That's a brilliant move by von der Leyen and Mark Carney (I guess he's in on it as well).
There is currently no such status as "associate member" defined in the EU treates although the idea of special status for not being a complete member was floating around for a while now.
Just calling it a "unique alliance" or "deepening of their relationship" wouldn't have had such a public effect.
Half of the right wing influencers on X is going bananas because when the US was "offering" Canada to join them, they said a firm "NO" but for the EU they are opening the door.
Trump even said when the Canada joins the EU as associate member, it could be considered a hostile act.
All that for a status nobody knows yet what it will entail. More than a simple trade deal, for sure, but also a lot less than a proper membership.
While there isn't an official "associate member" status, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland all have custom deals with the EU so this just codifies what already exists in an ad-hoc form.
The only bit the EU is rowing back is that they mentioned during BRExit that there would be no more custom deals so this simply a case of the realpolitik winning out.
I'm sure the UK will be looking at this very carefully as well.
You forgot Turkey as well. Yes, the EU is open in general for specific treaties. If possible they want to do broad treaties (see the EEA). But Switzerland is almost as big a partner as the UK. If it is big enough, they'll do custom deal.
There is not much trade with Canada at the moment but with some special treaties this might change.
Then there's the political edge to this "associate member" status and if it can work as a blueprint for more countries, they'll certainly will be open to do it.
> The only bit the EU is rowing back is that they mentioned during BRExit that there would be no more custom deals so this simply a case of the realpolitik winning out.
This isn't _really_ what they said. In practice, if the UK wanted similar status to Norway, it could have had it. The EU is cautious of specifically the Switzerland situation, which is a huge complex mess of treaties.
> There is currently no such status as "associate member" defined in the EU treates although the idea of special status for not being a complete member was floating around for a while now.
See perhaps Article 217 of TFEU:
> The Union may conclude with one or more third countries or international organisations agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations, common action and special procedure.
> Association is already an established form of EU external relations. The Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement with Morocco entered into force on March 1, 2000. The EU–Ukraine Association Agreement entered fully into force on September 1, 2017. Their substantive commitments and institutional structures differ, reflecting the relationships negotiated by the respective parties (Council of the European Union, 2000; European External Action Service, 2017).
> Article 217 does not prescribe a uniform degree of integration. Depending on its provisions, an association agreement may establish economic commitments, regulatory cooperation, joint institutions, and procedures for implementing shared objectives. The associated country's rights arise from the agreement rather than from a standardized legal status conferred by Article 217 itself.
There is this Venn diagram[1]. Canada could shift into the Council of Europe like Georgia or join Schengen with an independent currency like the Swiss. The latter would be a nice arrangement for Canadian passport holders.
Canada doesn't share a land border with any Schengen countries, so I'm not sure how valuable passport-free travel would be - you're already taking a transatlantic flight, it's not like passport control is a huge additional hassle.
However, I could see a big argument for a labour mobility agreement similar to the NAFTA model, where EU citizens in a long list of professions have the right to work in Canada and vice-versa.
The Council of Europe is strictly speaking not an EU thing at all, though all EU countries are required to be members of the Council of Europe, and, confusingly, they share a flag. The UK is still a member of the Council of Europe, for instance, as was _Russia_ until 2022.
Consent makes all the difference. Trump's talk of forcing Canada to become the 51st state via economic pressure stiffened the spines of Canadians and made it impossible for the Carney government to accept the same sort of deal other countries were getting. At the same time, it made closer relations with Europe look like a solution.
The reality is that the joining the EU as full members involves too great a sacrifice of sovereignty for middle powers like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc.. Brussels is too far away and the EU itself barely functions with the members it already has. There is, however, broad will among middle powers to work together more closely than they do now. This associate EU member thing needs to strike a balance where countries who join it can cooperate and contribute without feeling like the EU is becoming another U.S..
> Half of the right wing influencers on X is going bananas because when the US was "offering" Canada to join them, they said a firm "NO" but for the EU they are opening the door.
I mean, it's a very, very different type of offer.
Lots of people like QSpace, but I’ve bumped into weird privacy issues with it every time I considered trying it. Life’s too short to worry that my file manager is spying on me.
I am somewhat surprised not seeing any mentioning of hanging punctuation
when doing the full alignment to the right side. As everybody can see in
the article, punctutation marks on the right side results in uneven text.
