If both houses switch then he will be distracted fighting them for the rest of his term; if they don't we no longer need to treat the US as a functioning democracy.
And then what? Things will magically go back to the way they were? I doubt it. The US has seriously damaged its international reputation. It has burned bridges. It has started literal wars. Removing the Orange Danger would be a good start, but it will by no means by the end the problem.
Exactly. Trump isn't the problem. Trump is a symptom. I'm far more terrified that the US will sigh and go "puh, glad that's over and will never again be a problem" than I am of Trump.
Sad to see so many people here in the comments jump the gun and think of Russia.
Some local context: Today is "prinsjesdag" when the budget is announced. Protests are common, particularly when sensitive decisions are made. There are multiple organized protest movements in the country that have used physical force in the past and some of them had announced protests for today.
Could it be Russia? Yes. But local protests seem significantly more likely. Moreover, if I were Putin I wouldn't expose my foreign agents this physically. I would use them in much more insidious ways such as actually starting or supporting these protest movements. In a similar vein: Could any shooting in the US be caused by foreign agents? Maybe. But usually there is a much simpler explanation; guns and bitterness.
Protests draw attention to your cause. This doesn't draw attention to anything, it is straightforward sabotage. Neither is it in line with how typical protestors operated before.
You are jumping to the assumption that foreign agents wouldn't be exposed, but any willing idiot can be bought to conduct such activity. Recent research in Denmark showed that sabotage comes, most likely, from locals, persuaded by foreign actors.
So two things could be true at once. A local 'protestor', disengaged through some issue (whether climate, farming or anything else), persuaded to join some 'resistance' by anyone.
I don't expect this to be supported by local protesting groups, like FDF or XR, either. Way too risky, media-wise.
similar thing happened next to a minority area where they put railroad ties (the big wooden things, usually supporting the tracks) on the tracks themselves, and well, that even got politicized for the location reasons.
Ockham's razor may be? Big protests are common on Prinsjesdag, particularly when sensitive decisions or policies are made. A local protest organisation is therefore significantly more likely than an organized foreign sabotage. If I were Putin and had foreign agents in the Netherlands I certainly wouldn't expose them this physically.
It may be quirky for Americans to hear this, but one pivotal moment when it truly dawned on the average european citizen how corrupt the US has become, was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup. Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted. Any toddler could see how wrong it was and it was felt deeply in many hearts.
Needless to say trust is close to 0% throughout the population - even the right wing populists distance themselves from Trump - and this is the consequence. I fear we are heading into dangerous times.
One example to illustrate: when talking about dying, Americans would kick the bucket, Poles would kick the calendar, French would break the pipe, Germans would drop the spoon, and the Spanish would pull the leather. But they all would be referring to the US's trust among its allies.
In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less". The intention and meaning is the same. So the original comment did mean to say what they said.
My point was that what may look like a mistake or a contradiction is just cultural development of natural language.
Another example is the British expression "It would be cheap at half the price"
maybe it's regional? I always thought "Could care less" was in the same class as "irregardless" or "daylight saving time" -- in common use yet technically incorrect
I think you misunderstood the emphasis there - yes Europeans love football.
The point is that it's so blatant for such little gain, it's still a game. I.e. if he is willing to do that so openly for such low stakes, imagine what he does behind closed doors when it matters.
To add to this, because I think it is important context for Americans who may not be aware, football is seen very officially by many European nations and national governments as a cultural counterpart to many international treaties within Europe that were born out of the desire to bring our respective cultures closer together after the second world war.
It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
It is so important, that there are articles written about its importance on EU institutes websites. For example, this one reflects on Footballs importance in relation to the First, Second and Cold wars. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/alerts/european-footb...
To see Trump so flagrantly manipulate it sends a cultural signal that is hard for those outside of Europe to see, and that by some can be seen as the cultural equivalent of the political threats Trump has made against NATO.
At this point, your average European Trump supporter/right wing populist needs only reminding of Trumps interference to get a complete positional change - that's how bad it is.
