I for one look forward to the made up numbers: allowing me to be optimistic about the economy

The term confuses me in politics: it seems to have too many meanings; and even the agreed definitions are flexible.

Historically, democracy only allowed free males who were land owners to vote. A minority.

In the last few generations the wealthy have come up with clever ideas to hold onto power while expanding the vote to the majority.

So, I think Democracy is defined by periodically changing some of the government by the voting of some people. And the votes must be counted in front of witnesses.

This is my definition of democracy only; and not me arguing for it, personally I don’t think it works well enough

Yes, as practiced it’s mostly theatrics and the working class does not take power due to many controls and mental conditioning.

Democracy gives the illusion of control.

But many of these countries are by definition democracies

Yes: As long as people can vote, kick the other government out, and replace it with worse, maybe better.

I think where the confusion lies at, is the very definition of democracy. Democracy does not mean good governance or even particularly fair treatment. It had nothing to do with socialism or helping the disadvantaged. It simply means it can be replaced using voting.

I think the democracies of the west are overhyped oligarchies; but they are democracies

One is a quickly developing powerhouse.

The other is a democracy. It’s main opposition party had promised to allow porn again and is wildly successful

It’s like watching an online version of Brexit, without the referendum

Trump is terrible. His family is horrible no good people, and using politics to enrich family and friends is unethical.

That said, the only thing I see different from other presidents is less hiding and less being clever about the enrichment.

Which is a huge issue; because in my experience one can tell the level of graft in a government by using the visible crimes, usually small things. The actual crimes can be ten times more than the scandals. Like an iceberg

So when we see public crimes that are more often and more serious: that is a lot of new graft… tens of billions of USD at least

Users are funneled towards actions exploited by both politics and greed. Many have no choice.

I design systems similar to this; in my mindset the competency and privacy are the same.

There is simply no way anyone competent or knowledgeable would have made this series of mistakes in good faith. And it’s very hard for someone not knowledgeable about the tech to understand the magnitude.

It’s rather like designing and selling car with bad breaks, and your car gets into an accident which could have been avoided had the breaks worked. But nobody could test the breaks fully?

Indeed, how can anyone know?

I think failures like this will be readily apparent, within months after launch, to technically minded people only. But only if people have summaries in their news feeds or know how to research the opinions of others…

Perhaps non technical people should wait at least a year or two of before trying a new service? By then the worst of them will have crashed or be found out.

This will not be the last time it happens. With llm coding, I think there will be dozens similar to this in a few years

It is too bad all these people trusted a bad company which cared little about them or their privacy.

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They sign other papers in addition to receiving salary.

Usually with very low salary one expects other compensation, besides money: but performing arts and other categories allow legal creativity.

If More questions I may be wrong, such as exact details. But have seen this in real life ( although not me) . Should consult legal expert in Texas state law

Salary in Texas avoids all that, I can hire you for a salary of 1$ a year and demand you work 60 hours. But you can quit any time

Legal in Texas: put them on salary and have them sign a few papers.

The Ukrainian revolution had from the very start an anti corruption message. Politicians have both taken advantage and undermined it. This week is not unexpected. Zelenskyy backtracking today is not unexpected. Him using smoke and mirrors, in his new idea, to avoid undermining political allies will not be unexpected next month.

It is utterly predictable that this newspaper will issue similar editorial later.

One day there will be not so much corruption in the life blood of Ukrainian politics. But not soon. Maybe in a generation?

People know instinctively when they are dating up, down or have impossible dreams.

The reasons for that is as varied as there are people, but we all have primate brains and are hard wired to select partners using criteria that can be and are amazingly flexible

Many already know Zinn, but posting it for some for whom this is new

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-otanUZGGGcnDgfr7/page/n1/mode/1up