Ah, so that’s what you do with suspects… And admittedly he was suspected, so all is well here.

I’m not in favor of wishing death upon anyone. I find it all rather distasteful, but Bobby Vylans views seem in line with US death penalty practices, don’t they? Death to those who commit the terriblest of crimes.

Nor should you, no one does. And you’re not alone with this question, seeing the upvotes. So it presumably helped others.

Refugees are a group of people that’s very heterogenous. They don’t have one common way of treating Denmark. Except for the ‘asking Denmark for asylum’ of course.

Denmark does treat refugees a certain way, if by Denmark we mean their government, and not Danes in general. The government has certain policies which define their treatment. Basically they’re trying to win the race to the bottom: ‘treating them worse than other countries do’, hoping refugees will go to other countries instead. It’s a shortsighted tactic because now we here in the Netherlands as well as in other countries, are joining the race to the bottom. Which means collectively we are losing our humanity, while still largely getting equal amounts of refugees at our borders. Unless of course you’re willing treat people so poorly, that even a warzone is more acceptable. But what in the world are we defending if we are willing to lose all human decency over it?

It also would still allow parodies and satire, so some of the standard doctrine of fair use would still apply.

one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court

I’m against the notion that ideas can be stolen. I mean, you can keep an idea to yourself, choose not to share it, but if you share your ideas in whatever shape or form, it’s there for others to do with as they please. Or atleast, despite that not being the case, in my opinion, that’s how it should be. You can of course disagree, but in my view the idea that the first one to come up with an idea, can plant a flag on it and then own this idea, is not helpful. Rather it is limiting, it is holding us back. I think humanity as a whole functions better if we can use eachothers ideas as we please. Humanity functions by copying eachothers behavior and ideas and occasionally improving on them. Like with FOSS, if an idea is improperly executed or can be improved upon, even if just according to some, it is helpful, that the idea can be forked.

Like I said, I prefer to focus on patent law first, rather than copyright law. But fundamentally I think there is no difference.

Yes, Intellectual Property must go down. People often think positively of copyright, thinking that no one would support artists if they weren’t forced to, and that artists couldn’t possibly make a living if it weren’t for copyright. I think we are rich enough that if we were to share it properly we could give everyone, not just the talented, time and resources to create art. And I think the talented would still gain advantages by being talented, people want to support artists that mean a lot to them. But to be fair, limiting or removing copyright is not only not that popular of an idea, it’s also the least of our worries, cause it mostly concerns entertainment purposes.

Patent laws is where we need to act. To give a clear example: patent laws mean that excessive amounts of money goes to pharmaceutical companies, This is always defended by saying that they in turn will invest this money into research. The problem is

• They spend far more money on marketing than on R&D, which effectively means that you’re often not getting the best medicine, it means your getting the best marketed medicine.

• When money does go to R&D, the research that’s being done, is limited to that which benefits the pharmaceutical company. This is an unacceptable limitation. For example it is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to to cure disease, it’s far more commercially attractive to make it a manageable chronic disease, where you rely on medication for the rest of your life.

• Companies will not share their knowledge. For a company these are trade-secrets that could benefit their competition and if you have to compete obviously sharing knowledge is not in your best interest. But if you want to help humanity forward, obviously you should.

• Drug prices are often excessively high, in part because of the previously mentioned marketing costs that you pay for.

Neither of these problems would exist if R&D was funded by governments and charity. And the pharmaceutical is just one industry that’s taken as an example. The way that intellectual property is holding humanity back can not be overstated. Basically we need to go free and open source on IP,

I feel like there is momentum in Europe to switch to FOSS. Europe knows that the US cannot be trusted any longer. And this cannot be undone. Europe is striving for independence. Huge amounts of money are being spent on military sovereignty right now. All of us here on Lemmy know digital sovereignty is equally important. Recently an ICC prosecutor was cut off from his MS account because the US doesn’t like the Netanyahu arrest-warrant. These things don’t go unnoticed. It shows that technological dependance is not innocent, it can and will be used against us.

We need to use this momentum. Get involved, mail your representatives (municipal, provincial, national, federal), get petitions running, mail newspapers, go to political party conventions and get this on the agenda. It won’t fix itself. This problem is somewhat abstract and the solutions are just slightly too complicated for the general public. Most people don’t know what FOSS means. If we want this to change, those who see it and understand what needs to be done, need to get in to action.

If we were to rank people on the basis of how far they are on the path towards enlightenment, without a doubt Jeff Bezos would have all the world in front of him.

Aside from the pricking scandal, what a fantastic idea.

On “Fête de la Musique” people are urged to play music outside.

Here my country is stuck with Christian holidays that noone remembers the meaning of.

The US & UK supported the 1953 coup d’état to secure their oil interest. “Economically, American firms gained considerable control over Iranian oil production, with US companies taking around 40 percent of the profits” The Islamic Revolution is a response to this. If the west wasn’t as imperalist, who knows what could’ve become of Iran.

But to be honest, there’s no way western forces will take over control in Iran. Though it’s at a technological disadvantage, their military is huge, as well as their population of more than 90 million. Then there’s Pakistan that has threatened to get involved if the US does. Then there’s Irans proxies, though they’re in a relatively weakened state for the moment. But Iran has allied millitias all across the region. Then there’s China depending on the Iranian oil. I mean, if you want to force your way into World War 3 this seems like a brilliant idea.

How many apps did you ask them to download?

Personally, I only asked for this one, and everyone who is of importance to me chose to do it.

