jjpamsterdam
@jjpamsterdam@feddit.org
- Comment on How much more progressive are European views as compared to progressives in America? 4 days ago:
I didn’t believe that specific rule to be relevant to the argument. The Democratic Party includes a wide range of opinions that, in most European countries, would be represented by several different parties. While there are some fringes on the right (Clinton’s racists for example) and some fringes on the left (some Democrats even refer to themselves as democratic socialists despite being closer to social democrats in my opinion). The mainstream that has dominated all three presidencies you mentioned would likely find themselves among small c conservative or (economically) liberal parties in most European political systems that I know.
- Comment on How much more progressive are European views as compared to progressives in America? 4 days ago:
From what I understand the Democratic Party in the United States is a wide tent that includes people who consider themselves to be democratic socialists all the way to middle of the road, don’t rock the boat kind of folks. While the former might feel at home in a European social democratic party or perhaps even a socialist party, the latter would likely find more common ground among the liberal (in the economic meaning of that term) or conservative/christian democratic parties.
The main difference I feel is that most European countries have representative democracies with proportional representation in their parliament. This usually avoids the lost vote effect if you vote for smaller parties. Therefore, what are usually the wings of larger parties in the United States, would be separate parties altogether in most European countries.
Having said that the core of the Democratic Party and the majority of people in power and office from that party over the last decade or two have been centrists at heart. Even when given the opportunity they didn’t introduce any true universal healthcare. They didn’t address the fact that the minimum wage doesn’t reflect the rising costs most people face. They didn’t address the rapidly growing inequality. They didn’t move the needle on any public transport infrastructure projects. They successfully kept the country running and the economy growing while not seriously changing anything about the underlying structure of the nation. This is evidence enough for me to assert that the Democratic Party would probably be somewhere around Merkel’s CDU, Rutte’s VVD or perhaps Macron’s party (whatever name it’s currently going by) in terms of ideology.
- Comment on Is anyone NOT steaming their Music? 3 weeks ago:
I’m old enough to remember buying physical media. I still do that from time to time. For daily use I have a large library of digital copies of music I bought at various stages of my life. Listening to them costs me nothing and I can listen to them as often as I like for the rest of my life. Technology permitting, even my children may continue listening to what I bought last century. Ownership is a great thing.
- Comment on Humans can't consent to reading. 1 month ago:
Speak for yourself, person who doesn’t require glasses.
- Comment on How long before the GOP tries to get the 23andMe data? 2 months ago:
Bold of you to presume that the regime doesn’t already have any data it possibly can.
- Comment on Why was file search much faster in Windows XP than in subsequent versions? 3 months ago:
There’s a term for what you are describing: enshittification
- Comment on How are Americans so outgoing and extroverted and how can I become the same? 5 months ago:
From my experience it’s just part of the cultural differences. While many Americans, at least in the Midwest where I spent a lot of time for work, are very friendly and outgoing, I hardly ever got the impression that it’s deep or meaningful. From my experience it was very easy to have great conversations with people whom I hardly knew or had met just an hour ago but hardly ever did it go anywhere meaningful.
Now to the question of how does one become this outgoing kind of person: just try and talk to people, remain friendly and open. It will likely take some practice and maybe not be reciprocated by your average European.
- Comment on I have never met a woman named after her own mother 5 months ago:
The weirdest combination I’ve ever met was a set of female twins. One was named after their mother. The other had a different first name. Must have been really odd when growing up.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
You can (and some do) insist, that all phones and other digital devices be left outside or out in a well isolated place like a fridge. Furthermore you can use methods of encryption for both physical notes and digital notes. Neither is completely safe from being compromised, but then again hardly anything truly is.
If you want to be fairly certain to not be monitored, always leave digital devices behind and have meetings in varying locations with few or ideally no other people around. Only discuss confidential information with people you know and trust. Even then, experience from places like East Germany proves, nothing is truly safe from being compromised if enough time and energy is spent on the issue.
- Comment on What's the next stop on the authoritarianism express? 5 months ago:
I dread the elections in France in 2027. France is one of the last bastions of Freedom that is capable of standing up to the authoritarian states if push comes to shove. The last few presidential elections have moved France closer and closer to having a Kremlin sock puppet in charge. While they have managed to pull back from the brink a few times, it only needs to go wrong once.
- Comment on What's the point in getting married? 5 months ago:
Thanks for sharing! Concerning logistics when travelling I can also share my experience.
I travel on a Dutch passport and my children, while also having Dutch citizenship, travel on German passports because that is where we live and where my wife is from. They also use my wife’s German last name. Therefore, when travelling, my kids and I have different names and nationalities. For some reason nobody ever questioned any of that. I keep a copy of the birth certificate just in case though.
- Comment on What's the point in getting married? 5 months ago:
The answer will likely depend on the place in the world and even on the cultural background of individuals getting married. I’ll just share my experience.
We got married out of convenience. While it’s technically possible to arrange the bulk of the legal stuff with various contracts, it is just easier to use the “default contract” that already covers the most common use case. Some legal arrangements, for example cuts to inheritance tax or the right to remain silent when asked about your spouse in legal proceedings, are only available for “real” marriages.
Once we decided to have children we looked into the various arrangements needed to make that work and quickly found out that marriage is the easiest way to sort everything out. In our day to day life nothing really changed. In legal terms quite a lot is now different.
By the way, as others have mentioned, getting married isn’t expensive. All we paid was the administrative fee which was something like 50 Euros.
- Comment on How does Google make money from Gmail, the google calendar, drive or other services when used with third party front ends? 6 months ago:
Unfortunately this seems all to plausible. Despite Firefox and ad blocking in general, there’s very few services that rival Google’s Android and (in my opinion) none that can honestly rival Maps at present.
- Submitted 6 months ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 20 comments
- Comment on Multilingual people all must have experienced YouTube's f**kery with auto translation. Still no workaround? 7 months ago:
This is such an annoyance. As someone who regularly reads and watches media in several times different languages, the scourge of auto translate has only become worse. With the advent of more capable translation tools this will probably only get worse. I’ve already switched my OS language to English on all of my devices and found that it helped a little.