arbitrary

So your definition of neocolonialism boils down to 'has trade and diplomatic relations with the US and France'?

And isn't that quite offensive against the African states? You imply that they could not have created an intranational community without centering it around Western powers, no?

How, in your opinion, is ECOWAS a tool for neocolonialism?

volunteer positions

So instead of getting paid below minimum wage you'd rather they don't get paid at all?

Volunteer positions also often cannot provide the often increased need for supervision and guidance, especially for new or atypical tasks.

To be honest, I don't know every individual business, but the vast majority of businesses that I know that hire people with mental (or sometimes physical) impairment do so as part of a social goal to give back to society. We have a shop around my hometown where they fix bicycles. Takes longer and you often have a neurotypical supervisor that jumps in if needed, but at the end it's a great way to give these people a place in society and a small pay that they can see as their contribution to their family (or their own lives).

Question is, what business model would you support?

Ads are the thing that pay for a lot of services most people use in daily lives. Imagine you needed a paid subscription for your email, your search engine, browser, social media account(s)...

Lemmy is fun and all, but eventually it will need to expand and pay for server costs and so on. Yes, perhaps it will be carried by enthusiastic community members, but that's just a higher paid subscription for a few rather than many.

I agree fully with you that the level of commercialisation is beyond crazy by now, and many developments do not have the user in mind. But that's not on the business model itself, but the companies' decisions.

Not sure about other countries, but at least in Europe we had quite a few comments, including by health officials, that the school closures should not have been done and upheld to the extent that they were.

And I agree, the impact on learning and children's mental health was not justified by the real or potential dangers of the pandemic imho

Edit: One comment from the German Health Minister here, describing prolonged school closures as a mistake

You are right, the spot exchange rate at a given point in time is random and tells you nothing (nothing!) about the strength of a currency (or economy). Japan is a great example.

What, however, does indicate a weakening or economic downturn is the uncontrolled depreciation of a currency, which errodes savings, threatens foreign debt paybacks, and makes imports more expensive

The Yen is relatively stable for decades at its spot. The Rubel is sliding against monetary and fiscal efforts, which indicates deeper macroeconomic issues.

In all fairness, FPTP did create one of the oldest, most successful democracies that ever existed on the planet. Now, I'm not saying it shouldn't be reformed (it should be), but calling it a straight up terrible no good isn't right either

Better question at this point would be 'how many world wars have they seen already?'

YYYY-DD-MM, DD-YYYY-MM, or MM-YYYY-DD

What the actual fuck

'hey man, what date is it today?' 'well it's the 15th of 2023, August'

I'm sure not everyone will agree, but honestly, I kind of stopped caring too much. I've been using Instagram, Google, Android, Apple, and many other service providers for years and none seems to know a lot about me based on the stuff I see being advertised to me.

None of them seem to have figured out what languages I speak (I get a lot of language courses for English and German, but I'm native in both), what my education level is (I get a lot of 'study your bachelor or master here or there or online' despite having two master's degrees), where I really live (lots of British stuff always, but I live out of Europe), or what my hobbies are (lots of mobile games that I wouldn't touch with a stick).

Yeah, it seems they get the basics (I'm male, below 35, I am interested in educational stuff), but that could be anyone... And if I can use their services for tree for them to put me in a category with some 10M others, I'm kinda okay

So you'll buy an electric car for some 20k+ once that car breaks down to haul your frequent furniture and lumber purchases?

Because the discussion isn't about 'I have a car and won't exchange it for a train' but 'moving transportation onto trains instead of electric cars would be a lot more beneficial as the future of transportation'