Putting non letter symbols one space further to the right than the other
letters, it looks much better. Of course for monospaced text it is still
just a gimmick. But a visually pleasing gimmick.
> If I receive a low effort single-pass obviously-Clauded PR (many people (agents) don’t even bother using the AGENTS.md file I provide right in the repo?!)
Claude doesn't read AGENTS.md automatically, it only looks for CLAUDE.md.
With ghostel, the terminal experience inside emacs has become fantastic. Vterm was acceptable, but still too slow for me. Combine them with packages such as ultra scroll and emacs reader, I'm having.ore fun than ever in emacs
Ah, one of those "everybody knows" argument that is on the level of "everybody knows that Napoleon was short".
It's not completely wrong but it ignores important context. The part you are leaving unsaid is that the vaccine reduced transmission even if it didn't prevent it completely. 80% reduction is a significant amount.
Wearing masks on top of that was the sensible thing to do.
Uh, THAT'S the part you're going to try to challenge me on? You lived through 2020, right? Even people in this very website were supporting mandatory vaccinations. Where if you didn't get vaccinated, you couldn't keep your job or academic prospects, leave your house, or even go to most social gatherings.
I cannot believe the people that supported such measures at the time now turn around and say "well, we didn't literally pin you to the ground and force you to take it. So therefore, it was completely voluntary and you're responsible for your own choices and we can't be held responsible whatsoever."
Yes, that is. Are there other bald-faced lies I should be focusing on instead?
The vaccine wasn't "forced on everyone". Pointing to specific people for whom it was forced isn't "everyone". Nor does the existence of people supporting mandatory COVID vaccines imply "vaccines were forced on everyone".
Well in that case, yeah sorry requiring it to participate to civilized society to any significant degree is essentially no different than flat out forcing it upon people.
If the alternative is living in the woods not being able to go outside, that is obviously not a realistic compromise.
You're not wrong, at least in the USA - but it really shouldn't be. The polarisation was ginned up for various bad reasons, including political gain. It's deadly culture war nonsense.
"Polarizing" is a word that kind of applies, especially if one is trying to be polite, but really it's one of the most politically disinformed issues in a long long time.
A bunch of grifters pushed fear, uncertainty, and doubt for personal gain, at the expense of the health of the nation. I try not to blame people who got tricked, but at some point we need to treat people like adults who are responsible for their own actions, and hold them accountable for the harm they perpetuate by believing BS and acting on it.
A democracy cannot function when its members are low-functioning, and when bad information dominates. Those who spread disinformation, relish the conspiracy and disinformation because it makes them feel special emotionally, and wallow in the mess of it, are hurting us all.
I don't recall it being as polarizing outside of the US, where there was a larger group of anti-vaxxers to begin with. But that might be my "outside US" bubble.
There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
However, that discussion was largely side-tracked by the massive amount of disinformation (eg, "Plandemic") that circulated online. There are people who to this day swear that COVID-19 was just like the flu and simultaneously claim that the vaccine spike proteins have killed around 20M people. Not just crackpots, but people with reach, like Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast.
> There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
But we have already protocols and frameworks on public health.
Also plenty of other medical choices are taken with way less input of experts (see abortion discussions for example)
Not sure, the midst of a global crisis, with almost universal scientific approval is the time to have a long discussion on bodily autonomy on countries like america where 50% of people cant read at a 6th grade level.
> There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
There is a legitimate discussion (dating back at least to Typhoid Mary (1) ) on excluding people from public spaces when they refuse to take basic public health measures. Taking a vaccine for a spreading deadly pandemic is one of those measures.
Doing something so violently anti-social is not simply a "bodily autonomy" issue, and framing it only as such is deeply misguided in a way that seems particular to some USA norms.
I got the covid shot and every booster. I have no qualms about mRNA messing me up, and I think it was a tremendous life saver. As stated, there was also a ton of misinformation floating around, and people believed that misinformation.
The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information. They didn't see it as being anti social as they thought the drug was a boondoggle, untested, and that covid wasn't serious. I disagree with all of it, but it is important to understand why they objected, and not just saying they are selfish or antisocial.
> The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information.
This is how Typhoid Mary understood her status:
> It did not take Mary long to react to this suggestion. She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction. ... Mallon's refusal was based on her belief that she was not infected. ... To stop her struggles, he had to sit on her chest for the journey.
And yet, locking her up over her objections her was itself a rational decision. This is the debate.
I'm not saying that this kind of intervention is appropriate today, just that her "rational objections" were not be-all and end-all of the situation.
