Libb

I don't think I need to spend that much money on my current hobbies. But I obviously could

• A real lot of pencils, a lot of Bic and a lot of paper to write with (and to make paper planes, too). Like a good chunk of a lifetime worth of supply :p
• A lot (but already a little less) of top quality watercolor paint (that I don't need to enjoy my hobby watercoloring), too many top of the line watercolor brushes (that I don't need for my hobby either) and a lot of excellent watercolor paper (that I may enjoy using but still don't really need for my hobby ;)
• The entire line of Caran d'Ache 'Luminance' colored pencils and the entire line of Faber Castell 'Polychromos' colored pencils, in multiple examples. But why would I need that many colors when I use maybe 10 or 12 regularly?
• I do a lot of scratch building also using... cardboard. SO, a 1000€ would buy a few decades, centuries?, worth of cardboard and fresh hobby blades too. But since I mostly used recycled cardboard from old packages and parcels... I won't need to buy those.

Back when I was making scale models (plastic planes and tanks) I could have easily spend that In a couple hour in any hobby shop worth shopping at, buying a few fancy model kits, too much paint and some of the fancier tools, plus reference books. Or on a single camera lens, but that is another hobby I quit practicing. Or on some rare books... which I also quit collecting. It looks like I won't be able to spend much money :p

Like with every single other day of the week: I welcome it and do my best with whatever it gives me.

• "Klaatu barada nikto"
• "Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha"

The first one is a classic. The second one may not be as familiar but still is a great movie ;)

I'm not hardcore anything but I quit using Reddit and have not looked back. I also don't use any other social, even tough I own other accounts I have not logged into for many years.

Why I don't see myself hardcore? Because there is no hate, or anger and no desire to preach anyone to switch either. I respect people's choice. I disagreed with a few of reddit decisions & their policy change back then and took my decision accordingly. I posted a goodbye note explaining why I left reddit and switched to Lemmy. The same with X, Facebook, or whatever: when I realized I could not trust those services, I told people around me and moved away.

I don't date/wed a religion, or a god. Only a person.

That being said, there would still be the obvious limit that I would have to like (and be liked by) the person which, as far as I'm concerned, would most probably exclude some of the more... extreme religious beliefs.

Not enough to compensate for the coming war(s), I'm afraid :/

EU leaders to discuss measures aimed at making single currency more attractive on global markets

Simple, one just need to follow the USA, step by step:

1. Tell all other countries you altered all the deals you had with all of them. Tell them they now must spend a lot more of their money to buy your stuff, while you will buy a lot less of theirs. Tell them you will also dictate them what their laws and regulations should be like because fuck them.
2. Require them to also arm themselves and stop relying on your own armed forces like you asked them to do for the last 80 years or so, because you suddenly decided that was a shit deal. But don't let them buy any weapons of their choice, nope, tell them they must buy your weapons, those you have the hand over the 'off-switch' just in case the suckers would one day decide to fight against you.
3. Shame/ridicule/insult and threaten anyone disagreeing with you. Insist on shaming and insulting and threatening your closest allies even more so than your lifelong enemies, as that will teach them the trustworthy and reliable partner you're.
4. And if that's not enough, well, there is still the possibility to kick their fucking stupid foreigner ass with your big manly bombs that no one as one as big as yours and fuck you all, losers.

Sure, that's hastily summarized but I would say it remains quite true to the much more subtle original.

No doubt the orange clown will sign an executive order making it mandatory for anyone on the planet to send money to the US (not for us to go there, they just want our money not us), otherwise they will bomb their home.

a “symptom” of a larger erosion of trust between the United States and Europe.

Erosion?That's no erosion, which would be a slow natural process.

What happened is that Trump, in his usual delicate manner, put a bullet in the head of the US alliance with the EU.

And then, even it's not been officially acted yet, they also put a bullet in the head of NATO too. One just need to listen to mr Vance first Munich speech as vice-president. Sure, unlike his boss, mr Vance is not an illiterate pig, quite the contrary he is one of the smartest and brightest politician I can think of, but the message was still crystal clear: we the EU are on our own.

And then, seeing how Trump is willing to use 'his' economical power and 'his' armed forces to play bully against any country he disagrees with or that doesn't play along the US rules or doesn't pay the USA enough for his 'protection' (like some shitty gangster racketing local shop owners, in an Hollywood movie), I have little doubt what the USA would be willing to do to the EU (and to its too many rules and regulations) if they were given the opportunity. POTUS himself explained to the world we Europeans only exist to "screw America".

