Could you please define this. As it stands authoritarian is the thought terminating cliche of choice for the unintelligent and uneducated to avoid having to investigate and reckon with the questions of substance such as class content of the state, state form, satisfaction of the people with the government etc.

Normally I don’t respond to low level comments like this, but the intellectual laziness here is mind boggling. Dictionaries exist for a reason.

The people hold them accountable, through the mechanisms I described previously

So, free and fair elections. Well, now we’re back to square one, and pretty much describing how Western democracies work.

Nordic countries offer sizable concessions to their working classes because the Soviets were right next to them, and already offered better safety nets.

Ah, yes, the soviet Union, definitely not imperialist. Sarcasm aside, they literally did not allow their population to leave. They killed people who dared to leave. That’s not a sign of things going well, to mention just one.

The state serves private interests in capitalism

Just because you repeat it a hundred times doesn’t make it true. The very mechanisms you described are used (with varying degrees of success depending on how well the democracy functions) to keep the state accountable to the people.

you’re again giving examples of concessions given largely because of working class organization, not through the “democratic processes.”

So then why are these mostly things that parties campaigned on, got voted into power for and then implemented?

Fascism is a result of the decay in capitalism and imperialism

That’s a very, very broad interpretation that many historians would disagree with. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s the case. How do these capitalist structures decay into imperialism then?

consultative democracy

Yes, but who enforces the consulting and the usage of the information gathered from consulting? Without accountability, that’s just fantasy and/or simping for authoritarianism. Let’s not forget, every authoritarian leader, party or Organisation has its supporters who will claim they’re not authoritarian.

Capitalism inevitably tends towards centralization of the essential means of production and distribution into fewer and fewer hand

Except when it doesn’t. There are plenty of examples where countries that have capitalism based economies moved significantly to the left. Look at Nordic countries, for instance.

Very few leftist parties can get anything done in western countries because the media is largely controlled by capitalists

What about all the public broadcasters? There are many countries where they’re quite strong. And as to parties getting things done, what about:

• Minimum wages
• Welfare systems
• Massive improvements in workplace safety
• Universal healthcare
• Childcare

I could go on and on, but that’s not the point. The point is that fascists are trying to weaken the electoral system because they know how effective it can be. Otherwise, they wouldn’t give a fuck. And part of the way they do that is by downplaying its efficacy in order to wear it down and eventually get rid of it.

A single party system can be more democratic if it’s a consultative democracy and reflects the will of the majority, like how it works in China

Oh really? How do you hold the people in power accountable, then, if they’re part of the only party that is allowed to exist (which that party itself decided, what a coincidence!)?

In capitalism, a tiny class of people controls the most essential means of production and distribution for society.

False, that is the result of capitalism when it goes unchecked, not the definition. And different countries have different levels of checks on capitalism.

The state represents their interests, and any parties that exist must represent them

Yeah, no, that’s not the case. Otherwise explain to me how many western countries have leftist parties and even marxist-leninist parties. It’s just not the will of the majority. Which leads me back to the point: your (or even my) satisfaction with the results don’t measure how democratic a country is, despite the FUD spread by authoritarians and wannabe authoritarians to destabilize democracies by encouraging people to not participate.

How the hell are elections not indicative of democracy? I mean, just because you have elections doesn’t mean you have a proper democracy (e.g. if there is only one party available), but how those elections are run says a lot. They’re the core of any democracy. Democracy is, by definition, the people being ruled by the people. So you need some form of governance that is accountable to the people.

And capital is far from the only thing that determines if parties are viable. Yes, it plays too much of a role (especially in the US, but there are many western countries that aren’t the US), but let’s not pretend it’s some mysterious being that decides everything. That ignores so many important factors.

Just because the majority of the people in a country disagree with you doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy. In many western countries there are (still) free and fair elections. This is verifiable. But democracy lives off of active participation, and there are people (read: fascists) who see democracy as a threat and do everything they can to sow FUD in order to reduce election participation.

