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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • not sure what a ceremonial rich dude could have done.

    This is the kind of situation in which a king (or president) can make a difference.

    Royalty don’t have any direct power to order people to do things, but they do have a voice with quite a broad reach. Whenever the king speaks, people will hear it. Even if they don’t care about the king.

    In a time where people are getting their information from sources curated to fit their own political bubble or economical interests, it’s quite powerful to be able to reach a whole country across political and economic interests.

    Royalties can’t dictate, but they can encourage and motivate people to work together on a common goal despite of their differences.

    When something is seriously threatening the country, it would be nice if the king would bother making a motivational speech, so that people, companies and politicians could see the purpose of uniting against the common threat.

    It might not sway the opinions of people or companies who have strong interests in not doing anything differently, but it will boost the morale of people trying to do their best, enabling them to rest assured that they’re doing the right thing despite of what others might do. We could say it’s a really vague forn of long term meta-politics, but sometimes that’s also all that is needed to set a direction.

    It’s not political as such, but more like “yo let’s save this sinking ship” instead of passivily watching it happen. It won’t fix anything by itself, but it’s a good start. Without a good start and set direction, you can be sure that nothing will ever change.



  • It should be highlighted that the tough competition from Chinese manufacturers is on the Chinese market. The increased tariffs won’t help on that. VW simply got outcompeted in China.

    VW is still the most sold brand in Europe. Every time BYD sells one car in Europe, VW sells 74 cars Europe. That’s not the problem. It’s that the Chinese market used to be the largest market for VW, but now the party is over after 40 years.

    Exports are risky like that. It’s difficult to blame the China for this when they have cheaper and more technology advanced vehicles available domestically. I hope VW can see the writing on the wall and up their game, but I fear that this market won’t ever come back. In my opinion they should focus on going back to the core idea of making smaller and cheaper cars available to the people, instead of making luxury car exports.


  • I thought these idiots got sent back after Brexit, but I guess they weasled out of it.

    As someone working in a different EU country having business with Spain, I have to wonder why the Spanish tax authorities do everything that they can to make it impossible to pay taxes. It’s insanely bureaucratic.

    If your want to pay them, you need to request (in Spanish) to make a payment, classify exactly what you’re paying (using internal Spanish Tax Authority codes, which are not present in the letter) just to get a reference code that will identify your payment, and only after that are you given the information to actually make a euro zone payment, which is then set for payment at a specific date or otherwise it will fail.

    We owed them 0.57€ for interest on a periodical indiscrepancy and they still sent a stamped letter to let us know. Just the cost for them and us to do so easily runs into hundreds of euros for each part…

    Tax authorities in other countries either send out the necessary information to actually pay the claim or have a fixed payment account based on company number, so you can always pay and have it allocated correctly. Just give me the IBAN and a reference?!

    I can’t even be bothered to start thinking about the various ways that this system can be fucked over, but here they are only accepting that method.


  • IMF is part of UN.

    Egypt is trying to achieve a rapid transition to electric vehicles. They have started domestic vehicle production with a little help from China. Not just cars, but also smaller mopeds and such I think.

    So, by making people drive domestic vehicles fueled by domestic electricity, they hope to be less dependent on IMF loans and imported vehicles and fuel. They want to be the key hub for electrifying African vehicles, so they are also aiming for exports.

    It makes sense like that, but it’ll obviously piss off a lot of people, both inside and outside of Egypt. I’m not at all sure they can actually see it through. It’s a bold move when they have a poor economy to begin with. They are in the middle of a financial crisis, so something drastic needs to be done.


  • Reading the article, it says that both men and women attended the protest against rape culture in France, so the real issue is that France has a rape culture. People vs culture.

    This comment section however is about a few of the signs that a few of the protesters carried, and/or the comments from the self proclaimed feminist representative who says they’ll use these protests to promote their own agenda. That’s different, because that’s a gender issue. Men vs. Women.

    I understand why some people are annoyed by that, because it splits the people instead of uniting them against the primary enemy: The culture.

    Anyway this is just a lemmy thread, and it doesn’t matter who is right, but it shows that even talking about it is a distraction from the “real issue”, because while we are discussing signs and rape statistics, nobody is talking about the rape culture.

    I don’t know exactly what the feminist representative wants to do, or if she has a point, but I do believe that we need to be able to unite both men and women to speak freely against the culture, because rape culture is enabled by people who don’t speak about it. Alienating half of them is bad timing in that regard. To stop rape culture we need both men and women to speak against it.

    I hope this makes sense. This thread has gone completely off the rails…


  • I doubt that’s deliberate (it’s probably depending on some other task or shit that you don’t even intend to use), but it’s exactly the kind of bloat that turns people away from Windows.

    Windows seems to work alright for my work pc, where I’m constantly logged into their cloud, newer switch users, logged in long enough daily to get all the updates and have IT to roll out stuff, so I hardly ever have issues there.

