Let's not quibble over the population growth rates of these states which provide welfare to everyone. Instead, let's talk about te tax base which provides this welfare and you'll notice that tax base does not grow nearly as fast and might in fact be shrinking - actual reliable numbers are hard to come by. How many of the newcomers to these states will end up being net providers to the tax base and how many will end up being net consumers? If you provide more benefits, more people will come. If you raise the net tax rates to provide those benefits to a growing number of consumers more net payers will leave. The total population may remain the same or may even grow but a larger fraction of that total population will never become net providers, remaining net consumers. What is the end game here? This is a question which has already been answered in many European countries with similarly structured social benefit systems. There the end game is called 'austerity measures', the reduction of state services to keep the state from getting even deeper in debt.
A cynical take on this situation is that the current crop of politicos in these states launch these ever-increasing benefit systems in the knowledge that this attracts voters from a few segments of the population as well as 'future voters' who will move to these places because they promise to provide them with (more) benefits than their current domiciles. Once the costs of the whole system become too high the system will no longer be tenable but the current crop of politicos will by that time have moved on to greener pastures, probably golf courses in some nice shielded and guarded areas. The 'other party' will end up winning the elections after having been out of power for a long time but this will end up being a Pyrrhic victory since they inherit a state on the verge of financial collapse. OK, they say, "we need to fix this mess and the only way to achieve that is to cut spending because we can not raise taxes above where they've been raised by our predecessors" - in fact this promise was one of the factors which made them win the elections. They do just that, lower benefits, lower some taxes - but not that much because they do need money to pay off all those debts and all the running contracts entered by their predecessors - and they manage to pull the state away from the brink of financial ruin.
At the next election round the party which put in place all those benefit programs portrays the current incumbents as "inhumane penny-pushers who only want to appease the rich" with organised - and paid - protests by all the right groups, long media campaigns about the threat of *-ism and *-phobia, the works. The current incumbents try to defend their record stating that they're just cleaning up the mess left by the previous leadership who are financially irresponsible spendthrifts but that message is not nearly as emotionally appealing as the video clips of poor single mothers who now have less to feed their poor children, about the cancelled school trips because the state no longer had the funds to pay for them.
The elections are won by the party which put in place the programs which nearly bankrupted the state, the new leadership undoes part of what the previous leadership did to save the state from financial ruin and as a result the process is set to repeat in a few years. Enough years at least to make sure they get to retire to greener pastures, probably golf courses in nice shielded and guarded neighbourhoods. They don't have to worry about such silly things as financial responsibility, they know they can get the other side to clean up the mess and they also know they'll be able to use the measures the others need to take to clean up the mess to launch a campaign against them which is nearly sure to regain them the leadership in one or two election cycles.
As the label on the shampoo bottle says: rinse, repeat.
If you'd rather not be part of the protest gig economy but prefer a steady job there's plenty of NGO staffing positions available. Quota restrictions may apply, check with your local coordinator.
> They have shown that the information density in our existing languages is extremely low: small prompts can generate very large programs.
"Write a book about a small person who happens upon a magical ring which turns out to be the repository of an evil entities power. The small person needs to destroy the ring somehow, probably using the same means it was created"
Fatbikes are a problem in the Netherlands as well. Th Netherlands, also known as the #1 country - or at least in the top 3, no need to quibble about who comes first - when it comes to creating cycling infrastructure. Bicycle paths everywhere but those don't help against fatbike gangs. They don't care about safe cycling infrastructure, they hardly care about safety - especially other people's safety - at all.
OT: from Brisbane up to the south the fauna... made me scratch my head for a millisecond until I thought about it from a southern hemisphere standpoint. As a northerner I think of Oz and the likes as being 'down under (unsaid: the equator)' so I suspect you southerners think of Europe and the likes as 'down under' as well.
It might be an intentional 'non-northern-hemisphere-centric' construct. I had not heard it before but in a way it does make sense given that a sphere does not have a defined 'top' and 'bottom'. Then again the one we live on has a defined 'north' and 'south' and north tends to be thought of as 'up'.
I've been thinking, it could mean it doesn't matter which direction you go, cause I'd think north or south of Brisbane is same, wildlife is gonna try to eat/kill/sting you
He probably chooses the 'right' subjects for aiming his reprimands at. Now let him go to, say, a train with a number of passengers among whom is an individual who decides to use his phone the same way as a dog uses his dick: to clearly mark what he considers to be his territory. Loud gangsta/Turkish/middle-eastern music blaring from the thing, feet on the seat opposite him, the guy sprawling over three seats just waiting for one of the natives to dare to tell him to tone it down a bit. I'm one of those natives who does on occasion and invariably end up in a who-blinks-first contest with the miscreant. Thus far it has only gotten to threats of violence upon which the creature leaves the train at the next station so most of these dogs don't seem to bite. Some do, though, just ask train conductors in the Netherlands or Germany about their experiences with them.
