Most of the world is conservative by Hollywood liberal standards. Also injecting ideology is the least of concerns, it is just that they objectively produce shit compared to movies in 1995. All reruns, and remasters and basically living on the rent of old glories. There is a palpable lack of talent due to the political climate as well as reduced risk appetite to bet on young or transgressive directors/writers/actors. Now more innovative and interesting movies are coming from Korea and Turkey for example.
You could produce the most uber-woke movie possible and it would be loved as long as it was good art or had a legitimate good story.
Sorry I just remember from a Tweet that it was the year that many cult movies came, but one of my favorite years is 2000 for both Matrix/American Psycho.
The cynical in me doesnt see that as the main problem, lack of diversity in thought and debate is already an issue, censorship laws about what subjects and what opinions are correct is an issue that will be exacerbated.
To save the democracies you need, a better population who votes in competently and informed, as well as a public debate that is honest and doesnt decry any deviation from the standard as fascism.
Far-right populism only exists in coutries where debate is not honest and pragmatic enough, and avoided in countries like Denmark because population and government are in a tight loop where each feels heard by the other.
You can only have a democracy when the vote actually matters. In a representative democracy where representatives are not held accountable to their campaign promises that can hardly be said to be the case.
Given the track record of both the country and other EU attempts (despite the existence of a zero trust verification framework) I am quite sure this will be used to de-anonymize users online, see UK.
There it rears its ugly head again, the preemptive cynicism that prevents anything good from ever getting done.
It’s simple really: zero trust age verification should be a strict requirement of any such law and anything else illegal for age verification.
That to me is what has to happen and it’s important to me. That’s my perspective on this – not that‘s never going to happen anyway, so no point in trying to.
Social media is toxic to kids (and adults, but that’s a different matter), extraordinary measures are called for, even with risks. It’s hyper optimized to be the equivalent of a drug, and should be regulated as such.
Hacienda is the most extractive Tax Agency in the world. They have lobbied for ever more intrusion into private lifes of citizens in order to extract more money. Thus they have included a "lifestyle auditing" that has access to many cross-databases, utilities, insurance, etc....
If you set up a system of ID identification linked to your real ID and IP, Hacienda (and the police, and eventually private companies) will be able to backtrack.
The current PM's rother, wife and half of his cabinet are involved in corruption scandals linked to COVID funds given to companies that bribed people. This is the government that will implement such efforts. Would you be able to trust them ?
Well I do intend to use software to automate these interactions, because in my country whatsapp groups are unmanageable without this.
Imagine the group of parents of my kids schools sending 100 to 300 messages per day with different subjects.
The issue is. I also have personal and important chats that I don't want to share with an vibe coded AI software without any canaries taking the shot first.
And I'm talking as a person that is using almost all my Claude max subscription every week.
But I do verify ALL of the code that I'm delivering. And I'm even using Gemini as an adversarial LLM to review Claude generated code.
Does this that gigantic project set any standards for this?
I was not able to find on their documentation.
So it's funny indeed, but for now I'm upvoting this one even being a confident moderate person.
This doesnt fit either the peaceful nor prosperous except Malaysia/Indonesia maybe.
UAE directly finances the sanguinary RSF in Sudan and CTS in Yemen, Saudi Arabia/Qatar has financed institutions behind the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafism in the worlld and Turkey has a shaky economy with a large underbelly as well as engaging in their own brand of imperialism abroad.
You also forget it is expensive and in many cases not taking charge by the respective healthcare autority of the country, so it leads to less consumption.
I've known several users of GLP1's. None ever paid more than $600/mo for them once the "patient assistance" programs started, and even in the very earliest days the prices I heard were never more than about $1100 if paid in cash.
So, while they are very expensive, your understanding is not reflective of the situation on the ground.
Yeah, Zepbound is $499 now. Out of reach of many, but an improvement from $549 last year.
The terms and conditions are confusing. You can only use the half-off coupon they provide if you have prescription drug insurance. Even if insurance doesn't cover it, they still require the processing pharmacy to check that you have some sort of valid insurance and only process the coupon if so. If you fall into that bucket, it's $1200 or something. (Had to pay that amount one month because Amazon Pharmacy was very confused about my gender marker changing on my insurance. Many, many support tickets later, and it got fixed.)
There is also some price difference between the autoinjector and the single-use vial + provide your own needle and syringe. I haven't looked into that because it's the same with the coupon, but if you can't get the coupon to work, it's an option to just inject it yourself. Honestly I prefer not using the autoinjectors (I inject other medications), but it's the path of least resistance.