    My personal computer is a different thing. I have several users, use it about once weekly, making it basically unbootable. As soon as I open the lid, Microsoft starts bugging me to do a shit load of things and download gigabytes of crap that Microsoft, and not I, needs me to do before I can even use it. More often than not I simply close the lid again.

    It’s not unusual to meet people who don’t even have a pc these days. Most people can solve their daily stuff on any cell phone browser. I find it kinda amusing that Microsoft is pushing people that way.




  • bstix@feddit.dktoWorld News@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    Initially I figured that the story was that the guys were made to believe that it was her fantasy, not theirs, simply because I find it unlikely that he’d be capable of even finding 50 guys with that kind of fantasy.

    I have personal no experience in this, but I suppose that’s the purpose of “safe words”, which will allow someone to participate in that kind of roleplay featuring imaginary non consencual sex until someone yells “Oklahoma”.

    Anyway, with it happening in some small village, I can imagine how they could be oblivious to any proper way of doing that sort of kink, but it can never remove their own responsibility of not having concent.

    Put in a more straightforward way: I can not allow you to punch your friend in the balls. Only your friend can allow that. Regardless of how many times I tell you it’s okay, it’s just not okay, until he allows it himself, which has nothing to do with what I said.


  • I used to think the same, but kids are really much further ahead these days.

    There’s a lot of variety of course. Even my two kids are totally different. The older one knew the entire alphabet and basic math before kindergarten (<4yo), while the second one was still catching up on that in 2.grade (8yo here). Their gross motor skills are opposite though, and the oldest might never catch up on that.

    So, play is learning in one way or the other, but there’s no reason to hold back the children who are talented in one thing over the other. My oldest is being held back that way by the current curriculum. Starting school earlier might be a way of addressing this.

    It’s really just a matter of task assignment between institutions. Anything pre-school (nursery and kindergarten) is focused on behaviour and play, while early school (gradually) introduces more abstract learning, which requires a different teaching by teachers with a different education. Strictly speaking, it’s a teachers problem, and there’s currently not much overlap, except for “backwards compatibility”, because schools do have employees who are educated in kindergarten levels, whereas kindergartens do not have school level teachers employed. By introducing school earlier, it is possible to widen this overlap while still allowing for kids to proceed in their own pace.

    So, IMO, it makes sense, but yeah, it’d be dreadful to go to “school” for that many years. Coincidentally, kids also leave schools earlier. There’s no longer many kids in 10th grade, because almost everyone goes on to the following studies after 9th these days. (which is a completely different discussion…)

    I hope this makes sense. British/American school system are wildly different, but at the end of it, the kids will be kids, no matter what box they fit into.


  • bstix@feddit.dktoWorld News@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    While I can believe that some of the men were of the impression that it was part of a roleplay of some sort if told so by the husband, the simple thing is that she did not consent. It’s rape.

    There is no situation in which the decision of consent can be transferred to anyone else.




  • It would be nice if it was possible to simply go to a website, check off on the stuff you want and then get a full package.

    I liked the idea of AV Linux, because it comes in a bundle of stuff that I need, but it also comes with a lot stuff that I don’t need, and I’m not sure the desktop is my choice. It also didn’t really work at the time I tried it.(Some years ago).

    So… if I, a stupid user, could simply go to a website, check mark at the desktop, check off which office package, music apps, browser, etc.etc. and then get a download of that in one go where it’s all set-up and works, it would be a lot easier than having to go through the process of installing the OS and then installing/removing apps, and then making it work…

    Like, let’s say I want a PC just for music creation, I should be able to download the the OS with the DAW of my choice, all the VSTis and potentially also the most common free sound banks. In one file.

    If I wanted an office PC, I should be able to get the OS, the office suite of choice and all the misc. PDF tools, email client and whatnot of choice. All in one go.

    Windows and macOS sort of came with everything before, but these days they’re just as annoying to set up as any Linux distribution. Linux as a whole could take advantage of that situation by offering a prepackaged but custom installation.

    Of course it would also help if someone made a Linux installer for windows, so users didn’t have to use windows to create a bootable USB. I think this is the step that normal users hesitate on. I don’t know if it’s possible, but it ought to be possible from software to partion the disc and install dual boot or something.


  • Yes. Linux Mint works “straight out of the box”.

    It comes with a preinstalled browser (Firefox), so if you only use your computer for online stuff, then you dont need to do anything at all. Just use it.

    The only technical thing you might want to do is to enter the WiFi password and find the software manager to install any additional apps you need.If you can install apps on your phone, then you can also install apps on Linux Mint.

    I actually found that it was a lot easier to install Mint than setting up a new Windows pc. The most difficult part was using a windows pc to download it and making a bootable USB stick. Your friend can help you with that or you can follow a guide.

    I have had zero issues and I have never written a single command line. It just works.