This is a bad retort. The U.S. has 2 relevant parties. Most countries in the EU have at least twice as many relevant parties and there are over 25 countries in Europe, so you’re looking at close to 100 relevant parties.

The biggest indictment, however, is that the Siri they bought was itself more powerful before they bought it.

Meanwhile, China, responded firmly and has come out even better against Trump.

Even if it goes down going forward, Bessent was incredibly reckless. Basic emotions have a surprisingly significant influence on financial markets’ behavior. I won’t be surprised if the rates would have been at least a few basis points lower if it wasn’t for Bessent’s silly bravado.

Unfortunately the U.S. constitution was written with the, in hindsight, naive assumption that political parties could be avoided.

This just led to a system that has political parties but doesn’t really acknowledge their existence and therefore makes it difficult to regulate their behavior.

However, most western institutions and governments have used periods which required austerity to bake in long term privatization and government service cuts for ideological reasons, as opposed to treating it as a chapter 11 bankruptcy, for example, where they use it to clean and streamline their operations and programs and restart the services on a better footing.

Obama attempted to close Guantanamo. The political backlash was massive. He essentially ended the Iraq war leaving only a skeleton crew to work with the government.

Those are not even in the same universe as all the lies and corruption Trump has peddled.

Heck, Trump has had a dozen Mission Accomplished moments in the Iran war alone, compared to the 1 stupid photo op by Bush.

If anything, equating very different situations with Trump’s regular lies and corruption like this is why Americans are confused.

NYC launched one in 2003, however, I think it was far too early and the chatbot was easy o misuse and cost a lot.

3 years later both the tech and the ability to restrict it makes it far more feasible.

An example is messaging apps. Today, if I want to remain in touch with my friends and family I have to juggle between Facebook messenger (thank the heavens for this app which means I rarely need to open Facebook itself), Whatsapp, Signal, etc.

In the early 2000s, even though I was on more services, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AIM, a single app such as trillian or Adium was enough to communicate on all of them.

While today we have to go to a whole slew of walled gardens to read posts from folks, such as substack, medium, twitter, etc. earlier, the heavy use of RSS meant that a single RSS news client covered everything.

From a socio-political standpoint, “canceling” also wasn’t a thing, since you could trivially self host a blog and discovery would be no different.

Even better, discovery was through human recommendations rather than algorithms designed to keep you hooked on the platform.

More relevantly, a lot of their work involves interfacing with hundreds, if not thousands, of external partners, competitors, etc. systems.

Their questioning whether the outage surrounding a specific hazard is proportionate to its known danger does not mean they believe no hazards exist.

Is there any evidence that the amounts found in humans using non stick pans, for example, and not those drinking water downstream from an industrial source of “forever chemicals”, have any of these effects?

NYC turned a major street into a “busway”. So cars can enter, but they have to make the first right, so they don’t use it as a thruway.

Pedestrian traffic in that area has exploded.

Injuries and deaths have plummeted. As a pedestrian crossing the street is incredibly safer if there’s a massive bus driving at a steady speed (bus drivers won’t speed to catch a light, or jump a red), is significantly safer.

One of the heaviest water consumers and a massive user of land (especially when considering the land needed to grow feed). And data centers aren’t creating lagoons of shit.

And that’s even before you get to the moral atrocity of dairy.

European countries aren’t worried that China will conquer the U.S. and they’d lose access to their gold because a hostile Chinese government controls it.

The increased risk is that the U.S. was considered basically risk free for allies, and now the U.S. isn’t considered risk free anymore and allied status is also at risk.

> Off topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

So you’re incorrect. HN isn’t off bounds for all political posts, but yes, they do have to have an “interesting new phenomenon”.

The U.S. sanctioning a decades old technology collective is clearly new. Whether it’s “interesting” I can’t speak to because that’s subjective to every individual, but that’s where the useful voting system comes in.

Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.

This is the executive trying to undermine the law.