fauji
7mo ago
Now this is a wild theory, but how about a quid pro quo between Macron and Le Pen. Macron takes care of the accusation so that Le Pen is cleared and NF supports the amendment for increasing the presidential term limits.
fauji
7mo ago
If the establishment's goal was to prevent the rise of Right in France(and more importantly Europe) then conviction of Le Pen and removal of her candidature on such shaky ground was clearly a bad move and will definitely come back to bite them one way or the other. On a short term basis yes this removes a long standing thorn on their side by the name of Le Penn and energizes the left leaning base with that sweet sweet nectar of schadenfreude, it does nothing but push away the patient fence sitter mulling which side they should take. Even worse it gives the Right all over Europe an agenda to rally around and a martyr to celebrate. How will the left, positioning itself to be fairer, more democratic and incapable of abusing sacred institutional machinery(positioning not related to actual behaviour) deny comparison to Erdogan's similar disqualification of his own rival using state machinery. Saul Alinsky in his influential book Rules for Radicals laid down the rule "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.", and it certainly seems that the opposition painting the Left violating their own values for political gains will reduce their power. Add in to that the fact the Gaullist positions have recently been vindicated does will also contribute to the rising Right in France.That being said it remains to be seen how the Le Pen and her allies play this situation out.
fauji
8mo ago
It occurred to me as I was transferring everything over that I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago. I can emulate more games consoles now, and I grudgingly use some of the digital wallet features, but otherwise all the years of development doesn't seem to have changed anything at all. Are there cool features or applications that I'm missing out on?
I have been trying to find the same since past year and my conclusion is, not much. There are some interesting apps I use on daily basis that might be of interest-
- QuickCursor - It just adds the ability to whip out a cursor when you perform a simple swipe at the bottom end of the screen. Very basic functionality but intutive to use and something that has defintely improved my user experience
- NFC based automation - Triggers a preconfigured task when a certain, already mapped NFC tag is swiped. for example scanning a NFC tag attached to your washing machine that sets a reminder when the clothes have been washed
- Swipe based gallery cleaners - left to delete, right to keep
- URLChecker - Let's you set the app to open or delete any trackers when opening a URL. Would only appeal to people concerned about privacy.
- Task automation(ifttt/tasker) - Fully featured task automater can make your life quite easy. For example, when unplugged from your car's bluetooth turn on wifi and connect to home network(vice versa). Opens out tons of possibility in a Phone.
- SMS Organizer - Automatically sorts your messages according to the type of message(personal/financial information/promotions(spam))
- Buzzkill - Good notification management app
- P!n -> Tool to pin text to remember on notifications
I think we have hit the saturation level on what a smartphone can do with the current app based UI design and just improving software wouldn't work. I find app based design very constricting since to chain different abilities of what a phone can do needs to be packaged as an app and then what is the point of having just another app on your phone. I see a lot of potential in new innovation regarding how we interact with our mobile to unlock new age functionality rather than bringing new ideas to current ecosystem. Something like this for example - https://sxmo.org/
It's quite clear that tariffs were introduced by Trump admin to address trade deficits rather than to reduce the other countries tariffs. This means that the biggest risk to US according to Trump administration is creation of a new reserve currency or rather a group of currencies(Like BRICS) that replaces the US dollar and triggers a balance of payment crisis in the US over both its trade and budget deficit. This also means that Trump Admin views creation of such entity as inevitable. US's earlier moves to consolidate dollar's position in international trade via threats also point to the same.
Now that has been said, what's the endgame? This is by any measure a ballsy move since the associated risks with these move. Inflation all over the world being one. Pushing Europe towards China being second. And a consolidation of anti-America alliances being third.
On the flip side, there is no guarantee that USA would lower its tariff just because you lower yours, especially for economies with higher spending power with protectionist measures like Europe. For the world the lesson remains the same as the one in cold war, being the enemy of US is dangerous and being an ally of US is fatal.
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