> It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
Sports is peak diversion from real issues, Whether Europe, US or India and so on. The countries can go to hell, people can drown in endless real problems. But if people can be smothered with sport entertainment so they ignore real things whats better than that.
In India whole country can become absolute crap. Worst on any social, economic indicator but as long free cricket broadcast is on TV and mobile, life is good.
Notably this was after he waged a violent attempt to overthrow the US government. I thought that would have been it for everyone but apparently I guess soccer is the thing.
I'm not Chinese, but I'm confused why people think Xi Jin Ping is worse, yes they have surveillance, there is single party authoritarianism, but they always take care of their people unlike US who when filthy rich getting rich, more and more on homeless on the streets. In addition to that there is surveillance by Flock and Palatir. Most of all they do not let corporation to manage govt, even though their big corps like Alibaba has tried. They have to wage the wars to capture someones natural resources, unlike US holding Iraq oil revenue captive, manage Venezuelan oil. Not to mention helping genocide with trillions.
Funny thing, I recently saw comment under Turkey cat video, saying something like
I know about dynasties expanding centuries some was prosperous others were not, same goes for European monarchies, amount of killing, abuse, looting done in colonies is staggering even though about most boast about how they conquered this and that.
> less comments under cat videos
I find cats interesting they have different personas kind of similar to humans than dogs who are people pleasing.
Aside from that world should be like this[1], where Chinese and Americans work together.
Yeah it was more as a figure of speech. I actually wanted to say even Hitler didn't steal gold medals during the olympics, but I felt that only weakened my point.
> Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted.... was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup.
FIFA, a largely European organization created by Europeans for a sport that Americans barely care about and in the center of multiple corruption scandals and controversies over the last few decades and you're really going to sit here and try to tell others that the real wakeup call was when Trump made a phone call to ask that a star player who by many respects shouldn't have received a red card over at best a technicality in the first place be reinstated for the good of sport and competition...?
And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
I guess Donald Trump's phone call was the real last straw, and something like, idk, 6,500 migrant workers in Qatar dying to construct World Cup facilities is just another day at the anti-corruption office? [1]
There is a big difference between some sports association being greedy/unethical and elected officials abusing their position of power (especially when they sit in the highest positions and there are zero consequences).
Right, its just we all lose respect and we're real mad when Donald Trump makes a phone call about something that, well you know frankly the American public agreed with, and we don't lose respect or whatever and we're not outraged when that same extremely corrupt organization continues to do greedy, unethical, and corrupt things.
It's astounding that European governments would never do corrupt things. Totally never. And if they did, sorry they only draw the line at influencing FIFA.
Jeez dude. If you have a point to make, just make it. This weird sarcasm is borderline unreadable.
Anyway, everyone agrees with you that FIFA is a corrupt cesspool. The fact that Trump found a corrupt counterparty does not make his open and blatant corruption any less, well, corrupt.
The point here is that if he’s openly abusing his power for something so trivial, what is he doing behind closed doors?
Sorry my point wasn't clear. Let me state if plainly: the OP's comments and points about corruption and Vladimir Putin and Xi Kingpin somehow wouldn't stoop to this level of corruption are fucking stupid.
Yes, exactly that. And precisedly for that reason.
FIFA was corrupt. Infantino took it on another level, making it massively more corrupt then before. Then he created a peace price which combined corruption with astonishing lack of self respect and mockery.
And then Trump called over the red card, which contrasted with everything before as yes another never seen before level of corruption.
But second, FIFA is not an European institution. It is worldwide org and non European members are large contributors to the corruption. The middle east and afrikan members do like it corrupt, it suits their political goals.
> And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
Honestly, it even seems so. Trying to directly influence a soccer match, publically changing rules while not even understanding them is a new level.
Moreover, there is no reason to think Trump is less corrupt then Putin or Xi. If anything, he is equally or more corrupt.
