Obviously, there's a more disturbing background at play here, but churches shouldn't be untaxed in the first instance. The dude literally said to render unto Caesar, etc. etc.
It's nothing to do with stopping pedos. The people pushing this year-in and year-out don't care THAT much about pedos. It's not a cause that's motivating enough for them to be putting in so much effort, trying to sneak in legislation after being repeatedly rebuffed.
Yes, the world was a lot hotter in the distant past, but that's because the carbon in the biosphere was gradually sequestered by natural geologic processes, leading to a gradual cooling over hundreds of millions of years. We're now partially undoing that, by pumping and digging the stuff back up and burning it.
If fossil fuels hadn't come along, it's possible that the long-term cooling of the Earth would have been a problem, eventually. Nobody wants another Ice Age. But we've gone waaaay past in the opposite direction now. We really, really don't want to see an "age of the dinosaurs" climate, with its pole-to-pole super-hurricanes, continent sized mega droughts, and other forms of extreme weather that human civilization has zero experience coping with.
"Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7....
The recent success of the European far right is precisely because they've revised their image to get rid of the freakshow aspects. The days when you could dismiss these people just by calling them "absolute freaks" are over.
It's pretty sad to see Vox's decline into gutter clickbait media. I guess it was inevitable once Klein and Yglesias left, and their mediocre minions took over.
Half of this article's word count seems to be the writer snarking about how he doesn't care about these games and doesn't know much about them. I guess it's good to show contempt for your audience...
From the FT story about this, it appears the Israeli far right is going to respond with more repression:
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Wednesday wrote to Netanyahu, demanding “punitive steps” be against the Palestinian Authority in response to the European decisions and other Palestinian moves on the international stage, including seeking action against the Jewish state by the ICC.
Smotrich called for a series of measures including a major expansion of Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, the establishment of a new settlement for every country that recognises Palestinian statehood, and the freezing of Israeli tax transfers to the PA.
Any word on the final legislation's treatment of free and open source models? At the drafting stage, there were warnings that the requirements would basically shut out FOSS projects, thereby entrenching proprietary models from tech giants. Later on, there was talk about possibly adding carve-outs to protect FOSS, but I couldn't find the details.
What's interesting is that before the war, China and Ukraine had excellent relations, to the point where Russia was worried about Chinese influence in Ukraine. There's some remnant of these ties, like how China has never recognised Russia's annexations of Ukrainian territory.
But the thing is, China's overwhelming interest at this point is for Russia not to lose. A Russian humiliation at the hands of the West -- or worse still a Russian collapse leading to a reduced state that could be dominated by the West -- would leave China geopolitically isolated, and give the US the freedom to squeeze China with no further distractions.
At the end of the day, Xi Jinping has blundered his way into a strategic cul-de-sac. The Russia-Ukraine war is a geopolitical disaster for China, and Xi's dumb bromance with Putin was a key reason it happened. Strategically, he's the worst Chinese leader in at least a century.
Well said. One thing I'd add is that it wasn't only Putin going all in, but Xi's own strategic impatience. China needed at least another generation to grow into its strengths as a world power, but Xi had, for various reasons, convinced himself that he, not his successors, would be the one to see it all through. By finishing the job Mao had started, Xi would be the one lauded by history as the one inheriting Mao's mantle.
Xi likes to wax poetic about geostrategic "changes not seen in a century". Ironically, his own ego and hamfistedness has given the West a once in a century opportunity to kneecap China and prevent it from consolidating into a true world power.
Always weird to me how France is so insistent on clinging to its colonial empire, two decades into the 21st century, despite the headaches that causes.
The US closing off its market was totally predictable and has been priced in. You'll notice that no Chinese EV makers made any plans to export directly into the US, even as they were selling around the world.
The US market is significant, sure, but the US car industry could easily end up where its shipbuilding industry is: hanging around thanks to government protection, catering to the domestic market, but a bit of a joke by global standards.
There are rules concerning how to determine the country of origin, involving how much value is added at each step. Final assembly doesn't make the cut if the amount of work is too trivial. (The rules can be gamed somewhat but I'm sure the Biden administration will be putting this under a microscope.)
What is more problematic for Biden is that Chinese EV companies are building whole factories and supply chains in Mexico, so the product will be unambiguously Mexican and allowed to enter the US under the USMCA. If the US government feels strongly enough about keeping Chinese firms out simply on the basis of being Chinese, they will probably resort to threatening Mexico to strongarm them into shutting down those factories. The US has a long history of running roughshod over Mexico, so this seems pretty likely to me.
Georgia has been warned by the US not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow, as its parliament defied mass street protests to pass a “Kremlin-inspired” law....
There's irony here. Europe went along with the US push to block Chinese access to semiconductors. China turns to domestic chip manufacturing, and the obvious first step is to get into mature nodes, the segment of the semiconductor industry where European firms have been successful. European Commission: shocked Pikachu face.
