Agreed, this shouldn't be flagged. The creator is a young data journalist that posted the announcement of this project of his on /r/selfhosted last week. This is ShowHN quality work that is just reporting data, not clickbait.
Hacker News' autoimmune response has been triggered by recent events, so one can expect anything even remotely related to politics to be flagged for the forseeable future.
> POTUS Tracker experienced significant downtime on 1/28 due to an overloaded server. Thanks to your generous donations, the server has been upgraded to better handle the demand.
i understand you and many others might not feel it, but it can have a very severe emotional impact on someone. it's especially undesirable when you're taking a break and browsing something you find joy in, like hackernews.
i've abandoned a lot of websites just to avoid being reminded/thinking about this reality. and yes, i know that my behavior is going to be a growing problem that enables the problems. it sucks. but no one else is gonna protect my mental health. therefore........ i dislike politics on HN.
On the one hand, I'm with you. I went from being incredibly uninformed about most current events to being incredibly anxious about EVERYTHING due to HN. I've since stepped away (in fact, this is my first time back in weeks, maybe, and I approached the feed very cautiously.)
But, on the other hand, I come to HN for its intelligence. Compared to other similar sites, I've scarcely found another userbase that's as consistently sincere, nuanced, and intelligent as the users on here. So, while I agree that politics and related topics can be remarkably anxiety inducing at times, I value HN because I can see what I believe to be the best Laymen's thoughts on it, on a website which isn't nearly as profit-driven and exploitative as the alternatives.
That's fair. I'm very used to bad faith users who participate in a lot of political threads but only post "why politics" in threads that make them uncomfortable.
No, tech and politics are inextricably linked in this modern age. We might wistfully wish for the days when this wasn't the case, but this is our current reality.
The common theme in all of these EOs seems to be concentrating power to the executive branch, and scapegoating wokeness/dei so that people can celebrate/panic over culture warring nonsense. Trump is also floating the idea of booting criminals who are citizens out of the country. I don't want to panic, but we're only a week in, and trajectory of all this is very terrifying to me. I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do on an individual level.
You can leave. I encourage Americans to look at alternatives. My country (Belgium) as well as most of Europe will welcome you and many other highly skilled migrants for in-demand jobs such as programming and other tech adjacent jobs.
Cost of life here is lower and life is nice. You get your pick of a country; many are different and give you access to different cultures across the EU.
Of course don’t get me wrong, things are veering far-right here as well, but it’s nothing compared to the US and you’ll be shocked how much nicer life is when you can walk to get groceries instead of having to bring your pickup truck.
In a few years, when things have calmed down (they eventually will), you can go back and help fix whatever mess the US has been left in.
And as usual if you do want to take up the opportunity of moving to Europe and you’re serious about it, feel free to email me (see profile), I will do what I can to guide and advise you.
Can you walk and find groceries in all areas of Belgium? I live in the US and I can walk to two large grocery stores, but I know there are large swathes of the US that you cannot do that. Is that any different than Belgium?
Belgium has significant opportunities for software developers? Interesting. I thought many were struggling for these jobs.
By the way, in the United States, most of the backlash against immigrants is against low skill, immigrants sneaking across the border. I find it interesting that you mention that you are welcoming of people that you need, yet you imply that those that don’t want unneeded laborers are right wing. You just made the same error. So you’re right wing too, right?
In most of Europe if you are in any kind of town or a village of more than a few hundred people there will at least be a small supermarket within easy walking distance, say one kilometre. And if you are in any reasonable sized town, say a few tens of thousands or more then there will be multiple supermarkets within that range.
Belgium is one of the most densely populated countries in the world so you won't find many places that are too far from a supermarket to walk to.
In the US, small grocery stores are called convenience stores. Almost all small towns have one or more of these within a kilometer of most people in that town. Now you aren’t gonna find fancy organic produce at these stores, but the quality of food in the US is probably not generally as good as what you have in Europe.
Anyway, comparing a small country like Belgium (approximately the size of the state of Maryland) to a huge vast country like the United States is not a valid comparison.
