Newest Edition, with less Ghork.


First thing first:
That dude of the Primitive Technology channel and all his copycats have a great advantage: access to unlimited supply of bamboo. Unlimited to their objectives. That stuff is great, tuff as shit, light as feather, can be used to many purpose with little modification and not too much work.

I also read most of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Responsibility_and_accountability
I think technology and it's use are running forward and lawmakers lag behind. Those who spent any time in the past two decades on the internet have a giant heap of data about them. I think Bernd posted a video about a security eggsbert, I think he works kind of a private investigator many time cooperating with officials and he said in that video anonymizing data worth nothing it can be de-anonymized with ease, and both companies and govt agencies do.
Now this law was passed at 2016. This year the EU countries have to start implementing it. Who knows how long it takes until it finishes. The whole stuff is kinda vague (it can be modified when necessary tho), and I don't know for example how the EU can force a foreign company to do whatever? There are sanctions but what jurisdiction the EU has over a US based firm for example Facebook and how the EU will force the sanctions onto for example said company?

Previous >>39873 hit 500

I'm fairly sure I posted Alabama 3 (A3 in the US) before. But here you go, The Telly Show Theme Song of all time.

I watched/listened this video:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8EnkhQeTgiY
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8EnkhQeTgiY [Embed]
Some grille listenes the full Reign in Blood album, for the first time, in one sitting.
Sometimes I watch music reaction videos. As always most are trash (not thrash like this one), couple of good ones, I really enjoyed this I have to say.
She really has an upbeat attitude as if she wasn't listening to songs about death, murder, suffering, and torture. And the music wouldn't be like a barrel half full of nails shaken by an epileptic mong. I like the album, it's a classic
She's right, one can hear the punk influence in it.
At 00:28:20:
>DO YOU WANNA DIE????
<No, I don't!
Cutest moment. This is the correct way of listening Slayer.

Previous thread: >>36217

Found fun informational. It's dated, I think from 2019 but things seems to be the same. Not sure about that Paris Climate Agreement tho.

As in last post in prev thread stated today EU Parliament voted back Ursula von der Leyen as the president of the EU Commission (EU govt. basically).
719 deputy
707 votes
401 yes
284 no
15 abstained
7 invalid votes
She's so dumb, and the dumbest statements she makes. She's also a bit dated, she was first elected in 2019. But it shows how strong the leftlib is, they stay in power as expected, despite all the bleeting in the leftlib press about far-right danger.

Previous: >>51681

Around 2024 December 8 (I think the real date was the 7th) Assad was overthrown in Syria and left for Russia, went into exile with some of his family. Since then the Turkish backed and Turkish proxy Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over most of the country, led by Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa aka. Abu Mohammad al-Julani who risen through the ranks of al-Qaeda to found al-Nusra Front which he turned into the HTS, and now he is the President of Syria and changed his kaftan to a suit. And Syria turned from the enemy of the US into a client or a client of a client (Turkey's client).

Syria is weak and divided. Her leaders really has to bow to their masters, I don't think they like this, but they can't do anything else since Syria can't defend herself.
To the very north the other Turkish backed faction Syrian National Army (SNA) has a small enclave still I think. In the North East in the Kurdish populated areas the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue to rule, while Turkey has a buffer zone protruding into their territory. New formation emerged in the south where the Druze minority lives, I believe they are now essentially autonomous.
During the chaos of Assad's fall Israel invaded from the occupied Golan Heights and occupied more of Syria, calling it a security zone, similar to the Turkish one in the north.
I think the event that really showed Syria's vulnerability and that it is just a toy for all the stronger states around was the Israel-Iran war, when the IDF jets used Syrian airspace to refuel, blatantly disregarding any appearance of sovereignty.

But Syria left the isolation, the US stopped with the containment policy, sanctions were lifted. Now the leaders of Syria try to establish international relations. Just yesterday al-Sharaa met with Putin in Moscow. He also met Trump and Macron too not in Moscow - which our lad Clement Molin found distasteful, if the translation is correct. I also heard they established relations with India as well. So they are reaching out to everyone they can.

