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Tuukka R @ Tuuktuuk @sopuli.xyz
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7 mo. ago

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • Many of the things (e.g. healthcare) that the US is laughed at by Europeans is partially because the US spends so much on things like military that Europe doesn’t because they have been relying on the US.

    Nah. USA uses more money per capita for healthcare than most European countries do. It's not that USA doesn't have money for healthcare. They just have elected to spend it in a different way than European countries have. Since they can pay their current more expensive system, they could also switch to the European system that costs less money.

    I don't hate America. I just think USA is a country where people want to have politics that are not efficient and that it's a country not fulfilling the basic reasons for why a country should exist in the first place. It's a country where the individual is subservient to the system, and I don't really like that idea. But that doesn't mean I hate America. I just would not want to live the American way. And, although I am here in this echo chamber (which it is, indeed!), my colleagues and basically any person I meet here in Finland share's my views on America, including USA.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • Absolutely they do. But not all countries have systems in place for collecting the money in the sending country. I've had to pay customs duties for thing's I've received in Finland, so clearly they were not paid in the sending country.

    But it's also irrelevant that they they collect duties. Others would like to do the same, there just is no way to do it, for now. Later there probably will be, and then the deliveries will be continued.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • I don't think those countries have figured out how to ship. They just ship and hope for the best. The package might be returned or it might get stuck, a way to pay might appear, some-something. They can also end up in trouble and getting fines for having delivered shipments to USA soil without paying customs duties beforehand. No way to know in advance what will happen.

    Sending through them might work. And it might be that it sometimes does, sometimes doesn't. Again, it's a game of lottery.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • There is a limit under which the shipment is duty-free. Been there, done that. The declartion takes some 10-ish minutes of time. And there's a system in place for that.

    But, here the problem is that USA refuses to accept the money from any other organizations than UPS, FedEx and DHL, which apparently have some kind of back channel they can use. If I import something from China to Finland, I get a message telling me I'll need to pay up. It then asks for the value of the shipment and the type of the goods and spits out the sum I must pay. Once I've paid up, the shipment will continue.

    But the US demand is that exclusively the sender pays the money. And the US has no system in place for receiving such payments, so there is no way of paying them. For now.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • There the recipient apparently pays, but the formal recipient is a company in US. In other countries, it works so that when you're getting a package, you are asked to pay the tariffs, and once that's done, they receive the package.

    But USA now refuses this (except if it's DHL, FedEx or UPS, which is a funny ruling), so instead, the country sending the shipment must collect the money and relay it to USA. But, USA refuses to tell them how much money they should be collecting, and it refuses to tell them where to send the money to. Big guys at DHL, FedEx and UPS probably know some specific people in the White House who have made this work out for them, but not all postal companies on this planet know people in the White House.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • Then probably there is a system in place between UPS/DHL and the US customs. But there is none available for the national postal organizations. I don't think UPS is going to just open its computer systems for all possible countries to use.

    (Also, DHL? Isn't that the postal service of Germany? Germany's postal service is listed as "Germany" in the above list. Are you sure DHL hasn't suspended those shipments as well? If it hasn't, then Germany shouldn't be on the list!)

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • ...and pay a random amount of customs fees. Can be done, but can get quite crazy. It's better to let the few big guys handle those shipments for now than 30 different organizations trying to set things straight with the US customs.

  • 25 countries suspend postal services to U.S. over tariffs: UN

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  • In a way yes, but how is China getting much stronger a problem of Europe only?

    (Also, the strategy of "We want to be an unambiguous military hegemony, because that earns us influence that can be converted into big time economic boons. Therefore, we'd ask you, Europe, to refrain from having powerful militaries. That way, you can invest that money in the good of your own people. You won't get the economy we will get, but you will be doing better than without this deal." has been good for Europe, but better for USA. Now that it ends, it's likely that eventually EU will be a bigger military might than USA, which then translates to all kinds of interesting economic consequences for USA. I'd guess they'll for example have to pay off their debt once they no longer are a hegemony. Dum-dee-dum. I haven't ever liked this strategy very much, because it leaves us vulnerable, and I haven't felt sure that USA really wants to help if shit hits the fan. As it apparently doesn't, which means that the deal is off.)

  • Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple

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  • Why not?

  • Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple

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  • I guess they really are. Much of the decisions are based on what TikTok tells people to think. Facebook allows for Russian influence, TikTok is steered from Beijing.

    The idea of "USA shouldn't make electric cars" dies come from China, and exists precisely in order to put USA into disadvantage.

  • Groom dies of injuries from celebratory gunfire after wedding in Turkey

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  • Since it happened after the actual event, when the newlywed couple was on the way home to, errm.., I guess the bride's sister was pissed drunk and forgot where to aim the celebratory gunfire...

    Anybody know anything more precise? I tried reading some Turkish news sources for more info on this, but found nothing not already told in English medias.

