the place were the race is taking place is called EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma Universal Rome Exposition in English), the neighborhood that was built for the universal exposition of 1942 that never happened due to World war 2.
165 karma · joined December 14, 2020
I think this narrative has spread too much and has become one of those lies that repeated indefinitely become truths.
Marino had a problem: he wasn't a long time memmber of PD (Democratic Party) of Rome, they had another candidate but Marino beat him at the primaries and became mayor of Rome.
So they started the war against him.
Renzi simply acknowledged that the roman PD was a nest of vipers and put a commissar (Orfini) to handle the transition.
But it wasn't Renzi that created Mafia capitale where members of PD were involved with bipartisan criminals of Rome (like Tassoni in Ostia that was in bed with the gipsy-mob family Spada)
I'm also talking about corruption, years after it's clear that Renzi was right when che tried to reset the roman PD, his fault was not being able to actually clean the house
https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/04/10/news/scandalo_...
(sorry, Italian only)
Also, Marino wasn't loved by romans because he had radicals ideas about modernizing the city and romans are generally resistant to changes and also because he made some bad communication mistake.
I'm telling this as a roman who campaigned for Marino, voted for him and was happy having him as mayor.
Now people can safely walk around, the only allowed vehicles are public buses and archeological excavation have become a prominent activity in the area.
it's still messy because the new subway tunnels are taking a lot longer to be built than planned (that's quite normal in Rome unfortunately) but it's many times better than it was before when the main users where cars and traffic jams.
you buy phone credit and that phone credit it's money
you don't need crypto for that
mobile payments have been a thing in Africa since the 2000s
a digital currency doesn't have to be crypto to work
I would say that it works better if it isn't
USA military intervention is what did not work if you ask me.
Also USA support to Riad regime is not exactly for the good of middle east.
Having said that, Senegal learned to fish a long ago, it's politically stable with a stable (growing) economy and a stable currency shared with other countries and tied to euro.
A startup city would still be inside Senegal territory and be subject to Senegal immigration's laws.
Instead of spending 6 billions to build a one man vanity project, use those 6 billions to open a fund that guarantees loans requests by those people that do not have enough bank guarantees to access credit.
That's how you teach people to fish, IMO.
not where I come from!
> You don't see people protesting doctors being corrupt?
You don't? Really?
> Quite the opposite, people praise them
Because the vast majority of them help people in dire times.
And also because if they save people or don't, they get paid anyway, so what would the vested interest be, except it's their job?
Well, if you are building one where
The economy of Senegal is driven by mining, construction, tourism, fishing and agriculture, which are the main sources of employment and 75% of the population lives in chronic poverty, maybe there is something more urgent that could be done.
Unless you think that UAE and Dubai are a good example of development.
for example I've read that Akon financed renewable energy plants in Senegal.
That's a great way to help!
Building an entire new residential city founded by a single person in his own name for rich people? not so much IMO.
how is a cryptocurrency made by an American singer after his name, to run (quoting) "a residential and commercial hub, complete with resorts, towering condos, recording studios, a stadium, and e-commerce franchises" better than a stable economy made on decades of political and social progress, that benefit every Senegalese citizen?
Wouldn't it be better to finance that progress directly instead of building the SoDoSoPa of Senegal?
genuinely curious.
It's bitcoiners that do that.
if they said there are 6 millions addresses but it's actually a couple thousands entities holding them, it would be too obvious that bitcoins serve an insignificant portion of the society, usually already very rich.
The fact that having a single address it's not good practice it's proof that bitcoins are inherently unsafe
imagine if bank said "it's good practice to own many bank accounts". how many people would trust them with their money?
Imagine that you live in Italy, where only 24% of the population lives in cities with a population equal or larger than 250 thousand people.
Half of Italy is not flat and it's very hard using the bicycles to move, unless you are already expert and even for bikers (as in motorbikes) it's challenging going up and down the hills and mountains and usually they go in group.
Paradoxically around Milan (and in the city) they use bikes a lot, but it's also one of the most polluted areas in Italy because they also use cars a lot to move from or to Milan and other large cities, mainly to go to work or it's trucks moving goods.
You can't replace them with bikes.
You can't replace them with trains either, because regional trains are already at full capacity and Milan public transport already moves 800 million people/year (fun fact: the Milan public transport company ATM also operates the Copenhagen's subway).
Being on flat lands surrounded by high mountains also means that there are no regular winds cleaning up the air, so paradoxically biking is more dangerous for your health.
23% of the Italian population (13 million people) lives in cities with a population between 20 thousand and 59,999 people, the majority of towns in Italy (20% - 1,509 of them) have a population between 1,000 and 1,999 people and host 2.5 million people.
Those are the areas where they can't give up on cars, they have no alternatives, they have to use it daily for every activity: from groceries to work, school, church, etc.
