NateNate60

Or the VOC

Bruh I have a degree in COMPUTER SCIENCE and I can't even find a job

The US being a shit-show is exactly why this job is so hard. You're constantly having to deal with political crap from Congress or the Supreme Court, state governors suing your administration whenever it does something they don't like, opposition pundits calling for your impeachment, and that's not even mentioning America's foreign affairs. There's a reason people call the president of the United States the "leader of the free world".

The US has a geopolitical position to defend and it's a never ending queue of foreign leaders clogging up your phone line and calendar book either threatening you or grovelling to you. And then there is the unique military position of being the commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the history of mankind. So the president also has to attend military briefings, decide how to maintain and achieve the USA's foreign policy objectives using that army, whether to intervene in foreign wars, and so on. The US just has their fingers in so many goddamn pies that the job of president is unbelievably stressful. Yes, you're the most powerful man (or hopefully next year, woman) in the world, but with that immense power comes a humongous amount of responsibility. You could change the course of human history by merely scrawling some words on a piece of paper. You have the power to fuck up millions of people's days across the world with a stroke of a pen or by shouting some words down a phone.

You have to contrast this role with the leader of a country that is comparatively geopolitically irrelevant—their foreign policy is probably limited to dealing with the regional counterparts and/or the leaders of the USA, China, or Russia. The President of the United States has to deal with every country in the world because if there's one lesson we Americans will never learn, it's to mind our own goddamn business.

Just look at Obama—the man turned from a young energetic candidate to a ready-to-retire late middle-aged man after just eight years in office. Meanwhile, the prime minister of a country like Singapore governed two decades and is still in good condition to continue a career in politics.

Instant run-off voting isn't the only solution. Mixed-member proportional voting would basically inject new life into the political system overnight as the minor parties are essentially guaranteed seats if the electoral threshold is set to something reasonable, like 5%.

The removal of cars has nothing to do with the ultra-low emissions zone, but is a normal part of collecting debt in the UK. In the UK, once a judgement has been issued by the County Court or High Court, a writ will be issued and the claimant can hire County Court bailiffs or High Court Enforcement Agents to enforce the writ. They will go to the defendant's address and either collect the payment, arrange a payment plan acceptable to the claimant, or seize goods and sell them at auction to offset the amount owed.

If you so much as owe £500 in rent arrears or fail to pay back a £1,000 loan, you could have bailiffs knocking at your door shouting through your letterbox or clamping your car in just a few months time.

Transport for London has no extraordinary authority to seize cars—they go through the legal system and hire bailiffs to collect money owed like any other claimant.

There's even been a film series about it. It's called Can't Pay, We'll Take it Away. A documentary crew follows a pair of High Court Enforcement Agents as they travel around the country collecting debts. It's available on YouTube.

"Woke" originally meant "aware of and well-informed about systemic social issues affecting everyday people". Conservatives have co-opted this word and use it to describe anything associated with leftism or social liberalism. It is intended to be negative in that context.

"DEI" stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion". It refers to policies that intentionally include people of diverse or minority backgrounds in the context of employment or political appointment. Conservatives use it to describe (in their view) hiring practices that select less-qualified candidates of these backgrounds against the favour of those who may be more qualified. In that usage, a "DEI hire" or "diversity hire" is a person hired or appointed solely on the basis of their race, gender, or some other status as a minority even though they are not qualified for the role.

The only realistic way I see the situation being better here is if the United States imposes it. Nobody else has the power to do so and keep the peace. The United Nations is losing its credibility every passing day but maybe there is still enough time where Palestine being placed under UN trusteeship with the USA, Israel, and one Arab nation as joint trustees would be acceptable to the key stakeholders here. Eventually, once the situation stabilises, the goal would be to grant the Palestinian state independence from the Trusteeship Council.

The socialists of Lemmy will decry this solution. They'll call it colonialism and an example of Israeli and American imperialism. And it is. But it's better than whatever shit-show is happening now. Israelis today will not accept a sovereign Palestinian state and will devote all their resources to destroy it. Organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah will not accept an Israeli state and will similarly continue to expend their resources to destroy. These are resources that could otherwise be used to rebuild Gaza and the West Bank and to make reparations for those whose lives were destroyed in this decades-long conflict.

Israelis see the situation in reverse—if they don't beat the Palestinians to a pulp every single time without mercy, organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah will overrun Israel and do the same thing to them. It's kind of like the reason why Japanese troops in World War II wouldn't surrender to the Americans; they thought the Americans would treat Japanese POWs like how the Japanese treated American POWs.

Terrorist groups are more likely to form in bad social, political, and economic circumstances. Astute observation.

FiveThirtyEight gives Harris a 16% chance to win Texas. That's over 1 in 7. So it's definitely doable.

If that's what's needed, I can say with some certainty that adoption isn't going to be picking up any time this decade.

I still have no idea how to use passkeys. It doesn't seem obvious to the average user.

I tried adding a passkey to an account, and all it does is cause a Firefox notification that says "touch your security key to continue with [website URL]". It is not clear what to do next.

It's not a national election, but in Hong Kong, a 1,500-member Beijing-controlled electoral college elects the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and controls nearly half of the legislature.