A better way to think about it is imagine that FIFA is a massive, roaring inferno of corruption and Europeans are ignoring it and then Donald Trump walks by and tosses a Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno and it grows every so slightly and now all of a sudden everyone is concerned. Sorry don't care. Most Americans agreed with him doing that as well since the foul was stupid.
There are things worthwhile criticizing folks for. Donald Trump is corrupt. So is FIFA. So are numerous European countries and organizations. But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism that is, frankly, anti-intellectual, dishonest, and only serves to instigate flame wars and other such nonsense.
He did not threw "Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno". He shit on it and took a video of the shit and then threw a grenade on thr said shit. The peace prize would be the "Mcdonalds wrapper". The red card thing was huge additional escalation.
The corruption about who gets the championship and who rips of who is bad. Changing outcomes is entirely different thing.
> But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism
Neither Putin nor Xi would do that phone call. Nor would they proudly brag about making such phone call. That is fairly safe guess. It is not sensationalism. That is just safe guess based on those people previous publically known actions.
It is dishonest and anti-intelectual to pretend otherways, frankly. Putin killed more people in Ukraine. He is worst in that regard. But we are talking about who is more corrupt or who would be insecure enough to call to change red card.
I just can't help but just sit here and laugh at these things.
> Putin killed more people in Ukraine. He is worst in that regard. But we are talking about who is more corrupt or who would be insecure enough to call to change red card.
You're adding an additional detail here that wasn't mentioned in the OP, but there is no doubt about it that both Xi and Vlad would do the same thing, or they might just have someone killed or their family threatened, or sure they might not care about FIFA but didn't Russia under Putin run a state sponsored doping program with his tiny ego and huge corruption orientation? But sure, yea, neither of these guys would ever do something as corrupt as call FIFA and encourage them to overcome a questionable at best call so therefore everyone in Europe is so outraged about Donald Trump and whatever.
This entire conversation and this statement about how all Europeans allegedly feel is nothing but sensationalism.
When did Putin or Xi had people killed over soccer? I mean, you want to compare that, murder streak in pacific is going on purely for the "makes me feel more manly" reasons is not better.
Yes Russia run doping program. It is not the only country with regular doping scandals. And yet, they did not had referee change result so that they player can go againts another team.
> therefore everyone in Europe is so outraged about Donald Trump and whatever.
And greenland. Dont forget greenland. And Ukraine, dont forget how USA took Putin side in negotiations. Or tried to blame it for missile shortage after Iran war. Which leads to oil prices. And trade war. And insults. And lies of epic proportions.
Most of Trumps corruption is Americas internal thing. He is enriching himself at the expense of his country. That is not something Europeans would watch that closely. But, they watch the world cup.
> When did Putin or Xi had people killed over soccer?
When did Donald Trump kill people over soccer? What are you talking about?
> Yes Russia run doping program. It is not the only country with regular doping scandals. And yet, they did not had referee change result so that they player can go againts another team.
Yes, the doping scandal is much worse.
> And greenland. Dont forget greenland.
The more people complain about it the more I'm starting to side with the US on this lol.
> And Ukraine, dont forget how USA took Putin side in negotiations.
Yep and don't forget how America is still assisting Ukraine today, we were the ones rushing missiles and supplies to Ukraine and shouting from the rooftops that an invasion was coming while the EU sent helmets, well-wishes cards, and European leaders continued to public state nothing was happening.
> Or tried to blame it for missile shortage after Iran war.
Blame what for missile shortages?
> Which leads to oil prices. And trade war. And insults. And lies of epic proportions.
Ok but none of that has anything to do with FIFA or whatever this nonsense OP is about.
> Most of Trumps corruption is Americas internal thing. He is enriching himself at the expense of his country. That is not something Europeans would watch that closely. But, they watch the world cup.
No, believe me, they watch it very closely. In fact, it's even more important than news in Europe.
Literally you brought up killings in "Xi and Vlad would do the same thing, or they might just have someone killed or their family threatened".
> The more people complain about it the more I'm starting to side with the US on this lol.
