if they control more than 2/3 of the government [you’rre] screwed
That’s why I think confirming after 5, 10 years might be a good idea. A supermajority is rare. Unless the supermajority screws with the laws to guarantee they stay in power, the next congress might have enough votes to undo any meddling they did. If they do cement their power, then you’re screwed either way.
Rewriting the 2nd seems like a very smart idea to me.
Focusing just on the constitutional changes: it’s a bad sign when your constitution can be changed by a single political party.
In El Salvador’s case they have a unicameral legislature and Bukele’s party has 54 of the 60 seats. So, there’s no way to prevent this by requiring a bigger supermajority.
But, it seems like since a constitution is meant to last as long as the country exists, amendments to it should have to be reaffirmed or they get automatically repealed. So, there’s an automatic re-vote after 5, 10 and 20 years or something.
If they had done that with prohibition in the US they wouldn’t have needed the 21st amendment to repeal prohibition, they could just have decided not to continue the 18th which established prohibition.
With a dictator as president, and absolute control over the legislature, I would bet that those guys are also going to make it impossible for any other person to win a presidential election, or any other party to win the legislature. And then, the only way to restore democracy will be a coup or an uprising.
You know who else did that? Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, etc
And all Canada’s largest population centers are connected to the sea.
Calgary and Edmonton are large population centres, and they’re hundreds of km from the sea, and the shortest route to the sea involves going over some enormous mountains.
Toronto is technically connected to the sea via the St. Lawrence, but you can’t exactly park a container ship in the Toronto harbour. I mean, technically Minneapolis is connected to the sea via the Mississippi but there’s a reason there’s no big container port there.
There are a lot of things that can’t be grown at all in Canada that do grow in Mexico and the US. I’d love it if Canada imported more Mexican goods and stopped buying from the US. I know a lot of people in Canada are still avoiding US products / produce too.
I just wonder what Canada can sell Mexico. Mexico is part of the same North American network of auto manufacturing, so Canada technically exports car parts to Mexico and Mexico exports car parts to Canada. But, really, that’s just shuffling things around as part of a continent-wide manufacturing chain, with the imports and exports showing up in a country’s list for accounting purposes. I don’t think Canada is a major buyer of cars made in Mexico or vice versa. Canada’s other main exports are petroleum-related, but since Mexico has its own petroleum industry, they probably don’t buy much from Canada.
For some of them it’s “if you don’t want to risk your life in the armed forces, but really, really want other people to go and murder children and steal land so you can benefit, go study the Talmud”.
It’s about as narrowly targeted a chant as you can get.
It’s not about jews. It’s not about israelis. It’s specifically the army of israel. If that’s not narrowly targeted enough, what’s acceptable? “Down with the members of the IDF who intentionally target civilians but not those members of the IDF who are willing to risk a court martial to make sure that they only attack valid military targets?” Doesn’t make a very good chant.
AFAIK you can also not join the IDF by simply being extremely religious.
And if he does step down as CEO and sell his shares, the stock will tank anyhow. The only reason it’s currently about 100x over its realistic value is that people bought into the idea that Elon was this genius who was going to… well who knows. Nothing he could have done would have justified that valuation.
Yeah, even an established creator is going to have a hard time moving their audience.
If YouTube weren’t a near monopoly it would be different. Then other companies would be competing for creators.
Making it worse is section 1201 of the DMCA. It makes it a crime to circumvent access controls. In the past, Facebook was able to grow by providing tools to interface with MySpace. People didn’t have to abandon their MySpace friends, they could communicate with them through Facebook, and Facebook could ensure that messages sent on its platform arrived to people still on MySpace. But, if you tried that today Facebook has access controls in place that make that a crime. The same applies to YouTube. Nobody can build a seamless “migrate away from YouTube” experience because YouTube will use the DMCA to block them.
The governments of the world need to bring back antitrust with teeth and force interoperability.
The best part about this is that Unilever basically just bought the brand name. Ben & Jerry’s is a perfectly good ice cream, but it’s not like there’s some amazing manufacturing knowledge that Ben & Jerry’s has that no other ice cream manufacturer could match. What they are is a popular brand with well known political leanings and, with fun popular flavours.
