pixelpop3

joined 2 years ago
 

Interesting history and context about a movement I had not heard of.

A movement that wanted to merge North America into one nation and extend its borders as far as the Panama Canal might sound incredibly familiar. But this group, called the “technocracy movement”, was a group of 1930s nonconformists with big ideas about how to rearrange US society. They proposed a vision that would get rid of waste and make North America highly productive by using technology and science.

The Technocrats, sometimes also called Technocracy Inc, proposed merging Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the US and parts of central America into a single continental unit. This they called a “Technate”. It was to be governed by technocratic principles, rather than by national borders and traditional political divisions.

These ideas seem to resonate with some recent statements from the Trump administration about merging the US with Canada. Meanwhile, the US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) set up by Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has also outlined a vision of efficiency cuts by slashing bureaucracy, jobs and getting rid of leaders of organisations and civil servants he thinks are advancing “woke” values (such as diversity initiatives). This slash-and-burn approach also fits with some of the ideas of the Technocrats.

The idea that Musk's grandfather featured prominently in the Canadian arm of the movement makes a compelling case that these ideas have floated around and been discussed in the Musk family for decades.

More information about the movement here: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

 

The planned rollback of protections for Ukrainians was underway before Trump publicly feuded with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week. It is part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed to enter the U.S. under temporary humanitarian parole programs launched under the Biden administration, the sources said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the Reuters report in a post on X, saying "no decision has been made at this time." U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Wednesday that the department had no new announcements. Ukrainian government agencies did not respond to requests for comment.

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Europe’s Moment of Truth (www.foreignaffairs.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Wolfgang Ischinger writes in Foreign Affairs magazine on the context, fallout and implications of last week's meeting between Trump and Zelensky

The disastrous meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the White House on February 28 has led to a stark moment of truth for the Western alliance. In the fallout with Zelensky and the end of U.S. support for the war effort, the Trump administration has not only shaken Ukraine. It has also called into question some of the bedrock assumptions that have undergirded the transatlantic relationship since World War II.

In European capitals, panic has set in. Some policymakers and analysts are speaking of the end of NATO, or the end of the West. They are terrified about U.S. intentions: Does Washington intend to actively undermine the long-term survival of Ukraine as a sovereign and free country? Is Trump trying to execute a “reverse Kissinger,” by charming Russian President Vladimir Putin into abandoning his marriage to Chinese leader Xi Jinping and making an unholy alliance with the United States? A huge chasm has opened in transatlantic trust—one that is bad for Washington’s global power projection and for its image as a benign hegemon, and potentially catastrophic for transatlantic cohesion and the vitality of NATO.

The challenge facing the West is daunting. But the alliance has endured strong doubts before. And there are powerful arguments—on both sides of the Atlantic—that might yet rescue the alliance and support a continued strong U.S. presence and involvement in Europe. And there is much that Europe itself can do to demonstrate why the United States is so much stronger with it than without it.

Wolfgang Ischinger is President of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council and former German Ambassador to the United States.

https://archive.ph/gOYy0

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

After O'Connor died, there was a discussion on The Political Junkie podcast where they were talking about her autobiography and in particular, about Bush vs Gore and what they were actually thinking about that case. And it had more to do with the whole maze of where things go depending on which contingencies (i.e. what cases happen next between Bush and Gore).

So according to her it was more about the structure of the laws and government than the decision itself. Which I don't think is something that Cannon is dealing with. Cannons is a trial court judge. The questions at the Supreme Court are more about structure and function of the government.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I thought it was really interesting how Trump is a weird corner case because he's never held any offices listed. Almost all other presidents have taken the oath prior to being sworn in as president for one of the offices explicitly listed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I haven't tried it, but I am interested. The main feature I'm looking for is hands-free use (reading messages aloud, replying, responding to commands). This doesn't mention any of that but I might give it a try.

In the old Android Auto you used to be able to just turn it on and get all those functions but after Google got rid of that and keeps changing how we use phones while driving betwwen apps they keep cancelling, the only thing I know to access it now is to turn on Google maps with navigation to a destination which is pretty freaking annoying when all I'm doing is driving back and forth from work and I don't need all Google Maps commentary about which turn I should or should not be taking or that I'm in the parking lot rather than driving into the front door.

Edit: I installed it. I first tried to find it on F-Droid, it wasn't there which seemed odd. So I installed it from Play Store. It's a FOSS frontend that requires you to sign up for damoov account. Basically it seems to just be a demo app for damoov API. No idea what damoov is and what they're doing with the data. Based on what they mention in Play Store and the startup screens, my guess is they are an API intended to be used by insurance companies to develop apps that monitor policy holders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Do you use a VPN? I've noticed a lot of cdn's have become very hostile to VPNs over the last year. Initially I blamed the VPN but I'm pretty convinced it's the cdn's at this point*.

*This is because I started using a private linode server as a tailscale exit node and boy does the internet hate that IP with a passion. Toggling between using that and my home computer as exit nodes is somewhat fascinating. The web is so rude when I browse from my linode box. So... now I use the linode exit node to let the jerks take themselves to the curb. Anyway images not loading randomly is one of the telltale signs of a jerk website. It even happens when using Google One VPN or Cloudflair's WARP+ nowadays. Switch them off and use my residential IP exit node and presto it all works again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The Supreme Court is currently working on cases that are about overturning precident that allows administrative agencies to make policy that strays from the letter of the law. So my guess is Meta lawyers see a chance to say "there is no federal law that prohibits making profit off children, so this administrative rule is unconstitutional". Something like that (I am not a lawyer).

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I am a very, very long time Firefox user. Brave probably has a case for getting Chrome users to consider switching, but I've never encountered any compelling reason to consider switching from Firefox to Brave.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That Online Corpus of Founding Era American English seems like a pretty cool database. This is five years old (pre ChatGPT) and seems to have relied on manual search (which itself seems like a vast improvement). I wonder whether large language models are being built to assimilate the entire dataset to answer questions about "original meaning" nowadays and how close to useable they are. It would be even more compelling to have longitudinal versions that can identify when changes in meaning occurred. "Based on all existing written words, it didn't mean X at that time and that meaning first appeard 60 years later." Newspapers and legal rulings/documents seem like relatively convincing data sources that have been well curated and relevant to the task. Particularly since SCOTUS post-Scalia has become even more insistent about original meaning. I don't think it works well post-hoc but it will be interesting for these things to be interpreted when presented as arguments in new cases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Generally the logic is that once the fetus has reached viability (i.e. capable of being removed and continuing life without the mother), then acts that result in death of the fetus are no longer necessary nor morally valid. It is reasonable to expect the fetus to be removed from the mother and provided life support at that stage.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

The two women told detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division that they’d discussed the matter on Facebook Messenger

... why would they do that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Gfycat announced they are shutting down and deleting everything on September 1st.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I mistyped and meant Relay. Some apps are already dead. RIF supposedly still works when logged out, but won't work when logged in. Probably has to do with whether the developer disabled the API key to avoid a bill.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's temporary. Infinity's developer is working with admin to create a subscription app and pay API fees. There are a few doing that (Boost and a few others). They've been given some sort of a temporary exemption pending update rollout. You can see posts explaining this in their subreddits.

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