Finally, the coupon claims it only works for 7 fills, but I've been taking the medication for a couple years and all my fills have been covered. I don't really understand it. I have a feeling that I'm the only person in the world that read the fine print, including the pharmacies and manufacturer :/
And its for life. Unless you are doing it for Instagram only... "The Insta Diet" as it is called also.. When the diet finishes, you will gain the fat instantly also (just as with any diet obviously).
For artificial problems, artificial solutions. I think the state of food in the US is really bad, and one cannot compare such products to the superior EU food quality standards and eating habits (and city designs) which render the incentives really perverse
These drugs are expensive and, at least in France, they're discussing offering them. I think this is the main reason explaining the difference in prevalence between the US and the EU.
Despite access to "superior food quality", weight issues are absolutely a problem in the EU, too. Maybe it's not at the same point as in the US, but 51% of the population of the EU (outside Ireland and Germany for some reason) are "overweight or obese" [0].
My country (Poland) is an unfortunate leader in childhood obesity (and close to the top in terms of obesity in general), but it's very easy to see why: people live very different lives than they did just 20 years ago.
There are valid counterarguments to the overweight values, a lot of women who might be overweight are healthy because different % of fat are acceptable depending on the structure of the body.
I agree, that has to do with "malbouffe" and other lifestyle choices. As for offering them that is a nice thing, but I am curious about the mechanics (mutuelles) and such of the medicine.
> a lot of women who might be overweight are healthy because different % of fat are acceptable depending on the structure of the body
This is a tired argument. Most people who have BMI in the obese range do not have one of oft-cited exceptions that make BMI an imperfect measure.
Everyone knows BMI is imperfect at this point, but the number of people who have BMI in the obesity range yet have healthy body composition is very small.
> Everyone knows BMI is imperfect at this point, ...
Indeed.
BMI is the best thing that people can readily calculate with easily available equipment (a tape measure and scales either at home, gym, pharmacy, etc) plus some relatively basic maths or sticking the numbers into a website.
Measuring body fat using calipers is better but hugely error prone. Similar for waist/height ratios. Body fat scales can be wildly inaccurate.
BVI is far superior but very few people have access to the equipment needed to measure that.
So we're kind of stuck with BMI as the best "simple" measure.
Let it be noted that I have said overweight and not obese, if you are in the obese category you are 100% unhealthy (even the bodybuilders who inject stereoirs in this category are unhealthy).
It doesn’t change the argument. Most people who have BMI in the overweight range do not have healthy weights.
I say this as someone who did enough weightlifting to be in the overweight BMI range with a low percent of body fat (no steroids involved). Trust me when I say it’s a lot of work to get there. It’s not a category that includes a lot of people or invalidates the measure.
Thank you, this is what I constantly say. For population statistics, BMI is nigh perfect, since it's much easier to gather than more accurate data points, and the number of exceptions are super small.
I know very fit people that still fall well in the BMI 20-25 range. Most around 23. You have to be very focused on natural bodybuilding for years if you want to become an outlier on BMI.
Or some combination with being super short or super tall. But this again affects a tiny minority.
It's important to note that overweight and obesity are not the same thing. Most people are overweight, and from what I've seen of modern studies, the health risk of being overweight is almost negligible.
But being obese is a higher BMI than overweight, and the bar is actually quite low. Lower than most people think. A lot of people think they're overweight, but they're not, they're obese.
> Most people are overweight, and from what I've seen of modern studies, the health risk of being overweight is almost negligible.
Health risks of being overweight are very well researched and are significant (cancer risk, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular health). If you meant the mortality, then it is also worse for overweight people when confounding for smoking and reverse causality.
> There are valid counterarguments to the overweight values, a lot of women who might be overweight are healthy because different % of fat are acceptable depending on the structure of the body
But the BMI takes into account the mass, not the size. Usually women have less lean muscle mass than men, which would mean that for a given size and weight, they'd have more fat, without influencing the BMI. I also think there's quite some leeway. My BMI is "normal" at 24, and I have a fair bit of belly fat.
Very athletic people also don't fit in the BMI tables, a dude like Schwarzenegger is probably well in the overweight category if not above because of all that lean muscle, but is also probably healthier than average. These people are extreme outliers, though. I don't think they're anywhere near 1% of the population, so you can't really argue they skew the numbers.
> As for offering them that is a nice thing, but I am curious about the mechanics (mutuelles) and such of the medicine.
It's apparently paid by the social security, but doctors are only to prescribe this when other means of controlling the weight have failed, such as adjusting nutrition.