Like what, people complain about USA trying to invade Greenland and therefore it is OK for US to do so? If people just let it happen, then you would be against it. But since they did not forgot in few months, you are pro-invasion?
Is that what you have in mind?
> we were the ones rushing missiles and supplies to Ukraine
USA is refusing to give missies EU literally paid for. USA stopped military assistance after Trump took power.
> EU sent helmets, well-wishes cards, and European leaders continued to public state nothing was happening.
You are lying. Majority of help is from European countries while USA tries to push Ukraine to unconditionally accept Russian demands.
Doesn't matter. There's constant bad calls being made by referees. It shouldn't be, but their humans and make mistakes and it's part of the game. But only the mistake against the US got corrected.
FIFA is NOT a European institution it is the global one.
The European football institution is UEFA which has complained about things like this and is also trying to remove Infantino – but the rest of the world has been bribed enough to keep him on.
Conversations like this make me want more gatekeeping especially for football. Some people just don’t have respect to customs and traditional practices and the actual untouchables.
To not to sway too far away, well technically yes. However all 55 UEFA members threathened to quit FIFA after Infanito’s plan to privatise the World Cup. It was just last month. And we all know who is behind this.
Would FIFA be less corrupt if it were legally incorporated somewhere else?
I didn't know registering an entity in another place automatically changed the character of the people that run it. That's magic. Literally mind-control.
> The point is that FIFA is a corrupt European institution
It has "international" right there in the name. The vast majority of its members are not "European" in any sense. Calling it "European" is offensive to those members and to the footballing world as a whole. It reeks of a colonial attitude.
I'll ask you again: what actually affects how an organization runs? The place that it's registered in, or the people in charge?
FIFA has to be registered somewhere for legal reasons. That doesn't make it of that place.
> But maybe you're trying to make a No True Scotsman argument.
If FIFA were registered in the Caymans would you call it a Caymanian organization?
FIFA is a deeply corrupt institution (IDK if they count as specifically European, but if they do, it doesn't change the fact that they're corrupt). The US government is also deeply corrupt.
Indeed go ask anybody in China, India, North-Africa, or Eastern Europe. I am sure they will tell you things were better back then. Oh wait. Seems like the author never read Hans Rosling's Factfulness. Big recommendation for anyone out there who hasn't yet. If you have find yourself having a bleak outlook, this book is an antidote: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34890015-factfulness
Despite the article title, it's clearly about technology usage patterns roughly 25 years ago being a lot better than they are today. Its obviously from the PoV of someone in a developed western country, probably America.
Every single time someone brings up positive things about the past there's always some 'Nuh uh, look at how bad this thing you weren't a part of was at that time.'. Boring, pedantic, and not even relevant to what the article is about.
Early 2000s in my corner of Eastern Europe (Romania) was a very optimistic time. Higher salaries for locally employed educated people were on the horizon, while there was also the ability to work seasonally abroad and make a good sum that could be invested back home. Infrastructure started to see improvement through EU funds. And, to relate this to the linked post, lots of citydwellers then got broadband and found the internet transformational and positive for their lives.
In fact, it was a far more optimistic time than since about 2020, as soaring cost of food and going out means even privileged middle-class people are complaining, and infrastructure improvements have stagnated.
> Indeed go ask anybody in China, India, North-Africa, or Eastern Europe.
I've had pretty good time in "Eastern" (Central) Europe, so did my wife in China.
People were still optimistic about EU/euro, that lasted roughly until Lisbon treaty when they forced Ireland to repeat the referendum until they got result they wanted, which later become EU's MO and since then it went all downhill, with another major successes as Wir schaffen das 2015, Green deal 2020 or Totalitarian COVID pass 2021. Hard to understand someone who can still support this failed project. I would just dissolve it and return back to EEA.
Next time maybe ask actually people from those countries instead of parroting some writer.
You are right and yet I continue to be impressed by a court system that can deliver judgment in 3 months whereas in the Netherlands nothing happens in under a year and complex cases always last more than five.
