Unhappiness and fear linked to fascism? Unbelievable! But yeah, I think that's something you more or less directly learn as German if you look back on our democracy, the Weimarer Republik, before rise of national socialism. Many people didn't believed in democracy at the first place, but the bad economic situation made it even worse. If you are unhappy or even fear about your future that's a great attack point for right wing propaganda.
It works for both left and right wing populism. Unfortunately, the former tends to (almost always) manifest the latter. Just look at all left-wing populists who (understandably) hate Joe Biden rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump.
Justifiable hatred of the establishment undermines institutions beyond repair, and since left wing politics are grounded in facts, whereas populism is not a fact-based ideology, left wing populism almost always fails, and populism has become practically synonymous with fascism.
Incidentally, this is also why the left-wing has a tendency for infighting. Again, left-wing politics are broadly driven by facts whereas populism is not. The right wing flourishes under these conditions because none of their beliefs are grounded in empirical or normative reality.
I was thinking about this before scrolling comments. It seems many on the right support/vote for policies that actively make their quality of life seemingly better in the short term, and are surprised and disappointed when the long-term consequences of their decisions begin happening to become noticeable (usually more for me, less for thee?). When they discover the policies affect them, personally, they become angry and belligerent, looking to place blame on external factors. The left (I don't mean neoliberal) seem to go within, asking things like, "how did my voting choices affect this? What have I learned? How can I calibrate my choices for better results, going forward?" then try to make better decisions, even if it hurts them more, personally, in the short term, hoping for better across-the-board results long term?
I've just begun milling this, so I've no idea if this is correct or not. I'd love to see some research on it.
The contemporary witnesses are dying. I wouldn't say it's because of them not being able to tell their stories anymore, but a human life is enough time for a society to forget. And if I say society, I really mean the majority of people forget, nowadays just many have forgotten, too many, but not the majority. There always have been a few people who couldn't forget because they never knew, never wanted to know, we call them neo-nazis. They are on the rise again, all the crises of the last years have helped them and still do so, but I don't think people who haven't forgotten would follow them.
Look, I don't expect the back to be trivial to pop off and have a battery that I can yank out and replace within 5 seconds.
The need for high capacity batteries in phones pretty much necessitates thinner-walled (and therefore more easy to damage) batteries, and phones being all-screen pretty much necessitates phones being reasonably thin, so protective cases can be used without making the phones ridiculously cumbersome.
But if it does indeed require special tools, heatguns, and a skilled technician to do this, then I will be pissed off. There is zero reason Apple and the other industry shitheads can't design a phone with a battery that can be replaced without much chance of damage, or specialised tooling, by a normal person in under 10 minutes.
I'd also like to see them be forced to publish open schematics for their batteries so alternate companies can sell batteries if the OEM decides to be a shithead and charge you £160 for a new one.
Yeah, but Apple doesn’t charge labor for install of their batteries. You pay the same whether you do it yourself or bring it to an Apple Store. You only save money buying a third-party battery, which could be risky depending on the source.
Why would it be risky? I'm genuinely curious if you have any resources (other than Apple's, because they're obviously biased) that show that a third party battery is dangerous.
As far as I know, as long as the battery meets the dimensions, nominal volatage, chemistry/max charge rate/communication to the charging circuitry, discharge rate, it will function safely.
A battery is a battery is a battery. There's no concievable reason I can think of that would require you use an Apple branded battery. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it. Knowing proper battery safety is important if you mess with them in any capacity (which I do), so something I may not be aware of is important to know.
I mean a risky investment. Third-party batteries aren’t necessarily a safety risk. They could be, but more commonly they fail to have the same capacity or meet the same cycle count before failure as OEM, when created to match a proprietary form factor.
Third 0arty batteries have been easy to come by for any phone. The problem is that no third party sells ones that aren't complete shit. It's not the spec. It's that no good plant will make them and they bar the original plant from making extras to sell on their own. It shouldn't be borderline impossible for me to get an oem battery for my note 20 ultra.