As I promised I'll write about this book.
It's quite lengthy but you'll reach the end if you read at your own pace. Most of the book isn't dense for me, an economic layman, with the exception of the parts about trade, which left me confused. I'll write what I manage to understand.
The author wrote it to argue in historiographical debates and make some points, but I read it just to add to my historical knowledge.

I'll write in sections, at most one a day so Bernd doesn't get overwhelmed, and will try to make the sections more thematic rather than just a sythesis of each chapter, as Hitler himself suggests in Mein Kampf for how one should mentally organize knowledge. I want to write about:

-Trade and controls of foreign currency and raw materials
-Budgets and revenue
-Agrarianism
-Businessmen and workers
-Consumer goods
-The fate of different industries
-Rearmament
-General progression from 1933 to 1939

If I give up on writing I hope at least to cover the prewar period. I also hope to write on:
-Armaments priorities until 1940

The past years of witnessing an... "active" Supreme Court have gotten me pondering a lot about constitutions, powers and interpretation.

First question is: can a constitutional court be wrong about the Constitution? Does it have an absolute final say on the meaning of its words?
The obvious common sense answers are no and yes. Only the court's opinion has authority. A layman's opinion is just his opinion, and even a learned scholar's opinion is just an opinion. Even the lowliest judge has more authority than the highest scholar, and the only limit on his interpretation is an overruling by a higher authority (an appelate court). The Supreme Court has no higher authority.
This is obviously necessary because laymen and especially civil servants need legal stability and predictability. There are thousands of civil servants and they must all apply the law equally. If each of them has his own take on what is legal and what is not, the State collapses into anarchy. Hence they must all follow a single entity's interpretation. And there's also a citizen's gneeral duty to obey authority and channel his disagreement into legal methods to question and overturn authority.

But what if the Court says something outrageous? What if it rules the Earth is flat according to the Constitution? What if it revises the law on impeachment of Supreme Court justices to make them harder to impeach? (This one actually happened.)
Cheapest answer is that they wouldn't do it because the text's inherent meaning constrains their rulings. But this is just a speedbump. Philosophers demonstrate there's no such thing as an "un-interpreted" meaning of a text. With enough sophistry, any text can be made to mean anything. And the legal profession selects for the most devious sophists.

One can reply that only a limited set of interpretations can be reasonable, interpretation is never completely free. This is true. But who gets to say what is and is not reasonable? Only the Court has authority. If everyone finds their rulings unreasonable, that's just everyone's opinion.
A practical answer is that the Legislative and Executive will use their legal methods to restrain, impeach or change the composition of the Court. All of this still presumes that their flat-eartherist interpretation of the Constitution is right until overturned; their authority is still sacred.
And if it is sacred, what are you supposed to do if all such reactive measures by Congress or the President are ruled unconstitucional? What if the President names a new justice and the sitting justices nullify the appointment because the Constitution says justices must be qualified and they find him unqualified? What if Congress impeaches a justice and the Court strikes down the impeachment because the Constitution dictates a neverending march to utopia and Congress was merely disagreeing with the justice's utopian ideals?

Now those are silly made up examples, but if the Court's word is unquestionable, there's nothing you can do. The Constitution is whatever the Court says it is. And since everything from the tiniest private contract or local ordinance derives its legitimacy from the constitution, the Court has the unlimited power to bestow and withdraw legitimacy as it sees fit.
This is obviously false if you understand separation of powers and checks and balances. The courts ought to have their power checked by the Executive, Legislative and the original Constituent Power, which is above all three.
But what does it mean to check a power's decision? It is overriding it because it's illegal i.e. it is found to be incompatible when compared to the law. Those are two objects for comparison. The latter (the law) is not an independent standard but it is whatever the courts say it is. If the courts determine the two objects of comparison, they determine the result and there is no way to check them. What does it even mean to say the courts derive their power from the Constitution when they define what the Constitution is?

A year passed and again this day commemorates the foundation of Hungary, this is 1018th birthday. We celebrate this national holiday with listening to politicians mixing irrelevant daily politics into historical events in the morning and watching fireworks in the evening. Budapesterners can witness the procession of state founder Saint Stephen's Holy Dexter. Also all the local communities have their own little celebrations.
This is the third time I make this thread, and I won't post much, maybe I'll post something about what happened today - if anything interesting - later.