Can you elaborate? We have technicians searching in different languages. Also our knowledge base is often in different languages. I just don't see how full text search can work? Maybe in a problem space like a wiki where people always know what to search for?
I think there needs to be a linguist version of "what every programmer needs to know about (full?) text search"...
I'm not a linguist and I don't study languages, but I know enough to realize if a text search system is not designed for a particular language, it simply won't work. (As an example, to implement English search in a system for a hobby project, I had to import a US/UK spelling wordlist, and implement the Porter Stemming Algorithm. This is just for "one" language, and probably does not cover the other "English" dialects. Imagine doing a different workaround for every language in existence...)
RAG is actually a very language-agnostic way to work around those issues.
I am a linguist and can say your view is too simplistic. This works only for things that are common enough to be mapped onto the same vector from the training set. Try searching for my company XY and it won’t work, because your embedding doesn’t have an adequate embedding, so you will end up having to build a translation table anyways..
Instinctively this feels like a two phase problem - start with some machine translation into a single spoken language and index that, then when people are querying do the same thing. When returning search results show them in the original language.
It's a matter of running a for-loop. You'd get faster response times (no query→index translation), but the storage requirements for the indexes would be larger.
Yes we've tried. It works. But jargon is hard. RAG with embeddings works all the same. The LLM doesn't mind receiving sources in Italian, french and German, and then outputting the answer in Japanese while providing the verbatim German jargon term in brackets
Embedding search is effectively machine translation into a single common ‘language’ - embedding space - and then searching that; cleaner and less lossy than translating everything into English for searching, but harder to debug when it goes wrong.
And yet present day hunter gatherer societies tend to have extremely strict gender roles. For example the idea of a woman going on a hunt is not taboo, but simply unthinkable, maybe similar to what we would think about a man taking lactose pills to breastfeed. At least that is what I read in Sabine Kugler's excellent books. So somehow I doubt everyone participated in everything.
Selection bias. Notice how most present day groups are in hot and relatively stable climates, areas where one can hunt/gather all year. Look to past groups in the north where seasonal changes meant the window for any particular food source was always limited. When there is only a short window, it is maximum effort from everyone.
The same is true for agriculture. Even today, with all of our mechanical wizardry, farmers on the plains still pull their kids out of school to help during harvest.
Your previous comment was far too absolute in its wording and was thus incorrect, as evidenced by GPs counterexample. "Four guys going into the woods and spearing an [animal]" is definitely not "a myth".
Note that many early humans lived in "hot and relatively stable climates".
Yes. Had one kid mid thirties. And now I realize I want nine of them too. Or four maybe. We started too late and I doubt we will make it. Biggest mistake of my life. In my environment I see people delaying kids because they think 33, 34 is still alright to start. And it is. If you want to have 1 or 2...
We will go for the third one next year and that would be it for us. I come from a family of 8 children and my wife is a single child. I don’t think I had a better childhood, just different. She has a lot of good memories of traveling with her parents and does not regret not having siblings. I saw my dad a few days a week for a good portion of my early childhood and regret that a bit. My wife and I are equally social, I’m actually more of an introvert in some circumstances. We are both considered of others, and like to share. I would say the one skill I developed that she lacks is the ability to focus and concentrate in public spaces with noise. Because that’s how I did homework and studied all the way from elementary school to college, always around a bunch of loud people, no place in the house where I could close a door and be alone.
Yes. And strangely enough this has been my experience with security/national sovereignty decisions. Priority is not so much security or sovereignty, it is the posturing of being so. Ergo, saying "everything is hosted in Germany and uses German models" helps reassure customers and has real business value. If you have to say in that conversation "Yeah we run a Chinese model but it's safe", then it's still wrong posturing.
Hopefully this will change soon. But AI and China/US skepticism is very high. Even if the person you talk to isn't skeptic, his boss may be. And even if his boss isn't, his CFO or Legal department may use it as a political lever and therefore if you can say 'everything in europe' you dodge the tension entirely.
reply