The EU battery regulation requires all portable batteries to be removable and replaceable by the end user, starting 2026. So I guess that means no specialized tooling or repair training required, or the tools will have to be included with the phone
Unfortunately there are all kinds of caveats in the law. E.g. phone batteries over a certain capacity are exempt, you can be exempted if you provide a battery warranty of (iirc) 3 years, etc.
I’ve seen several cars trying to auto detect speed signs, and at times miserably failing, sometimes spectacularly (20km limit detected on the acceleration way for a major motorway with a limit of 80). If this were to be enforced, it would actually be dangerous
You go into a car park with a limit of 5, when you leave the idiot system will expect you to do 5 on the main road until it sees another sign.
I have all speed limit alerts turned off because a system that just remembers the last sign it saw but can't logically associate signs with roads or remember them is wrong about 50% of the time.
Last time I drove a rental Ford it was an endless amount of random ding-dings and dangerous interference with steering. Maybe you get used to it after a while, but I found it extremely annoying.
Agree. Ford’s auto braking and lane keeping in insane and dangerous. It constantly feels like somebody neurotic is reaching over from the passenger seat to grab the wheel. And sometimes it will look at a pothole or puddle and decide to stomp on the brakes. Happened only twice in about 1500km/four days, but that’s still twice too many. Car “automation” tech is still deep in its infancy.
A year or so back I had the misfortune of driving a rental MU-X with this feature. It turned out to be really good at seeing the speed signs on highway offramps, basically every time I drove past a turnoff it'd start beeping at me telling me I should be going 80 or even 60 km/h instead of 110...
tl/dr: every new car sold in the EU will have a button that drivers will push every time they start the engine.
If they don't push the button, the car will beep at them when they go over the speed limit.
So instead of clipping a wire you plug in a Bluetooth OBD interface and flip a bit in the car’s memory that the engineers conveniently forgot to remove which disables the beeps…
Someone who worked on design for a previous iteration of this said that their company deliberately routed the 'beep over a certain speed' signal via a wire between two modules for precisely this rrason.
The real tragedy of it is this: if left-leaning parties still based their policies and marketing on original leftist theory/thought, all this would be an arguments for more people to vote left. Leftism was intended to help the disenfranchised, the workers, the poor. But for a good while, social democrats have tried to become popular with the educated, mid- to high-earning employees; to the point where they've mostly lost their original target group. Meanwhile, the far-right are among the few parties that actually try to speak (pander, imo) to the workers' interests. I really hope this can be a wake up call to political parties that lean left.
The plutocrats in media and politics have turned the young against their own interests and blamed everything on foreigners. It's classic divide and rule.
You‘re right, I thought of Frankfurt am Main, but if it’s one of the others they could be livable. I only have been to Frankfurt am Main, and thats about the last place I would like to end up…
Utterly insane take from him. Based on the strength of a single referendum that was likely influenced by a foreign power and carried out by some of the most determinedly incompetent leaders we've seen in a generation, we are to lose free trade, influence abroad, freedom to roam, consumer protections, and countless other benefits, to continue for the lifetime of an as yet unelected PM who has purged his party of anyone to the left of Barack Obama.
It should be enough to know that Russia prefers the current situation. I'd happily ditch the pound on that basis - it's not exactly as if sir Isaac has been running the mint lately.
Eh, why feed Reform or Conservatives any on-the-edge voters at this late an hour by making them fear a vote for Labour is a vote for more Brexit madness.
His statements are full of weasel words too, as have other party member’s statements. It’s not an insane take, just a “I don’t think we will” to avoid arming opponents with something to fearmonger with.
They need a term, and if they can change the perspective on EU membership and see polling supports rejoining (and they’ve the funds to pump into the obscene political advertising it’ll require to not get drowned out by Conservatives like before the referendum), they just might go for it in a second term.
oh man, so little was achieved and now they are going to roll even that back. With Meloni, the RN in France and the CDU in Germany soon, we‘re completely fucked.
Nah she is just shilling for the high end car builders of Italy. I am fine with gas engines in cars. As long as the fuels are taxed at 5 euro per liter from 2030 adding a euro per liter per year. This goes for bio fuels too.
