So... there's been a lot of Europeans looking at America and laughing at the stuff we're going through, smug that the US is getting this.

I'm not going to say as someone from the US we don't deserve the kicking, as a country the attitude of the US has had a bad problem of exceptionalism

But this right here should be the warning to Europe not to fall into the exceptionalism trap... your oligarchs are waiting to take everything over as well. And before I get called overreacting and unconnected, this is smelling quite of the "Patriot Act" we got.

Their "oligarchs". LOL.

That's a different part of the world, it's not "oligarchs", it's just the government and politicians and a significant part of society in every European country. Eastern Europe might even be a bit better in this regard than Western, because of relatively recent historical memory.

You have to deserve "oligarchs" first. They didn't. You ask some granny in any European country, that granny will likely be in favor of full-on totalitarianism because they are a law-abiding society and there should be order, and people thinking they have natural rights are extremists.

You in your land of the weird joke about "freedumb" and "mass shooter rights" and "free hate speech", not understanding that the reason Europeans too joke about those is not them seeing your problems as they are, but because they (except for France and maybe some Scandinavian ones, and, eh, maybe Switzerland) unironically have problems with the ideas of freedom, equality, limits of mandate, right to rebellion and free speech. Half the European nations are monarchies or recent monarchies or recent fascist nations or ex-Commie nations.

You there joke about these treating it as a given that you have those rights, just some jerks abuse them, while Europeans joke because they don't have those rights and don't treat them as certain. There's nothing in UK's or even Germany's constitutional laws that admits that their citizens are free people with right to rebellion and to freedom of expression and association, even if someone in some other law writes that they are not.

Mhm. Show me where in the US constitution it says that people have a right to rebellion.

And then please show me how this right to rebellion was applied when an actual rebellion occured.

And please also take into consideration any laws regarding treason or domestic terrorism.

I said constitutional law, not the US constitution alone. Including declaration of independence and the surrounding history of discussion and all. Also not "says that people have", but recognizes it as an inherent right. Naturally if such a right exists, either no law can retract it or it would be meaningless.

And then please show me how this right to rebellion was applied when an actual rebellion occured.

I don't see how this is relevant. If you think it is, please explain how, explicitly and not implicitly.

(Also one would guess that slaveholders' right to rebellion is in significant doubt.)

And please also take into consideration any laws regarding treason or domestic terrorism.

Can't override constitutional and inherent rights. Also if you don't recognize the latter, it's too bad but your country's founding documents do as a basis. Basically the US constitution is toilet paper compared to unstated but mentioned in d.o.i. inherent rights, and any normal law is toilet paper compared to the US constitution.

And people who made that system were very well educated, also very practical, and explained very thoroughly why should any system of formal rules be possible to discard by force and why inherent rights not prone to degeneracy of any formal system driven by power should exist in philosophy. They were not XX and XXI centuries' idealists with overvalued ideas, or idiots dreaming of totalitarianism with those like them on top.

A law that doesn't apply is worthless.

Thinking that this somehow makes you or your anachronistic shithole of a country somewhat better is just plain delusional.

First, my anachronistic shithole of a country would be Russia.

Second, I said right, not law. Rights are more transcendent.

Rights don't exist. They are social conventions based in law. If you don't have a law or the law isn't enforced then you don't have a right.

Contrary to the name, there are no basic, inalienable human rights.

If your right is not supported by law, it does not exist.

Rights don’t exist. They are social conventions based in law. If you don’t have a law or the law isn’t enforced then you don’t have a right.

That's your opinion which was a minority one in most of the world for most of history. Including such counterintuitive parts of it as China.

Contrary to the name, there are no basic, inalienable human rights.

Says who and based on what?

If your right is not supported by law, it does not exist.

And from which hairy arse would a law gain justification to determine someone's rights?

You are likely from one of the countries with English-derived legal system, where the precedent mechanism literally means that there are non-codified rights outside of the law, which the interpretation of the law has to approximate.

Ok, lets put it in a way you might understand.

Let's say there's a basic human right to life, liberty and security (Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). That's quite basic.

You say you live in Russia. What good does that right do if your holy leader decides that he doesn't like what you posted online and sends you to the front in Ukraine or into a Gulag? Are you going to tell the military police that they can't touch you because you got rights?

Or lets make it more extreme: Say you live in Gaza. Are you going to tell the IDF that you got rights and thus their bombs and starvation just won't touch you?

You are likely from one of the countries with English-derived legal system, where the precedent mechanism literally means that there are non-codified rights outside of the law, which the interpretation of the law has to approximate.

Nope, I don't live in a country with English-derived legal system. A law is a law and judges interpret laws and not judges.

But even in a precedent-based system: Precedent means jack squat if the country's leadership doesn't care, as seen by the US.