"a dude like Schwarzenegger is probably well in the overweight category"
For illustration, Arnold was 107 kg at 1m88 at his prime, giving him a BMI of 30.3, which is clinically obese. But yeah, LOL at all these people with 130 cm waists going 'BMI is useless'.
BMI still isn't great for fat people. An active fat person is going to have a significant amount of muscle compared to a sedentary fat person at the same body weight - just doing things carrying around that weight will build muscle. Some health markers, this won't matter for - your heart doesn't like pumping blood to a 300lb body, whether that's at 50% BF or 8% - but for a lot it does. Lipids, insulin resistance, etc. are going to be quite different in someone at 40% BF vs. 20% BF at similar weights with similar genetics.
Unfortunately it's not so easy to get a good BF%. BIA scales are probably what most people have access to, either at home or at their local gym, or calipers, but both are very inaccurate at getting totals and at best can help you understand trend directions. There are places to get cheap DEXAs in a lot of cities these days, but not everywhere, and $30 each time you go is still expensive for some people.
BF% and FFMI are both a lot more useful for everyone than BMI.
I lived in Germany and Indonesia. It’s easier for me now back in the US than ever to eat healthy.
I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close)
While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. And the portion sizes here are insane (just look at the evolution dinner plate. 1960s plates at an antique sale only pass for salad plates)
There's a massive amount of junk food and ultra-processed food in grocery stores, even though (rough estimate) 50% of floorspace is "raw" food. (Fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish.)
Processed food tends to have more sugar (high fructose corn syrup) than other countries. The same brand in the US vs another country will have more sugar.
Cultural momentum: Everywhere you go there's unhealthy food.
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Speaking from personal experience, junk food is just plan addictive and satisfying. It's not like alcohol or other drugs where you can just abstain; you gotta eat and we all get hungry.
I think there is argument to be made that the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia. I think maybe by living abroad you have adapted by default to a path (shaped by the environment) to eat more healthy.
In the US I heard there is now parity in terms of quality products, but maybe culture takes some time to adapt to such environments.
I agree that when it comes to portion size and whole foods, Europe makes it easy to follow by example. FWIW, I ate healthy in the US before because I rock climbed and needed to maintain a very lean mass. If I wanted to cut weight in Indonesia, it was easy: just eat their portion size, and I'd come in below maintenance.
What I've seen consistently amongst the non-healthy eating Americans is that they argue:
1. Dieting requires them to be hard on themselves and they're focusing on self-love, which they struggle with
2. They deserve a daily treat. They look forward to it, it brings meaning, etc
3. The taste of their food is super important to them, such that they can't imagine repetitively eating (meal-prep) or eating cleanly (no added sugar, monitoring sodium)
Here's some advice on all 3, and I don't even ask you to buy my supplements :)
1. Practicing a healthy diet is self-love
2. A daily treat is not what breaks your diet. Have _a piece_ of chocolate, sweets or snacks now and then. If you (still) lack the self-control to not eat the whole package, help yourself out by repackaging in daily-compatible portions. Meaning is not gained by consuming anyway.
3. Taste preferences are in big parts a matter of habit. Also prepping doesn't necessitate you eat the same thing for a week. You can freeze a lot of things for longer and thaw them in a mixed manner.
Imo the issue is that people seem to lack a combination of knowledge, time to prep or motivation. Lack of knowledge could be solved with information campaigns, lack of time/motivation is a consequence of people having to spend so much of their time doing a dayjob just to get by, embedded in a culture that puts no value on thriving humans.
> 3. The taste of their food is super important to them, such that they can't imagine repetitively eating (meal-prep) or eating cleanly (no added sugar, monitoring sodium)
They're saying this without irony? Or by "important" do they mean "the way I like it"?
In North America there are a lot of "food deserts" especially in poorer neighbourhoods. "Healthy" foods become a class marker. Distribution of higher quality food is through more upscale grocery stores.
Same goes for walkability in neighbourhoods. To live in a place that has transit accessibility, green grocer and bakery you can walk to -- that's not possible for the vast majority of North Americans because it exists only in urban areas that have gentrified beyond the reach of most people.
When I moved to Toronto in the mid-90s it was possible for a middle-income earner to rent or live in a home adjacent to some of the corridors in the city that offer this (e.g. Roncesvalles/High-Park, Spadina/Chinatown, College&Clinton, etc) and you could see a higher diversity of people living near the stores and in the neighbourhoods off them. As a person in my early 20s making not very much money, I could make it work. That is now no longer possible, the city has become a wealthy fortress. I imagine the same for parts of Brooklyn&NYC, Chicago, SF, Vancouver etc.
