“Everybody would have guns, everybody would have drugs and nobody would be in charge.”

Well… Makes more sense than trying to robotize cars. The track is fixed and speeds and rights of passage are imposed by plain physics.

But you need tracks to implement autonomous freight trains.

Nope. Get me back to the starting point but grant me my memories from my past life.

I sincerely don’t know what is going on but after installing that package I was made aware that apparently the camera I have connected to my computer has a built in microphone. But which is apparently not useable as a recording device. So I have to wonder to where is that sound going.

Edit: something is seriously wrong. The microphone I have built-in to my headphones started working when I first added the package. After I disconnected the USB camera, it stopped registering on the system. And now it does not pick uo sound to record on Audacity.

That should be a crime. An electes official bound by a privately signed document? That’s rich.

You’re referring to case of an entire town council that got caught being binded by NDAs, right?

How cam those superseed the duties abd obligations elected officials have towards their constituents?

You assume correctly!

We can see the foxes have their winter season coat on; they look very fluffy and bushy tailed. But also look at bit on the chonky side. Some a bit on the extra chonky.

A sanctuary wouldn’t over feed their charges. And wild foxes are usually wary of humans to have excess food come their way.

So, a nice image but so many questions left open.

More pictures, please.

Unless this is from a fox sanctuary, I find that behaviour worrisome.

And if it is from a sanctuary, what are they feeding the foxes?

Steel cans are still manufactured? I only find aluminium cans, nowadays.

With the amount of integration it achieved to facilitate services and transactions? I am very skeptical of that. I expect to happen a serious market feagmentation and a great number of bankrupties but the void will be filled by new presences.

So, you want an excuse to be outside, catch some sun and probably drink a few beers in peace.

I can respect that.

Most people don’t understand though, that’s the problem.

Most people have been taught or led to believe in the figure of saving heroes and leaders; we can stretch the reasoning a bit and argue it is an inheritance from religious systems. But that is not the concern here.

[…] A country is more complicated than an individual institution, and average citizens are not experts. In a way, what you’ve described is a form of representative democracy: hospitals run by doctors, not patients; schools run by teachers, not students or parents. Random citizens don’t know enough about medicine to run a hospital, so the doctors represent them.

Even patients had their say; they had the right to be heard and were. The same for schools and every other activity had participation from every part involved. There were meetings and gatherings to discuss concerns and people could and would be relieved of their duties or at least seriously constrained in their freedom of action if their stance was deemed inadequate.

I’m sure you’re informed enough to do the research to make rational policy decisions, and so am I. But I don’t think that paints an accurate picture of the general population. Sure, there’s plenty of common sense human rights policy, but there’s also plenty of complex nuanced bureaucratic policy.

I’m fairly certain of my ignorance. What I am able to is to ask questions and request further clarification on any subject, if I have the space for it. Which is not conceded under current day representative democracies. The system is predicated on pushing decision making and interference further and further away from the people and funneling it into bodies of more often than not non elected individuals.

The main issue though is time.

I agree. Everyone is so worried about it, yet is so often wasted.

Even in a world where everyone is well-informed on the problems and solutions, and also takes their civic duty seriously, it still takes forever to draft and pass policy in direct democracy.

More interventive and direct democracies must necessarily by navigated by long term goals. It’s the image of the jar full of rocks, pebbles and sand. It must not be a race to pile as much as possible on the table and drown out the attention.

In a world where everyone is knowledgeable, conscientious, and quick to consensus, direct democracy is the obvious answer. But I just don’t think we live in that world, at least not at scale.

I’m willing to chance we can “sit” and chat amiably for a bit and find a couple of subjects we can see eye to eye and build on each other point of view to reach consensus and solutions. Political parties, polititians and by extension politics, as they currently exist today, are not predicated on consensus but opposition.

The issue is representative democracy.

Democracy in itself is not bad but unless people understand what and how their decisions influence, there is a tendency to just let go to others.

My country had a very rough patch after throwing down the fascist government in the seventies. Although there was as official government, the daily running of things was done by people.

Hospitals became self run by the doctors, nurses and all the other staff. Schools organized through the teachers to created conditions for all to access teaching. Private companies had their directors reigned in, with severe salary cuts, work schedules were redrawn and off days were finally recognized. Enough said it was an era of huge unionizing and collective action; people actively worked together for a common and better good.

Then, through a series of political maneuvers, a representative democracy was installed and influence was taken away from the common person and put into politicians that recursively entrench into self serving and protecting schemes.

Policy is not something to be handed off to “leaders”. Policy is done through collective will. Politians would be a much more careful if they were to be held responsible by their decisions when instead any politian can wave any consequence away by just stating they were doing the best they knew in face of the events. That is political immunity, oversimplified.

A sports association is going to sanction a sovereign nation.

If this isn’t unhinged, then nothing is.

What?! Can you explain that?

No search can be done if no phone exists but better yet to not go there.

They prefer money.

Really?

I always vote for boredom, which means I vote for Debian. It’s a well rounded, reliable and solid OS. It can be a bit dated on some packages but it rewards with very low maintenance. It works. It does what it is supposed to do, which is allowing us to run and use our computer as we see fit.

You want something a bit more up to date? Move to Mint. If Debian still appeals to you, move to LMDE.

This is a cruel thing to say from an outside perspective, seems like the US government is forcing a diet on the population. Brutal but efficient to address that overweight problem.