It's weird to discover what cheesy 1980s US shows are syndicated to German daytime TV. Riptide and 21 Jump Street, for instance. I fully expect to come across The A-Team at some point. Knight Rider must be on the schedule somewhere here too. Come one, that's inevitable.
Scenario 1: Anthropic is wrong, and it crashes the global economy when stock markets accept the failure of this con.
-Or-
Scenario 2: Anthropic is correct, and it crashes the global economy by forcing every knowledge worker and creative worker into joblessness.
I don't know which scenario you have been rooting for in theory, but if you imagine either is going to be a win for you, oh my...
Everyone's homework for tonight is to watch The Big Short again, and protect your assets _immediately_.
In Italy, the hospital staff laughed at my foolish American question about where to pay for the major outpatient procedure I'd just had. It took up several hours of time for 1 doctor, 3 nurses, and a lot of advanced equipment. They laughed because there was nowhere for billing or payments. The national healthcare system covered all the costs of care, period.
I did pay like 20 euros for some shitty cough syrup once though. So I guess it's technically true that healthcare isn't "free". Btw, foreigners in Italy had to pay 2000 euros per year for access to the system. So yeah, again technically not "free". But imagine as an American having your _total healthcare costs essentially capped at 2k per year_. Everything else free except for OTCs such as tylenol.
The oligarch-owned media wants you to believe the true-but-not-true "there's no such thing as free healthcare in Europe" so that you don't look at the details closely enough to recognise that they need you to stay there complacent with letting your "big" US paycheck continue to be siphoned off by the bloodsucker class. Meanwhile, Europeans with half your salary get to enjoy more peaceful lifestyles.
Oh and yes Germany's national train service is a literal punchline. It still is way more comprehensive and usable than Amtrak. And on the flip side, for the equivalent of about 75 USD per month we have a transit pass that is valid on every public transit system in the country plus on most of the country's intracity lines. Imagine riding on every train, bus, and tram in the US for that, including those handful of regional lines run by Amtrak.
"They Fled T<<<p’s America. Now They Regret It" lololololol the oligarch propaganda machine is working overtime to keep restless Americans brainwashed that nowhere can beat the quality of life in the US. 🤣🤣🤣 Just shows they're worried that the light is dawning.
Look, I have ample criticisms of each of the three European countries I've lived in. There is no "utopia" out there. But do I regret leaving the US? Oh hell nah. I walk through parks at 2am without fear. Sidewalks aren't filled with homeless campsites, contaminated needles, and overdose victims. I get all my preventive healthcare screenings knowing that any bad findings will be taken care of without bankrupting me. My taxes are used mostly to extend care to vulnerable people and help parents give children a stable foundation. Jobs come with 6 weeks paid vacation plus 10 paid holidays and 10 paid days of continuous education. When you get sick, there are as many sick days as you need, period. I have multiple friends whose doctors put them on 6 weeks of paid sick time for _burnout_.
Don't let the bullshitters bullshit you. Life can be a lot better than the low standards set in the US.
https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it/
Mid-October and it's 4C. Winter in Berlin is, like, 90% of the year. Sigh.
But I'm disappointed that they didn't really deal with poor Frances' justifiably deep sense of betrayal. It would be credible if she were furiously turned into a political assassin or something. Slipping cyanide into the Americans' tea every morning. From her perspective, it's a nation of monsters repeatedly attacking her country and its sworn protectors.
Daaaamn, the end of every season of "The Diplomat" finds a way to throw a bigger bomb into the narrative. It's the ultimate soap opera. I fully expect next season to end with aliens landing and taking over the White House. It's the only plot twist left that's crazy enough.
Honestly, kudos to the writers for finding ways to write a version of unhinged that can stand comparison with our very unhinged reality. The show still reads as too idealistic for our times. But it's trying to at least grapple with the idea of leadership run amuk, even if it's still locked inside the fantasy world that "The West Wing" inhabited.
There are certain epithets against marginalised groups that have been reclaimed in order to transform their power. Black people and the n-word. Gay men and the f-word.
And then there's the way Brits use the c-word. It's not a marginalized group taking it back to remove the misogyny. It's just a word used in a different way than what I'm used to, and it makes me smile every time I see it used as a gender-nonspecific mild barb instead of a thinly-veiled threat of violence against women.
Thanks, Brits. Keep taking the power out of that word. I appreciate it.
Welp. ID.me is certainly a steaming pile of shit if you don't live in the US. It demands all sorts of documents that simply do not exist. Electric bill within the last 90 days? Hon, I get one bill per year for that here and it was issued last winter.
This is cult behavior. Deliberately choosing to do the thing that there is no objective evidence in support of, in order to prove you're a true believer in the cult's blatant bullshit.
It's literally signaling that blind faith, in contradiction to objective facts, is all they have left to cling to. These are people who need deprogramming and temporary guardianship to protect them from further exploitation.
I love reading the photo captions people write here. Often they're more entertaining and illuminative than the toot itself. A great example of how improving accessibility for a marginalised group winds up benefiting all of us.
Germany has hundreds of lakes that Lichtenberg streets could have been named for. Why choose Canada's? And if foreign lakes were preferrable, why not a country with closer ties to Lichtenberg? The berzirk has a huge Vietnamese population, so if anything that would he the more obvious candidate. Does Lichtenberg have a Canada connection that I don't know about?
There are a series of streets in Berlin-Lichtenberg that appear to be paying homage to the Great Lakes of Canada. Michiganseestraße, Erieseering, Ontarioseestraße, and Huronseestraße. But why would an East Berlin neighborhood do that? The buildings in the area all have that Soviet-era cookie-cutter architectural style, so I doubt the area was recently developed.
What an odd little mystery. I'd love to hear the story, if someone knows. Internet search turned up nothing. Maybe it occured during the post-reunification effort to purge Stalinist street names? https://berlin-urbanplanning.weebly.com/street-names.html Though that still wouldn't explain why choose Canadian lakes as the alternative. 🤷
Sheeran didn't even need to take a position on the Palestine conflict. He could have just said "Selected venues have threatened to cancel our contracts with them unless I agree to censor the political free speech of all artists on my tour. Artistic integrity demands that I not capitulate, or pressure my fellow artists to capitulate, to suppressing their voices. Therefore the following dates have been cancelled by the respective venues. I apologise to the fans for this inconvenience, and hope you understand why we made this tough decision. Everyone on the tour is looking forward to seeing you soon at a different venue in your region, as soon as we can book substitute dates."
The man has a 9-figure net worth. He can eat some cancellation costs. Instead he is losing friends, fans, respect, and possibly the entire tour instead of a handful of dates. Cowardice is not paying off. He should have stood by his people, not thrown them under the tour bus.
Everytime someone says to me "I know it's cool now to be anti-AI", another angel gets its wings. 😇
Good job, everyone!
Dolly is dead while Trump and Musk aren't, yet you tell yourself the god of the New Testament is real. Bitch, please.
We told you to take Gamergate seriously. Next time, listen to women. Especially trans women, who are always front line targets of misogyny so know exactly who the fash are.
#QT https://mastodon.social/@mackayim2022/117152295813320946
Everyday.
Dog: You know how this shrub has approximately 10 million leaves?
Me: Yep
D: Well I need to go back 3 meters to sniff precisely one of those leaves.
M: You couldn't maybe sniff one of these right here? They're all very nice and have basically the same scent.
D: Mommmmm, you are embarrassing me in front of the other dogs with your hopelessly inadequate snout. Do we have to do this every time? You shouldn't even be the one in charge of the walks. Ridiculous.
M: I get my entertainment where I can, sweetie. Let's go find your leaf.