they may not want to do it because perception shifting to them being the more stable and trustworthy superpower especially in the eyes of developing countries while they’re actively doing the work of building relationships the USA has now abandoned benefits them immensely and their own special military operation would speak directly against that.

You obviously know it but worth still saying this current admin and the Republican party certainly isn’t… Trump’s friendly with the dictators more than the traditional allies most of which are democracies USA used to have and he’s actively trying to end democracy at home.

they’re already testing in Tokyo so I think that is likely to be the next location outside USA/UK.

Probably a big part of it is the internet emerged from the USA and Silicon Valley already was a strong tech hub in the 90s when it really started becoming worldwide. Back in the 80s and into the early 90s UK used to also to have a pretty big concentration of talent but for some reason that started going away as the 90s progressed.

well searx is just metasearch so you still depend on whatever you’re getting the results from.

My understanding is that this is basically just presenting Google results. Certainly better for privacy but doesn’t do much for tech sovereignty.

I’ve been using it for a couple of months and while I agree the results can sometimes be interesting to compare I think it seems more primitive and result quality worse to the point that I have to go to other searches relatively often. It isn’t as smart about my native language and is only able to search for the exact word typed instead of different variants of it for example.

Forgejo is leading the charge on that. Version 16.0 is going to have some early bits of federation functionality.

Democracy isn’t dead even when the system has been gamed to an extent if there’s still a way to win even unfair elections. Hungary is a very recent example of that. Poland is another from a few years back. It’ll be dead if they ever get to a point where it’s like Russia and the results are that in every election Putin gets a 99% victory but until they do elections are a viable way to fight back.

What they’re doing now shouldn’t be conflated with what they used to do (which was arguably more mutually beneficial) and if the hypothesis OP makes was correct it would be a recent thing.

But yes, I think the Trump admin wants to make Europe a subject just like they want to do it with Venezuela, Iran etc. even if the method is thankfully different. I don’t think it’s going to work.

the midterms and what happens after that will be a test of that but I wouldn’t declare it dead yet. Just like recent events have shown Orban did not manage to kill Hungary’s democracy in his 16 years of power.

At the same time Trump and the Republicans are certainly moving much faster than Orban was so I’m definitely not saying it will take as long as that if they manage to finish the job.

The more troubling turns are far more recent than his nomination so him having bipartisan support back then (as tended to be the standard) does nothing for this argument. I don’t believe for a second that the Democratic party is happy with the clear bias he has shown by pushing through anything the Republicans want and obstructing the Dems. Especially not when it’s Trump he’s enabling.

They must know what they’re doing because they’re engaging in acts that are clearly exceptional in the history of the court.

Chip shortage raising plastic production costs? Are we sure it isn’t the oil prices that are doing it?

It’s not that it can’t be true they’ve expended a significant part of the stockpiles, it’s more that the implication isn’t that they won’t be able to prosecute the ongoing or another war, just that they’ll be somewhat limited by it and that if shit really hit the fan in the form of China for example they want to have a stab at it too then they could be in more trouble.

Reminds me a lot of the similar stockpile counting with regards to Russia in Ukraine.

it certainly doesn’t and attempts to resolve this have been happening under the international framework where both things are recognized for many decades now… If we had a system that was able to enforce the ideas uniformly instead of the current deeply flawed one where great powers still hold veto over any issue they want it could be that Israel would be prevented from doing that.

I’d say form of governance beyond every person being isolated and only ruling themselves forces lesser evil, it’s very unlikely that any two people would always be in perfect alignment on every single conceivable issue. Of course in some systems you don’t get a say you so you don’t get to pick the option that you’re the most aligned with at all.

We shouldn’t really look towards the “might is right” geopolitics of the past for how things should be anymore. After WW2 there has been the ideal of a rules based international order under which the people have a right of self-determination and the country has sovereignty which together pretty much means recognizing that the state of Israel does have a right to exist.

the reviews are good

There are countless examples of the people doing something about it even when the tools provided by a democracy aren’t available. I agree it’s significantly more difficult, extremely so, but we shouldn’t pretend it is completely out of the question. It isn’t given enough desire by the people to do it.

Also a reason to fight for your democracy when you still have it ofc. The Russians had that option too but they didn’t do it in time…