iii

Never learning to socialize with other kids their own age

Even when going through a normal education system, this would not happen. The difference in both ability and interests is so large that there's little shared basis for socialization. This way there's at least some socialization.

not getting taken seriously by adults until they're much older.

Why do you think that's the case?

Remember Hoekstra's emberassing speech? Like a toddler throwing a tantrum. (1)

"Under no circumstances are we going to accept this." in name of EU. They accepted it two days later as everyone ignores him anyways.

Almost none of the other countries cares for EU's opinion because the EU has shown that the greenification comes at the cost of most expensive energy in the world (1), deindustrialization (2), becoming completely dependent on foreign r&d and manufacturing. This also has military consequences, as we can view in Russia's war in Ukraine - EU promised aid it can't deliver, leading to strategic mistakes, deaths and military losses by Ukraine. This also economical consequences, leading to political instability and which will permeate to the loss of the welfare state.

We've made an exempliary role of ourselves, in a cautionary way.

We try to convince others by relying on slogans and wishful thinking, on the one hand. And shaming and bullying on the other. Should've relied instead on great engineering that others would want to follow for their own benefit. Show, don't tell.

But we've no such thing - au contraire.

the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks

I have concerns that the opposite effect may be occurring. The leading countries in addressing climate change appear to have prioritized their efforts at the expense of industrial growth, energy security, and short-term population welfare, which has resulted in economical stagnation or decline, unhappy populations and political turmoil. Geopolitically, it seems they may have overextended their influence, leaving them with little to offer and they are easily ignored in global discussions.

Developing and manufacturing nations view that approach as a cautionary example.

no public or private body of any kind has any right to any of my information for any reason without my explicit informed properly scoped consent for each given interaction.

predatory orgs

No public or private entity should access my information without my explicit, informed, and properly scoped consent for each interaction. Except that they do and that this legislation does not address this issue.

An effective solution will be technical, ensuring that only minimal information is transferred.

This legislation doesn't work because most of the world can just ignore EU law. And the government institutes, from local to federal to EU, the largest invaders of my privacy, exclude themselves from the regulation.

This fosters a false sense of security, leading to a decline in digital skepticism and privacy hygiene. It even mandates shitty technical implementations, in such a way that improvements are illegal.

This naive, shitty legislation is a net negative for digital privacy.

And stop with the emoji's you minecraft nerds. Ascii has all you need ੭˃ᴗ˂)੭

I don't know, you win

Neither of us is a winner here. This whole legislation sucks for everyone involved.

can track how many (unique) people use the site

We have to authenticate with a government ID in order to use those applications. So they have all the information to count unique users even without google tracking.

Men are people too

Annoying. I'm on xfce and would switch if they do that.

No. For example this is the website we need to use for tax reasons: https://www.minfin.fgov.be/ full screen cookie window, doesn't work if you have an ad blocker.

In order to authenticate yourself on the previous website they made this: https://mygov.be/. Also full screen cookie window. To then lead you to a download that only works on non-rooted android or apple phones. This is a NextGenerationEU project. This is the EU's vision for it's own digital future. It sucks embarrassingly hard.

In Belgium lower income people also tend to vote more extreme. It's even shown that whenever extreme right parties grow, it's usually because they convinced people that previously voted extreme left.

People who vote for the socialist party are typically retired or work for the government in some capacity.

Most people are a bit of both, no?

In reality, Europe’s political and economic system still has much more to offer than Chinese state capitalism and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Europe needs to invest more in getting that message across.

Are we sure that's the case?

Almost all EU countries are flirting with political extremism on a federal level, because of unhappy population, mismanagement of migration. France, Germany are in a political gridlock. Brexit we all remember. Slovakia and Hungary show that EU governance by concensus also doesn't work.

Industrial and energy landscape of the union is fucked. We haven't managed to partake in the technological advancements since the 90s. And that won't change soon because energy is waay too expensive, and know how is lost.

This has meant government income has stopped growing, whilst spending has only grown, and most countries have been running increasing deficits with financing becoming more and more difficult. The EU as an institute has been racking up debt, too, because their credit rating hasn't been maxed out yet. But that, too, is a stop-gap measure.

Militarily and geopolitically the EU underinvested for decades. As a consequence they can be and are being ignored, for example in the russian war on ukraine.

The only thing the EU did well is having a low gini coefficient. Almost everyone is equally fucked. Congrats!

If I was a country looking for long term partnership, I would stay away from this sinking ship, too.