I feel like Jeffries is the guy who vaguely knows he is supposed to act like a Democrat without understanding what it really means to be a Democrat.

He only uses that when he’s making proclamations. Otherwise, he usually signs his messages “President DJT”.

This new Radical Left legislation VERY UNFAIR to our Hardworking Members of Congress! They spend day and night advancing our America First agenda and working for the American People! I urge Leader Thune and all other Patriots in the Senate to immediately VOTE DOWN this extreme Proposal! Otherwise, I will be forced to VETO THIS HORRIBLE BILL as President of the United States!

I am deeply offended by that. I worked in a municipal government for several years and I can assure you that there are plenty of Republican civil servants who take their jobs just as seriously and act with as much impartiality as their Democratic counterparts.

Like I said, to dismiss someone as “biased” only because they have the opposite political orientation is Trump-level reasoning.

I don’t consider mere membership in a political party as very strong evidence of bias. There are only two viable political parties in America and “membership” is nothing more than ticking a box on a form. Even I’m technically a Republican despite being a “woke lefty” because I just wanted to vote against Trump in the 2024 primary election and because it causes the Republican Party to waste money mailing me “get out the vote” campaign material which I immediately throw in the recycle bin.

Civil servants are allowed to have political leanings. This doesn’t make them automatically biased. That is Donald Trump-level reasoning. Just like he was wrong to attack the New York prosecutor who happens to be a Democrat, I’m not going to attack this guy just because he happens to be a Republican.

Am I reading this wrong? The article seems to indicate that he’s just a civil servant prosecutor? Is there any indication of bias?

Ah yes, the Trump starvation agenda.

The more I hear from this woman, the more I feel like there might actually be a decent heart deep down inside who wants to better her country, but is being hindered by an incredibly stupid brain that is calling the shots.

I’m going to make a prediction if they are going to release a list of some sort with names on it:

1. They will redact names by using black highlight using computer software and then destroying the underlying text information by printing it out and scanning it, or something similar. This would prevent the most obvious form of getting around the redaction (which is extracting text information from underneath the highlight).
2. They will make the rookie mistake of using a proportional font like Times New Roman for the names, which is a font wherein each letter has a different length, instead of a monospace font like this one where all characters are the same width.
3. An investigative journalist will notice that one of the redacted names is exactly the same length as “DONALD JOHN TRUMP” typed in the document’s font, and then applied black highlight over it.

It is unusual for a US president. Name one other president who did something like this.

They are trying not to remind China of their continued existence

While that’s how it started, most Taiwanese people don’t think of themselves as Chinese any more.

The people who consider themselves as solely Taiwanese people outnumber those who consider themselves Chinese by 2 to 1. The Taiwanese government can’t do something like change its name to the “Republic of Taiwan” without starting shit with the People’s Republic of China. So they figure sticking with the old name of the “Republic of China” is less llikely to cause problems.

A lot of geopolitics in general revolves around people trying not to start a conflict over something dumb rather than accepting obvious truths.

I think that’s not what the author was trying to say here. He’s saying that recognition should be granted on an objective basis based on whether an organisation claiming to be a state is able to exercise the powers of sovereignty, without respect for the political implications, and that if Palestine meets the requirements, then Taiwan definitely does as well, so it’s unfair to not also recognise Taiwan.

Like the others have said, all major distros are fine. Ubuntu is or used to be Valve’s “favourite distro” and the package that you can get from Valve’s website is for Ubuntu. That being said, software on Linux should be installed using the package manager (the Software Centre) and not downloaded from the Web.

You may wish to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS later. This is fairly easy (you can use the Software Updater application) but the newer versions have better drivers and newer GNOME versions which may bring better performance.

Arch is the one thing that should be absolutely not recommended to beginners. Even implying that it is a suitable beginner distro in any way like you have done in this comment is only likely to drive away users when they inevitably get confused.

Existing Windows users mostly are not interested in even knowing of the existence of the Arch Wiki. They will just give up and conclude Linux is shit.

I understand you are playing the devil’s advocate here, but this is a legally misinformed take. There is a legal doctrine in American law called the “anti-commandeering doctrine”, which states that even though federal law is supreme to state law, the federal government may not “commandeer” organs of the state government by requiring them to perform actions in furtherance of a federal policy. Hence, it would be illegal for the federal government to require states use their law enforcement resources for immigration purposes.

The State of Colorado in particular has instead chosen to explicitly forbid its law enforcement agents from expending state resources to enforce or aid in the enforcement of federal immigration law.

In the United States, the Constitution states that in order to take your land for this purpose, you must be compensated fairly. Of course, “fairly” in terms of market value did not amount to very much, but compensation was paid and even dilapidated housing in so-called “blighted” neighbourhoods were still worth something and the cost does add up when you’re knocking hundreds of houses down and having to pay thousands for each one.

There is no easy way to withhold the taxes because the State of California never touches the money. Most of the federal tax revenue from California is remitted directly to the Internal Revenue Service by individual taxpayers.

I’m not going to pretend that I know the whole picture as to why this project is so severely over budget and behind schedule (there is likely nobody on Earth who does), but let me give some pointers as to why countries like China have built hundreds of thousands of kilometres of high-speed rail while California struggles to build a few hundred.

For one, the legal environment in China is one of the prerogative state. “Rights” in China are whatever the Government suffers you to have or deems it expedient to honour. So if you “own” a piece of land in the middle of the planned rail route, the Government will just kick you out. What are you going to do, sue? In the US, environmental laws, land rights laws, and legal procedural law mean that anyone who can spend $50,000 on a lawyer can cause $1 million worth of headaches for the high speed rail authority using the American legal system, which believe it or not, actually sometimes holds the State accountable to the law.

Secondly, in China, the Government has an unprecedented control over the economy that allows it to offer carrots and sticks to a degree that American politicians could only dream of. Yes, you have no say on whether the Government will order your house demolished to make way for an expressway, but in return, if you go quietly, you’ll get a flat in a high-rise in exchange and generous monetary compensation. Raise a stink, and you’ll be paid three strawberries and a steamed bun for your house instead.

Thirdly, under Chinese property law, all land in the country belongs to the State. Everyone else can only lease it from the State.

IIRC there’s still an ICANN fee that has to be paid by the registrar per domain registered