up drama in the movies that followed, after A New Hope was already out.



  • The EU is looking for tech independence

    Issues of whether or not the EU is actually looking for tech independence aside… I find it remarkable that open source software offers so much potential for breaking free from US-dominated tech giants like Microsoft and Google, for relative pennies, and no one seems to want to pursue it. I imagine a country like France or China could develop versions of Linux (for desktop, mobile, and other applications like spreadsheets or web browsers) that blow away what we currently have for a cost that would be a rounding error of a rounding error in their current state budgets. Not sure why this hasn’t already happened, tbh.



  • Weydemeyer@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlDPRK rule
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    2 months ago

    or need breeding facilities

    Setting aside the weirdness of this comment, the DPRK’s birth rate is significantly ahead of ROK’s, to the point that I wouldn’t entire rule out ROK seeking reunification eventually in order to avoid demographic collapse.


  • What the EU doesn’t have, at least in the short/medium term, is energy. That industrial base needs (a lot of) energy. Russia was able to supply this cheaply, while the US is charging an arm and a leg. Of course in the long run, renewables can help keep that energy production local, but that means developing closer ties with China. And right now the US is trying to throw up walls to prevent other countries from accessing China’s renewable energy products.

    The EU does indeed have a significantly larger potential industrial base than Russia. But that also requires coordination, intentional action, and long-term planning. So far the EU hasn’t seemed capable of doing these things but who knows, maybe Trump has been the wake-up call Europeans need.

    I also hope Trump has shown Europeans that the US is the bigger threat to European sovereignty than Russia. And this will be true after Trump is gone, it’s not a one-time thing (Biden did things hostile to European sovereignty but that goes under the radar because he was more supportive of Ukraine). But yeah, if the EU makes some coordinated effort to build military defenses, they shouldn’t have a problem protecting their sovereignty against Russia. And that assumes Russia wants to try and military conquer parts of Europe, which I do not believe but even if I did, a more robust, domestic EU military would be enough to prevent an attack even if that was Russia’s intention.

    The US is Europe’s fake friend - with or without Trump - and it frustrates me to no end that Europeans can’t see it.