…maybe because many westerners are worried about losing their democracy? I mean, when democracies Fall, they usually don’t make room for better democracies, historically speaking.

Narwhal song when?

The goal is to create a more secure version of the program. Since (safe) rust eliminates entire classes of security relevant bugs, a rust version has the potential to be much more secure that the C version. And since rust can eliminate entire classes of bugs, we can put more energy into finding bugs like the ones presented in the article.

The weaker license is unfortunate, though.

Ouch, I looked through a bit of stuff… This person seems to have been through some shit (to put it mildly) and is having trouble processing things. Reminds me of my lowest points when I was in an abusive situation as well as the time after. I hope things get better.

Doing that can reveal a whole bunch of interesting patterns. I was repairing something on a circuit board once and was trying to figure out the wiring. Trying to get more light, I shone my phone’s flashlight at it. At some point I suddenly realized that the circuit board lets a bit of light through. I realized that, at least for some of the board, I could shine a flashlight onto the other side and see pretty exactly how the circuit was laid out. It also looked really, really cool.

I get the impression there’s more to unpack here. Why does your brother feel responsible for something your ex did and you never told anyone about? I don’t think volunteering at a women’s shelter will solve the problem, there seems to be something more deep seated than that. I think therapy would do much more. He can still support domestic violence victims if he finds this is something he legitimately wants to do (and there are many ways of doing that).

EDIT: you mentioned he had a couple of dwi’s/dui’s… That really sounds more like something where a therapist could help. Again, if there still is a legitimate wish to support domestic violence victims, then that can be looked into then.

Honestly, I want to like Kodi, but even this first screenshot looks much better than anything I’ve been able to muster together in Kodi.

Technically, VBA arrays start wherever you want them to and end wherever you want them to. Thing is, since VBA is usually interfacing with MS Office, you’re heavily dependent on what the office APIs do. And unfortunately, they very often start counting with 1. So practically, you’re generally starting your counting with 1.

TIL

Unless you’re programming in VBA. But at that point you’re already fucked anyway.

How about this: it’s awful in both places. Just because another country started doing it as well doesn’t excuse anything, it means they’re now both doing something unacceptable.

Take anything the lead dev of GrapheneOS says with a grain of salt. He’s a little… Um, special.

Honestly, this reeks of spam. Let’s just look at the first paragraph:

Our isolated systems

Isolated from what?

has [sic] received multiple unsolicited incoming connections from an IP address under your control (abuse-mailbox as per RIR database).

If this is really coming from your ISP, then they don’t have to look up anything in the RIR database since they already (should) know which IP address(es) is/are assigned to you.

All unsolicited connections reported below have completed three-way handshake procedure [sic] defined per Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) [sic]. This ensures that our evidence was not tampered upon [sic] any external party posessing [sic] a source IP address spoofing capability, because three-way handshake procedure requires both receiving (device within our network) and sending (device within your network) parties to receive reply of another party to complete handshake [sic].

I’m not an expert in TCP, but AFAIK, the fact that a TCP three-way handshake occured does not prove anything.

All in all, it sounds like they’re throwing around a bunch of technical terms in hopes of sounding legitimate. If you’re still worried, contact your ISP directly (not using any links or similar from this email, but through your normal channels, e.g. by phone), and if there really is a problem, they’ll tell you then and there.

EDIT: the more I read just that first paragraph, the more I realize how broken the English is. I started inserting “[sic]” where there are mistakes, but I stopped because it would make the text that much harder to read.

Here’s the thing: lower birth rates are actually a sign of a more developed country. There are a number of reasons for this. If you can’t be sure if the system will properly take care of you in your late years, people tend to have more children so that there will be someone to take care of them in old age. If people (especially women) are better educated, there will be more of a focus on persuing careers, and children can be an impediment to that. Also, if people have better access to healthcare and birth control, many will use it. Just a couple of examples.