I wouldn't say "no chance". Last summer Trump was a few inches from being a chunkful of splattered History.

Of course the idea that the population could take the US military full-on is ridiculous. But resistance doesn't have to take the shape of traditional warfare, and anything would be better than the current overwhelming apathy that is the response to being governed by literal Nazis.

Star Wars is not right wing by America's fascist standards but it is right wing by most other standards.

Lucas is clearly a firm pro-capitalism liberal. The story criticizes fascism and the concentration of power but hardly criticizes authority and firmly supports strict social hierarchies. There's an entire sub-caste of sapient slaves called droids that never gets acknowledged as problematic!

And that's what made Andor very special. It's an allegory for class struggle and unionization. It's a story Lucas would have never told, and it is brilliant.

There are two main points to getting a diagnosis:

1. Access to mental health services and acomodations, which will often require "proof". Up to you to decide if you need that.
2. Getting "closure" and self-understanding. Which is what most "high functioning" adults are really looking for with a late diagnosis. That does not require your psychiatrist to write anything down though. In your position I'd explicitly ask for that.

TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis

I can't help but notice that your comment is highly upvoted, with one down vote at the time of writing. I also notice that whenever someone comments something like "Americans deserve Trump and everything that is happening to them" their comment is usually around 50 % downvoted.

Regardless of your opinion on whether a people can collectively be held responsible for the actions of the majority, it looks like a lot of Americans on this website need to reevaluate their own cognitive dissonance.

(Also what the fuck is up with the comment at the top of the chain. That is literally hate speech and could get you fined in my country).

Those are very different things.

The whole American credit system is frightening. You all but have to own a credit card (here they are only used by people travelling internationally), the credit card needs to be paid off manually (!?!? my bank just auto-withdraws the balance monthly), etc.

Here we employ a straightforward system to vet potential lenders : mortgages almost always have a contractual stipulation that you must use that bank to cash in your paychecks. Your bank will ask for proof of a stable income. You have to put down a downpayment. Defaulting on a mortgage furthermore puts you in a government registry; it's not "a wink and a handshake" as you put it, but a formal tightly-regulated process.

There is nothing that the credit score system does that the Belgian system doesn't achieve, except the part where it enables banks to prey on people through a privately owned and unregulated system used to push citizens towards short-term credit and needlessly dangerous financing habits. A 30 year-old with 50k€ in a savings account and no credit history sounds to me like someone who "should" get a mortgage a lot more than someone juggling 3 credit cards and a 10-year car loan. But the american credit system incentivizes the opposite. That is anarcho-capitalist predation.

In an economy where skill (supposedly) correlates to income, income is expected to increase across a lifetime.

Therefore 25 year-old me borrowing excess income from 45 year-old me is a good thing, purely egotistically.

Furthermore lack of debt means every big purchase is preceded by hoarding. No matter which way you look at it this is bad for society. If I had 50k€ laying around it would be much more efficient resource-wise to lend it to my neighbor so they can build up their business, than to keep the money under my mattress and tell them to tighten their belt for another five years. They get a business, I get a bit more money in the end, everyone is richer and the economy is stronger.

Economics are not a zero-sum game. This belief that "if someone is making money then someone else is getting robbed" is deeply damaging, especially as it seems to be the main economic driver for Trump's batshit insane administration.

Debt is good. Predatory practices are not. That is what regulations are supposed to curtail. Where I live "credit scores" are not a thing, banks only loan to you based on proof of income, a declaration of open credit lines, and your civil status (age, partnership status, dependent people). Racism and sexism are of course an issue, although if caught the banks face big fines. But it's not like American credit scores are colorblind...

I doubt Trump thought that far but his posse of inside traders certainly did. And they're (probably) right.

BTC will never replace the petrodollar, but already acts as a refuge asset exactly like gold. It is valuable because it is reliably scarce and reliably in demand. It is not unreasonable that with US bonds cratering and the fed causing Turkish levels of inflation on Trump's orders, some investors would divert some of that money to (perceived) alternatives such as gold and crypto. Much to the pleasure of Trump's buddies.

What's bizarre to me is that a lot of billionaires not close to the Trump syndicate will be getting fucked on the collapse of the US economy and it's hard to believe they are getting a better deal than under Biden when the stock market was booming and they could already buy politicians and newspapers for relative peanuts. The supposed deep state is doing a really bad fucking job of fighting for its own survival.

