Somebody help me out here. What’s the opposite of “construction” again?

Yes.

You know the answer to that, and you also know that the answer does not matter. MAGA isn’t a political movement that gains or loses people’s support depending on the outcomes of its actions. It’s a cult, built around absolute faith in the leader and its ideology, and as such, it’s insulated from reality. Cults have a long history of explaining away the suffering they cause to their own members:

• The other side is pure evil, so whatever this is, the other side is worse.
• You deserve it. You’ve been a terrible person, and your suffering is your repentance.
• It’s a test of your faith. Doubts are a sign of you being weak.
• You need to hold out just a little longer. Paradise is just around the corner. (Of course, dates and goal posts constantly shift into the future…)

Just think about the suffering any past cult has managed to have people endure or inflict on others (often their own kids). Then you know no matter how much MAGAs will suffer from their own political choices, it’s not going to change their minds en masse.

In the sense that they’re bastards and now also a little poorer? Yes.

In the sense that they’ve suffered a blow of fate nobody could’ve seen coming, and are deserving of our compassion? Fuck no!

…and by buying them on Amazon, you’re filling the coffers if fascist supporter Bezos. How ironic.

At this rate, we’ll be running out of awards quickly… and free space to tack them on to.

Danke, ich stehe korrigiert. Dabei hätte ich mich an diesen Mechanismus erinnern sollen: In der Vergangenheit war er im Kontext Ungarn mehrfach ins Gespräch gebracht worden.

Warum es nie dazu kam, und warum er de facto wirkungslos blieb: Sobald man zwei (mutmaßlich von Russland gesponserte) rogue members hat, blockiert jeder (qua Mehrheitsprinzip) die Suspendierung des anderen. Zuletzt waren das Ungarn und die Slowakei, derzeit dürften es die Slowakei und möglicherweise Tschechien sein, mit PiS-Polen und (im Falle seines Beitritts) Serbien als mögliche neue “Blockierer”.

Wenn es wirklich Mitglieder gibt die langfristig wichtige Projekte blockieren, dann ist die richtige Lösung diese von der EU auszuschließen

Cool. Blöd nur, dass es dafür eben keinen Mechanismus gibt. Un nu?

The timing was truly impeccable this time: within hours of Trump’s newest tariff threats to the EU, a federal court struck down his latest round of global tariffs. Makes you wonder how long these EU tariffs would stand, if the orange turd didn’t TACO out of them beforehand. After all, there are plenty of Tuesdays until July…

The models you can run on consumer hardware are still nowhere near the stuff that runs in corporate data centers. To stick with your metaphor, its like running a little steam engine at home while the big guys get to operate nuclear reactors…

I’ve looked into self-hosted AI and decided it’s not worth the cost - both in terms of hardware and energy - when compared to the relative value to be gotten out of it. YMMV.

Das ist gut, keine Frage. Die Sache mit OpenDesk ging ja auch erst kürzlich durch die Medien.

Aber: Es sind kleine Anfänge. Das Gros der Workstations bei der BW dürfte weiterhin auf Windows laufen, und das lässt sich wegen der Fachanwendungen nicht mal eben so umkrempeln. Das BS austauschen ist einfach. Die Tonnen an Anwendungen zu ersetzen, die darauf laufen, ist leider alles andere als trivial.

Hat dieses “Papier” auch die Abhängigkeit von Windows berücksichtigt? Denn: Selbst bei einer Bundeswehr, die nur noch deutsche oder europäische Rüstungstechnik kauft, läuft das Zielsystem der PzH noch auf Windows, jede Fachanwendung auf Windows, von der Buchhaltung über die Personalverwaltung bis zur Werkstattanwendung. Und dass Windows über keine Hintertüren für amerikanische Dienste verfügt, glaubt doch spätestens seit Snowden niemand mehr…

Are you sure he isn’t just Grok inside a humanoid shell?

You better have a nice, big “fell for it again”-award ready for him. He’ll need it for emotional support.

Roses are red
AI is slop
My homies can’t wait
For this bubble to pop

You found the joke. Now put it back! ;)

What’s really messed up is that the very people who could end FPTP/winner-take-all through constitutional reform are actually incentivised to keep everything as-is: after all, why risk losing your seat to even more competition?

Makes me appreciate living in a country with a functional democracy

Same here. We’ve got proportional voting. The result still isn’t perfect, but there’s a lot less distortion between what people wanted and what people got.

It can’t. “Building from the bottom up” means winning seats in races for mayor, state legislatures, or the federal Senate and Congress. That means splitting the Democrat vote in those exact races, and makes sure that everywhere you try to “build power”, you will hurt that side of the political dichotomy that is closest to your own political ideas.

The rules of rational discourse are centuries old. But if you need them spelled out once more, here they are: If you claim shit, you back it up with evidence. If you can’t or find weird excuses why you shouldn’t have to, people will legitimately call you out on making shit up.

Case in point: I think you made a case for torturing fluffy little ducklings with red-hot pokers in the past. You’re a bad person for doing so. I can’t find a source right now that proves you did it, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in your post history. So unless you prove you didn’t say that (which is impossible, btw), I expect you and everyone else here to accept my claim as true.