If that doesn't say it all about the state of any alliance between us I don't know what will.

And that's not just Trump being Trump. I mean, US people elected this clown twice meaning that's the kind of leadership they want to follow. Why keep on pretending the dude is merely an accident and that thing will get back to 'normal' after him? Normality is Trump-like. When mr Vance will become the next President he will obviously be (a lot) less illiterate and (a lot) less dumb than Trump is, but he certainly will not make us an ally again. They don't give a crap, that's their policy.

It's rarely a good idea to elect an hateful angry monkey as a leader, we can all agree on that but can we also all agree that the issue is never the monkey itself but the people deciding to put it in charge. And those people,they don't seem to me that much willing to change for the better, I'm afraid. Hate and violence seem to be the only plate on their menu, it's just the color of the name on the menu that's different.

The USA has made quite a few dumb decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decisions that mostly managed to strengthen their true enemies and rivals while weakening their rare real allies. This is just one more decision like that, but a huge one.

I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.

Welcome :)

It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.

This a very interesting metaphor, real spot on.

But I would say a lot of that rural Internet has not disappeared, not yet. It's still there, very much alive. People are simply not visiting it anymore. They don't dare go outside the pretty walled-gardens they're used to.

But those people wanting to stay parked in their corporate-owned gardens, or silos, doesn't make that small and more humane web go away. And would they chose to, they could still come visit it freely, they could still easily interact with their creators. They could even create and tend to their very own part of it, making that small Web a richer place.

They just don't do it. Most of the time because they can't be bothered with doing the actual work, or because they're afraid to try and to fail. They want to be fed easy to eat content, not learn to cook it themselves.

They want the a Web that is like those shitty fast-food serving standardized and over-processed industrial food. Something ready to eat that is barely food at all but that will stuff their belly and, more importantly, that will never surprise them. Alas, this food is as much a poison for their head as it is for their body. They will realize that too late. It probably already is.

Too bad, because the alternative is still a thing, not that far away.

The small web is still a thing. Many blogs still exist that only share content their author sincerely care about or is interested in, that are ads and tracking free, that respect their readers... But the majority of people have quit visiting them, they simply don't go outside of, say, YT, X, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok or whatever where they can all stay together parked like the cattle they have not yet realized they have become.

Back to your original metaphor. Digital rurality is still there and many could easily own a small part of it and make it exwactly like they want it to be, and be happy with it. But they prefer staying in the large over-crowed cities, in small overpriced apartments like most their friends are doing.

Lemmy is a great alternative to reddit but it could relatively easily become another silos—just plural and not corporate-owned but silos nonetheless. It's up to us to keep it open to the alternatives. I mean, sometimes I feel sad to see little posts & comments inviting people to go read/watch something they liked that is not already hosted on some corporate-owned platform. Heck, sharing personal content feels so much like a lost cause to me that I seldom share a link to my own blog posts: why bother? I also publish a lot less often than I used to, here again: why bother?

The real info would be 721 million divided between 281 researchers (less than 3 million each).

Personally, I'd rather see that nice 700 million budget be used to focus on a handful of selected priority projects (I don't care of they're senior or junior researchers) but that's just me and since I don't have 700 millions I probably do not know what I'm talking about.

Also, being the EU, my very naive idea would then raise the question: what are the selection criteria and who is to decide? And since it's the EU that would lead to the creation of a commission that would study the criteria to use and who to ask, and then to a new commission studying the result of that first commission, and then a new commission deciding of it's worth using those results validated by the first two commissions because of the public perception that day, and so on and, suddenly, we're already 25 years late.

But, I insist, I have no idea what I'm talking about ;)

Using your example, you could be lying.

True that. It's even more interesting considering 'Libb' is not my real name, just the one I fancy using online. But I would say that it's beside the point of your question (which was not about the possibility one would be intentionally telling lies, just how much data makes a 'fact' reliable), still, it's obviously related.

But then... considering that for some undisclosed reason you could not get access to more (source of) info, how would you decide if I say the truth about my name or not, when at the same time next to me some people (more than one) are claiming I'm a liar and that my name is Gertrude? Maybe that can't be decided? Or that should not be? Or mayb the dude claiming his name should be given some extra credit? Or maybe not (I may say I'm but I doubt Elon Musk will admit I'm his natural son and that I should therefore be entitled to a part of his huge piles of money, plus change for the trauma I endured ;)