I remember just after all this kicked off last October there was an interview with an ex hamas guy (who is now an anti-extremism researcher) about what their plan was with all of this.

He mentioned how their plan had always been to force a reaction from Israel and then use social media to build support among specifically both the Muslim diaspora and progressive non-muslims in Europe/NA.

The worse it gets in Gaza, the better it is for Hamas. Their support in Gaza goes up, and they gain additional support abroad, while Israel loses support. Win/win/win

My sleep-routine is that I read (usually my kindle) in bed at night.

It’s kind of great both because I like reading, but also because it makes me fall asleep.

I went through a pretty big libertarian phase way back in my late teens.

Not the ‘deregulate everything’ type, but rather more of a ‘everyone’s place in society is governed by the choices they make’ social-darwinist sort of angle.

Once I got out and experienced real life more (and learned about all the little nuances behind everything) I realized just how wrong I was.

Nowadays I’m a big leftist/socialist

Some parts of the US, not all

To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.

The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.

Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.

Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.

Politics (especially among republicans) has become a bit religious, so it’s not really THAT different I guess

The Dems should definitely move more central on social issues, as the US election system has a huge built in rural bias.

Then focus on more broad-reaching progressive economic topics. Less focus on legislation targeting specific marginalized groups and more on policies which would impact everyone directly. As a potential example, Universal Basic Income (“Freedom Bonus” or whatever it was called) was one such policy which was floated a couple elections ago.

You’re right, I agree with you and I think his goals are both damaging and stupid… but at the end of the day his strategy is winning and we will obviously have to adapt to beat it.

Just look at history though and you’ll see that most significant changes (both bad and good) happen abruptly and it’s often a bit messy.

Unfortunately it’s just the way that humans work

Sure, that didn’t help, but she also was a “more of the same” candidate (she’s rhe current VP!)

As much as I wanted her to win, she was always a stupid choice in at a time where voters can essentially all agree on one thing: they want change.

Status quo politics is dead, the dems just haven’t realized it yet. As braindead as Trump and a most of his policies are, people like that he doesn’t give a shit about disrupting things to achieve his goals.

I don’t know anything about the campaign in Oregon, but most people are scared of things they aren’t familiar with.

Also I’m guessing neither party really supported this much, since they benefit from first-past-the-post.

Status-quo politics is dead, many major western parties just haven’t realized this yet. People want firmer political leadership that promises fundamental change and isn’t afraid of breaking things along the way.

It’s just fucking unfortunate that (in most countries) it’s only the far right who are ahead of the curve at realizing this.

Center to left parties need to reinvent themselves and focus less on pleasing everyone or fighting losing battles. They also need to present a much clearer vision.

Another reason is that Hispanics (like many minorities) are on average both more religious and more socially conservative than the general population.

Exactly this. I gave up on it once or twice (always starting from the beginning).

Eventually I got past the initial awkward phase and it became one of my favorite shows!

Just as a note: Wienerschnitzel is from Austria!

This is 90% just a proxy for how their parents will vote.

Its only a very small portion of kids that age who are going to have substantially different views than their parents (not that they don’t exist!)

(Most) stocks represent partial ownership (read: control) of a company and most of their value is derived from that.

For an extreme example: if the stock price were to drop below the amount of money that could be made by just selling off all of the assets, then someone would (in principle) just buy all the shares, sell the assets and make a profit.

Each share represents a small bit of control over the company and their assets.

Personally I always always buy phones with two sim slots. It’s super practical if you travel semi-often.

Idk about apple, but basically all of the mid-range androids have this feature. I guess this is about the US though, so it’s probably Apple.

My credit cards I’ve had in Germany/Austria were all basically glorified debit-cards which had their own bank account attached to them. Technically I had a credit limit of a couple thousand, but I never went into the negative.

The only difference (for me at least) was that I could use them to rent a car, which is nice.

Yeah most of europe is waaaaay better when is comes to mobile plans compared to the US.

I don’t use use that much data, but my 8gb plan is just under €6 per month.

In the US, I had a plan like this for over $30…