If Unilever ever forces them out over too much activism, it would be easy for them to start up a new Ice Cream company and bring all their old customers over. So, Unilever basically has to just accept this activism or lose their customers.
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Well done everyone!
English is pretty bad at naming these things. In North-American English they’re often called "Semi"s, which is short for either “Semi-Trailer” or “Semi-Truck”. Why? Who knows, I’m guessing it’s because the trailer part is only half of the whole. The front part with the engine and trailer hitch is sometimes called the Tractor Unit. But, that’s confusing because “Tractor” mostly means the thing you drive around on a farm. The purpose is basically the same, and the name comes from the fact it’s focused on something that pulls, but farming has such a hold of the “tractor” name that that’s what people think of when they hear that.
18 wheeler makes sense for the whole unit together. It’s also good because it identifies the thing that is instantly visually unique about these kinds of vehicles, all the various wheels. But, I’m sure there are many cases where it’s not 18 total wheels. And, when they’re used as road trains with more than one trailer, I’m sure it’s much more than 18 wheels.
The Brits like “lorry”, or “articulated lorry” but where does that come from? And sometimes shortened to “Artic” which makes it sound like it’s really cold.
Other names include “HGV” for “Heavy Goods Vehicle”, but that’s confusing because it’s not clear whether it’s the goods that are heavy or the truck. Presumably they’re also used for light but bulky goods.
Oh well, dumb language, we should start over with Spanish, I’m sure their name is better.
Are those the trucks that are only able to move 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 or 13 things at once? (I’ve never heard that term before)
the Koala community
(called “Ute’s” here, “trucks” in the USA)
Pickup trucks in the USA. “Truck” is a more generic term that covers just about everything from semi trailers (a.k.a. articulated lorry, heavy goods vehicle) to vans.
The riding he’s chosen to run in is one of the most conservative in the country. The guy who’s stepping down won something like 80% of the vote.
But, the Liberals should run someone who actually lives in that riding and keeps reminding the voters there that Poilievre doesn’t live there and doesn’t know anything about his new riding. It won’t be enough to keep him from winning this time, but there’s a chance that over time it will start to matter to voters that their MP doesn’t live there and knows nothing about their riding.
The good news is that the riding he has to run in is incredibly rural. He’s going to hate it.
Poilievre is a city boy. He grew up in the Calgary suburbs. Then he moved to Ottawa to become an MP. The only job he’s ever had involving physical exertion is when he was a paperboy as a kid. Now he’s going to have to spend some time in his new riding surrounded by farmers. The biggest “city” there has a population under 20k. Everything else is towns, villages and hamlets. Assuming he buys a house in Camrose, if he wants Thai food, he’ll have to drive over an hour to get to Edmonton.
Maybe because the conservatives have such an overwhelming majority in Battle River - Crowfoot, they won’t care that he’s a carpetbagger and he won’t have to put much effort in there. But, I think eventually he’ll have to spend some time in his riding, and it will be a major culture clash.
My idea (not very well developed) was to do it once 5 years after the amendment, once 10 years later, and once 20 years later.
The 5 year window would be for obviously bad amendments that really should never have passed. You just have to wait 5 years to try to fix things because that’s enough time for a set of elections to happen and power to change hands, so you don’t just have the same people voting on something.
10 years is for something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but a decade later has some obvious problems. Something like prohibition, or new amendments that might have been written in the wake of some major event like a terrorist attack.
20 years would be so the next generation has a chance to weigh in. Maybe older people were scared of the world changing to they wanted to enshrine something in the constitution to keep the world the way they liked it. Younger people would then have a chance to reverse it.
The idea is that there’s a 20 year trial period for new amendments. If they’re still thought to be a good idea, it should be pretty easy to rubber-stamp their renewal at the 5, 10 and 20 year marks. If the support for them has faded, they automatically get repealed when there aren’t enough people to support them.
I also just think it would be a good idea for amendments to be pretty common, even if all they’re doing is clarifying parts of the constitution that are vague. Like, whatever your position on the US 2nd amendment, you have to admit the wording is horribly vague. So, rather than supreme court justices trying to determine the historical context around those particular words, or people making weird analogies between railguns and muskets, you just open up the document, add a few clarifying words, and close it back up again.