The food deserts thing gets tired. It's a social media trope at this point. I lived in poorer neighborhoods growing up, and those who wanted to eat healthy made it happen. It just took more work, which is the point. Corner stores that stocked fresh fruits and veggies would just have them rot on the shelves due to no one purchasing them. It's consumer preference.
Almost nowhere in the US walks to go to the grocery store. Exceedingly small portions of major cities. Where I live in Chicago is quite walkable, but the vast majority of my neighbors load up the car for the vast majority of their shopping trips. There are pockets of course, but they are rare.
My neighborhood also happens to be much more fit than the national average - obesity is somewhat rare to see. The correlation is with wealth. Why there is such a correlation is much more interesting, and it likely is not as simple as people want to believe.
Same goes for the poor inner ring suburbs where I lived in my 20's in a different state. Very high rates of obesity. In the rich outer suburbs obesity levels were visibly less.
It's far cheaper to meal prep and make your own food from base ingredients. It doesn't need to be fancy. When I grew up poor (working class) this is how we made it work. By buying staples in bulk and buying other items opportunistically on sale. We didn't even own a car for most of that time - and the nearest grocery store was at least 3 miles away. It simply wasn't an option to exist off of junk food since it was too expensive.
Eating junk is easier and more convenient. It feels good in the immediate moment and is low-effort. It's the default, and the environment around you encourages it. Add in lack of any peer pressure and it being normalized by those around you and I believe that explains nearly everything. Lack of walkability certainly hurts, but it's not a primary driver anywhere I've lived.
> the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia
My theory is that in US compared to Europe, you are going to need the path of least resistance more often. If you are working two part-time jobs with variable hours and schedules to make ends meet, then you are going to reach for the easy & fast food options. Whereas if you have the stability of 40 hour work weeks, regular schedule and social safety nets - regardless of the total income - then you have the time and mental energy to eat healthier.
Another data point for here. Not from the USA, I find the ingredients pretty good and we cook a lot at home, and we avoid anything super packaged, so yes, you could claim Americans don’t have a culture of eating appropriately
This is no joke. I picked up a 3 pound package of garden variety 80/20 ground beef last week and it was over $20. Maybe I just don't buy it often enough to notice, but that seems far higher than even a few months ago. I would have expected to buy a modest cut of steak for that price.
First, pre-cut isn't that much more expensive. Second, cutting is an accessibility thing now? A kitchen knife and 5 minute YouTube video should have anyone being to chop/dice without much trouble. And once they learn they will only get faster/better at it allowing them to use whole veggies adding more variety.
Yes, it's a boon esp. for old people who live alone, have mobility or sight issues, and don't trust themselves to hold a knife. It's also a convenience thing, but as you said, the general population can cut things just fine and won't suffer much without it; which isn't the case for this growing demographic.
Whole Foods fresh vegetables prices are comparable to elsewhere, same with some dairy. However, everything else carries a premium and for budget minded people you need to avoid it.
The pre-chopped coleslaw mix is like 3 bucks for a huge bag. 1 pound of pre-sliced frozen peppers I think is $2. Some of it depends on where you’re shopping, I’m sure this stuff would be 50-100% more at Whole Foods the next town over.
Tons of Americans want to eat healthy but don't have the energy/time/access. It's easy to cook healthy for yourself if you're single, have a good work/life balance, and have a grocery store nearby. There are a lot of Americans who eat fast food on the go because it's their only option (or they haven't been educated on how to get healthy food quickly). Others have lives where job and family responsibilities sap so much energy that by dinner time ordering a pizza is pretty tempting.
If you start looking around at the world you will likely start to notice an inverse correlation between those with “little free time due to working three jobs” and the amount of junk they feed their families.
Turns out that if you care enough and have the work ethic to grind out that sort of living to better your family, you also tend to care what kind of foods they eat.
There are of course seasons in everyone’s lives - but this observation has held generally true no matter the demographic or geographic location I’ve lived around.
I was obese - there is no intended judgement here for folks who struggle with it. I did for the better part of my adult life. The social tropes are simply unhelpful.
Consumer preference is a scapegoat. You can also make nicotine-free cigarettes, and people have tried, but they just don't sell. Of course consumers prefer the stuff that feels better. They have to.
The abundance of "fat free" and "low fat" products. A huge increase of "protein heavy" and "low calory/sugar" products.
All these tell that people do have a preference towards buying healthy stuff, given the choice. It's not their fault that they have been misled by the media/scientists in some of those cases.
