Basically: Resident enfranchisement. It's weird, when people born in our country and having lived here their whole life can't vote outside of local elections. My own father, for example, had a Dutch background, and was never allowed to vote in federal elections until his death. (Neither he nor I even spoke/speak a single phrase of Dutch)
Yes, things have gotten somewhat better and easier with applications for citizenship, but that there are hurdles like that to begin with, is a bit.... weird.
archive.ph - link without registration wall
The investments are being placed through opaque structures known as special-purpose vehicles, which have the benefit of concealing the investors’ identities, to avoid the ire of US authorities and companies wary of Chinese capital during a nadir in relations between the two countries.
Asset managers behind the deals have told investors that the entities are specifically designed to avoid disclosure. The use of special-purpose vehicles in financing is commonplace and there is nothing illegal about the arrangements.
Still, it raises concerns about the potential for undue influence and conflicts of interest at a time when Musk has unprecedented involvement in US policy, politics and business.
Funnily enough, to me personally, there are more questions about what this means concerning Chinese politics and conflicts of interests in the future. The country is not without its own tensions, after all.
The inflow of Chinese capital into Musk’s business empire is primarily profit-driven and has little to do with technology transfer or influencing public policy, according to people involved in the transactions.
With a sluggish domestic economy, wealthy Chinese are looking abroad for investment opportunities.
To me, personally, it serves as a reminder that no amount of red flags waved or social-democratic laws saying "wealth is going to serve the interests of the working class" makes a country communist, only material realities can.
Besides that material interest, there is also cognitive dissonance because of ideological distortions. If you believe things were fine before Trump, you were already adept at closing your eyes to problems. Including very fundamental problems, which helped to put the clique of billionaire grifters and outright fascists into power.
Don't choose Germany, though, we (and a lot of nations, actually) still for some reason have citizenship-by-blood/heritage laws more or less straight out of the 19th century, not citizenship-by-birthplace laws.
Funnily enough, I had never gotten one on my old account which was >4 years old on .ml - but after I made this one on my own instance, in less than a day, I finally got one.
Sadly, as I'm not from the US, it would not really help me (in fact, make it harder). Funnily enough, Iceland was actually occupied by the US during World War II - which they did pre-emptively, worrying the Nazis may pull off another stunt like with Norway and endanger shipping from there if they don't.
It's: Eggshell-predetermined-breaking-point-causer
God damn, if I had the money, I'd escape to Iceland. Has been a dream for a long time now, but it just gets more and more desirable.
It's a simple choice, really, considering how many hours I managed to invest as a kid:
Hmm, I wonder if that value for the UK ~2005 is just a statistical artefact, or if something culturally happened to temporarily create more homophobia in the late 90s/early2000s.
(Same but less pronounced US ~2010, but that looks more definitely like an artefact to me)
I understand concerns about fragmentation, but recently, I have been more and more in favour of "why not both" as an approach. Basically: One de-facto "central" community, and many local communities. Main reason being, that this will help the Fediverse grow without losing it's "soul" so to speak. Where - hopefully eventually - there will be those central communities with a reddit-like experience for the topic, and then also local ones, where smaller communities around the topic, without the traps of large, "mainstream" communites, can form.