I say it once again: Rights, laws, constitutions, all that are fine and dandy, and they are somewhat useful as long as the rule of law is mostly upheld. But:

• If the leadership doesn't care about any of that, none of it matters.
• If laws stop being enforced, they stop mattering. A law that isn't enforced is a suggestion, nothing more.
• The same goes for constitutions and constitution-adjacent rules.
• Rights are never anything more than suggestions. If they are supposed to have any meaning at all, they need to be codified into law.

Look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All 193 member countries of the UN ratified these. And yet there are articles in there that every single of these member countries violate. And having these "rights" means absolutely nothing in real-life terms if there's no mechanism to enforce them or get any benefit from it.

As a russian, how much do you e.g. enjoy the "right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association" (Article 20.1) and the "right to freedom of opinion and expression" (Article 19)? How much does "having these rights" help you if you go on the street and protest the war?

You say you live in Russia. What good does that right do if your holy leader decides that he doesn’t like what you posted online and sends you to the front in Ukraine or into a Gulag? Are you going to tell the military police that they can’t touch you because you got rights?

It'll just be a violated right. As that's treated always.

And you don't seem to understand that when "right" is treated as a thing separate from "law", arguments functional against "law" are not arguments functional against "right".

But even in a precedent-based system: Precedent means jack squat if the country’s leadership doesn’t care, as seen by the US.

Which doesn't change if it's a right or not. It's in the word. You are either in the right or in the wrong. If you're in the right, that doesn't guarantee you anything in the physical world. That's the point of such an entity.

And having these “rights” means absolutely nothing in real-life terms if there’s no mechanism to enforce them or get any benefit from it.

Wrong. Having a common frame of reference means a lot as a precondition for other things.

Say, having a program supporting some Kademlia-based protocol doesn't guarantee you to find other nodes supporting it, or to find a file or other resource you look for on them, or that someone won't block it. But it's better than if people can't agree on any protocol, but, suppose, MS and Apple can.

I think you shouldn't treat things you don't understand so arrogantly.

Are you seriously applying your half-knowledge about programming to legal and philosophy?

You are so lost that you don't even know which topic we are talking about and still think that your arrogance has any basis in reality?

This is pidgeon chess, and you are a delusional pidgeon.

You may think whatever you want, you don't even need to have negative feelings about it.

But you've got no clue at all.

there are different approaches to this, but some of these links should help:

Hardware:

banglejs.com/

pine64.org/devices/pinetime/

OS: asteroidos.org/

Gadgetbridge:

I personally use a garmin, which is paired to gadgetbridge

DIY:
open-smartwatch.github.io/

PineTime

An Open Source Smartwatch For Your Favorite Devices. Low Cost, High Fidelity. The PineTime is a free and open source smartwatch capable of running custom-built open operating systems.

^PINE64

gadgetbridge.org/

This is where I'd start

are there any decent wrist watches that respect your privacy and don't send all the dam data home?

I've heard Garmin is decent, and Pebble is coming back

repebble.com/

Gadgetbridge

A free and open source Android application for bluetooth devices.

^{gadgetbridge.org}

Mechanical ones, sure. 😀

Daaaaaaaaannnngggg...

citizenwatch.com/us/en/product…

AsteroidOS is a linux based replacement for wearOS (android for watches) which is FOSS and removes all the google privacy issues.

asteroidos.org/

Not to sound stupid, but it really depends on how smart you want the watch to be. From connectionless firmware device to fully-featured Android.
+1 for gadget bridge either way.

I have a Fossil Hybrid, that combines physical hands with a 2-color e-ink display. It can't do apps, but it has standalone timers, notifications, media control, pulse/oxygen and step counter.
I personally don't need more. It's cloudless and lasts a week.

If you need full Android/WearOS check AsteroidOS and specific ROMs. Hardware tends to be on the older side here.

The only thing that's hard to do is sleep tracking. That tends to rely on proprietary algorithms and cloud compute a lot.

Pebble has an open source OS and companion phone app.

It's made for developers, tinkerers, and tech enthusiasts. There are many community made apps and watch faces available in the phone app, and fairly good documentation and examples if you want to make your own.

We're bringing Pebble back!

Eight years later, you still can't beat a Pebble

^repebble.com

lilygo.cc/products/t-watch-ult…

There's also a Plus version.

Also: open-smartwatch.github.io/

If you search for "ESP32 open source watch" there are quite a few out there.

T-Watch Ultra

Specifications MCU ESP32-S3 FLASH 16MB PS RAM 8MB Platform Arduino-IDE, ESP-IDF, VS Code, Micropython Wireless Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n; BLE V5.

^LILYGO®

Did you tree photopea? photopea.com/