Goodluck getting a healthy salad delivered outside of a major metropolitan area. In my city of a quarter million (not huge, not small) the options are pretty much limited to two or three places that only offer high caloric salads
Yes, and the reason is that few people want them.
There isn't a cabal conspiracy to forgo the profits from offering healthy options. They just dont sell.
My issue with organic stores in Germany is that they offer the exact same stuff you can get in a regular supermarket, just smaller, less flavorful and more expensive. My pet theory is that a lot of people here just don't really enjoy food, so when they have kids or simply some extra disposable income, their idea of "eating better" would be to have the same bland plate of spaghetti, just with organic pasta and organic sauce.
Organic tends to have more variability in quality. So sometimes you get really good stuff, sometimes you get really bad stuff. I’ve read that pesticides penetrate a quarter inch into most foods so there’s no way to wash them off. Given that, I try not to buy non-organic food to keep my son from getting a lot of pesticide exposure.
Whole Foods isn’t the only store providing vegetables or pre-cut vegetables.
Even my local Walmart has pre-cut vegetables.
It’s not an affordability issue either. It’s cheaper to buy the same number of calories from vegetables, fruits, and legumes than meat right now. Meat prices are unusually high and it doesn’t seem to be slowing consumption.
My consumption of beef is way down because of the cost. I'm almost exclusively buying poultry and pork now for meat. Occasionally I'll get something like a top round or flank cut if it's on sale.
Well, corn and potatoes are indeed vegetables, so there's that. And I think the only person who ever said ketchup was a vegetable with a straight face was Ronald Reagan 40 or 45 years ago.
"Eat your vegetables. They're good for you." shouldn't mean dipping your fries in ketchup. But that is what happens if you call corn and potatoes as vegetables.
Cause and effect is backward. The locations indicate where people are buying it. And cheap doesn't really add up either because if somebody wants the cheapest possible calories they would be buying rice, flour/pasta, potato...
I don't know why the problem is shied away from. It is because people are addicted to fast food and to their sedentary lifestyles. It's not the price or availability of good food, not the first order effect anyway.
You'll never be able to force "whole foods" sellers into unprofitable places and if you did by some miracle, you'll never be able to force people to buy it no matter how much money you gave them. Vegetables and grains and basics could be free and many obese food addicts will go buy a burger from a drive thru.
Cooking good food takes time. I can slap some pre-made burgers in a pan, throw some buns in a toaster and have a "meal" in 10 minutes. I can stop by fast food on the way and have the same meal (at only slightly more cost) in 5 minutes.
I typically spend more than an hour in the kitchen cooking every day, and then there is half an hour clean up after my family is done eating. I eat much better and healthier food, but it takes time. (If I'm having noodles I'm making them from scratch myself - I could save some time buy less of things like that and the cost wouldn't be much different if any - but even then the whole meal takes time).
I grew up in a poor neighborhood. Busy doing what, exactly?
This comment is so out of touch it must be a joke right? At least I hope so.
Far more time was spent in front of the TV than any other activity by far by my peers and their families. Moving to a more middle class area opened my eyes in how many other options people had to do with their time, and how much time and effort was spent maintaining their lifestyles.
Well, uh, working. The less you make per hour of work means the more hours you need to maintain a normal standard of living. Obviously there's variance in standards of living, but wealthier people don't typically work two or three jobs. Poor people do, I've met people who do. The reality is that at 12 dollars an hour, 40 hours is just not gonna cut it.
And it's a little more complicated than even just that. Another reality is that, at 12 bucks an hour, nobody is going to be giving you a steady 40 hours. You need extra shifts for buffers, and your shifts will be shorter.
Sure, working 50 hours a week across 7 days isn't technically more than 50 across 5 days. But it does certainly drain your will to live a lot more, from what I've seen.
Poor obese people aren't working so much they don't have time to cook.
And using numbers to support that idea doesn't work, it actually goes against you. A small (much smaller than most obese people will eat in one sitting) fast food meal costs about an hour of minimum wage! Buying stable calories in cereals where the time to buy and cook them can be amortized into many more servings can be amortized is actually cheaper and also takes less time.
In the US, obesity rates rise as income drops, but it continues to rise beyond the point at which income drops below a full time federal minimum wage income.
It's over-eating and under-exercising. I know this is hard for certain ideologies to accept because it means obesity is not inflicted upon victims against their will and beyond their control. If you really need to minimize their agency and responsibility for their choices you can call it addiction to food and addiction to sedentary lifestyle if it helps.
