bluebarbet (u/bluebarbet)

bluebarbet commented on Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial bbc.com/news/articles/cp8... · Posted by u/onemoresoop

belter · 2 days ago

Alabama has GDP per capita higher than Finland? Hard to believe....

Maybe you can afford Universal Health Care after all...

bluebarbet · 2 days ago

Above all it's great example of why we'd do well to drop our quasi-religious fetishization of GDP as an indicator.

bluebarbet commented on He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over washingtonpost.com/lifest... · Posted by u/wallflower

pksebben · 5 days ago

That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern).

Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us.

But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

bluebarbet · 5 days ago

Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport.

But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.

bluebarbet commented on He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over washingtonpost.com/lifest... · Posted by u/wallflower

BeFlatXIII · 5 days ago

What are those reasons?

bluebarbet · 5 days ago

The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.

bluebarbet commented on Is it a bubble? oaktreecapital.com/insigh... · Posted by u/saigrandhi

ares623 · 6 days ago

The alternative is to be f*cking honest

bluebarbet · 6 days ago

This contribution adds nothing to the conversation except gratuitous venom.

bluebarbet commented on EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance reclaimthenet.org/eu-coun... · Posted by u/fragebogen

hrimfaxi · 19 days ago

Does your definition of censorship require everything to be viewable by anonymous users?

bluebarbet · 18 days ago

Does your definition of disagreement require that it be made harder for others to hear voices you disagree with?

bluebarbet commented on 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/n1b0m

Loic · 24 days ago

Durable is really the French household name "par excellence".

bluebarbet · 22 days ago

You mean Duralex. And maybe not just in France. My British school canteen was monopolised by Duralex too.

bluebarbet commented on Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next? disassociated.com/persona... · Posted by u/gnabgib

bccdee · 24 days ago

> This is not primary content

In a forum, the discussion IS primary content. That's the problem: Reddit has shifted away from being a discussion forum toward an endless-scroll content feed.

> Here we're all nobodies to everyone else. For my part I try to remember that fact - and get to the point.

Kind of an odd turn of logic. If being a nobody devalues your anecdotes or tangents, then it equally devalues your point. If, conversely, your point can be valuable in and of itself, then your anecdotes and tangents can be valuable in and of themselves too.

> Yes, here we can scroll past it, but [...] This is not primary content (that's at the top).

Incidentally, you don't have to scroll past anything to reach the content at the top of the page. It's at the top of the page.

bluebarbet · 24 days ago

My point is that the primary content at the top of the page has a byline. It's already vouched for, somewhat, by the reputation of the domain, or publication, or author. We have an idea of whether to spend our time investigating further. By contrast my rando comment (or yours) has nothing to recommend it but some opaque username. That's why I (and I'm betting most people) will scroll right past the "autistic weirdo"'s wall of text. And why I personally choose to try not to write that text.

bluebarbet commented on Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next? disassociated.com/persona... · Posted by u/gnabgib

HeinzStuckeIt · 25 days ago

Social media might be getting less attractive for that, though. Compare Reddit now to ten years ago, and you can see that even on more serious subreddits, everyone’s comments have become very short, often little more than a single line. If one posts a couple of solid paragraphs as a reply, one looks like an autistic weirdo info-bombing.

bluebarbet · 24 days ago

>If one posts a couple of solid paragraphs as a reply, one looks like an autistic weirdo info-bombing.

As one should. The rando who spams a discussion thread with an impenetrable wall of text is like that guy who uses their "question" at the end of an in-person panel discussion to ramble incoherently for three minutes. Yes, here we can scroll past it, but it's still presumptious and annoying. This is not primary content (that's at the top). Here we're all nobodies to everyone else. For my part I try to remember that fact - and get to the point.

bluebarbet commented on Lawmakers want to ban VPNs eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11... · Posted by u/gslin

bogdan · a month ago

You can buy a Hong Kong esim in China that has access to everyrhing. You can use any vpn service and it just works. The only place I had trouble was the airport wifi but shadow proxy works fine. So I don't know what you're talking about

bluebarbet · a month ago

>So I don't know what you're talking about

All this did was to inject venom into an otherwise civil exchange.

bluebarbet commented on Reminder to passengers ahead of move to 100% digital boarding passes corporate.ryanair.com/new... · Posted by u/teekert

bluebarbet · a month ago

A "boarding pass" was always a redundant document anyway. As are "tickets" whenever ID is required for the service in question. The ID has a number on it, in the system that's the ticket. In police states like China, tickets are a thing of the past.

That flying - an entirely unsustainable mode of transport - is now widely viewed as a commoditized consumer good is already a form of ethical collapse IMO. Now this. We need regulation. But for that, people need choose it, to vote for it.