Beryl

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Beryl ,

That there are such wild variations in price between countries shows how little that subscription is correlated to any actual costs.

At best subscribers in richest countries are subsidizing poorer ones, but most probably, Google is just trying to maximize the amount of money they can extract from everyone's pocket. The repeated seemingly random price hikes seem to confirm this hypothesis. It's just the MBAs enforcing terminal stage capitalism and ruining everything that is good.

Beryl ,

I don't disagree but it seems to me it's going crescendo, with de facto monopolies running the show and buying anything that could be an obstacle, be it other companies or policymakers.

Beryl ,

I'm really relieved we're out of the uncomfortably skinny pants phase.

Beryl , (edited )

This guy could suddenly rupture a brain aneurysm and you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.

Beryl ,

Much better title than the clickbaity one they went with for the video.

Beryl ,

That record ? CO2 levels at their highest in millions of years and still growing faster than ever.

Beryl ,

Economics actually says it's far cheaper overall to stop polluting right now than trying to mitigate it in the distant future. But that goes against the short-termism our economic indicators are built around. The line must go up, and shareholders need their maximized profit next quarter. Meanwhile pollution will only become more of a problem the further away in the future you look. And that sounds like a problem for future us.

Beryl ,

There's a typo in the title. If you go back to the original source (in french), they actually retain 79,5 % of their original efficiency, so even better than the article's title would have you believe.

Beryl ,

I understand the sentiment, although I still do have sympathy for them. The thing is, everyone knows by now that any westerner will likely be arrested by the Iranians on bogus pretext, and then used as a bargaining chip to alleviate some of the international sanctions. In the meantime, you're pretty much guaranteed to spend a couple years in prison, and probably be raped too if you're a woman.

Hundreds arrested, roads barricaded in New Caledonia as riots continue ( www.reuters.com )

SYDNEY, May 16 (Reuters) - Armed forces were protecting New Caledonia's two airports and port after a third night of violent riots that have killed four people, the Pacific Island's top French official said on Thursday morning, adding at least four alleged instigators were under house arrest....

Beryl , (edited )

Jeebus ! The number of people commenting here who don't have any knowledge of the situation is annoying.

France vowed in the Noumea Accord of 1998 to gradually give more political power to New Caledonia. Since, under the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, ALL rejecting independence. Now, the last referendum in 2021 had something like 94% people voting to stay French BUT the independentists had called for a boycott of the referendum, and so turnout was only about 44%.
In 2018, New Caledonians rejected independence at 57%. In 2020 it was 53%. In both these votes, the turnout was 80+%
.

So this is not a case of France imposing control on the local population, there seems to be at least a small majority of people who wish to stay French.

New Caledonians have French nationality, they vote in all french national elections (presidential, parliament, etc. ) and could absolutely vote in local elections if they moved to say Paris or Marseille.

The thing is, the electoral lists in New Caledonia were frozen in 1998, and so anyone who came to live there legally after that still can't vote in local elections. This is now being reversed, allowing citizens who have lived there for at least 10 years to vote, and that's why the independentist party is rioting. They fear the independentist vote would be diluted by these newcomers, which presumably would vote to stay French.

Edit : To add some context on the independentists, they are mostly of the Kanak people, the aboriginal population of the islands. Today, they represent about 41% of the ~300k people living in New Caledonia.They are usually poorer and benefit from a lesser level of education than Neocaledonians of European or mixed descent.

Beryl ,

...following "a complaint made by a female member of the production crew after an incident following his performance in Thursday night’s Semi Final."

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