Humanitarian technologist & big data wrangler, on a quest for evidence-based policy. Rational optimist, post-statist, contemplative humanist, mystery enthusiast, bardo tourist.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • It’s far from perfect, but the European parliament is vastly more functional than the American Congress, just based on the amount of legislation that is crafted, compromised on, and passed. These laws, which have to be adopted by all the countries in the EU, are the most prosocial and environmental in the world.

    With these elections increasing the size of conservative coalitions, there will be more of a push against things like green regulations, immigration quotas, and support for Ukraine.

    More conservatives are being elected because right-wing nationalist/populist parties across Europe are fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hate, the burden of inflation, and EU regulations that might squeeze the ability of farmers (or other laborers) to make a profit, in order to sell their Make (insert country name here) Great Again rhetoric and whatever religious/corporate/fascist power dynamics that rhetoric conceals.






  • The main problems I have with it now are sometimes there are still issues with loading between browser and apps. Like it might open multiple tabs trying to open an app, and it leaves the app redirect pages open in your tabs list. Additionally, sometimes (like 3% of the time) website scaling doesn’t always work, especially on older sites or those made with janky CMS’s, and I’ve also rarely had problems with some dynamic content like inline forms and graphs.




  • I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.