Why is it more "important to understand why she objected"? Isn't it far more important to understand that she infected? The thing is, a virus doesn't care what you believe, or your political stripe. To a pathogen, you're a mass of warm cells, nothing more. Human beliefs are irrelevant to a virus, so why centre them?
Stopping the spread of e.g. measles depends on vaccinating just about everybody, that's statistics and epidemiology. At the end, that is what determines if there will be an outbreak. Cutting people slack on that because they choose to believe nonsense is not helpful and will not work. Actions matter more than beliefs, voluntary or not.
> her "rational objections" were not be-all and end-all of the situation.
I hope this is not what you think my position is.
If you want to change someone's mind, you need to understand it. If someone believes false information, and if they are driven my emotion due to everything they've heard, then giving them a bullet list of facts will not change their mind 95% of the time.
You've probably heard of the term "steel manning" when arguing with someone. If you cannot state the other person's argument in a way that they agree with, then you are just talking past each other. If you can state their position as well or better than they can, now you in a better position to change their mind.
If your goal isn't to change their mind, then go ahead, just keep calling them stupid and making no progress with them.
Given a population of people, you should aim to change some peoples minds. Indeed in a democracy it is important to get a majority or plurality in agreement.
But you cannot hope to change everyone's minds, and so that should not be a goal. A system that depends on that won't work. Typhoid Mary is a counterexample.
Your drive to verify must be very low then. There are hundreds of small logic reasonings or even experiments with which you can easily prove that a flat earth model is at least very complicated or even impossible.
Explaining Moon phases gets very complicated in any flat earth model. With binoculars you can see the shadows of craters on the moon's terminator. Or the phases of Venus whereas Mars doesn't have any.
Timezones are ridiculously hard to explain on a flat earth.
A proper theory must explain all of them and no flat earth model can do that. A round Earth OTOH easily does.
None of that is an actual verification of round (or kinda potato shaped) Earth. You are just choosing to not think too deeply about it, essentially parroting things, just like I am.
Disproving flat Earth does not verify round Earth, after all. And all your listed refutations of flat Earth do not really disprove anything, either. They might, if you do the actual work, but you did not, choosing to just parrot someone that did put in the work.
Which was my point. It is much easier to speak vaguely and reference things than it is to actual prove something rigorously.
Disproving flat Earth doesn't logically prove round Earth, sure. But that's not how empirical reasoning works. If one model explains a bunch of observations naturally while another needs increasingly elaborate patches, that's evidence in favor of the first model.
There's a difference between "I haven't verified this myself" and "there is no good reason to believe this." You're conflating the two.
But then I've given you a few examples of thought and actual experiments that are very easy to do. That's the opposite of parroting as you can use your own mind to ponder those. But you seem to want to be ignorant, claiming that two theoretical models are equally bad just because you don't want to consider their properties for a second.
I'm not disagreeing with your conclusion. All I'm saying is that I'm just parroting these things without actually verifying them - and so are you. If flat Earth gets you all excited, I can also explain the concept with Pythagoras' theorem.
I never did a formal proof of it, yet I just use it because it works and I'm pretty sure it's true. Someone else proved it and I'm just parroting that without ever even having bothered to read the proof.
I’m disagreeing that I am just parroting things. Parroting is mindlessly repeating something. I don’t claim that all my thoughts are original but some are at least independent and self derived.
We have 2500 years of epistemology. Individual humans can reach knowledge to various degrees. It’s not a binary state of knowing or not knowing.
Take the Pythagoras example then. How is it different from parroting if you never even read and understood the proof? And alright, parroting might be a negative word and you could want to use a fancy word saying you're following heuristics instead. But it doesn't change that you maintain and propagate knowledge that you have not personally verified in a rigorous sense.
There are examples of things written in school books that were just plain wrong because no one bothered to properly verify it. We all settle for "good enough" most of the time.
There is currently no such status as "associate member" defined in the EU treates although the idea of special status for not being a complete member was floating around for a while now.
Just calling it a "unique alliance" or "deepening of their relationship" wouldn't have had such a public effect.
Half of the right wing influencers on X is going bananas because when the US was "offering" Canada to join them, they said a firm "NO" but for the EU they are opening the door.
Trump even said when the Canada joins the EU as associate member, it could be considered a hostile act.
All that for a status nobody knows yet what it will entail. More than a simple trade deal, for sure, but also a lot less than a proper membership.
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