Unfortunate reality, but headline placement is quite OK.

I know a lot of people don’t like the American First Past the Post system, but to be honest, even in a proportional system like here in the Netherlands, you end up with very similar dynamics.

Truth is, progressives are always a small minority, in every country. Because they are always ahead of the curve on change.

In the US, this means that you only get a handful of progressives in the most progressive districts and never a really progressive national government.

In the Netherlands, this means progressives are always represented, but need to compromise to form a government. And often, they even get skipped and the centrist and conservative parties form a coalition.

Truth be told, Biden is as progressive as you could hope to get in the USA.

And, while I do think it is important to criticize him - and even threaten to not vote for him - to enable him to move more towards the left, it is also important to vote for him.

Progressives always win, not through getting majorities, but because they have the right ideas and eventually the other parties catch up to them.

For recent examples, gay marriage in the USA or marihuana legalization are now law in the USA.

I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.

Americans still care about the price of oil, which is set in a global market and where Saudi-Arabia and Russia have more influence than the USA.

Obviously, the extremist Arabs that overthrew their own leaders are also to blame. Where did I deny that?

I don’t think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.

You’d first need to get new candidates to win a primary and then a general and the required majorities are lacking almost everywhere.

A more fruitful approach is to actually change public opinion.

It’s a long uphill battle, but it’s happening.

For decades, Israel and the US (and European countries) have pursued a policy to destabilize middle eastern regimes.

People don’t realize this, but there was a wave of Arab nationalism that was killed by sponsoring Islamic extremists. Had that not happened, the middle east would be much more secular today than it is.

Israel attacking and destabilizing Lebanon and Syria and the US maintaining a dictator in Egypt are part of this strategy.

In turn, this leads to hate towards the West and Israel by the Muslims affected.

It won’t stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.

As your links explain, C series is used for envelopes, while B and elongated A are special case that aren’t commonly used.

In any case, none of those series has an equivalent to American Letter.

The only paper that you will commonly find in European offices are A4 and (to a lesser extent) A3.

A big office printer might have 4 trays stocked with A4 and one tray with A3, for example.

As a European, I do appreciate Legal as a format.

It just happens slightly too often that an A4 is not long enough and the last bit, including the signature, goes to the next page.

I wish Legal was common here. Or perhaps we could get a Long A4 with a third extra height or so.

The Letter format should just be replaced by A4 though.

Exactly.

If the USA tried to again be a White/European ethnostate and allow anyone with Caucasian heritage to immigrate and barred everyone else from immigrating, then no one today would accept that.

And if they went full on apartheid and started putting natives and minorities in locked down ever-shrinking reservations, people would really lose their shit.

When white nationalists try to advocate for such policies, they are rightfully criticized for being racist.

I can never understand why Israel gets special treatment in that regard.

Indeed, also it’s much nicer to use a shared high quality tool than to buy an el-cheapo disposable tool.

Even something simple like a crowbar. I once borrowed a (shorter) professional crowbar after struggling with a (larger) cheap one. The thing I was trying to pry came out like butter.

Even though physics dictates that a shorter lever should be inferior, it just had a much better design and grip.

Better for our wallet, sanity and environment.

From a lecture by Roger Penrose

Wikipedia has an article and he has some videos on YouTube

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction

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Does anyone know why Bangladesh had zero added sugar?

Could it be that Bangladesh has stricter regulations?

Indeed.

And an often overlooked downside of all the tax loopholes is that asshole billionaires don’t pay tax, so they have a competitive advantage against someone like Mark Cuban.

Basically, with billionaires we are evolving them to become nastier with each generation.

True. It also shows how most humans tend to think in social hierarchy where money and status are interlinked.

That’s actually one thing capitalists (as you call them, I’d call them managers) are good at. Their focus on money allows them to ignore status.

This is also why workers need unions. Workers need experts that understand the inner workings of corporations to lobby on their behalf.

I like your way of thinking.

Actually, Unions tend to do something similar with overtime and weekend pay.

If the factory needs you at night or in the weekend, they gotta pay up.

Right, investment company.

In particular, they are Not a Bank.

If you just Google you will see JPM and Citi did quite badly under the low interest regime and bounced back after interest rates went up.

Citi had a more pronounced bump with Covid stimulus.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JPM/jpmorgan-chase/gross-profit

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/C/citigroup/gross-profit

They are still making nice profits, but Apple and Microsoft are at no risk of being overtaken by any bank any time soon.

If you want to call BlackRock a bank…

Then you’re gonna be right in your bubble, but it’s a pretty big leap. And you won’t find many people agreeing with you.

And no, banks are making profits again with rising interest rates. They were making way lower profits at low interest rates.

In terms of being disconnected from reality, I think you’re projecting.

The banking sector is not bigger than before.

The fact that smaller banks merge and consolidate does mean that some banks are bigger than before.

And that’s also what regulators want. They want a handful of big banks that they can more easily monitor and control.

But the power of the sector has greatly weakened.

The big money is now in tech and energy, not the financial sector.

Indeed. And we had a decade of extremely low interest rates that basically broke the power of banks.

The more important causes in 2024 are:

• Taxing the rich
• Climate change
• Protesting against war and genocide