They are usually near highways or heavy traffic roads, because many people move daily to go to larger cities for work, but also the areas where biking it's more of a challenge.
So it's a combination of long distances (people live away from cities because housing it's much cheaper), geography and older population.
I present you a sample of the area where my parents come from.
https://www.juzaphoto.com/galleria.php?t=2681540&l=it
https://www.juzaphoto.com/galleria.php?t=2510258&l=it
https://www.juzaphoto.com/galleria.php?t=2510257&l=it
as someone who almost completely abandoned the car, even though I live in Rome, one of the most car crowded cities in the West (and probably the World), if we care about taking cars off the road, we need to make cities walkable
Many areas of Rome already are and have been by design, because pedestrians and cars don't compete for the same space and there are large enough sidewalks
in the city centre where streets are narrow, cars usually drive very very slowly, because the road is occupied by people walking and have precedence
But when pedestrian share the space with other vehicles, like in car restricted areas, that's where things start to get unpleasant if not impossible
bikes, electric bikes, scooters they all make walking difficult to the point that pedestrian need to be careful about them more than with cars
in this covid times with virtually no cars for Rome standards, my biggest concern when I am around is avoiding riders and their bikes, they are everywhere and respect no rule.
I can be relatively sure that on a one way only street no car is gonna suddenly appear from the wrong direction, not so much with bikes (and other two wheeled vehicles) especially because they are extremely quiet
this is my experience after 45 years as a Roman citizen and 7 years without a car
> The Vaalserberg is a hill with a height of 322.4 metres (1,058 ft) above NAP and is the highest point in mainland Netherlands
before anyone gets the wrong idea, the biggest problem is not going up, but going down (especially with kids, cargo or kids+cargo)
It's only a matter of barrier to entry.
The best things on Netflix are non Netflix productions (with some rare noticeable exception), because the barrier to entry for them is so low that everything kinda sucks, in different ways, but it does (long tail distribution)
when they have to buy (or rent) something to put it on their catalog (the overwhelming majority of the items on their platform) , the copyright holder is going to lure Netflix in with some very good title and definitely many average (slightly above or below) title, titles that can sometimes also benefit from the power of nostalgia, but will also put in the package some bad and definitely some very bad title, so that they can profit from dead weights.
In that case I assume something more similar to a gaussian distribution.
> assuming there are still a few very bad ones that you don't mention
You asked for it.
https://www.netflix.com/it/title/80211634
https://www.netflix.com/it/title/81003393
https://www.netflix.com/it/title/81005220
and don't miss this one
https://www.netflix.com/it-en/title/80185764 (7% on rottentomatoes)
I only argue that we already had that kind of sharing.
I know about Monthy Python since late 80s, I was barely more thank a kid.
The article talks specifically about Netflix, an American paid subscription service whose primary objective is "growth" and "profit".
With less than 40 million accounts in Europe over a population of 700 million people it's barely relevant.
Maybe it's relevant among youngsters and parents using it as a nanny for their little children, but a large part of the population ignore it completely and, frankly, the catalogue does not contain anything barely resembling the cultural impact of Monthy Python.
I can speak about the Italian material: they are airing shows and movies made for the Italian TV (low quality, low budget, same old actors' faces everywhere, nothing that we haven't already seen somewhere else, it's basically recycling garbage) or recent cinema productions made buy the "usual suspects" to get the government's funds (that usually go to the same "usual suspect" aforementioned)
That's completely missing the point about what the "Italian culture" could look like.
There were a few gems before, but now that the big guys are in, forget about it, they are going to air only those things that they own the rights for, so now they are being paid two times.
There is no Fellini, Antonioni, Leone, Bertolucci, Fulci, Bava, Argento, but there is this shit
https://www.netflix.com/it/title/81304753
a movie so bad that even bad movies are ashamed of being in the same category.
The other scary phenomenon is that they are conflating the ratings, every movie on Netflix must be great according to Netflix, so "Piccolo grande amore" has rating around 90% even though Raoul Bova himself doesn't want to talk about it.
It was considered utter tash, off and online, until Netflix picked it up.
If everything is good, nothing is good.
That's the opposite of culture.
> you're never going to understand someone perfectly without sharing their cultural references, and they go all the way back to childhood
Exactly.
Hence my point about not completely getting the references in Southpark.
I've never heard of them as a kid, they mean nothing to me, even though I know what they are.
It's not Netflix that is going to do that, it's internet that did that.
Netflix is only one player and who knows for how much longer, now that major studios are creating their own platforms.
Wanna talk about shared cultural heritage?
Disney+ with all the Disney movies in catalog has much better chances of spreading it.
well that's kinda true for everybody, I guess...
> At least, I wouldn't pay the amount I currently do.
I pay a global 43% on my salary which is not even in the 5 zeroes, but I am fine with it as long as everybody else do their part according to what they have.
