"The thing about Europe is that it lacks an absolutist attachment to free speech. See how judges in Romania and France derailed the careers of hard-right politicians, who have convinced themselves (with little evidence) that it was their ideology rather than their lawbreaking that got them in trouble. Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza; news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians. Law firms are not compelled to kow-tow to presidents as penance for having worked for their political foes.
(...)
The thing about Europe is that it is like an open-air museum, yesterday’s continent. Is its model even sustainable? A good question—one that presupposes the European model is worth defending. It is a place blessed with walkable cities, long life expectancies and vaccinated kids who do not need to be trained to dodge school shooters. Charlemagne’s realm is a place of many flaws, lots of them enduring. But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/04/10/the-thing-about-europe-its-the-actual-land-of-the-free-now

#Europe #FreeSpeech #FreedomOfSpeech #QualityOfLife

I lament the fact that the City of #Salem budget is in such bad shape that the #libraries, #parks, and #seniorcenter are considered “optional” for funding. But here we are.

Please vote to keep these essential public services open and operating for the next five years. Your “Yes” vote on May 20 for the levy will support jobs and quality of life in Salem.

#PublicServices #qualityoflife #Oregon #library

https://www.yesforsalem.org/

Atari Teenage Riot - Revolution Action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8JBUktSxvQ

I'm comin' at ya! Carl Crack like a flamin' arrow -
Burning the regime of terror!

#AtariTeenageRiot #RevolutionAction #DigitalHardcore #Music #GovernmentTerrorism #QualityOfLife #InformationWarfare #ClassWarfare #RiseUp #Revolution

Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games

https://jcarlosroldan.com/post/355

#HackerNews #QualityOfLife #Tetris #Games #GameDesign #IndieDev #GamingCommunity

"The study, led by researchers at Brown University, found that the wealthiest Americans lived shorter lives than the wealthiest Europeans. In fact, wealthy Northern and Western Europeans had death rates 35 percent lower than the wealthiest Americans, whose lifespans were more like the poorest in Northern and Western Europe—which includes countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

"The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the US contributing to lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like stress, diet or environmental hazards," lead study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown, said in a news release.

The study looked at health and wealth data of more than 73,000 adults across the US and Europe who were 50 to 85 years old in 2010. There were more than 19,000 from the US, nearly 27,000 from Northern and Western Europe, nearly 19,000 from Eastern Europe, and nearly 9,000 from Southern Europe. For each region, participants were divided into wealth quartiles, with the first being the poorest and the fourth being the richest. The researchers then followed participants until 2022, tracking deaths."

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/wealthy-americans-have-death-rates-on-par-with-poor-europeans/

#USA #Europe #LifeExpectancy #PublicHealth #QualityOfLife #Inequality

so been using arch for the past few days...
couple things I like and don't like...

I don't do much gaming, theming, tweaks, no custom kernels, no extra fonts, none of that for me, so I am interested on the longevity and stability going forward. So far I am impressed. Using ext4 so backups should be pretty basic.

#archlinux #qualityoflife #linux #ext4