ALoafOfBread

This isn't quite right. Trump didn't really modify laws. That isn't even something he can claim to do since he is the head of the Executive branch, not the Legislative one. He issued executive orders, many of which were illegal, and he had some cronies who enacted some of them anyway - others did not enact some of these, and others were not really actionable (like when he declared that no one has a gender). He did rescind many policies, but he can't just make laws go away on his own. There are literally hundreds of court cases currently challenging these executive orders - seeing as how the judiciary is the primary check on the executive branch, that is the system working to check presidential power.

However, I am not a liberal, I am a socialist and do not think this is working well - there are many problems here. The highest levels of the judiciary have been largely captured by far-right judges, many of whom are specifically aligned with Trump's goals and support the unitary executive theory. Also, this method of checking presidential power is extremely slow. For every illegal action Trump's administration takes, a court case has to be crafted, filed, heard, and adjudicated. Every one. And invariably, some will not reach the correct outcome and others will never actually be taken to court - there are just too many.

Basically, the administration is using the fact that they control every branch of government to dismantle or capture core government agencies and to provide cover for various illegal actions - forcing them through if only temporarily for various political and structural ends. A soft coup, basically. So yeah, the fact that something like this is possible is proof of the flaws inherent in this system of government.

It isn't daft. The Republicans since Reagan have pushed a fringe legal theory called the Unitary Executive Theory. Basically, they want the president to fully control the executive branch and military such that theirs is the only voice that matters for much of the government. Not unlike a king, but partially checked by congress and the courts. They have been taking (illegal) actions to try to get sued, and also have been suing others/other branches of government, to try to get the Supreme Court to hear cases that will support this fringe legal theory so that it becomes the law of the land.

I am not a lawyer, but this is possibly something Trump can legally do since he is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. However, this seems more like an apportionment thing, which is Congress' responsibility. Congress has allocated funds to send military aid to Ukraine. So, even if Trump as Commander in Chief could say "no more weapons to ukraine", it seems doubtful to me that he could (legally) stop weapons shipments currently en route.

But, by the time whatever government office sues the office of the president to get a judge to enjoin them to send the agreed upon weapons that were already apportioned, it will already have hurt Ukraine somewhat. Trump often weaponizes inefficiency. And these sort of illegal acts aren't crimes per se - they're just procedural breaches - the legal remedy is just to reverse the action.

So, probably not legal. But Trump gets to weaponize his administration's incompetence (or feigned incompetence) to at least delay aid. More competent people may support these actions, knowing they're illegal, to try and strengthen the president's role even further.

Tye ne moi brat, tye moya oblast

You're not my brother, you're my province/state

(I don't know russian but I think that's what it says)

Chia cryptocurrency. My dad got into it, and the price was mooning. Gave me an excuse to build a new PC and learn linux, so I thought it was a worthwhile investment. Sunk a decent chunk of change into hard drives that I still have laying around, but I'm using several of them and have a sweet gaming rig that I would've built eventually anyway and had something to talk to my dad about. So basically, just out the cost of some drives. All in all, it was a calculated risk that didn't pay off but was still fun.

That may be true, I'm really not sure - and idk if it's really knowable. But it is definitely a motivation that exists. I just think we'd be better off without those motives and only with the good ones you outlined. As long as the profit motive, consumer culture, and media exist, I think we'll not be free of that sort of thing.

The main thing, I think, is that being conscious of those forces and of the degree to which business and other bourgeois interests shape our behaviors helps us to avoid their influence. I think most folks on Lemmy probably avoid more of that motivation than most.

And, to your point, i think the better, more wholesome motives will always exist - and it's important we let them thrive and don't overlook them.

That is pretty clever. Except it would already be dated since Trump attempted to get Pence lynched by an angry mob a few years back

It's commodified in terms of social media. Either "for sale" literally, if indirectly, through monetization (which is increasingly the goal for many people) or not-quite-literally in the sense of likes/social media attention. The act of dancing in this context, for instance, is no longer done as an expression of genuine emotion or to connect with people or express oneself, but instead being traded for clicks, monetized or not.

In that regard, even if not personally affected, I think that consumer culture can and has taken the purpose of human experience away from many and twisted it from experience as experience to experience as performance.

Edit: to expand on a dance being commodified: a TikTok dance has to be learned by consuming TikTok. That is the product: the content around the dance. Then the user further contributes to the commodification by entering their own content into the marketplace (TikTok). Whether the user makes money or not does not change the fact that this content is for sale by TikTok. TikTok gets more viewers and trades viewership for advertising revenue.

Damn. Yeah really good points all around

It's commodification. These things have been turned into marketable commodities for sale.

A huge part of capitalism is commodifying core parts of the human experience.

I kinda like it. Brutalist console

Baiscally, POTUS invited Zelenskyy to the White House for a meeting to discuss potential terms for a peace deal with Russia. In a press conference, Trump and Vance basically blamed Zelenskyy for the war, told him that by not capitulating to US and Russian demands, he was gambling with WWIII, said that Ukraine doesn't have any "cards" - that they can't have a say in peace deals involving them, and literally started yelling at him and lost any sense of decorum. All of this was after Zelenskyy proposed a version of Trump's "give us all your rare earth minerals" plan that involved US Ukranian mining partnership - so already a partial capitulation.

It was a... bad... PR and diplomatic decision. It weakens US leadership globally, further erodes soft power, is going to make China evaluate if Taiwan has "cards" in the way that Ukraine does not, etc. It was disastrous for US foreign policy and further marks a decline in its importance glabally.

It is not a thing. DEI is a corporate initiative to make sure non-white, non-male people are interviewed and hopefully hired. Has nothing to do with schools