This whole case has collapsed into a handful of choices:

1. Judge doesn't declare the Trump admin in Contempt of Court (i.e. does nothing). This sets precedent that Trump's administration enjoys full immunity from the judiciary, officially turning the US into a dictatorship. This is what has been happening for weeks and remains by far the most likely scenario.
2. Judge declares Trump in Contempt of Court, but is unable to enforce it. This is equivalent to scenario 1.
3. Judge declares the Trump admin in Contempt of Court and deputizes state police to enforce the ruling and arrest, if not Trump, at least some officials. This would be legal and remains the only constitutional solution, but would almost certainly trigger an armed response from the regime. Democracy doesn't go down without a fight, but the end result is uncertain.
4. Pro-democracy factions use illegal/violent means to force Trump to comply (military coup, sudden Luigi's Mansion remake, etc.). However it would seem that the masks fell off and despite decades of propaganda to the contrary, literally not a single living American is willing to put their life on the line to protect Democracy.

Democrats again playing backfooted.

The time to chastise congressional insider trading was last year at the latest. Now they're doing the same, but on a much bigger scale and without fear of reprisal because the institutions meant to penalize insider trading have all been gutted. They are literally openly bragging about the billions they made from this move.

This is how fascism wins. Antifascists perpetually fighting last month's battle while everyone else deals with this week's crisis. Mark my words: Republicans will disclose their trades in a month or so and literally nothing will happen.

There's a rock that is perfect for an entry-level Illusion magic spell. You cast it onto pretty much any dish and it improves and magnifies the taste.

As a more advanced spell of the Alteration school you can also cast it on the ground to remove snow.

This is terrifying. Americans are running headfirst into the Greatest Depression, except this time they are the Nazis and they have enough nukes to eradicate life on Earth.

And their political discourse oscillates between "serves us right" and "yes daddy". Republicans are complicit and literally everyone else will refuse to resort to political violence or disobedience even as Trump orders nukes to be fired at whoever he's mad at that week.

Bad news, the people driving cars in that traffic are breathing in the exact same fumes. The cabin air doesn't magically get rid of pollutants because it went through a paper filter meant to keep out large particulates. The asthma/cancer causing pollutants go through just fine.

In fact in slow moving traffic where two wheelers are allowed to filter, I'd expect they are getting exposed to fewer pollutants because they are spending less time in traffic. Plus cyclists get improved cardio which helps negate breathing problems.

Anecdotally the physical health difference between no exercising and mildly exercising while commuting is mind-blowing. And the fact that so many able-bodied office workers couldn't run a mile uninterrupted due to a car-dependent lifestyle should be terrifying.

Covoit, mobilité douce, transports en commun, lutte des classes, super.

Plus de voitures, non. C'est du greenwashing. Le supposé besoin de "renouveler le parc" c'est de la politique écologique telle que vue par le lobby automobile. Les voitures électriques ne servent pas à sauver la planète, mais à sauver VAG.

La "petite voiture électrique" c'est vraiment le pompon, c'est vraiment le pire de tous les mondes puisque elle a un range de nain de jardin et vise donc un public de milieu (péri)urbain délaissé par la politique de transit. Au prix de remplacer toutes les voitures d'un village-dortoir on pourrait plutôt construire du rail et inciter à de l'utilisation mixte des terrains (i.e. reconstruire des commerces de proximité et proscrire le concept américain de faire ses courses à 30 minutes en voiture 1 fois par semaine). Mais justement les habitants de ces villages dortoirs ne veulent pas de ces solutions car dans la lutte des classes, ils se battent côté bourgeois.

Oui, une Renault 5 électrique c'est mieux qu'une passat diesel. Mais c'est pas avec des ambitions aussi minables qu'on va arriver au net zéro, puis de toute façon comme acheter des bagnoles électriques c'est un projet bourgeois les gros SUV qui ont la même emprunte carbone qu'une thermique ne seront jamais inquiétés.

Pour Paris (et je soupçonne les autres grandes villes) le problème est aussi celui de la région qui fait pas son taf.

La ZFE est bien desservie par les TEC, et c'est pas la faute d'Hidalgo si le reste de l'IDF est majoritairement complètement réfractaire à l'idée de ne pas prendre la bagnole dans Paris (et vote d'ailleurs très à droite).

On peut râler à juste titre sur le côté injuste des ZFE, mais dans tous les cas le but final c'est aucune autre voiture dans Paris que le strict minimum nécessaire (livreurs, ouvriers, urgences, etc.). Que ça passe par une ZFE ou autre chose ça fera chier. Et je peux comprendre le point de vue des parisiens intra-muros que c'est pas à eux de choper un cancer du poumon pour les franciliens dont le gouvernement préfère investir dans des bretelles d'autoroute et une planification urbaine à l'américaine que des stations de RER et une planification urbaine centrée sur le rail comme par exemple à Tokyo.

Va falloir sourcer le fait que renouveller le parc automobile est désirable d'un pdv écologique.

