Yeah maybe there’s stuff I’m not aware of. I’ve seen some people on Lemmy point out that Bill Gates lobbied for the University of Oxford to not open source their Covid vaccine. I suppose that seems shitty on the face of it.

I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.

Maybe there are things about Gates I don’t know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don’t know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill’s stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.

True, it’s a long time until the next UK general election. Maybe Reform’s vote will suffer before then. Alternatively the local elections and by-elections could be a boost for them, I dunno.

Anyway, maybe we should have proportional representation in the UK. Even if Reform had 25% of the vote and therefore 25% of the seats in parliament, that would mean that 75% of parliamentarians wouldn’t be Reform members.

Our current system allows a party with minority support (potentially Reform in the future) to win a majority of parliamentary seats. In 2019, the Conservatives won 44% of the vote, which gave them 56% of seats. Last year, Labour won 34% of the vote, which gave them 63% of seats.

He spends quite big sums on healthcare I think? I’m not saying he’s a perfect guy. Maybe the world would be better if taxes were such that nobody could be a billionaire. I just think I prefer Bill Gates to other billionaires, especially the prominent South African one.

At least Bill gives away a lot of his money, and his stance on politics seems relatively sensible and measured. Whereas the South African billionaire gets a kick out of being stupid and damaging to the US (and beyond the US if you look at his comments on foreign politics).

It’s similar in the UK currently. The UK’s equivalent of AfD is Reform UK who are apparently the leading party in the polls (source):

Reform UK in front on 25%, Labour on 23% and the Conservatives on 20%, with the Lib Dems on 16% and Greens on 10%

I know people want to hate on Bill for being rich, and I can understand that, but I still prefer him to a certain South African billionaire.

Maybe some people will say that’s like comparing a giant douche to a turd sandwich though.

They do those things to some degree, but those things remain banned for under 18s, which I suppose reduces harm, even if it doesn’t fully eliminate harm.

I read this BBC article about it

Obviously if this turns out to be life that would be interesting, but it could turn out to be nothing.

If it turns out to be some moss or bacteria or other basic life, that would be pretty cool. If it’s humanoid aliens then maybe we’re screwed.

Fair points. At least with real life politicians you can find out about their past behaviour though, if you do some reading.

On the internet people can just easily lie about who they are. There might be a propagandist on social media who has a strong foreign accent, so in real life you’d know they’re from a foreign country, but on the internet you can’t hear their accent, so they can easily lie about where they’re from.

Also even just for casual interactions on social media (e.g. Reddit), I think one of the reasons that people get so angry in discussions/arguments is because they don’t have to see the face of the other person. I guess it’s like a dehumanising interaction.

Jean-Marie Le Pen got 18% in 2002 apparently, but his daughter in 2022 got 41%.

Anyway. I think it makes sense that Europe shouldn’t just allow itself to be propagandised by the USA. Maybe Europe should bring in a law saying that, for example, Musk can’t boost the visibility of his own account on X (here is a news story saying that he did that).

I suppose a properly pro-democracy social media platform would be neutral and fair, rather than boosting certain types of content.

True. Another thing that I think is artificial about social media is anonymity. In real life you can see who somebody is when you’re talking to them - you know whether they’re lying about their age, or accent, or whatever. But online you could have an American pretending to be a European, or a Russian pretending to be an American, etc. And anonymity seems to encourage some people to be more abusive and insulting than they would be in real life, talking to real people.

Anonymity might have some genuine uses though (like trying to escape persecution from your country’s government).

By that logic we shouldn’t ban anything for teenagers. But we do: smoking, gambling, alcohol, etc.

People like Nigel Farage would probably say “they’re trying to rig democracy by making you vote again and again until you choose the ‘right’ answer”. And some Brexit voters would probably believe that narrative.

I think it’s definitely possible that there will be a push from the British public to rejoin the EU, at some point. Maybe in 5 to 10 years though.

I’m not saying I necessarily agree with the idea that getting too close to the EU would be a mistake. I think it makes a lot of sense for the UK to have strong ties with the EU.

Brexit was a massive headache for Britain so I think that’s why the UK government doesn’t want to open up that argument again immediately. I guess Starmer does want to build stronger ties with Europe, but he probably wants Brexit-voters (many of whom were from poorer parts of the UK) to feel like their vote is being honoured. If they feel they have been completely ignored then they might give their support to Reform UK, Britain’s equivalent of AfD.

I just searched the internet for any news articles from 2024 about Trump’s comments on prices. Here is a video from Truth Social where Trump complains about prices rising under Biden. But now Trump is of course causing price rises himself with his tariffs.

Speaking of Truth Social, it says on that website: “Proudly made in the United States of America”. But Truth Social seems to be based on Mastodon, as indicated on one of their pages about open source software. And Mastodon was largely made by a German guy, presumably in Germany, rather than in the USA.

Also he said he would lower prices, but of course his tariffs will instead raise prices.

As the New York Times put it last year: “Trump Vows to Lower Prices. Some of His Policies May Raise Them.”

Ah okay. It looks like some people believe the summary is AI-generated though because six people (at the time of me writing this) have upvoted the comment claiming the summary is AI-generated. I really did write it myself though.

Maybe I wrote it in a matter-of-fact way. It’s just a long article so I thought I’d explain the gist of it.