Fast food almost always takes longer than that unless you can literally drive through while driving home from work.
Also, you're comparing making noodles from scratch to a typical meal. I can do an asian style chicken/veggie/rice meal in < 30 minutes and have the kitchen mostly cleaned by the time the rice is done.
i said on the way for fast food. Since those places are eherywhere it is likely you can find one on the way when you were going and so the time cost to go is zero.
i agree you canecook faster than I normally do - a lot of meals benefit from simmering while the flavors blend.
Or you slap the burgers in a pan and serve it with some broccoli, and sliced fresh red peppers or other other quick healthy sides and have a balanced meal. The bun, fries and soda are the unhealthy part of a burger, anyways (assuming it's good quality meat).
This does not address what I wrote though because it is not what I was arguing against.
I agree part of the reason people buy junk food and fast food rather than "whole food" is because the real or perceived effort required to turn it into something they will eat. Or they don't know how to make things that can compete on taste and satisfy their food addiction like those fast foods. It's not because they are time-poor either. They are just addicted to this sedentary "lazy" lifestyle. 30 minute drive to get fast food and eat it while watching TV or tiktok for the next hour or so beats making food and cleaning up for an hour.
Plenty of ways to automate the kitchen and also cook fast and easy meals. I can spend 20 minutes on the kitchen and have food for a week. 2-3 minutes of reheating per meal
When it seems like a lot of people don't want to do something that is obviously good for them but, instead, opt for things they know kill them slowly, that probably means addiction is somewhere in the mix.
lol, Alnatura is the worst. I’d prefer any Netto, Späti, or even the small shops in a gas station, anytime. Alnatura is a para-religious “anthroposophical” shop and everything you buy has low quality due to adverse selection and is overpriced by 3x
A consequence of universal healthcare that people don't talk about much is that it turns unhealthy citizens from an individual cost into more of a collective one. So it makes sense that countries with universal healthcare regulate in favor of their citizens as opposed to their food industry, because they're paying for the consequences more directly.
Not that this affects the political calculus (where perception may as well be reality), but the cost burden specific to universal healthcare is actually opposite this intuition.
Things like obesity, smoking, and alcoholism all kill you before you can get too old. Healthy citizens end up using far more of the far more expensive end-of-life care, to the point where it outweighs the extra healthcare the unhealthy citizens use in their youth.
This (French) study [0] published in 2023 on data from 2019 calculates that the costs from legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, including higher helthcare spend during the life of smokers/drinkers, are still higher than revenue from unspent money on pensions and taxes, and cost of healthy person living years.
This is both an argument in favor of universal healthcare, and my favorite argument for why the US should not implement it without first changing a whole array of perverse incentives.
Indeed, I would caution pretty much everyone else in the world (except maybe Asians, but even then) to be circumspect when taunting Americans for their obesity rates. Germany, to use an example from this discussion, has been going up steadily for decades. Doesn't seem like this is a US-specfic problem or something that Europe has a good answer for.
Europe is just lagging behind. There's not that much difference between the US and Europe. Europe just has more history and culture which makes the changes less extreme.
Demolition Man said Taco Bell would be fine dining by 2032, they might be on schedule. (It also said they'd be just about the last restaurant left, though.)
My POV is Americans are not an ally in any case, and all efforts must be made to increase self-reliance and disentanglement from the US. Both parties of the US disrregard european interests.
An argument can be made the Internet is actually Chinese because the atoms your bit relies on are mostly produced in China or Taiwan.
Am American, can confirm. I largely disagree with the idea that U.S. citizens chose their government, there are many, many filters, restrictions and unnecessary complications specifically designed to prevent politics having too much influence on policy, and our militarized police force is only too happy to deal with any inconvenient protestors. (Not to mention literal military deployments to several of our cities.) On the other hand, I am routinely amazed at enthusiasm among the public for surveillance, such as the opinion that FLOCK cameras are justified because they might help catch people exceeding the speed limit. Never underestimate the average person's desire to monitor and control other people.
Edit to clarify: I and many Americans are trying hard to be your allies, but it's not clear we have the leverage to be effective. Shit is locked down pretty tight over here.
no it means u_sama has (correctly, IMO) observed that the US has made it very clear in the past year that they don't regard the EU as an ally. I mean the openly talk about annexing EU territory right now.
> That assumes that all Americans support the actions of the current administration
This is making the mistake of trying to distinguish between what individual voters want and what the American government and large businesses do. If you’re, say, a Dane wondering if it’s safe to use Windows, iOS, or Chrome, you don’t care about a hundred million Democrats think but instead can only go by what you think the people in power will order and the odds that Satya, Sundar, or Tim will resist requests to compromise your interests. The number of people involved fit on a private jet.