Man, I broadly agree with you about this type of person, but it makes me cringe that you say "this creature" and use the dog metaphor. He sucks but he's a human.
You are, of course, under no obligation to capitulate to my discomfort, but I figured it was worth commenting.
Sure they are human and their actions are part of human behaviour. Having said that I don't hold with language policing so I just use the terms which best describe their behaviour without trying to tie myself into knots about who might be offended by my word choice. If they dislike being talked about in this way they can just cease behaving in ways which make people talk about them in this way. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
The CGA colour palette was horrid on RGB monitors but on Composite it could look quite good for its time. Not Amiga-level good but good enough. Of course composite monitors were not really a thing in the IBM PC world so it was to little avail. Here's an example of a screen in the mentioned horrible hot-pink palette:
Now here's an area where one of those newfangled large language models actually could do some good: create a spelling checker which doesn't gleefully replace somewhat misspelled or 'mis-swiped' words with correctly spelled but contextually clearly nonsensical ones.
Another contender to become the European 'Max' [1] for when the EU decides it can no longer tolerate communications applications where those who stray too far from the desired narrative are not reined in.
Nope, nein, nee, nej, non, нет, não, nie, nei, ei, nē, ne, όχ and whatever other word for 'no' you can think of.
Just give it a few years and you'll be able to buy the thing for a fraction of the 'current' price. By that time it will be considered to be 'slow' and 'power-hungry' and people will wonder why you're intent on running older hardware but it'll still work just fine. The DL380 G7 under the stairs here also used to cost an arm and a leg while I got it for some finger nail clippings.
Typical BBC reporting: Amazon's cloud computing business says drones have hit three of its facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain following US and Israeli strikes against Iran at the weekend. The incidents occurred on Sunday morning, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying at the time that ''objects'' had hit a data centre in the UAE, creating ''sparks and fire''. Also on Sunday, AWS said it was investigating power and connectivity issues at a facility in Bahrain. On Monday, the company confirmed that drone strikes had caused the outages.
Notice how they do not mention that the facilities were damaged by Iranian attacks on the UAE and Bahrain but following US and Israeli strikes against Iran at the weekend.
Somewhat OT but it remains remarkable how the knee-jerk down-vote-button brigade feels the need to vote down a totally unrelated post on getting a refund for a Microsoft Home Server [1] and one on the relation between hardware + low-level systems software capabilities versus applications software just because I happened to voice an opinion outside of their desired narrative. Grow up, people. If your opinions are so weakly founded that you feel the need to 'punish' those who dare to voice dissent you should get some more soundly founded ones.
A cynical take on this situation is that the current crop of politicos in these states launch these ever-increasing benefit systems in the knowledge that this attracts voters from a few segments of the population as well as 'future voters' who will move to these places because they promise to provide them with (more) benefits than their current domiciles. Once the costs of the whole system become too high the system will no longer be tenable but the current crop of politicos will by that time have moved on to greener pastures, probably golf courses in some nice shielded and guarded areas. The 'other party' will end up winning the elections after having been out of power for a long time but this will end up being a Pyrrhic victory since they inherit a state on the verge of financial collapse. OK, they say, "we need to fix this mess and the only way to achieve that is to cut spending because we can not raise taxes above where they've been raised by our predecessors" - in fact this promise was one of the factors which made them win the elections. They do just that, lower benefits, lower some taxes - but not that much because they do need money to pay off all those debts and all the running contracts entered by their predecessors - and they manage to pull the state away from the brink of financial ruin.
At the next election round the party which put in place all those benefit programs portrays the current incumbents as "inhumane penny-pushers who only want to appease the rich" with organised - and paid - protests by all the right groups, long media campaigns about the threat of *-ism and *-phobia, the works. The current incumbents try to defend their record stating that they're just cleaning up the mess left by the previous leadership who are financially irresponsible spendthrifts but that message is not nearly as emotionally appealing as the video clips of poor single mothers who now have less to feed their poor children, about the cancelled school trips because the state no longer had the funds to pay for them.
The elections are won by the party which put in place the programs which nearly bankrupted the state, the new leadership undoes part of what the previous leadership did to save the state from financial ruin and as a result the process is set to repeat in a few years. Enough years at least to make sure they get to retire to greener pastures, probably golf courses in nice shielded and guarded neighbourhoods. They don't have to worry about such silly things as financial responsibility, they know they can get the other side to clean up the mess and they also know they'll be able to use the measures the others need to take to clean up the mess to launch a campaign against them which is nearly sure to regain them the leadership in one or two election cycles.
As the label on the shampoo bottle says: rinse, repeat.
reply