    Some Turkish forum probably has more. Anybody onow where to look?

  • A Linux user's nightmare: the machine was wiped clean with one click

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  • Almost nothing is ever really done on any filesystem when you press "delete". The only thing is that those physical parts of the disk with the "deleted" file are marked as "not in use". The data is there still unchanged, until you save something else and that spot on the disk is the first free spot available for saving that new file.

    So, if you accidentally delete files, make sure that nothing gets saved on that disk anymore, not even by the OS. So, either unmount the disk, or cut the power to your computer, or whatever. Then learn how to mount hard drives as read-only and how to mark the "not in use" spots on your disk as "this spot contains this file".

    This is why proper deletion of files always includes filling the disk with random data. As long as nothing has been written on top of where the file was (and in reality: still is), it's still there. Only access to it has been removed, but that access can be regained. Been there, done that.

  • 7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux

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  • It would make sense that developers would support their game as played through Proton, which is not really that different from just making a proper linux-native game. It should work just as fast both ways.

  • ‘Absolutely Disgusting’: Trump Sparks Fury By Joking He Can Cancel Future Elections If U.S. Gets Into a War

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  • Probably he does, but at the moment his support is strong enough by enough of margin that it's clear he'd win an election anyway if it was held now, so this is kind of moot.

    (And then he'd be the president for the next half a decade, which might be already right after the end of the war no longer what the people in Ukraine want)

    I think it's a bit of a stupid rule to have in your constitution, and I think it was probably written before 2014 when Ukraine stepped into democracy (or even before 2008, when it started seriously heading towards proper democracy). But as bad as I find the rule, it's currently in the constitution and wasn't added by Zelensky.

    It does make sense that at a time like this you do live according to the constitution. Organizing elections would be against the Ukrainian constitution, and it would be a bigger problem with democracy to break the constitution than it is to postpone an election.

    Especially since in the current situation an election would be massively unrepresentative. (What do you do with a mail-in election when the Russia destroys the whole warehouse where the ballots, or at least the ballots from a whole province, are stored?)

  • ‘Absolutely Disgusting’: Trump Sparks Fury By Joking He Can Cancel Future Elections If U.S. Gets Into a War

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  • Well, for that there are other ways as well. Elections are for making decisions. Popularity can be polled in easier ways as well.

    But what I asked was why is it relevant that Zelensky won't stay president very long of he somehow loses his support among the people? It's a self-clarity, so I was interested in knowing why you chose to mention that.

  • ‘Absolutely Disgusting’: Trump Sparks Fury By Joking He Can Cancel Future Elections If U.S. Gets Into a War

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  • Of cpurse Zelensky won't be able to hold his position if his popularity nosedives. That's a simple answer to a simple question.

    But how is that relevant? His popularity isn't going to nosedive in that manner anytime soon.

  • ‘Absolutely Disgusting’: Trump Sparks Fury By Joking He Can Cancel Future Elections If U.S. Gets Into a War

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  • It makes a big difference whether the war is in your own country and touches everyone, or if it's waged elsewhere or touches only a small part of your country.

    US Civil War didn't have 500 drones flying to various cities across US each day and night. If Ukraine had elections now, there would be queues on the street and those queues would get bombed by the Russia. I don't think this would have been a risk around the time of Pearl Harbour.

    What is your suggestion for how the elections in Ukraine could be organized safely and so that the result would be reasonably representative?

  • Brazil's top court rules US laws do not apply to its territory

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  • A far smaller scale? Show me where USA has ever done something like what the Russia has done in Groznyi, Aleppo, Mariupol and Bakhmut?

    When was the last time USA spent a night sending several hundred drones aimed at civilian homes? And when was the last time the Russia did not do just that?

    What about the Kakhovka dam? When was the last time USA caused such devastation anywhwere at all?

    I mean, I've been in several demonstrations against many wars waged by the US, and I most likely will attend many more, and I stopped buying US-made products when the Iraq war began. But come on, what the Russia is doing is in a whole other league compared with USA.

    And of course I know about Hawaii. Just blatantly overthrowing a country's leadership and taking over it in such modern times is apalling. But have you ever heard of Siberia? Did you know that it is nowadays a part of the Russian Federation? Ever read of that? And then, if you look at Mali, South Sudan, Belarus, Libya, Kazakhstan, and Syria, the amount of pain and horror caused for the locals because of Russian meddling in their countries has been huge. Yeah, regarding that, USA is doing very similar shit, but they do at least cause less destruction than the Russia does when doing the same.

    And USA has Guantanamo, but the Russuahas twenty of those.

  • Brazil's top court rules US laws do not apply to its territory

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  • Why is that a relevant difference?

  • Brazil's top court rules US laws do not apply to its territory

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  • Uh... The Russia? Isn't that country doing the same in a much bigger scale, even?