1. Les voitures euro 2/3 ne consomment pas nécessairement plus qu'une thermique euro 6, elles émettent justent plus de composés toxiques (particules fines, NOx). Une clio diesel de 2003 qui consomme 4,5L contribuera toujours moins au réchauffement climatique qu'une clio essence de 2025 qui consomme 5L, c'est mathématique.
2. Faut prendre le cycle de vie en compte. Construire une voiture émet énormément de CO2, leur remplacement prématuré est donc délétère sauf si ça évite beaucoup de CO2 avec la nouvelle bagnole.

Là où les ZFE ont de l'intérêt écologique c'est qu'elles rendent la voiture moins attractive dans l'absolu. Et c'est là que le bas blesse, cette logique n'est appliquée qu'aux pauvres. Puis y'a l'argument de santé publique qui lui se tient très bien.

Sure, but community moderators can't. Spinning up my own instance shouldn't be a requirement to use custom CSS.

If it's a browser plugin it won't receive widespread adoption. I don't know what the actual numbers are but I'm willing to bet well over 95 % of desktop lemmy users are using the default frontend despite the many alternatives.

Old Reddit+RES did it right IMO: custom CSS but an easy-to-use toggle on a per-community basis, plus (IIRC) a global toggle in case one doesn't want custom CSS at all.

Custom CSS wouldn't even necessarily have to federate, though it would be better if it did (but there are probably security concerns to address). It's CSS, it's supposed to gracefully degrade; if CSS federation isn't supported, it doesn't break the user experience. That doesn't have to change anything in ActivityPub either, you can just add a custom field for the styling and let clients figure out what to do with it.

Kind of the whole spirit is to give users a tool and no worry so much about the rough edges. Custom CSS doesn't have to work perfectly, it just has to work for most users.

They perfectly illustrate the Corporate Mindset. I like to imagine they were designed by a conclave of neurotypical and painfully unfunny and uncreative MBAs who got together in a coworking space and brainstormed the most consensual and least offensive avatar tech they could fathom. Likely none of them ever had a passing thought about what makes for compelling character design. Certainly none of them can stomach the idea of emergent phenomenon in communication. And above all nothing must stick out; to them the idea that users would want to make a non-human, cyborg, furry, green-skinned, or whatever avatar is abhorrent. Jane's quirky facial expression is the full extent of allowable creativity (and even then you know they had a 30 minute debate about including it).

These avatars do a better job of inspiring dread in me than half the shit in Severance.

Tangentially, it reminds me of when we went from Geocities/MySpace/custom reddit CSS/custom youtube pages to "you can change your PP and banner". ..... okay? Was a unified design language really worth crushing all visual creativity?
... and now I think it's a shame that Lemmy and Mastodon's default clients don't support (AFAIK) custom CSS for communities/user pages. I think that would be very iconic for the Free Web. Is someone working on this? I feel like someone should be working on this.

Belgium has some of (if not the) lowest income inequality in the OECD due to our very harsh income tax (highest median tax wedge of the OECD, yes even including the nordics). With quite a few asterisks attached to that statement of course because our fiscal system is a complete mess so if you're special kinds of well off (e.g. you make your income on capital gains) you'll be taxed very little.
How low income inequality doesn't correlate to very high standards of living like it does in the Nordics... Well I'll leave it to historians and economists to hash it out. The answer you get will almost certainly reflect that person's personal politics. Harsh industrial decline is worth mentioning though.

Wallonia is measurably poorer than Flanders, but both regions are developed western economies. The US has a murder rate 535 % of Belgium's, and I don't see anyone warning students away from studying there (or well, not until the past few months).
That judge should be investigated and the prosecutor should definitely appeal, and besides there is a lot of work to do safety-wise, especially for women to be able to feel safe, but that's hardly a problem specific to Leuven or Belgium.

I just thought of a reason why trying to explain the downsides of solar power generation always goes so poorly for me.

Where I live, solar=good is a given. No amount of oil lobbying can overcome the simple fact that thanks to historically heavy subsidies, PV is free money and therefore anti-solar sentiment is fringe because everyone loves free money.

(Which is its own can of worms because ungoverned PV has externalities which the owners may not be bearing or only partially, while people who can't install PV are essentially using up some of their own taxes to give a tax break to the bourgeois down the street with a solar mansion, and sure that's more solar which is environmentally good but it's also another indirect tax on the poor which is socially deleterious).

Anyway my point is that in a country where nearly everyone has PV or wishes they did, I don't see any issue with plainly stating "PV is causing major headaches to grid operators". Because pragmatically we need to justify solutions like dynamic pricing, solar taxes, and the phaseout net metering which are predictably unpopular policies with PV owners who were promised endless riches.
But I suppose from a North American perspective where "renewable energy is good" is somehow the fringe opinion and PV deployment is pathetic, then it makes sense to push back against such messaging.