> Almost all small towns have one or more of these within a kilometer of most people in that town
I find this hard to believe based on my lived experience in the southeast US. Where I live, there are stores a moderate walk away (still over a km) that are completely unreachable from where people live because they require crossing 4-6 lanes of traffic with no crosswalk or pedestrian route.
> Anyway, comparing a small country like Belgium (approximately the size of the state of Maryland) to a huge vast country like the United States is not a valid comparison.
> I find it interesting that you mention that you are welcoming of people that you need, yet you imply that those that don’t want unneeded laborers are right wing. You just made the same error. So you’re right wing too, right?
I don't welcome or reject any "type" of migrant, because I don't work in politics nor at any of the public institutions in charge of this. What I said is factual: Belgium, as well as most countries, /will/ be welcoming of high-skill migrants for jobs that are in-demand (and are likely to be a budget positive), and less welcoming towards people who do not have a prospect to get a job (and are likely to be a budget negative).
This isn't a political statement, nor is it me being more or less welcoming of people. If you want my personal feelings: the people I'm less tolerant/welcoming for are those that have been so used to picking political fights with everybody, and who are in such an advanced state of Facebook-brainrot, that they see political statements everywhere, such as in a harmless HN thread offering assistance to people who want to move. Those, I don't want in my country. They can go take a swim in their favourite Gulf.
Nice try. You were the one making political statements and criticism of the United States when you don’t even live here and probably only receive information about it through hacker news or mainstream media, which is not representative of what’s really going on here. I asked you questions and then you tried to hide behind the politics of your nation when you made personal opinions regarding immigration policy in the United States.
And then you bring in an ad hominem attack against me for responding to your nonsense and trying to educate you about the reasons behind some of the frustration in the United States regarding immigration. It seems as though you don’t care or wanna know so I’m done and that’s fine.
I didn't make a single political statement nor criticism of the US in this thread, you're just applying things you read from other people, to me. As I said: Advanced state of facebook brainrot.
I have long-enough lived in and have enough ties with the US to know how things are over there. OTOH I think it's incredibly unlikely you'd be able to teach me anything about how immigration works here in EU. Especially when you're busy trying to pick a political fight.
Hey, you want a political statement, here's a tip for you: It's possible for people to not be a single-issue right-winger. It's possible to be economically right wing, have negative opinions about how the EU is handling immigration, and /still/ be pro social safety nets and worker rights, and even so still think France for example has too many worker rights.
Would have been better to see this with the previous administration to see what Biden really did during his time in office, or if he even did do anything significantly beneficial to the US other than funding more wars.
There's been transparency sources on the executive and legislative branches since the birth of the internet. If you need a pretty website to know that shit, that's on you.
Hopefully, this answers your question. Probably not the best source of information since citations are not right next to claims, but most of the claims seem easy to independently verify.
He launched the site during the Biden Administration (stated on his help page). Also, all information here is already accessible as linked on the bottom. Nothing has ever stopped you from knowing this information.
> Portions of the President's schedule are provided by Roll Call. https://rollcall.com/
> Legislation information is provided by Congress.gov.
No, it is not.
Instead of allowing the one-time Covid emergency spending to expire, your guy kept spending at that level.
It will take time and effort to undo all that damage.
This sounds like an entry in the garbage can of excuses your side will use once he fails to implement the improvements that his voters were promised. Biden only had 4 years and a very strong opposition, with Trump he has a more "efficient" government full of yes men, having all three branches of government, plus the popular vote, there is no excuse anymore.
That underground vault of yours - where perspective and nuance are apparently on lockdown - must feel cramped in there with you juggling all these convenient talking points and doomsday predictions.
I invite you to finally come out in the sunlight, and get reacquainted with the real world—where things are never quite as simple as picking up a magic wand and saying ‘No excuses’
You may be tempted to keep the treasure trove of recycled grievances handy though. Just don’t be surprised if the rest of us have moved past the idea that entire policies can be passed overnight by waving a presidential scepter.
The rest of us might still be stuck here dealing with pesky details like budgets, compromise, and, oh... reality.
You should try emerging and enjoying a breath of fresh air; rumor has it oxygen can do wonders for one’s outlook.
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