In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more territory per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning.
From what I've read, this is mainly a distraction. Russia hasn't committed enough troops for a serious invasion of Kharkiv oblast; their objectives is to tie up Ukraine's reserves and keep them away from the fighting in the east.
If AI really was such a game-changer, it would increase the chances of finding extraterrestrial aliens, not decrease it. If AI allows for superhuman feats of intellect and engineering, then even if 99.9% of all strong AI leads to the destruction of the original civilization, you'd only need the 0.1% of civilizations that develop stable benevolent civilization-boosting AI (let's call them The Culture). Those would spread around, and we would have seen them. So we're back at Fermi's paradox.
US policymakers screwed themselves with crappy urban planning, leading to insufficient housing supply and bad transit options. Blaming AirBnB for high housing prices is like setting up a chain of dominos, and criticizing a guy who comes by and knocks it over. If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else, or the wind.
"The wealthy and corporations" have choices of how to invest their money. If housing supply is sufficiently elastic to meet demand, they'll find somewhere else other than housing to put their money. Ain't nobody trying to corner the Chinese real estate market in 2024, for instance (*).
There are a few places where land shortages genuinely constrain housing supply, like Singapore and Hong Kong. But the US has tons of land; things are simply not well optimized. That, plus high interest rates due to fiscal/monetary mismanagement.
(*) Not saying the Chinese real estate market is worth emulating.
This is an unserious proposal. Germany spends about 1.5 percent of its GDP(*) on defence, much of it wasted, and increasing it to even 2 percent has involved painful and extended political wrangling. If the country collectively cannot find the will to tweak its budget to fund a modest increase in defence spending, it is not going to countenance universal conscription.
But the point remains: 2% of GDP is the NATO target, getting even to that point for Germany has been like pulling teeth, and a serious implementation of universal conscription would be a much bigger ask.
People have been reliant on "ole’ techno-solutions" since the dawn of humanity 2 million years ago on the African savannah, long before capitalism was even a thing. Just sayin'.
Once an economic powerhouse that was the envy of much of the world, there is deep concern in Tokyo that the economies of China and Germany have already surpassed Japan's — and that India's will do so next year....
It's nothing to do with Japan, really. It's about India and its economy slowly clawing its way up from its historically low base. Note that India's GDP per capita is still well below the global average (and Japan's is well above).
Irrelevant. Because of India's population, the only way for it not to eventually surpass Japan in total GDP is for India to remain perpetually mired in backwardness. Since the 1990s, India has undergone successive rounds of economic liberalization, thereby achieving catch-up growth. All that stuff with Japanese demographics, bad management, etc. are secondary factors. Even if all the factors for Japan had been more favorable, it would only have postponed the day of overtake by a few years.
You could similarly argue that phone makers should concentrate on making and taking calls. Turns out, that's not what consumers care about once a certain bar is cleared (a pretty low bar; call quality is notably bad on many modern cellphones). They care more about other stuff like... being good at navigation.
This has been put to the market test in China. For EV purchases, most consumers turn out not to care about the "car" aspects beyond a certain point. If the car drives okay and has acceptable safety, what matters is the Internet-based bells and whistles.
Israel has launched a major military offensive against Hamas forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, seizing control of a key border crossing and cutting off most aid into the territory a day before indirect talks on a ceasefire deal are due to restart....
I'm pretty skeptical about how much fundamental change is possible on this issue. So long as we give consumers a choice, the overwhelming evidence is that most people dgaf about their data, and are willing to trade it away.
This is a totally free exchange. Even when you plant the choice in front of users as an obnoxious and intrusive accept-cookies prompt, they'll happily click Accept All even for sketchy websites (let alone something like Gmail). So you end up wasting everyone's time for little benefit.
A common response to this is to mull heavy-handed centralized government controls, like how China regulates its internet giants. But this would be a decisive move away from the entire idea of a decentralized internet. People pushing such legislation often retort that it's possible to pick off the internet giants while leaving smaller operators alone, but this seems like a forlorn hope. Google and Meta already signalled that they are not concerned about EU data laws, because they have so much internal data, and the regulations could even entrench their dominance by preventing other players from catching up.
Russia has opened a criminal case against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and put him on a wanted list, the state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, an announcement Ukraine dismissed as evidence of Moscow's "desperation"....
So you're just talking about the look of the car? Because BYD has been doing EVs far longer than Porsche, so if anyone is doing a rip-off of the tech, it would be Porsche.
As far as design goes, BYD's aesthetics in recent years has a lot to do with them hiring big-shot European designers like Wolfgang Egger. If they're pulling from the same talent pool as other top carmakers, it's not so obvious why you'd accuse BYD of copying others, and not vice versa.
Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds::Renewable energy provides the cheapest source of new energy for Australia, a new draft report from the CSIRO and energy market operator has found.
Let's not nickel-and-dime the green transition. Nuclear energy has a role to play, and so do renewables. The most urgent thing now is to get as much electricity generation off fossil fuels as possible. Building nuclear power plants is an important part of this, especially in countries like China and India which would otherwise default to burning coal.
Heads of churches say Israeli government is demanding they pay property tax, upsetting status quo ( apnews.com )
World’s 1st high-temperature superconducting tokamak built in China ( interestingengineering.com )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17201348
Chinese EV makers proposed a 25% tariff on large European ICE cars, state media reports ( carnewschina.com )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17085528
EU attempt to sneak through new encryption-eroding law slammed by Signal, politicians ( www.theregister.com )
India under its longest-ever heatwave, with worse to come ( www.straitstimes.com )
Starfield's latest update draws player ire by sticking a bounty hunting quest behind the Creation Club paywall ( www.vg247.com )
EU elections 2024 live: Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections after huge far-right gains ( www.theguardian.com )
"Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7....
Is TikTok breaking young voters’ brains? ( www.vox.com )
Zenless Zone Zero gets a release date of July 4th, plus a trailer with lots of kicking ( www.rockpapershotgun.com )
Does String Theory Actually Describe the World? AI May Be Able to Tell ( www.wired.com )
Spain, Norway and Ireland will recognize a Palestinian state | CNN ( edition.cnn.com )
This is quite big! Kudos to them.
Europe sets benchmark for rest of the world with landmark AI laws ( www.reuters.com )
Janet Yellen urges EU to raise tariffs on Chinese solar panels and wind turbines ( www.theguardian.com )
Complains about overproduction of green technology, because it's important we don't have too much green technology....
Free-Market Advocate, Elon Musk, Asks for U.S. Government to Put Tariffs on Chinese EV Imports ( medium.com )
Zelensky wants China at Ukraine peace talks, cites ‘influence on Russia’ | CNN ( www.cnn.com )
France imposes state of emergency in New Caledonia as unrest continues ( www.npr.org )
Always weird to me how France is so insistent on clinging to its colonial empire, two decades into the 21st century, despite the headaches that causes.
China Isn’t Scared Of Biden’s Big Bad EV Tariffs ( jalopnik.com )
Biden's new China tariff wall faces leakage via Mexico, Vietnam | Reuters ( www.reuters.com )
US warns Georgia not to side with Moscow against the west ( www.theguardian.com )
Georgia has been warned by the US not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow, as its parliament defied mass street protests to pass a “Kremlin-inspired” law....
Europe eyes car chips as next battleground with China ( www.politico.eu )
Commission will start questioning its industry about competition with China and others on older-generation microchips....
Biden hikes tariffs on Chinese EVs, solar cells, steel, aluminum ( apnews.com )
Climate change and inflation are both important, so we're going to make it as expensive as possible to switch away from fossil fuels.
Google accidentally deleted a $125 billion pension fund's account ( qz.com )
Russian forces push deeper into northern Ukraine ( www.bangkokpost.com )
In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more territory per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning.
Creepy Study Suggests AI Is The Reason We've Never Found Aliens ( www.sciencealert.com )
How Airbnb accidentally screwed the US housing market and made $100 billion ( www.arktrek.shop )
Germany may introduce conscription for all 18-year-olds ( www.telegraph.co.uk )
Scientists have figured out way to make algae-based plastic that completely decomposes ( abcnews.go.com )
Japanese angst as India set to become 4th largest economy ( www.dw.com )
Once an economic powerhouse that was the envy of much of the world, there is deep concern in Tokyo that the economies of China and Germany have already surpassed Japan's — and that India's will do so next year....
Biden really, really doesn’t want China to flood the US with cheap EVs ( www.theverge.com )
Israel launches Rafah offensive it says is start of mission to ‘eliminate’ Hamas ( www.theguardian.com )
Israel has launched a major military offensive against Hamas forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, seizing control of a key border crossing and cutting off most aid into the territory a day before indirect talks on a ceasefire deal are due to restart....
Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right? ( www.nytimes.com )
Chuck Todd: The race to build a better internet — before it's too late ( www.nbcnews.com )
Russia puts Ukraine's Zelenskiy on wanted list ( www.reuters.com )
Russia has opened a criminal case against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and put him on a wanted list, the state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, an announcement Ukraine dismissed as evidence of Moscow's "desperation"....
Is Tesla Feeling the BYD? A Chinese Giant Shakes Up the EV Electric Car Landscape ( www.arktrek.shop )
TikTok's CEO is feeling the pressure and users are freaking out ( www.businessinsider.com )
Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds ( www.abc.net.au )
Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds::Renewable energy provides the cheapest source of new energy for Australia, a new draft report from the CSIRO and energy market operator has found.