> the mistake of trying to distinguish between what individual voters want and what the American government and large businesses do
That's not really a "mistake", though; that distinction exists and is important. I'd posit that the comment which reads "Americans are not an ally" should instead read "America is not an ally". The interpretation that they are talking about the American people is correct, from a literal reading. I suspect they intended to specify the American government ("America") rather than the American people ("Americans"), which makes the meaning more reasonable (IMO, of course). I agree with the rest of what you wrote; indeed, Satya, Sundar, and Tim both strongly influence and are strongly influenced by the government in question.
Sure, I was thinking mistake as in using “Americans” vaguely to refer to both three hundred million people or the much smaller number of people who make things people outside of the United States depend on. Neither one is wrong but it’s easy to think you’re talking about the same thing when you aren’t.
I think this will answer both comments, I said Americans and not America because *both* Democrats and Republicans would antagonize Europeans if they went to bat for their interests (using China as a counterpower to America, protecting industries and becoming as agressive as American administrations have been with protectionism, heavy brain drain, financial abuse and retorting to diminish EU power etc etc)
As a counter to what you say, that is true but in large most are ok with the current administration or the earlier ones. It was under Bush that there was a renaming of French fries to Freedom Fries as a backlash to Gerlany/France not joining the Iraq war.
Not every German was a nazi in WW2, yet if you fought a German you will not stop and give him a questionaire to understand his ideology. You lump them as heuristic and act on that.
That’s because our mass protests are focused on the overseas concentration camps, illegal detainment and arrests, and the other authoritarian moves our president has made. It’s true that Americans in general care little about foreign policy. It’s not an anti-Europe thing, it’s just that people care about stuff that more immediately affects them. European countries are smaller and more integrated, so foreign policy has a more immediate affect on them. Foreign policy has a dramatic affect on Americans lives, but it’s usually indirect and therefore not top of mind for the average citizen. That doesn’t mean we like our government’s foreign policy. And all that’s without mentioning that many believe the Greenland talk is not serious, and simply a distraction, and therefore mass protests would actually be playing into the admins hands.
Then you’re not paying attention. The US is currently experiencing the largest wave of mass protests in its history. The corporate media is simply ignoring it. Practically every trump administration action has triggered nation-wide protests.
Unless your government is entirely forced upon you, they're is only so far the populace can distance itself from them. The majority of the bad crap this American administration is doing and has done was predicted, heck a lot of it they effectively promised during & before the election, yet nearly two thirds of the population either directly voted for it or sat on their elbows and let it happen.
True. But I'm assuming over there is similar to over here wrt brexit and such: some of the loudest voices wailing “we didn't vote for that” are people who actively did vote for [whatever], or didn't vote at all.
I'm not seeing that. The Leopards Ate My Face people are amplified mostly by people who have not had their faces eaten by leopards, partly in mockery, partly in humor. The complainants don't have much of a voice (thankfully, I suspect).
I'm not sure how your math stacks out... but 2/3rds of 330 million people is not 75 million votes.
The fact is, the American electoral system is heavily stacked against the actual population due to...
- Citizens United allows individuals with sums of wealth which are nearly incomprehensible to literally drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a single election and not even have a dent in net worth
- The electoral college which may have made sense in 1796 or whenever they were deciding it means presidential elections focus on approximately 7 of our 50 states
- Many places like Puerto Rico, DC, the US Virgin Islands, and other territories just flat out don't have federal representation
- In the Senate small state citizens can sometimes wield up to 60 times as much representation as large state citizens (Hey guess which states those billionaires drop money to buy representation in... I'll give you a hint, it's not the populous ones)
- The House of Reps is capped in size which again hurts large states
It may be time to start talking about structural change here in the United States.
That being said... The United States and (most of) Europe have been allies for 8 decades, it's not like Europe hasn't had it's fair share of bullshit and far right parties.
The fact everyone in this thread is saying our relationship is done cause America's going through a rough patch is ridiculous. Especially given that a year ago our President was helping the expansion of NATO, and we're still sending arms to Ukraine (although the terms are differing), and we just took out Russian ally Maduro.
And I for one am happy that the outcome from this absolutely awful human being is increased European self reliance.
