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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I read all that and I must admit I am still not quite sure what part of all that is markdown, and why any of it is markdown.

    I get that this sentence must be the key concept: ““Markdown” is the name of a particular standard way of formatting text so that programs can reliably interpret parts of that text as representing the writers desire for their text to be displayed a particular way.” But it reads like a tautology without really explaining either statement.






  • Merva@sh.itjust.workstoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world[Deleted]
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    16 days ago

    You are arguing from ignorance. The terms republic and democracy and so on have rather solid definitions in political science. Republic is not a very informative descriptor of the poltical system of a country, it just means that the role of head of state in’t heritable, ie. that it isn’t a monarchy. The actual political system of a republic can be basically anything except a monarchy.


  • A republic just means that a country doesn’t have a heritable head of state. All of those listed countries are in actual fact republics. It says next to nothing about the actual political system of a country besides the role of the head of state. Lots and lots of dictatorships are republics. Many democracies are republics as well, but as you can see it is the dictatorship/democracy part which describes the important part of those countries political systems, not republic.

    Many Americans are confused about this, because they have been indoctrinated into thinking that republic is the main descriptor of their system. Mainly because it was an important descriptor back in the 18th century, when most countries were monarchies, but much less so in later times when most existing countries are republics.


  • There are lots of republics where the president does serve as a literal figurehead without any consequential powers, so a republic does not necessarily turn up with a Trump. In fact the US is rather unique in how it has combined republic with absolute monarchy in the office of the president, probably very much a sign of how antiquated the constitution is.