By American standards, I don’t think that’s true. If I’m wrong about that, that would be amazingly good news!

On a more optimistic note, a true heir to Bernie will know how to negotiate with the center left to accomplish some of their goals in exchange for the support of progressives to win elections.

Technically yes, but I don’t mean technology as phones/laptops/tablets/etc. Imho, the biggest factor in social isolation is atomization due to bad urban planning. When everything and anything is only accessible by car, you lose any connection with your local neighbourhood and local stores/cafes/etc.

In environments where people walk around the neighbourhood, doing small daily shops, going to local businesses and taking mass transit to work/school/restaurants/bars, then you’re much more likely to interact with people rather than driving around in your social isolation-mobile.

Urban planning can be considered a form of technology, which is why I said technically yes.

EDIT: Oh, another big factor here is the loss of the third place. It still exists in some places (local pubs in British towns, local coffee shop in Portugal, etc), but in places without a socially normal “hangout spot” that is separated from both home and work/school, it’s much harder to meet acquaintances which may in time become friends.

To add on to what @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world said, you need to change the voting system first before that becomes viable, and then it happens naturally without any manual intervention.

Take the Alaska 2022 election as an example. Before, candidates had to be extreme in order to appeal to their base, as all that mattered was making the other side look “evil”. Once they switched to rank voting, all of a sudden they had to convince voters of their own worth so they’d be put in at least second or third place, if not first directly. It also meant people could safely vote third party or alternative candidates within the major parties without a spoiler effect, as if the candidate is unviable, the vote just gets transferred to the second place pick.

Tl;Dr: The real solution to what you’re trying to do is abandon first past the post and adopt some kind of ranked choice voting.

That boy needs therapy

Nope. On trial here in Romania still, not allowed to leave the country but otherwise free as long as he keeps his court dates.

As soon as the trial is over, he’s on a plane to London as the UK wants him back. God knows why.

At least after the trial he won’t be allowed back in the EU as he won’t qualify for a visa.

Even threatening them with that would be a tiny step in the right direction.

As funny as it is to imagine, you’ve got enough problems over there with for-profit prisons. Giving companies like McDonalds incentive to lobby for more arrests to get free labor from community service sentences would not be pretty.

Gerrymandering is indeed a powerful tool. I’m just saying that it can backfire under the right conditions.

Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering can be pretty brittle. It relies on accurate models of who will vote and for whom. If the underlying assumptions are either wrong or change, then it can backfire. Here’s an extreme napkin-math example to illustrate the point:

You have 3 districts. Candidate A is extremely unpopular. You split the voters to get 2 out of 3 districts for candidate A.

District 1:

Candidate A: 5%

Candidate B: 50%

Not Voting: 45%

District 2:

Candidate A: 20%

Candidate B: 15%

Not Voting: 65%

District 3:

Candidate A: 25%

Candidate B: 20%

Not Voting: 55%

As you can see, even though if you add up all the voters for candidate B they heavily outnumber candidate A’s voters, by siloing them into one district you can win. But look at the margins for the other 2 districts. It doesn’t take many new voters who you assumed wouldn’t vote to upset your scheme. Depending on exactly how unpopular your candidate is, the margins for this might be pretty tight. It only takes an extra 10% of the voters moving from not voting to candidate B to cause a landslide 3 district sweep in this example.

At every step in the process, it looked to those around me that whatever I was using was going to be used forever. I didn’t set any lofty goals

This is absolutely the right approach, even if you were planning to quit from the start (not the case with you, but still). “This is my last ever cigarette” just caused me to delay and delay and delay. The only realistic way to do it for me was one craving at a time (“I’m not smoking for the next hour”), then a day at a time. Handling the hours and days was hard, but once you do that the weeks and months take care of themselves.

Vaping for me was a major misstep. Just caused me to consume more nicotine than when I was smoking.

There’s two separate addictions going on with smoking: habit and chemical. What patches, nicotine gum, etc are trying to help people do is tackle them separately.

This means you can focus on getting out of the habit of lighting up after a coffee, or after a meal, or whatever triggers you had, while delaying the chemical withdrawal which seriously messes with your head until later. Tackling the two seperately is easier for many people.

With that said, patches don’t work for everyone, and I hope you find the cessation aid (if any) that works for you. Quitting smoking is an absolute bitch.

For me personally, the most helpful aid was nicotine gum, and then swapping out the nicotine gum for normal gum once I was confident I’d kicked the habit part and could focus on the chemical withdrawal.

The kitchen is operated by volunteers and rely on donations and food banks. I Believe this is also common practice in many temples within India proper.

Here’s a great little mini-documentary on that I saw on exactly that a few months back. Sikh temples seem amazing in terms of the sheer numbers of people they feed with no limiting criteria.

Lol, took me a minute to figure out you’re literally talking about a football match happening now. I was re-reading my comment thinking “Wait, what’s this got to do with Ukraine? Did the Romanian government do something that hit the news I don’t know about? What does this mean?!?” xD

Probably most countries think so of themselves.

Funnily enough, Romanians are the exact opposite in this regard. Romanians tend to think that Romania is terrible, backwards, and filled with awful people. That isn’t exactly the case (like any country, it has it’s pros and cons, and there’s a lot we need to work on) but it is how they tend to see it.

Start looking now. Tell prospective employers that you’re working on the certification and include it in your CV (as a work in progress, ofc). Job searches take a long time, and the sooner you start, the sooner you’re out.

Edit: @MrBobDobalina@lemmy.ml has exactly the correct approach for getting it in writing. Keep it professional, emotionless, as close to an accurate summary of the situation and the decisions made as possible.

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Maybe a battery weight limitation?

I’m no aviation engineer, but as far as I understand it that’s exactly it. The more weight, the more thrust you need, which means your fuel (or in this case, stored energy) needs to be very efficient in thrust per kg.

I see this opinion a lot, but I honestly don’t think Sanders or his campaign were to blame.

She lost far more centrist votes than she did left-wing votes.

My humility.

Joking aside though, I’d like to think I’m pretty empathetic and understanding.