Only fitting for the guy - everything he does is based on a lie.

It was a 5-4 decision. Thomas agreed with the majority, or rather, his vote constituted the necessary majority.

With this decision the Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court and effectively stopped the recount of votes, resulting in George W. Bush winning Florida’s electoral votes and thus the presidency. Here you can find a summary.

Whether Al Gore would actually have won with the recount is impossible to say with absolute certainty in retrospect, since the votes were not recounted. However, it was a neck-and-neck race, and numerous indicators suggested that Gore would have won - it was considered likely at the time. And that is precisely why it is scandalous imo that the Supreme Court prevented a manual recount, as this would have made it easy to verify the will of the Florida citizens without any disadvantages.

Overall, I think it’s fair to say that many aspects of this election were rather flimsy.

If you’re interested in the somewhat strange events surrounding this election, you can find the complete documentary “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election” here. This documentary is a bit sensationalist in places, but it does highlight some of the rather undemocratic methods that were used.

Hope that’s what you were looking for.

“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

If you cannot identify this line…

“Obviously, you’re not a golfer.”

Not so fun fact: Even back then, a certain Clarence Thomas was involved in the Supreme Court decision that prevented a recount of votes in Florida (source), which would likely have resulted in Al Gore’s election victory. And: Also even back then, this Supreme Justice was associated with a certain billionaire named Harlan Crow who supported him with various favors - he continues to do so to this day.

Google Workspace (GMail, Meet, Calendar Drive, Docs, Sheets, …) is a popular alternative to MS365 among companies.

The Republicans control both houses of Congress. But the usual rules don’t seem to apply anymore. Isn’t Trump currently starting a war without the approval of Congress?

That would be desirable, of course, but I wouldn’t count on it.

German here: The overwhelming majority of politicians in my home country are also doing everything they can not only to silence voices denouncing the genocide of the Palestinians, but also to actively support these crimes against humanity, among other things by supplying weapons - all this while invoking “our historical responsibility.” This seems almost worse to me, especially because I am convinced that the majority of the population firmly rejects this and wants the opposite course - namely, to hold these monsters in Israel accountable for their crimes.

I am truly ashamed to be German, and I think many of my compatriots feel the same way when they read the daily horror stories from Gaza and have to admit that we are actually promoting this barbarism on the part of Israel. It’s enough to make you cry.

Yes, it still amounts to billions in additional tax revenue, which is of course paid for by US citizens rather than the manufacturing countries – but this sum is probably already reserved for the planned tax cuts for the super-rich.

The plan is presumably to finance Trump’s private army through additional cuts in healthcare, environmental protection, education, and all other areas that are counterproductive to fascism.

I’m not a US citizen, but I think this country is screwed.

It’s clear that ICE is morally bankrupt, but I thought that its restructuring into a secret police force would be financed by these absurd import tariffs, which are so broad in scope that they are basically tantamount to a massive VAT increase.

Yes, even I, as a European, have the impression that the US system has become so infiltrated by criminals that it has itself become a significant part of the problem. I mean, it couldn’t be any more obvious when even a constitutional judge like Clarence Thomas no longer has to be ashamed of his open corruption – and that’s been the case for decades, if we’re being honest.

I would say that this corrupt system is what makes organized crime possible in the first place. This system is broken beyond repair because it not only fails to fulfill its function, but actually achieves the opposite - so imo: it cannot be repaired from within.

Specifically, with a functioning legal system, an obvious criminal like Trump would never have become president, because he would have been in prison for decades. Instead, he is now president and is exploiting the legal system for his crimes.

The fact that no one has yet arrested Trump shows what a farce the US legal system is – it has absolutely nothing to do with justice or fairness, but rather facilitates organized crime on a massive scale.

They won’t be able to afford advertising if they have as many customers as turned up for this ridiculous birthday parade. Unless Putin and people like that become customers again.

If not, the US president will be their only advertising medium - that guy won’t stoop too low.

The US is a failed state. There’s no other way to put it.

Ja und beim lieben Herrn Merz klingt es zudem ohnehin immer nach: Eigentlich sollte ich ja die Interessen der deutschen Bevölkerung vertreten, aber tatsächlich bin ich als Ex-Blackrock-Deutschland-Aufsichtsratchef und aufgrund meiner zahlreichen Verstrickungen etwa mit der Atlantik-Brücke vielmehr Berufslobbyist im Dienste von US-Konzernen, weshalb mir die deutsche Bevölkerung komplett egal ist ¯_(ツ)_/¯

In my experience, teams has performance issues, consumes a lot of system resources, and has a confusing, unintuitive interface. I also find it outrageous that the teams app adds itself back to autostart every time you use it.

I also have concerns about where my data is stored and how it is processed.

Yeah, I’ve been there too – it’s really sad that people are so incredibly incompetent – I had this happen to me even with an advertising agency that makes millions in sales, where we were the client. It’s really unbelievable. These are all highly paid people and they have no idea what they’re doing. Really just empty talk and not the slightest bit of substance behind it.

Yes, I’ve also experienced this several times. However, I still don’t understand what the problem is with contacting customers who use Teams via some other solution. I can only explain it with ignorance that borders on incompetence.

Yes, that’s clear, but I think Teams is still terrible even in this situation. I really can’t imagine a use case where this app would be a good choice - even if everyone uses Office. What are the advantages? What are people doing that couldn’t be done with any other solution? I realize that it’s probably mainly because employees are set in their ways, but is there really an objective reason why it has to be Teams? And as I said, I mean that even if you ignore the data protection nightmare that this application is.

Edit: Sorry, I probably misread that. I assume you use Teams because every employee has an MS365 subscription anyway. That seems like a waste of money to me tho, because every Office app can be replaced with a free open source app – except perhaps in the few cases of Excel power users. But that’s just my opinion – in corporate practice, things look very different.

Apart from all the absurd stuff MS does with user data, I simply cannot understand why people use Teams - it’s a terrible app for video calls.