RunawayFixer

Is this from Spain?

It sounds like what they are doing is clearly illegal and you probably could do a lot of people a favor by complaining to the authorities.

Generally for the eu: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-003934-ASW_EN.html "If users receive unsolicited communications after having withdrawn consent, they can file a complaint with the national regulatory authority. In addition, they have the right to a judicial remedy before national courts."

The responsible agency for Spain: https://www.aepd.es/

This seemed like such an arbitrary law that I went looking for it and apparently it's a small committee (4 persons*) rule that was poorly substantiated. The rule itself has been shot down by an appeals court in 2023, but the industry obviously had already set plans in motion to change their product line ups.

"On September 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the CPSC’s rule on custom window coverings. The court agreed with WCMA that CPSC failed to provide an opportunity to comment on the underlying incident data, conducted a flawed cost-benefit analysis that ignored the enormous harm that the rule would have caused the multibillion-dollar custom window coverings industry, and selected an arbitrary effective date for the rule. The CPSC acknowledges that the industry will need at least 2 years to develop completely new products. So the six-month effective date would make it impossible for the window covering industry to create proven safe replacement products."

https://suncoastblinds.com/understanding-the-cpsc-rule-on-window-coverings-and-the-appeal/

• I'm not from the USA, so to me it seems very weird that this is how decisions with far reaching consequences are taken. In the eu legislation like this gets putten through the wringer in the eu Commission, probably also voted on by the eu Parliament, and then still given years preparation time and back and forth between industry/lobby groups/government. But instead this was: 4 non elected people take a vote and those 4 see no issue with a 6 month deadline. Wth, what a rugpull this would have been for the industry.

Edit to add: that rule that lost in appeal in 2023, was from November 2022, so maybe it does go in effect in november 2024, since it seems like that timetable was the biggest issue for the industry. Just speculating though, can't look it up atm.

Are you doing research for a personal project or just asking for a friend?

Reporting what questionable government sources say without enough due diligence is not the same as supporting the actions of that government. If I say that Davy was beating up Mark because Mark stole his cookie according to him, but then it turns out that there never was a cookie, then me wrongly reporting about the cookie does not mean that I ever approved of Davy beating up Mark.

I found that the NYT editorial board opposed the war in an opinion piece that was released just prior to that war, so I'm of the opinion that they opposed it. Probably as one of the few media outlets in the USA.

And I find it funny that the first and most prominent article in the pbs link is the NYT criticizing the reporting of the nyt, that's promising at least. The smh article reads like it's written to lay the blame for being dragged into the war with someone else, a narrative of "we were all duped, if only we could have known beforehand and we would have acted differently", conveniently ignoring that there were enough other international sources that called out and demonstrated that the wmd evidence was very flimsy.

Do you have examples of that support? Or an article/report that lays it out.

When I looked for it, I only found the opposite; https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/opinion/saying-no-to-war.html

Imo it's much more likely to have never been an actual piece of fruit. The story is probably an allegoric warning for some taboo subject and now we can only speculate on what was originally meant.

My theory: Adam and Eve were convinced by Adam's one eyed snake to fornicate, but then their dad found out and kicked them out.

It always takes them a bit of time to pivot talking points. I imagine that whenever a pivot is needed, there's a bunch of drunk higher up russians having meetings to come up with new ideas, then all those ideas get thrown out there to test them, they measure clicks and responses to figure out what works and once they find something that sticks well enough, the frontline trolls will receive the new talking points and playbooks.

We've all see some vile attacks against Walz and especially Harris recently. But unfortunately for Trump and his foreign supporters, drunk macho fascists coming up with ideas to attack the character of a non Caucasian woman, does not produce ideas that resonate well with the democratic left. So they were unable to find something new that had enough zing and they went back to their golden classics of pushing a 3rd party and the "both sides" argument, for now anyhow.

In 2022 there were some stories of how people on work visas were unable to jump ship while others were fleeing en masse. And now after all the tech layoffs in the USA, I imagine that finding another company to sponsor their visa, has become a lot harder still. So that's one group still working there: people who will be deported if they lose their job.

In a non first past the post voting system, it's less likely that 1 radical party remains in power long enough to screw up the high courts. But it can still happen, case in point Hungary and Poland.

Iirc, Orban had been in power for many years in Hungary and went for a gradual erosion of the independence of the courts. Death by a thousand cuts.

Pis in Poland only had a majority for 2 election cycles, but they needed only the first win to screw up the courts. Instead of a gradual (legalistic) takeover, they went for a bonkers hostile takeover of the supreme courts: https://freedomhouse.org/report/analytical-brief/2018/hostile-takeover-how-law-and-justice-captured-polands-courts

The eu should have kicked out both states out of the decision making process and implemented sanctions, but since that required unanimity, Poland and Hungary were essentially protecting each other from consequences. Now that pis lost in Poland, I hope that the eu takes action and prevents this from happening again.

I'm absolutely certain that it wasn't ads that put a firm like TomTom on a downward slope. This was actually the first time that I've heard someone proclaim that ads are the reason.

If your business is to sell maps + navigation devices for money and then the times change and now nearly everyone already owns a smartphone with built in gps + some car manufacturers provide sat nav as a default + another company is giving access to a map away for free, well then your business is in trouble.

I've never even heard of ads in TomTom or Garmin, since I stopped using a dedicated sat nav once I had a smartphone, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was one of the things they tried to stay afloat after smartphones became ubiquitous.

"but also provided psychological protection by shading the face from close scrutiny. "

To me it feels like this was made up by some spoiled twat, who couldn't stand that people that they thought were socially inferior, wouldn't show the expected obeisance by removing their hat in front of their "betters".

I consider as most effective, the system that is most effective for the whole market in the long term, not the system that only works best for a few in that market. And yes, I realize that authoritarian market intervention is great for maximizing short term profits for those few companies/persons, but if the rest of the market suffers in the long term because of it (and they are), then we're dealing with rent seeking and that's pretty commonly accepted to be bad in the long term. Bad for society, but also bad for wealth creation. And if it's bad for wealth creation, then it's definitely not effective capitalism. This is why I consider authoritarian capitalism to not be the most effective form of capitalism.

And yeah, I'm aware that the USA is on this trajectory. Other western democracies are too, but of those that are, I think it's still mostly to a lesser extent than the USA.

About China: China's competiveness has significantly regressed in the last few years. Xi Jinping's authoritarian and imperialistic policies have not been good for business. Under Xi Jinping guanxi is also much more important again than it was under Hun Jintao: companies have no real rights, they too are dependant on maintaining relations and obeying the government. If they fail to maintain relations or if they bet on the wrong political horse, then the company leadership will be gone pretty fast.