Hopefully the composition of the EP doesn't change enough in the future to repeal it. Here in Czechia the 'Motorist' party literally won two of our 20 seats.
Only if you're stupid about it and overuse them. My diesel VW runs on 100% biodiesel made from waste fat from chicken processing that would've gotten landfilled or something otherwise.
That's maybe fine for small scale usage. And even then I don't know if this is actually good. In any case your USA case won't scale well. I also don't know if it is even legal in my country.
I more meant large scale biofuel cultivation instead of food and nature. Cause then these companies will start eating up agro subsidies etc while keeping polluting cars on the road.
Not really. Biofuels are better than normal oil-derived fuels in terms of excess CO2 being dispersed in the environment, but they are still overall bad. They still release harmful particulates, they still release lots of NOx, and they are doubly bad in terms of land utilization, where you use huge swaths of land to cultivate plants with the sole goal of making them into fuel, rather than using that land to make food. Moreover, in a lot of places the cultivation of biofuel plants is being done by burning down forests and using that land for farming.
Biofuels are definitely better than normal petrol or diesel, but they are still overall bad, and I'd also argue that if we 100% switched to biofuels we'd have massive issues in terms of land, farming-related emissions, deforesting etc.
Depending on where biofuels are produced, the land use changes can make them worse for climate than fossil fuels. E.g. there was a recent study on US biofuels.
They still release harmful particulates, they still release lots of NOx
Frankly, those are just local problems and thus negligible (compared to greenhouse gas emissions).
they are doubly bad in terms of land utilization, where you use huge swaths of land to cultivate plants with the sole goal of making them into fuel, rather than using that land to make food. Moreover, in a lot of places the cultivation of biofuel plants is being done by burning down forests and using that land for farming.
So don't be stupid about it: make as much of them as you can out of waste fats and oils, then stop. Easy-peasy!
I'd also argue that if we 100% switched to biofuels we'd have massive issues in terms of land, farming-related emissions, deforesting etc.
This isn't wrong, but it's a massive strawman argument because doing that would be idiotic anyway. Biofuels are best used for filling the gaps left over after cities are fixed for bikeability and everything reasonable to electrify is electrified. (In other words, they're the answer to "but what about my [insert special-snowflake reason why I can't ride a damn bike/train/electric car]?" pearl-clutching.)
There is no one solution to sustainability, and pretending there is is a fallacy.
Frankly, those are just local problems and thus negligible (compared to greenhouse gas emissions).
Tell that to those dying because of those toxic emissions.
So don’t be stupid about it: make as much of them as you can out of waste fats and oils, then stop. Easy-peasy!
Sure, I agree, but if you want biofuels to be a significant enough part of the fuel mix, you need to make them at scale, which means you need incentives and by incentives I mean making them profitable enough so that it makes sense to invest billions into making them. At that point it becomes a race towards who can make the most at the lowest price to make the most money, and guess where that brings you. Otherwise, if you limit fuel crops, you'll get a very small production at a high price, since the scalability and possibility for growth will be limited.
Biofuels are best used for filling the gaps left over after cities are fixed for bikeability and everything reasonable to electrify is electrified
This is really what I'd like to see, using the massive taxes on fuels to finance sustainable mobility like trams, rail, bikes etc
Biofuels are great and all to fill that gap, but the moment they become more profitable or cheaper than fossil fuels, it's the moment you're gonna have massive problems.
That doesn't sound fair to the people that just can't afford a new car. The ban is about no new combustion cars getting into the market, not to say nobody can drive on from 2030 onwards.
I don't think a absolute ban is necessary, the phase out already started, most new car models are electric and most car companies for the mass market focus their future on electric. The ban as it currently is should do the job just fine. Most people will see the new electric cars as great, they save a lot of money and the tendency is towards even more.
I think investing in public transport is the most important, especially in Germany...
I'd love to see additional tax increases after a specific year. If you want to drive an Oldtimer or a gas powered supercar.. it should be expensive to operate.
But indeed only once full electrification has reached normal families.
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