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Cake day: October 30th, 2023

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  • Here in the Netherlands our house of representatives has 150 seats and they’re filled by 15 parties, the biggest of whom has 37 seats, the second 25. People sometimes suggest that political fragmentation makes things more complicated, because usually at least 3 or 4 parties are needed to form a coalition. I don’t really think it matters because I look at it this way: there are different views on things in society and compromises need to be found one way or another, it’s where this takes place that’s different. In one case it’s on the conference of 1 or 2 big parties, in the other case it happens in parlement/government where the many small parties meet. The benefit of a many-party system is that people actually got a choice, if you’re on the left and don’t like what a particular party is doing, you can pick another leftwing party. You don’t have that option in a 2-party system, you’ll probably stick with your party despite everything you don’t like about it. Here, if a party really fucks up, they’re done for, a party can get 20% one election and 1% the next one. The system is more dynamic. At the same time, the actual governments usually have an overlap, like there will be different coalitions, but our center-right party has been in the coalition for over a decade now. There may be a certain charm to knowing that every other election a completely new set of people forms the government, but that also has many downsides I think. There’ll be little continuity, republicans undo everything democrats have done and in 4 years we’ll see the reverse. Haven’t heard any really convincing arguments against political fragmentations. It’s just the path towards it that may be difficult if you’re in a 2 party system, because as soon as you go third party, you’re hurting your side of the spectrum. What would be helpfull is if it would happen on both sides simultaneously. Can’t you setup a structure where people from both sides would together commit to voting third-party?





  • Yes you name important reasons, also there’s migration both legal and illegal. Legal migration also from within Europe, for example there are quite a lot of Polish homeless people here. Often they came here to work, but they lost their job and the housing that was part of the job, and they stick around for a while, thinking to turn things round, but things get worse when they start drinking. Often their best chance is to go back to Poland, because there they have social security rights, which they don’t have here. But they feel shame to go back and face their defeat. It’s heartbreaking sometmes, not very proud of how my country treats foreign workers…

    There are some schizophrenic homeless people, but even more people with bad tempers, anti social personality traits, that get themselves into fights all the time. I often need to remind myself and others, that it’s those people that often need help the most. Some people only want to help those that are very sympathetic, and greatfull. But those will make it any way, everyone is willing to help them. It’s the ones with the bad tempers and the short fuses that need your help most, because most people are unwilling to look beyond it.




  • What about the online food ordering market. I reckon that might be an easier first step than consumer products. Here in the Netherlands JustEatTakeaway has a market share of around 90% and requires restaurants to give them a 14% provision. Restaurants don’t have much of a choice, if they’re not on there they miss out on a huge part of the market, it’s like they don’t exist. Why don’t restaurants unite and develop a FOSS protocol that let’s them federate, so the consumer has a central place to browse the food delivery market, but simultaneously makes the providers independant because they can run their own instance if they please. Have these types of ideas been pitched to branche organizations? Restaurants have a clear interest to develop this to free themselves from the platforms with a monopolistic venture-capital-driven strategy.




  • TIL: Abdullah Gül

    Though I find the predecesor before Gül even more interesting: Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Apparently he was the last secular president of Turkey. “During receptions at the presidential palace, Sezer refused to allow women wearing the headscarf to attend citing the laws on the separation of religion and state at the time; this resulted in the wives of Abdullah Gül and Erdoğan, Hayrünnisa Gül and Emine Erdoğan respectively, being barred from attendance. Erdoğan later said in public that he had ‘suffered a lot’ from Sezer.[3]” So he refused the wives of who would be his successors.

    During the 2014 presidential election, won by Erdoğan, Sezer openly refused to vote, citing the lack of a secularist candidate as his reason” Turkey has a strong secularist tradition and I really hope it returns sometime. Atatürk is still being celebrated, but do people still believe in his secular ideals?


  • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nltoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldAI Training
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    2 months ago

    Yes, even when people copy eachother they don’t have the same output. And some individuals are mighty excentric, for instance Picasso. But most people stick almost entirely to what they see and only differentiate by means of the mistakes they make, not by intended originality. From the moment people are born they start copying everything they see. With a head full of mirror neurons we tend to live our lifes exactly the same, and the differences only stand out because they’re relative. From a distance we would all look, behave, be more or less the same. Copyright should be abolished. I’m all in favor of supporting artists and creators, support whoever you will out of free will, but don’t limit others freedom to copy you. If we can’t copy what others have done before us, then our culture is not free. It should be an honor to be copied, that means others like your idea and want to use it too. That’s how humans have always lived, that’s how we progress. it’s what has brought us this far. Let’s continue without bizarre copying limitations. If we can copy freely that means culture is free, it means we can learn from eachother, take eachothers ideas and creations, put them to use and expand upon them, sometimes inadvertently while trying to make an exact copy. This freedom will be to the benefit of us all, and the opposite is true aswel, intelectual property is to the detriment of us all.

    If you don’t want your work to be used by others, keep it private. Don’t show it to anyone. Keep your invention in your cellar and let nobody enter. If you want to share your ideas and creations, please do so. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t show what you’ve made and expect others to not use it as input and put it to use.





  • What about the least essential?

    1. Tax consultants - helping companies avoid contributing to society
    2. Marketeers - manipulating people into buying worse products for higher prices
    3. Middle management - causing a lot of fuzz while doing nothing of significance.

    Just to name a few. An artists contribution may be abstract but it’s certainly there. There are others that actively sabotage society and very often they make a lot of money.