Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Last May, immediately after Europe’s new privacy regulation came into force, noyb [a.k.a. Max Schrems] lodged its first series of strategic complaints — targeted at what it dubbed “forced consent”, arguing that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Google’s Android OS do not give users a free choice to consent to processing their data for ad targeting, as consenting is required to use the service.

Congrats to Frenzie for the Dutch victory at Eurovision. Well, congrats to the performer too.

Btw, someone somewhere said that English "oh dear" originated from "adieu" or the like.

A derivation from Italian dio, God, as conjectured by some, resting upon modern English pronunciation of dea(r), finds no support in the history of the word.

Elections are going on in Europe, so it seems.

I hid myself from them at my home and did not vote.

Good advice for me next year.

28 songs making for 11 1/2 hour of television

“Both Spitzenkandidaten, whom I would call the only real Spitzenkandidaten, are in the race and have both made sure that the Spitzenkandidaten process will remain in the future,” Merkel said on Saturday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan. “We are on a path which will maybe make a solution possible tomorrow.”

Hopefully some thunderstorms soon.

Nothing else is happening, so we are reduced to talk about weather.

Two facts are fundamental for the EU’s orientation towards China.One is that the US is now at best indifferent to the survival of the rules-based international order. Europe is largely left alone to defend the international governance under which it thrives. The other is that China is building a global economic network with itself as the centre. […] 

Quote

Put together, these two facts mean that for the first time in the history of the European project, the EU has to go on the offensive in order to defend its interests. What this means is restoring itself as a pole of attraction for third countries and projecting its influence with them just as much as China does and as the US has done in the past.Earlier this year Brussels named China a “systemic rival”. Here are seven things Europe must do to address this rivalry.

Synopsis (read article for full argument):

• articulate a vision for the future as concrete and appealing as anything Beijing can come up with
• offer more to Europe’s eastern and southeastern flank in particular
• create a better-defined and more attractive offer for countries not on a path to full single market membership
• employ sticks as well as carrots; carbon border adjustment taxes with those not doing their part on climate change; restrictions on data flows with those that disrespect the data rights Europeans increasingly assert
• while being transparent about systemic rivalry, identify clearly aligned interests where the EU and China can work together as equal partners
• look for areas to accommodate a full role for China in shaping global governance
• the EU needs to be much more aware of the things it does well and which make it attractive to others
  

Quote

In technology policy, for example, too many Europeans fret about having no equivalent to Google or Facebook, while too few pride themselves on the Linux operating system’s European origins. The former extract massive profits from surveillance-intensive advertising. The latter is a free and ubiquitous underpinning of the digital world.

Which has done more for Europe’s — and the world’s — productivity? Rather than envying America’s tech monopolists or China’s privacy-blind data hoarding, Europe must learn to see that many of its particularities, such as tougher competition and privacy rules, are not weaknesses but strengths.

Synopsis (read article for full argument):

• articulate a vision for the future as concrete and appealing as anything Beijing can come up with
   
• offer more to Europe's eastern and southeastern flank in particular
   
• create a better-defined and more attractive offer for countries not on a path to full single market membership
   
• employ sticks as well as carrots; carbon border adjustment taxes with those not doing their part on climate change; restrictions on data flows with those that disrespect the data rights Europeans increasingly assert
   
• while being transparent about systemic rivalry, identify clearly aligned interests where the EU and China can work together as equal partners
   
• look for areas to accommodate a full role for China in shaping global governance
   
• the EU needs to be much more aware of the things it does well and which make it attractive to others

Due to its larger geographic size and larger population relative to earlier challengers, the US had a big advantage in its knowledge base to fuel its innovation. Against the Soviets, the US had a larger economy, invested more in higher education, and even managed to attract many of the leading German scientists after World War II. Against the Japanese, the US had a much, much larger economy and a much larger population, as well as more investment in higher education. This advantage gave the US a big edge in innovation, whether it was in developing superior weapons systems and consumer goods relative to the Soviets, or inventing new industries in response to the Japanese challenge.

Today, China’s economy is approaching the size of that of the US, while its population is more than four times the size of the US. And the country has steadily and strongly expanded its spending on higher education to prepare for an even brighter future. Since China knew that it would take many years to strengthen its own universities, it has also provided generous funding for young masters and doctoral students to study at excellent international universities, not only in the US but throughout the developed economies in Western Europe, Canada and Australia. China calculated that allowing its citizens to study abroad would strengthen their knowledge, and that most of them would likely return to China and put that enhanced knowledge to work in the Chinese economy. This meant that China did not need to wait for its own universities to catch up, in order to increase its innovation capability.

As a result, we in the US now face a near-peer in innovation infrastructure. The innovation infrastructure consists of the hard and soft assets in the society to generate, disseminate, and absorb new innovative knowledge. This requires investments in hard assets, like 5G connectivity or up-to-date airports, roads and train stations, as well as investments in soft assets, like training, skills, universities and other forms of human capital development.

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs — all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

The US has become used to have a significant other, a rival, and some, Republican and Democrats, are propping up China to be the next one.

That's partially an age thing, young Europeans are converging, older Europeans somewhat less so.

...impossible to achieve in EU, see those Brexit supporters.

EU would never return to it's supremacy role with such people.