It limits both sides involved in a conflict from using nuclear weapons first.
As history has clearly shown, it doesn't do much to prevent conventional wars, especially involving third parties.
I don't think anyone in power truly believes that France would actually use nuclear weapons to protect Italy during a conventional war against a nuclear power when France itself isn't in danger - let alone in a war Italy started. That's a no-win scenario for France.
Italy isn't a third party. They're both EU states. French nuclear doctrine is specifically the only one with nuclear first strikes as response to conventional threats.
If push comes to shove, I believe France is incredibly unlikely to actually attack the US with nuclear weapons regardless of what happens to Italy.
Doctrines and policies are meaningless under pressure. Would France risk global nuclear armageddon and the near-extinction of humanity for Italy? Almost certainly not, regardless of what their "doctrine" says.
They are a third party. The EU isn't a country, it's an association and it's clear that solitary between member countries only goes so far.
We saw what happened when France triggered the mutual defense clause in the EU charter after the terrorist attacked. Even when they all but begged other EU states to help them, they were rebuffed.
There's little reason to believe France would behave any differently if the roles had been reversed in the especially if there was any real risk to themselves if they got involved.
So their "fix" was to have an artist do a quick paint-over to remove the most egregious artifacts. Is that... actually any better? Just hire artists to make the damn paintings in the first place.
Steam is a service that's been running for >20 years and somehow hasn't been enshittified (although, I suppose when it first appeared it was seen as enshittification). It's worth celebrating, to be honest.
I can personally vouch for a great deal of consternation among players of Valve's games at the time of Steam's launch and I have the IRC logs to prove it!
I was also personally resistant to the new thing and to this day have "only" a five digit Steam ID rather than maybe a four or even three digit one.. Haha!
Since then I can say that PC gamers have only benefited greatly from Valve's benevolent dictatorship compared to the alternatives.
The first two people you mentioned co-wrote a paper titled "Towards decolonising computational sciences" and certainly anyone at DAIR would also be in that ideological cluster. I don't think an absolute majority of the signatories have those sorts of associations, but a good many do. What's puzzling me is why so many are Dutch?
From the first two of your cherrypicks' web pages:
I am committed to [...] the broader decolonisation of cognitive and computational sciences. My research interests comprise (meta)theoretical, critical, and radical perspectives on the neuro-, computational, and cognitive sciences broadly construed.
and
Central to my research is challenging and dismantling societal and historical inequalities and power asymmetries; holding responsible bodies accountable; and paving the way for a future marked by just and equitable AI systems that work for all.
I'm sorry, what? If you're a voting member, then yes I //do// expect you to read all the candidate statements. That's the least you can do to be actually informed about your decision. The laziness on display - even being bragged about here - is astonishing. If you don't have the time to be informed about your decision, then there's always the other option - not voting.
This would destroy the goodwill that they've built up as a public good. People generally don't mind you archiving their content, but if you're selling access to that data, they aren't going to stand for it.
I recently read the book "Invisible Friends," and in it, among other things, the author does go on to explain that it's theorised that many skin infections come from a lack of biodiversity in a persons' skin microbiome, because the "good" or neutral microbes compete with the "bad" for resources. Supposedly people who share a house together often have similar gut microbiomes, too.
So yeah, I don't know. I think you have a point here.
- a decent mobile client that uses the same account
- and decent notification system
- a backlog that survives disconnects
- a search
- file and media uploads that actually work behind NAT, and also persist
- markdown
But yes, certainly Slack isn't the only option here.
Boy, Americans really do have an overinflated sense of their power.