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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it’s not used as a tool to keep people from voting.

    In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.

    If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States




  • So they basically want to bring back the company towns from the gilded age, but more dystopian thanks to the possibilities of modern technology. Characteristics of company towns often were: “controlling and/or exploitative”.

    Control: If your employer does something unethical, will you dare go against it, if it means that not only will you lose your job, but you and your family will be also be kicked out of your house, school, town, … Very few would.

    Exploitative: where can the company town residents shop and find services? In the company shops of course. This constrained supply also leads to subpar service for high prices. And if company sales are down, the company will spend less on wages, but keep the company shop prices the same since the shoppers have no alternative anyhow.

    Add in modern technology, and some of those towns will be like Brave New World, while others will evolve into 1984. Dystopian.


  • One USA metropolitan area has as many as many people in it as many small countries. All these excuses that you’re making as to why there are no large protests because of American exceptionalism, they just sound hollow. Protesting or not comes down to people and ATM there seems to be a severe lack of high level activist pro democracy leadership.

    Edit: I do appreciate your answer about it taking 2 years to prepare that march, that’s new info for me. But even then, I’d expect pro democracy protest everywhere and the Washington DC metropolitan area (or other densely populated areas) shouldn’t need to depend on further away regions to get large numbers to turn up.





  • Many thanks for the links, was interesting.

    Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can’t find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won’t turn up in an internet search query.





  • It’s a self-coup, so people are correct in calling it a coup. It’s still in progress, so it’s not clear how much power the white house will end up usurping, but with what they’ve done so far, it’s imo already enough to call it a coup.

    From Wikipedia: A self-coup or coup from the top, is a form of coup d’état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation’s constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

    The wiki article also contains a long list of other historical self coups. Germany in 1933 is the most famous example.




  • Caged is already no longer available where I live, so the price I gave is for perchery eggs, medium sized. I would have added that it was for perchery, but I only learned that word 5 minutes ago from your post ;). In the last few years when caged eggs were available, a 6 pack of perchery eggs usually was the same or almost the same price as caged. I remember the price difference being so insignificant that I always bought perchery.

    But there’s bound to be so many regulatory differences, that probably even the perchery label will have different rules. And some of those labels are pretty empty. So imo for a simple comparison, it’s still best to just compare cheapest with cheapest of the same size and ignore labelling/marketing.


  • The cheapest I can find atm are 2.1 euros for a 12 pack of store brand eggs, 0.175 per egg. Eu.

    Edit to add: imo the only relevant comparison is comparing the cheapest with the cheapest available chicken eggs. If you add in branding, location, … Then you’re no longer comparing eggs, but rather cost of living & marketing.

    2nd edit: perchery, medium size.