> In my experience, the bus is not a nice experience. The bus feels dirty, unsafe and hostile.
This depends very much on where you are in the world.
Full disclosure: I have visited a lot of cities/countries, approx 70k flown miles last year. I almost always try to use public transport where possible.
The last "not nice" experience in a bus was in SFO, travelling back to my hotel from the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption. Make of that what you will.
> At this point the harms to children from social media use are very well documented
Our middle child (aged 12) has an Android phone, but it has Family Link on it.
Nominally he gets 60 mins of phone time per day, but he rarely even comes close to that, according to Family Link he used it for a total of 17 minutes yesterday. One comes to the conclusion that with no social media apps, the phone just isn't that attractive.
He seems to spend most of his spare time reading or playing sports...
I commend this but I always try to think about the arguments for something like cigarettes. People didn’t buy the argument that parents need to be preventing their kids from smoking
As part of the unofficial bargain in which we limit screen time I get to spend a big chunk of my spare time driving him (and his siblings) to and from various sports fixtures.
Not my point in the comment but my personal opinion:
To regulate access to addicting material.
This is done in the physical world - why should digital be lawless when it applies to the same human behaviors?
I've been addicted to a lot of digital media parts in harmful ways and I had the luck and support to grow out of most of it. A lot of people are not that lucky.
I don't think that's what the original comment was discussing at all...
If governments want to require private companies to verify ages, those same governments need to provide accessible ways for their citizens to get verification documents, starting from the same age that is required.
> their democracy appears to be very high functioning, which demonstrates this form of democracy can work well
This probably depends on your definition of "working well".
In March 2025, after the last Federal elections were held in Germany (February 2025), but before the new parliament was constituted (within 30 days of the results?), the new governing coalition engineered a constitutional amendment which required a supermajority which they would not have in the new parliament, so instead they held the vote in the old parliament.
I added that last line as a honeypot, as part of my ongoing project on HN. No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all." I think we need an equivalent of Brandolini's law for counterpoint of negativity in all HN discussions. It is as though people think they are disproving a maths proof by counterpoint. That's not the way the Real World of Human Society works. Weirdly, I see the same pattern on Wiki pages about living people. There is always a section of a bunch of random one-off events trying to discredit the person.
To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.
> No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all."
Isn't this what's called "balanced reporting"? Life is shades of grey.
Aside: not that long ago, half of Western Europe used to look up to Germany as it was the home of "Made in Germany" and the place where the trains ran on time ... <chuckle> ... VW emissions and Deutsche Bahn, how times change.
> I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy.
I suspect we may need to hear your definition of "a highly functioning democracy" to assess that claim.
If - hypothetically - your political worst enemies were to pull the same stunt immediately after losing an election, binding the winners of said election, would you be as supportive?
> To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.
I agree with the repealing of the debt brake (it was a dumb idea that lead to badness, exported right across the EU), but there's no question that how it happened was pretty un-democratic. Like, procedurally it's fine but it was essentially making a big change in a lame-duck session of Parliament.
None of this disputes the notion that Germany is a high functioning democracy, but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy. The sad part is, they will be entirely correct in this particular case.
Another idea for the debt brake: What if they set strict limits, like a max of 3% for 7 years, or 5% for 5 years. Literally, you have a "bank of GDP percent points". You can gain them by running a surplus and spend them by running a deficit. Start the initial bank balance at 25%.
> but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy.
NASA is taking steps to potentially roll back the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after overnight Feb. 21 observing interrupted flow of helium to the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage
> Since I could tell which “state” the airport is in from looking at flightradar clearly there is a pattern. However the pattern is not easily definable [..]
Errm, what? "Not easily definable"? Based on what?
I've just opened FR24 and in less than one second I can tell that they're currently doing Westerly ops, which isn't a surprise.
Arrivals: 27L
Departures: 27R
You don't need to "predict" what they're doing, you just need to look at where the aircraft lining up to land, and (on the other runway) where they're departing from.
(Full disclosure: have done many hundreds of LHR flights over the years...)
any memorable moments? one of mine was noticing we were circling for about 15 mins, then I realised we had to fly into what looked like a massive nimbus cloud. It was the realisation that gave me a good memory , all fine tho
StackOverflow as built back in the days of Web 2.0 where the idea was that user generated content formed in the days of the (relatively) altruistic web.
There isn't any clean way to do "contributor gets paid" without adding in an entire mess of "ok, where is the money coming from? Paywalls? Advertising? Subscriptions?" and then also get into the mess of international money transfers (how do you pay someone in Iran from the US?)
And then add in the "ok, now the company is holding payment information of everyone(?) ..." and data breaches and account hacking is now so much more of an issue.
Once you add money to it, the financial inceptives and gamification collide to make it simply awful.
Trying to say "give us your payment and tax information so that we can pay you $0.13 for your contributions" would be even more insulting than not paying anyone.
Doing renumeration for people in some countries could get legally challenging too.
Except it seems that it's often large companies - typically those with lots of lawyers - who seem to get away with what I can only describe as "corporate misdeads" most regularly.
"Following regulation" sounds great until it's revealed that corporate lobbyists have been helping (co-)write regulations to make sure that fair competition is quashed.
It’s interesting how people can apply thinking like “there are problems, it’s not perfect, better not to try” to government, but also be pro starting businesses
This depends very much on where you are in the world.
Full disclosure: I have visited a lot of cities/countries, approx 70k flown miles last year. I almost always try to use public transport where possible.
The last "not nice" experience in a bus was in SFO, travelling back to my hotel from the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption. Make of that what you will.
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