Amazon’s philosophy is that higher-ups get paid in mostly stock and their salaries are capped at pretty much what Andy’s salary is. Idea is that if you make ~300k in salary, but your stock can be worth anything from 40 to 500 million in 4 years when it vests, you’re probably motivated to work extra hard to make the company worth more.

Stock grants outweigh salaries by 3x in senior software dev roles already, the executives make roughly the same salary, but more stock.

It’s not a few billions anymore. Undersea fiber, datacenters in several countries… It all adds up.

Uh didn’t y’all tankies keep parroting Putin’s “Ukraine is full of neonazis” line 4 years ago? Black sun flags and all that? Zelenskyy, a Jew, was supposed to be an antisemite?

Now when there’s finally a law against it, everything has changed and antisemitism was never a real issue?

Granted, I can’t read the whole article, but

Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people.

This part is almost definitely not referring just to unfair elections because I doubt anyone thinks that the “real” people support that. Rather, it’s common to play to the fears of these “real” people: immigrants will steal your job and also be lazy and live off benefits and they’ll also murder, rape and pillage. The gay liberals will make heterosex illegal. Etc. Orban was pushing this, Putin is pushing this, EKRE in my country has beeb pushing this, GOP has been pushing this forever. And the narrative usually pits these “bad” others against “real” hard-working folks, as if the gays and foreigners are going to be a huge danger to them and everything they hold dear.

You mean the other people have to live with a narcissist. The narcissist isn’t the one suffering.

Which word is the slur here?

It used to be, but it’s been a bit more than a century.

This is about social liberalism not economic. The opposite of which is conservatism and repression. I don’t think you’re arguing for the cause you think you’re arguing for here.

As I understand, Hungarian elections were voted as “free, but not fair” by observers.

I.e the ballots would get counted properly, but Orban’s gerrymandered it into oblivion, most media belongs to Orban’s friends, etc. The winning party had every possible disadvantage short of Fidesz actually messing with the ballots themselves.

Hell, Trump himself probably owes a lot of his political views to Fox. I’m not gonna call it news.

The US is speedrunning it, they went straight to lashing out in the middle of the conflict with the up and coming power.

I have not, but I’ve heard good things. I’ll see about adding it to my server.

I do find it funny that we’re all up in arms about people being called illegal immigrants in the US but nobody seems to notice that MOST of the world has closed borders, maximum stay durations for non-residents, etc.

I will preface the rest of the comment with the following disclaimer: While I do believe in immigration controls, I AM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY ICE.

Obviously what ICE is doing is fucked up on a level of its’ own and nobody should be forcefully deported without due process EVER, much less to a concentration camp in a random ass country, but at the same time, I think we can still differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants? And legally speaking, it’s got nothing to do with race. The right wants you to think that latinos == illegal immigrants == criminals whereas there are plenty of white illegal immigrants (I’ve had a family member migrate to the US a long time ago and overstay their welcome and we’re literally mayo colored) and most latinos are legal immigrants and most illegal immigrants aren’t criminals either.

Either “illegal immigrants” needs to lose its negative and racial connotations, or there needs to be another term for people who are in the country illegally, but aren’t actually actively committing crimes or anything, because such people will always exist, and there should be clear cut paths for residency for them, as well as humane paths to exit the country if they don’t want to become permanent residents or aren’t eligible for some reason. And the distinction between legal and illegal/undocumented immigrants needs to exist because… There are records about the former, they pay taxes, etc, but usually the latter don’t pay taxes. They for sure don’t in my country, they’re hired without a contract and paid in cash. They aren’t part of censuses. They don’t receive benefits they should be eligible to if they were here legally.

I’m not talking about refugees either, I’m talking about people who come here for work, get paid near minimum wage for hard work that a citizen/resident would get paid at least twice as much for and the employer would have to pay taxes for. They get a raw deal themselves, they mess up the labor market for everyone else (hire an Estonian for 2000€ a month contractual monthly wage, he only gets ~1660 and you have to pay a total of 2676 (because taxes exist on both sides of the employment contract) OR hire an undocumented Ukrainian, pay him 800-1000€ and give him and 3 of his mates an apartment to live in that you pay a total of 500€ a month for). I used Ukrainians for the example not because of war refugees, but because at least before the war, I knew about more than one small-time employer using undocumented Ukrainian laborers.

There absolutely are issues that come from illegal immigration and just ignoring their existence doesn’t help anyone. Instead the goal should be to help them become legal immigrants. And as much as it sucks, fully open borders would suck for any moderately wealthy country. Capitalists are gonna capitalist and if you suddenly increase a country’s workforce by a huge amount, well, salaries for everyone are going down. Immigration controls are, in fact, kind of an artificial scarcity on the workforce. Obviously skilled labor from abroad is beneficial for an economy, particularly experts that are hard to train, but you also don’t want to suddenly increase your workforce by 10% a year or something because of open borders. Salaries for everyone will go down FAST.

Love that they went deeper into the politics in the prequels. Wish the trade route blockade bit had been more fleshed out.

I want to see more Star Wars plotlines that aren’t JUST about the heroes. Of course I haven’t seen the more recent shows or played too many of the games. I think S1 or S2 of The Mandalorian is the newest thing I’ve seen. Haven’t had the time to keep up and maybe there’s lovely new Star Wars content that’s perfect for me and I just haven’t seen it yet.

I’d really love to see something in the lower levels of Coruscant. Like the cancelled game Star Wars 1313. I’d love to know more about the politics of different eras.

There’s an interesting universe, interesting planets, interesting species and people. But most stories are about a select few heroes and villains (thankfully more than just the Skywalker and Palpatine lineages now). There’s so much more that could be done without being repetitive. It’s like a money printing machine that they’re just not using.

The trouble with getting rid of all that is that other countries won’t. Until we have one world order, it’s not feasible to completely abolish defense.

NATO works. Russia has not dared to attack a single member. I’m writing this from a former soviet country that would’ve been conquered by now if we weren’t a member of NATO.

Here in Estonia we have a meat company called Maks ja Moorits which is pretty dark when you think about it. Don’t wanna know how their sausages are made.

The whole death thing isn’t described in depth, that’s why it’s not that traumatising. They do topple a dictatorship though!