Creating a viable alternative to Visa and Mastercard requires “several billion euros” in investment, according to EPI’s own estimates. Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.

It remains to be seen how much political and economic power the European bourgeoise are actually willing to mobilise in order to cut dependence from the US. Can the liberals overcome the temptation for austerity and america worship? Every new project like this that comes along in europe has this giant asterisk attached to it.

Lots of interesting details in the article this time

1. The scientists created a process for converting CO2 into carbon monoxide (at least that's what is stated). Wierd headline
2. There already were processes that reduced CO2 to carbon monoxide, this one replaces certain consumable organic compounds with a material that is not consumed. So it's cleaner and cheaper
3. The material is actually the star here. It stores electrons when exposed to light, and this helps reduce the CO2 in the processing steps. The material also works with natural sunlight so that's neat

If you don't know much about chemistry, "reducing" a compound is when you either

1. Add electrons
2. Loose protons
3. Add hydrogen
4. Remove Oxygen

If you're wondering what's up with hydrogen and oxygen, just know that hydrogen is the least "electronegative" of the common elements. It's basically the baby other elements can steal ~~candy~~ electrons from. So adding hydrogen gives extra electrons to other parts of the compound. Oxygen meanwhile is like a gangster for electrons. It steals them from everyone else (except flourine*), so getting rid of it the same as adding electrons.

*florine is the electron IRS.

If you are astute, you might notice that reductions are the exact opposite of oxidation (the latter of which consists of adding oxygen). I'm pretty sure most reductions need for you to add energy, which most oxidations release energy. There's other factors to it, but that's a good rule of thumb.

Also the reason we talk of adding of subtracting electrons is cause of acid and base chemistry. It's relevant there.

That's exactly what I mean, I thought you were serious for a second 😢

Jerking it too close to the sun with this one ...

Thank you comrade for copying over my comments

Engels and lenin had good writings for beginners. You might want to read principles of communism, or state and revolution to get some basic context and theory. The first one is structured like an FAQ and is short. The latter you can find english translations that are quite accessible.

Once you understand the basic principles of marxism, you will understand just how different the whole philosophy really is. If you get deep into the theory, you might see that Marxism is basically a whole separate branch of philosophy that breaks away from the enlightened tradition of western philosophy. In some small sense, I see Marxism as a refuation of liberalism.

This is a memey Internet forum not a ML party formation. Genuinely what do you expect?

Also the stuff about the queer posting is just wierd. How many "normies" are wandering onto lemmy queer spaces in the first place? And if seeing some wierd memes is enough to "push" someone into conservatism then they were already a conservative.

This is a very idealistic view of history. Ideology did not create material conditions, material conditions created ideology (and ideology was used as a tool to reinforce material conditions)

The slavery, genocide, capitalism and colonialism came first. Then liberalism was created to justify it. And I do want to emphasise that all of those 4 things were justified using liberal logic, that was the point of liberal logic.

The first liberals deemed the "unenligtened" to be subhuman, incapable or governing themselves, worthy of being treated like livestock and as fundamental threats to the ruling order. This was their justification for doing everything they did, you can read their writings on native Americans and Africans and see exactly what classical liberalism was all about.

Later waves of liberals ended up using liberal logic to abolish slavery. Great. But the reason they did this was because the capitalist mode of production had superceded the slave mode of production. The surplus of proletariats hated competing with slaves and having their wages be reduced. Meanwhile the northern bourgeoise often had friction with the southern planters since the planters were rentiers extracting wealth from the whole economy like parasites.

Modern liberals now proclaim themselves to be great champions of "liberty" (the liberty for the bourgeoise to buy property), but they by in large continue to support capitalism and western imperialism*. And frankly, why wouldn't they? That was what the ideology was created for.

*you can see this in their insistence upon using "white man's burden" arguments whenever foreign intervention comes up

I’m in the camp that their ideas of classical liberalism were fine. I feel shame that our country is built on genocide, slavery and exploitation

Not an American here, but do you not see the contradiction here? From an outside perspective this reads the same as a German saying

I'm in camp that hitler's ideas were fine. But I feel shame that the riech was founded on genocide slavery and exploitation.

Like I'm genuinely confused here.

Alongside this, £115 million (US$157.3 million) will be invested over the next three years into a National Centre for AI in Policing, known as Police.AI. The Israeli-based Corsight AI – implicated for using AI for surveillance in Gaza and leading to the wrongful detention of hundreds of Palestinians – will be subcontracted to help provide this service.

Behold. Israel, genocide trained AI and mass surveillance. The holy trinity of 21rst century liberalism.

as well as the merger of Britain’s 43 separate police forces, likely into 12 "mega forces".

I wonder if centralisating the police forces will make them more violent or less. Well at the home secretary thinks it will make them more violent else they wouldn't be doing it, but does anyone know of how this shit might play out?

In parallel, the House of Lords amended the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ban VPN access for under-18s, mandating provider identity verification and further eroding online anonymity. A recent amendment to the UK’s 2025 Online Safety Act will require social media and dating apps to take “proactive steps” – including pre-scanning private messages – to curb unsolicited nude images and other harmful content.

Awful in every way.

1. This is a great and important use case. Fuck sanctions
2. As yes, fuck everyone (like me) that isn't allowed to get medicine from above board channels (this 1000 times more common than silly things like paying for hitmen or organs. If you are buying hitmen or organs on the Internet 99% of the time it is fake)

Besides just not wanting to have kids, being taxed for being trans, not straight, infertile, didability, or single.

ow many of these "exogenous" conditions will exemptions be made for?

If exemptions are made for being single, then this discentivises marriage (lol)

Exemptions for infertility will probably be made, although there is no way they'll make it easy to get an exemption.

Exemptions for sexual orientation, under reform? Not happening (another reason to hate cishets)

Exemptions for minority groups or "genetically disabled" will almost certainly be made (because why wouldn't reform pursue eugenics?)