Surely this will work wonders, they’ll never recover from this. Also they won’t have any incentive, because why would you even consider building a bomb in such a friendly environment? Why would there need to be an axis of resistance, let them surrender unconditionally like Trump suggested, because clearly Israel and the US are to be trusted. If only these damned Iranians remained at the negotiating table while we bombed the shit out of them unprovoked. I guess they don’t want peace. /s

And religion. Quite some Christians love Israel, no matter what, because the Bible. Yes, it’s a fantastic argument. And as long as the victims are muslims, they’ll support Israel. If you’re not disgusted by the wars in the old testament, why would you in present day?

For clarification, this just concerns Schleswig-Holstein, not the entirety of Germany.

(Somewhat unrelated to the subject, but I felt like writing my thoughts on Iran in general.)

Iran being a Shia theocracy seems repressive and backwards to us, and surely they are as theocracies tend to be. This means that thinking about Iran westerners tend to think they themselves are on the good side, while Iran is on the bad side. But this is fundamentally wrong and the west is clearly the bad actor, given that it does not have any legitimate interests in the area and only engaged for imperialistic reasons.

If you look at Iran’s history you’ll learn that the Islamic Revolution of Iran was a response to western influences, and those western influences came along with the 1953 coup d’etat. And this coup d’état was supported by the US & UK. And the only reason this was done was for the purpose of oil. It was in reaction to Iran trying to nationalize it’s oil industry, which obviously was a good idea, but bad for the western imperialists. So you install a puppet regime, that begs for a revolution, and surprise surpise, there’s a revolution and it happens to be religious and conservative. So ever since the people of Iran have been stuck with it’s theocracy, Undeniably this is in part the fault of the West.

Then of course there is the anti-Israel stance of Iran, which is constantly used as proof of Iran being evil. But if just for a second you try to look at Israel from the perspective of someone from the Middle East, you’ll see that Israel is a colonial state, founded by zionists who from the very start commited ethnic cleansing to secure their state. The Nakba isn’t talked about much in the west, but just try to imagine a similar event happening in your region of the world by foreign powers, and you’ll understand the impact that would have. That is not forgotten after a few decades, especially because Israel is still driving people from their lands and colonizing it till this very day. This isn’t ancient history, this is in the present. They even returned to committing genocide all over again. Also, Israel has been the base for the US influence in the region and all the wars and interventions that come with that. How can you possibly expect Iran to not view Israel as their mortal enemy? Just imagine a Middle Eastern colonial state located in Europe or the US, created by ethnic cleansing the local population. We’d view that state as a mortal enemy and want to drive these people of our lands. I am not saying this is the proper thing to do, I am saying it’s obvious that this sentiment is broadly shared. It’s hardly surprising. Victims tend to have harsh views of those who attacked them.

And Iran is being attacked again, supposedly for developing nuclear weapons. Meanwhile Israel has had nuclear weapons since the 60s. But in the views of westerners this is not a problem, because Israel is good, being a democracy and all that, while Iran is bad, being a theocracy. But these are all just western frames. Why in the world would a bomb be in safe hands with a hyperagressive colonial ethnostate that has repeatedly engaged in ethnic cleanings? But not in the hands of an admittedly backwards, conservative theocracy, that wants to secure itself from western imperialism. The Iranian interest in having a bomb seems completely reasonable actually. Again, just imagine a Middle Eastern colonial hyperagressive ethnostate founded by the ethnic cleansing of your local communities. And now they have nuclear bombs. And not only that, Middle Easterns powers are constantly engaging in wars all across your region. Would it be unreasonable for you to also want a nuclear bomb in such a situation? It’s a no brainer.

And as much as I dislike theocracies, I can’t help but think that if the west wasn’t as imperialist as we have been and still are, Iran would’ve developed into something completely different. Iran/Persia has always been the center of regional powers, from the Achaemenids 500 bc till today. It’s a beautiful country, they have a beautiful and rich history and they have an incredible culture, from the Islamic geometry, to the persian miniatures, to the incredible Sufi poets. You can’t expect a proud people as they are to lie back and be dominated by western imperialism. And the more you repress people, the more they’re bound to turn to theocractic conservatist populism.

TL:DR we’re not the good guys, Iran are not the bad guys.

Where is this though? Here in Europe unemployment rate is at all time lows.

Quite happy with my fairphone running /e/OS. So far I’ve not needed to replace anything, except for the battery which was getting weak. So I bought another battery, and I’m keeping the other one as a spare battery.

If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don’t only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.

If the EU invests massively in free and open source software, pretty soon all across the world countries will hop on the FOSS-train.

If FOSS catches on, it shows to the world the power of collaboration. A power we have mostly forgotten, thinking that competition is a better idea. But competition alone is shit. To give an example. Here in the Netherlands we’re very proud of ASML, a company that makes the machines needed to produce microchips. They’re famous because they’re unique, in that no other company is able to produce these machines. It’s a competitive success, but obviously it’s holding us all back. If they’d share their knowledge companies across the world could try to improve on these machines, speeding up innovation. I’m supposed to think China’s corporate espionage is a crime, but to be honest I feel like not sharing such crucial information with the world is the actual crime. The power of collaboration is easily underestimated, let’s give it a try.

Kidnaps are and were never common. It’s one of the most overrated risks that parents worry about. And also one of the most disastrous especially in the US, where people, riled up by media, seems to find it irresponisble to let your child roam around the world unwatched. Whereas experts have shown again and again that this is important for the childs development.