EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member' • Hacker News Board

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#901

Post by sajithdilshan » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

mmmmmbop wrote: post #880

sajithdilshan wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of non-europeans have this illusion that EU is this one big liberal, open-minded continent. It is mostly true if you look at certain cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but in general most EU countries are way more conservative, and traditional. Not only abortion, some EU countries still have laws to discriminate people based on their sexuality. One recent example is that one of the prominent openly ga…

> openly gay German politician (Jens Spahn) had to give up his position (although he had it coming because his other political scandals) because he used a surrogate mother in US to have a kid with his husband. That's misleading. The issue was hypocrisy. Spahn was a chief advocate against surrogacy. He publicly supported a motion keeping surrogacy illegal in Germany while simultaneously secretly using a surrogate moth…

The reason he had to give up his position was not his hypocrisy. If that’s the case then 99% of all politicians would have to give up their positions.

Even if he was a supporter of surrogacy, he would still be forced to step back because surrogacy is illegal in Germany. Further, there was no debate or discussions on making surrogacy legal after that incident by the so called all other liberal progressives parties like Greens or the left that pretends to be all for women’s rights and equality

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#902

Post by FabCH » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 9:00 AM UTC

carlob wrote: post #863

FabCH wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Eurovision is this cultural joke that unifies all of Europe in this yearly cultural moment of absolute madness. And the EU treaties refuse to define what „European“ means, so using „watches Eurovision“ as a rule of thumb is surprisingly workable as a definition of where the borders of „Europe“ end.

so Australia is in Europe, but Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland are not?

I guarantee you that the winning song will play on repeat over and over again in every city in Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland irrespective of if they are competing, and people will still watch the circus from those countries. The whole "well we are not competing this year as a protest" is part of the joke.

That is the whole point. If you want to understand more, this song is genuinely a good explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tgnx6jTQ

And I'm not even joking.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#903

Post by mitxela » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 9:25 AM UTC

RunSet wrote: post #477

mitxela wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is all the newest and best technology from China, outside a few specific fields?

Why is there still demand for Chinese student visas at universities in the USA?

Many reasons that have nothing to do with creativity, innovation, or freedom.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#904

Post by foldr » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 9:55 AM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #467

mitxela wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you propose forcing 27 groups of people to become 1 group just so it's easier to sell them things? Culture in Europe is more on sustainable business rather than hypergrowth, but you can expand to other countries too. You just have to have a business strategy catering to all the groups you want to cater to. I think it's good the supermarket chains in France and in Germany are mostly disjoint sets, it keeps competit…

I’m just telling you the tradeoffs you’ve chosen. You can’t be an economic superpower in the current regime. Without your own “hypergrowth” you’ll always be dominated by the hypergrowth of competitors like the US and China. You’ll be in orbit of other powers instead of creating your own gravity. Where am I wrong?

Didn't the US also used to lecture China on how it would never be an economic superpower if it didn't adopt liberal democracy and US-style free market capitalism?

I think the world is less and less interested in the concept of securing economic growth by copying the exact US economic and political model. Different parts of the world are going to figure this out in different ways.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#905

Post by orf » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 10:56 AM UTC

dudul wrote: post #869

Eupolemos wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democratic populations have feelings towards each other, including friendship. There are plenty of nations I feel my nation has friendships with - if they were bullied, we'd stand up for them on pure reaction. Not everything is interests. People are people.

Thanks for the good laugh. Interesting that you didn't feel the need to say what your "nation" is, or their nation BFFs. It would have allowed us to dig into real data, but no, let's just use feelz instead :) People are people, and nation states are nation states. These are different entities.

If we say that nations can have enemies then it stands to reason that we can also say that they have friends.

You can of course be needlessly reductive and say that friendship is just two temporarily, mutually aligned self-interested parties, but… yeah. That’s pretty verbose. And not even correct.