It’s been a decade.

Since the Invasion of Crimea, NATO has been placing troops near its boarders with Russia, especially in the Baltics.

There should be a penalty for prosecutors who torture people to force them to make false confessions.

I think you mean police? Prosecutors generally don’t question the accused, except maybe in a trial.

Sure, hate capitalism all you want, but it’s the system we live in

As pointed out in the first paragraph of the article, “Lakota Language Consortium” is a nonprofit organization. While NPOs operate in our capitalist system, you expect them to have goals besides pure profit.

this is a notebook with an Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60GHz (2 cores, 4 threads) with 8 GB RAM and installing and upgrading on xubuntu 23.10 was already really, painfully slow.

Have you put an SSD in there, or are you still running on spinning rust? In my experience, even a cheap SSD will make a huge difference.

I wouldn’t recommend installing a distro just to install a different DE. IMHO, you should be fine with cinnamon. I’m using Linux Mint 21.3 with cinnamon on an x201 (Thinkpad released in 2010), though I did up the RAM to the 8GB max. However, if you want XFCE, is there a reason you don’t want to use Linux Mint 21.3 with XFCE? If that’s no good for you, I’d recommend finding a distro that fits most of your needs right out of the box, maybe Peppermint Linux or MX Linux?

It’s literally in the article:

…the U.S. announced on May 28 that it had suspended operations so repairs could be made.

The United Nations said on Friday it had still not resumed transportation of aid from the pier to U.N. World Food Programme warehouses.

I’m not even sure if terms are necessary, though I don’t mind the idea of a long term where at the end, Justices would have to be re-nominated. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) does just fine with lifetime appointments (though we do have mandatory retirement at 75).

I think we could tinker with rules and procedure (for example, instituting strong codes of ethics), but I think what SCOTUS needs is a change in cultural norms, and that’s extremely hard to bring about. The process for appointments to the SCC and SCOTUS are very similar, yet SCOTUS appointments are highly politicized while any “seemingly political” appointments of judges in Canada have faced huge public backlashes.

I think there are many differences that created these cultural norms but IMHO, one of the biggest is the politicization of lower-level judges (as well as other positions). This interweaves law and politics, and it’s not unheard of for members of the judiciary to jump into full political-positions and back again. This is very different than Canada, where we also have many lawyers who enter politics, but that basically closes the door on ever entering the judiciary.

I agree with your message, but as a Canadian, I always find it funny how Americans throw around “unelected” as a pejorative. Very few countries hold elections for anything that isn’t a professional-political positions. Maybe I’m biased from my experiences, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with judges being unelected, they should be apolitical and follow a code of ethics.

I don’t think anyone should be locked away in Gitmo. It doesn’t matter how bad a person is, they’re still a person and shouldn’t be exposed to torture, abuse, etc.

Even then, “locked away for life” seems pretty extreme.

I by no means love Kamala Harris, but she’s not “just a woman,” she was a strong candidate period.

So, if you don’t have an Apple/Android device (and the app installed), you just can’t use web-banking? That’s pretty crazy!

If it was me, I’d be worried that Alito would use his contacts/indirect power. You don’t get on SCOTUS without a TON of networking. Side benefit: plausible deniability since it isn’t direct retaliation.

I think I’d still prefer to use a 3rd-Party TOTP app but at least Steam’s app adds some value by pushing a notification when you login.

Is 20% the rule where you live? The article says the down payment is 3%.

I know that’s the case in some markets, but I think it’s pretty close in most places. Especially when you consider the other expenses of ownership like maintenance, property tax, insurance, etc. I know in my situation, we have a few hundred dollars a month more flexibility by owning instead of renting.

I disagree. If borrowers are unable to afford a down payment, that almost certainly means they have very little financial flexibility, which is necessary when owning a home. Now, I’m not trying to blame borrowers for this scenario. They are living through an affordability crisis and are almost certainly affected by the housing crisis if they are renting (as opposed to living rent-free/light with family). By allowing zero down mortgages, it’s treating a symptom, but letting the underlying causes fester.

I didn’t realize New York was an “At-Will Employment” state. As a Canadian, it’s so weird that NY is one of the most progressive states, yet feels so far behind us (and we, in turn, are so far behind many European countries).

I don’t know specifics of New York labour laws, but I know they’re much more employee friendly than other states (though that’s a pretty low bar to clear). I know some speech is protected, so the content does matter.