The problem in my country is that many don't and the majority of them is in the high income spectrum
In other words: primevideo is cheaper and has a much better catalog. My ISP also offer the same things I can find on Netflix for free with the subscription.
True, I meant Bosman not Schengen.
> And I think dismissing light entertainment as not being culture is pointlessly elitist
I am sorry if it came out that way, what I meant is that entertainment is more tied to personality and familiarity than culture as "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a social group" because those things are usually misrepresented in a fictional show made to entertain the general public.
I love Southpark because I love that kind of harsh sarcasm, but I know it's not a perfect honest to god representation of the US society and I usually also don't get all the references, because you can't spread pop culture to other cultures or generations by simply citing or mocking them. you have to go deeper than that.
> but close ties does not translate immediately to the extent of shared culture diffusing through populations
I think it does on a basic level.
All of the countries on the west side share very similar views about worker rights, welfare state, public education and healthcare, women rights, minorities' rights, democracy, etc. etc.
French is the language of diplomacy because French invented modern diplomacy when they were an important global empire and imposed their language on everybody else (and the reason why until the 80s in Italian schools French was the primary foreign language - I had to study it in elementary school from 1982 to 1987)
For the same reason German is #1 mother tongue language in Europe, beating English.
Think about religion in Europe: 75% are Christians,or at least they claim to be.
I am an atheist so I have no horse in the race, but that happened through centuries of close relationships (and wars)
Think about Europe before and after the USSR collapsed.
If we compare western Europe to former eastern block countries we will find fundamental differences and that's completely normal (and sometimes scary), because we have been separated for a long time and we are still compensating for that time.
low corporate taxes have made Ireland a tax heaven, with all the drawbacks you can imagine
Expensive housing, long commutes and stretched public services are making Ireland a less attractive place to live.
And it’s not just younger people who feel aggrieved. People on relatively good incomes, who might have traditionally bought into the status quo, are now priced out and are calling for more radical solutions.
I think Schengen and herasmus program were much more important for the common European culture and to build a sense of belonging to a shared sovra national space where we are all Europeans.
Also most western Europe has been in close contact since the end of WW2, developing those relationships that led them to the first treaties in 1957 and us where we are today.
We don't need Netflix for that.
because they are considered simarly developed countries, but as far as violence stats go (especially gun violence) USA is more comparable to developing countries.
But also a population 12 times larger than Norway (60 million people).
Los Angeles and Norway have a comparable population, in Los Angeles in 2020 there have been 300 homicides, a 20% increase over 2019, despite covid. It's more than the whole Italy that stopped at 271, 14% less than 2019 that ended with 315 homicides.
Los Angeles has the same size of Rome, in Rome there have been "only" 15 homicides in 2020, 20 times less than LA.
US is the outlier in the West, all the other developed countries have comparable homicide rates.
Japan has the lowest rates globally, in 2017 they had 56 times less homicides per capita than in USA.
Also Der Alte (different seasons had different names in Italy) with over 400 episodes.
I got the copy/paste backwards.
I've watched Äkta Människor and loved it even though I've watched it in Swedish, without subtitles. Highly reccomended.
First of all Netflix productions are not great in general, there are a few very good ones, the rest is just mediocre.
Secondly, Netflix is not the only streaming service offering the same content.
Last, but not least, in Europe we have been watching European shows since forever on national and private television networks.
Two of the most popular shows ever in Italy are Fantomas, which is French, and Derrick, a German crime series started in 1974 that lasted ~~14~~ (TYPO! it was 24!) seasons. We've always translated and dubbed foreign content, Netflix hasn't really changed anything in that regard. We also watch a lot of national productions, like for example in Italy Gomorra is very popular and highly rated (there are many others)
European movies in theaters have also been quite popular over the years, it used to be more popular until the 80s, but French cinema for example is still producing great movies (I think everybody knows who Luc Besson is).
The Italian actor Carlo Pedersoli (Bud Spencer) was so popular in Germany that when he died German Post offices released a series of ten stamps as a sign of gratitude and respect.
Besides, some popular American productions are remakes of European content:
Forbydelsen (Danish) -> The killing
~~Humans (Sweden) -> Real humans~~ (not American)
The Returned (France) -> The Returned
I'm not American so I can be mistaken, but isn't it written in the American Constitution that government has the power to tax citizens?
In that case it's the price to pay to be part of the community, like it or not.
Coming from Italy I can only say that mafia doesn't do what they do because some fundamental law that defines a Country and is accepted by every political party gives them the power to do it, but only because they have the means to force other people to follow their own rules, they are violent criminals, out of the law.
Also: being prosecuted in a due process and eventually arrested it's not the same thing as being killed because some mob boss feels like it.
if you ask me I would defend your right to express that opinion, but I would also expect that if you ever come close to having the power to make it real, you would be stopped.