For many if not most of the affected imports, it would never ever make economical sense to try to rebuild a local industry from scratch, at least not without major subsidies. And as for local alternatives that already exist, they carry a premium higher than any tariff (because a local workforce likes to be paid living wages), even if magically scaled up to achieve some degree of economies of scale. Western economies are truly and irreversibly post-industrial.
Back in the 00s a friend and I played with the idea of using genetic programming and random line segments to approximate images (ie. maintain a population of candidates, take the best n percent, "breed" them to create the next generation, add some "mutations", repeat). This implementation seems to use a basic hill-climbing algorithm to reach a local optimum – something like simulated annealing might improve both quality and speed of convergence.
Yeah. The idea that he's a Russian asset, although tempting, has always seemed to me like a coping mechanism of sorts – externalizing the evil, like blaming the devil for one's bad deeds.
And, of course, Hanlon's razor is very much relevant here, although certainly it doesn't apply to everybody in Trump's inner circle. Some of them are very much competent and malevolent.
I found Vlad Vexler’s take interesting. Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder. Not a narcissistic trait that many elites have, but an actual disorder. He looks up to Putin and wants to bask in Putin’s glory to elevate himself.
I use them – well, mostly en dashes because that's the custom where I'm from – because I'm a bit of a typography nerd and have grown to dislike the barrenness of ASCII.
One gossamer-thin silver lining in this current geopolitical lunacy is that it's likely to show the current Commission's pro-corpo anti-citizen endeavors like this, to bend the knee to US corporate interests, in an increasingly bad light. Particularly given that activating anti-coercion measures that target those very corporate interests is now being seriously discussed.
EU and the rest of the world needs to ditch their anti circumvention laws that they put in place to appease the US demands on trade deals historically. They're getting tarrif'd anyways so YOLO. I think you'd see a lot of pressures ease up that are probably putting a lot of politicians around the world in compromised or blackmail-able positions. US Tech really needs to lose this massive leverage they have over the world right now.
Is it a silver lining? I think it's clear that whoever runs any government is free to do whatever they want with total impunity. Dissatisfied citizens complaining on Twitter is not gonna remove any "pro-corpo anti-citizen" politician from power. And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook.
Power corrupts, and the more steps removed politicians are from whomever put them in power, the safer they are.
There's a fair chance that discordant voices in the Parliament will grow increasingly stronger, party affiliations notwithstanding. It wouldn't be the first time that the Parliament has asserted its power over the Commission.
Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail.
It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all.
Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.
> EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office
Selection/rejection of the European Commission president (there is no such thing as the EU president) is indirect democracy, not popular vote. But it is still representative and democratic.
US contrast: in the US, citizens also don't vote for the President directly. Instead, we use a two-step system centered on the Electoral College.
Hypocrisy: if anyone (especially us American citizens) are going to argue that europeans should get to vote directly for the President of the EU commission, then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
> Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail.
The EU is basically run by the Council, who are the national governments, all of whom are elected.
It's incredibly depressing that this keeps needing to be repeated when its been this way since the inception of the EU (with a small hiatus where we were gonna get a constitution).
The Commission can propose laws, but unless the Council (mostly) and Parliament (theoretically) agree, they won't happen.
Such irony that the site has difficult to opt-out cookie/tracking settings sharing everything possible about you with hundreds of "partners", and flashy, distracting ads between every single paragraph…
Nah. He’s an asset of his American handlers. Stephen Miller is the person driving this Greenland thing (but what are his reasons?), Trump himself would’ve forgotten that the whole island exists if not reminded about it. Now, of course, it has also become an ego and legacy thing for Trump and he can’t walk back without being somehow convinced that he won even without getting Greenland. But that’s going to be almost impossible with Miller whispering into his ear.
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