I'm hoping it shakes out that the US rebukes this awful party, and president (which many many people were duped into voting for cause most people are not paying as much attention as say... me and combine hundreds of millions from Musk, and misinformation flowing in through social media, and the stacked systems laid out above)
And when that's all said and done, and millions and millions of us are donating, and marching, and calling, and working to make that happen and there has been very real push back here, although slower than maybe some would hope
That then the US and Europe can be more equal partners than before this monster of an individual
> but 2/3rds of 330 million people is not 75 million votes
It was a remembered stat, and there were more than 75,000,000 who “either directly voted for it or sat on their elbows and let it happen”.
A quick check of official stats:
The turnout of 64.1% and 49.1%/49.3%/1.9% “of the vote” figures means:
~32% rep
~31% dem
~ 1% other
~36% did not vote
So 68% voted for it or sat on their elbows. Pretty close to my half-remembered two thirds.
> it's not like Europe hasn't had it's fair share of bullshit and far right parties.
True, and they are worryingly gaining ground in a number of places (here in the UK for one), but the whole EU (or Europe, or the EEA, depending on the exact set of countries we want to include in the pot for this discussion) has never been close to far-right in that time.
> That then the US and Europe can be more equal partners than before this monster of an individual
Eventually, hopefully. We'll see what happens in a couple of years. But the trust won't come back overnight even from where it is now, and there is plenty of time for the situation to get worse. I expect it will take a couple of terms at the very least for things to even out close to where they were before, if they ever do.
And for all the claims of “defending democracy and the free world”, the unilateral arseholery in general and active threats to other democracies (the EU overall, its individual states, and non-EU states), gives other regimes a loverly big mess to point at while asking “Do you really want democracy?”, so it might not even be possible for things to revert over that timescale because of the changes in balance elsewhere as less direct consequence.
The biggest problem here isn't the numbers, but the usual manipulative rhetoric of putting people who "voted for it" and those who "sat on their elbows" into the same bucket, to vilify them together.
I'll skip the philosophical argument for the absurdity of this view in general, because the numbers you provided speak even louder. Consider that both big parties got pretty much the same amount of votes[0] - so whether or not the 36% of population who didn't vote are seen as complicit villains, depended on how a different 0.5% of the population (or 0.15% of the voters) voted!
--
[0] - I'd argue that 0.2% difference is within margin of statistical error, but that's a whole other discussion.
> so whether or not the 36% of population who didn't vote are seen as complicit villains
Not complicit villains, it isn't as black and white as that, but those who don't engage and then complain are pretty close. After the brexit vote a number of people said things along the lines of “if I'd know it would matter, I'd have bothered”, which is something I find difficult to respond to in a polite manner.
Why not taking two seconds to look it up before making such a false statement? From Wikipedia:
> Citizens of Greenland are full citizens of Denmark and of the European Union. Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union and is part of the Council of Europe.
There is confusion here because Greenland is not part of the EU directly (they were, they left) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_and_the_European_Uni...
Its citizens are members of the EU but its territory is not. Greenland is part of NATO though, and has a trade alliance with the EU so its territorial status is very complicated.
It's always disappointing to see that level of aggressive ignorance on HN. I flagged your comment because you're lying and spreading misinformation. Greenland is associated to the European Union but is is not and never has been part of the European Union; it was previously part of the predecessor organization the European Communities but withdrew before the EU was founded. Next time take two seconds to look it up.
I never said it was a full part of the EU, I even posted the quote from Wikipedia that specifies the situation. But saying that Greenland is not part of EU is also wrong. Even though it might not be a regular member state, it is a territory of Denmark, which is certainly part of the EU.
>There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies.
This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up of "far-right" movements in the continent. The infamous EU chat law doesnt help either, and all the abuses of Germany in their misuse of hate speech to punish speech is not a positive development. We do not have real alternatives to most American tech services, and administrations are unwilling to move to Linux based alternatives.
The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.
> The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.
They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately).
This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.
> Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out
... and those parties would be even more authoritarian if they got in. Which they might in part because of the reaction. It's possible to get fucked from both ends...
I would not classify Greens as heterodox, because the whole climate policy (and the degrowth movement overall) is forefront in Germany. The move to close nuclear plants and instead replace it with renewables (which are blocked at the local level by boomer Green elected NIMBYs) is not sound, if your objective is to achieve enrgy transition and 0 fossil fuels.
As for the fascists, when one looks deeper into the AfD (not that I like them, more the opposite) they are just the old right + immigration issues. Labelling them as fascist is a dangerous thing because it devalues the value of the word and opens the way for true facsicm to come.
You could produce the most uber-woke movie possible and it would be loved as long as it was good art or had a legitimate good story.
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