“Android fans”

i don’t think our political views differ much. But I wouldn’t let them have this word, for it has a meaning that is bigger than them. You say conservatism has never been wanting to keep society as is, I’d say it is exactly that, and I would fight these so called conservatives by pointing out that, as you said, they’re only conservative when it comes to their positions of power. If you allow them to own, so to speak, the term conservatism, then people might fall for these movements, because they feel the world is moving to fast, things of importance are being lost and should be conserved. It doesn’t work to say: but anyone who knows about politics knows that the conservatives don’t actually conserve anything of importance, because many voters know very little about politics. They need to be called out, we shouldn’t except the frame that they’re the ones conserving, while they’re destroying the planet, the wellfare state, society.

I’m actually a member of the dutch green and workers-parties, which are fusing into one new party this year and will then change their name to Progressief Nederland, and despite being happy with the party, I am strongly uncomfortable with this name. For I don’t feel I am progressive in many if not most senses of the word.

I wasn’t so much thinking of them joining the EU, but of them being in close collaboration and with more or less aligned values as the EU, rather than our worst enemy. I agree it might not be a good idea to have such a huge country in the EU.

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Within politics these words are still context dependent and used to describe all sorts of stances and are open to various interpretations. It’s an umbrella term. To claim otherwise is simply besides the facts. I know lots of leftwingers who call themselves conservative. About liberalism and anarchism, yes you might use those terms in those ways, and that is actually being done all the time.

People tend to underestimate the enormous success of the EU. It can be seen in the economical developments of Poland and the Baltic states. Ukraine saw it and wanted in on it. Russia knowing that if Ukraine too would ‘fall’ to democracy, Russia itself would inevitably follow. So Navalny needed to be killed, Ukraine invaded, the EU sabotaged. Hungary was their pawn. Not only could Hungary halt EU decision making through veto’s, they could also be used in propaganda. How can Putin be all bad if even this EU country sympathizes with him? The EU will now be very inclined to make Hungary as succesfull as they can. It’s too early to celebrate, the Hungarian government will still be filled with lots of Fidesz bureaucrats. And the new government may still be inclined to use its ties with Russia. But the past decades have proven that the cheap Russian oil can’t compensate for the corruption that comes along. Magyars anti-corruption stance is pretty much saying: we want to model our country towards the EU examples, not Russia. Lets hope Magyar succeeds and other countries follow. Lets hope that eventually Belarus and Russia will rejoin the European family. The world has much to win here. The US not understanding why they need to support Ukraine tells us they don’t care much for democracy anymore. It’s understandable that if your government fails to supply you with decent living conditions, you won’t be inclined to support helping out other countries on the path towards decent government. But both can be done at the same time: focus on sorting out your own government, while simultaneously supporting other countries on the same path. The EU has been the driving force behind multilateralism. If we want a rules-based order, if we want to save the planet, if we want a better future, we want a strong EU leading the way. We want to support nations in their striving for democracy.

Conservatism of any kind is right to far-right.

What a bizarre statement. If I want to conserve social democracy, workers rights, unions, public infrastructure, etc. where as my political opponents want to ‘liberalise’ or downgrade them, that makes me a left-wing conservatist.

So do people who get training from the taliban, mark there payments ‘taliban training’?

ListenBrainz is used to track your music listening habits. So you just use whatever application you are using now, and submit the listening data to LB. This page should help you find if what you’re using now to play music is compatible with LB somehow. If you’re on Android I think you can use the ListenBrainz official app, but personally I have no experience with it, since I only listen to music on laptop/

Yes me too. I have no idea.

Yes I think it is like you describe.

Here is someone from MetaBrainz explaining why.

Yes, there is not a feature for private profiles. If your listening data is a privacy concern to you it’s better not to use LB.

MetaBrainz is a non-profit dedicated to open-source and open-data. So if people don’t like the algorithms LB has integrated, they can just build their own.

About not delegating your brain to machines, that’s a fair point, and I would encourage people to consciously choose where to use machines and where to use their brain. If you enjoy searching for music, it would be foolish to delegate it to a machine. For me personally though it’s usefull, using an algorith here allows me to spend energy on other things that are equally stimulating for my brain. I particularly like LBs ‘fresh releases’ feature, which gives you heads up about new releases by artists that you’ve listened to.

• Eavesdrop.FM, submits Plex music listening data to ListenBrainz
• phooks, a python script that submits local Plex listens using web hooks and file lookups

source: https://listenbrainz.org/add-data/

Fair enough, personally I don’t mind using algorithms as long as they are fully transparent

I agree on the social aspect lacking a bit. But who knows, ListenBrainz got better and better over the past years, perhaps with more users there will be more demand for social functionalities aswell, and perhaps they’ll be implemented in the future. LB was very rudimentary when I signed up, it’s nice seeing it grow and improve.

How will drones ever cross the moat?

You’re right. It’s easy for me to hold this position, given that I’m without kids, without specific health problems, and live in the Netherlands where I have more than enough vacation days to spend.

Got one thing to add, that’s not contradictorary to what you’re saying but I just would like to share: I think we overvalue long distance holidays. People fly to the other side of the planet, but never visit beautiful places at 100km distance from home. We mistake the possibility of going very far away, for that being more desireable than going places relatively close by, which is not necesarilly the case. In saying this I don’t want to begrudge anyone and I don’t mean to say it’s not a legitimate thing for someone to want to see certain parts of the world some day.

We need everything to be available instantly, because we need our time to be bored and watch TikTok.

Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari who spoke in a talk of his about how even kings back in the day, generally speaking people who get a lot of information handed to them all the time, when they needed to travel the country, they would have a week off and be detached from all the news whilst sitting in a carriage. Here we are having all the world news available to us every second of the day. No excuse not to be up to date on anything. What a comfort…

When I travel across Europe I do so by train, and I find it to be part of the experience that the journey takes time. Last year I visited Italy, from the Netherlands, and through the train window I see the landscape floating by, the flat Netherlands, the hills in Germany, the mountains in Switzerland and then the beautiful landscapes of Italy. Due to the time it takes you get a sense for traveling, for the distance you travel. I don’t mind the time, cause I’m reading a book, which is often the most enjoyable thing of my vacations anyway: I find time to read, without any distractions.

More broadly speaking I’ve noticed that I’ve become suspicious of comfort and convenience. Nothing may take time anymore, nothing may take effort. Everything good needs to be quick and easy, available instantly all the time. But is that really better, or did we actually like having to work for something, not minding that it takes time, and weren’t we more satisfied with the relief when we finished something, feeling like we spent our time well and brought something good unto ourselves. Isn’t that experience more meaningful?

You could say this is some sort of false romanticism, but i don’t think it is. Obviously we got a lot of good things, and I am not saying we should get rid of every comfort or convenience in our lifes. I’m just saying the opposite isn’t true either, some discomforts and disconveniences are blessings in disguise.

To be fair, in Europe everyone has realized the US is no longer a trustworthy ally, and steps are being taken away from depending on our old ally. But in this proces, officials won’t speak their mind, because in some respects we are still vulnerable due to these dependencies. But that shouldn’t obscure the fact that no one consider the US as an ally anymore, and that’s not just after Greenland. Trump is single handedly destroying 80 years of collaboration and US politics is allowing him.