enaaem

I cannot speak for the US, but having been in Europe and Asian countries like Japan and Korea, the simplest explanation is the difference in tolerance for petty crime, vandalism and litter. Is related to the broken window theory.

The thing is that European cities have always been kinda dirty and crime infested, and it has little to do with American culture war. I do not have an explanation for this, because you will need dig deep into history for that, but the good news is that things are overall improving. Overall crime is overall trending down. For example, the inner city of Amsterdam used to be full of junkies and now that has been almost completely cleaned up. And football Hooligans used to be a much bigger problem than they are now.

At this moment there are right wing conspiracies from people like Owens and Tucker that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel because he was getting critical of them and would be against the war.

I am not saying that these conspiracies are true, but this is how fascism looks like. Putin doesn't arrest all of his political challengers, but he gets rid of the ones that are viable opponents. In case of Kirk, he is popular enough to make it big in politics and in the short term he could break the party narrative.

Despite the efforts, I have seen an increase in anti-zionist sentiment on the internet. Most notable on the right from people like Tucker Carlson en Candace Owens. People are tired of fighting another Middle-Eastern war for Israel.

I liked this one:

- European countries to be invited to join the United Kingdom, creating a new ‘union of Europe’, if you will. (2024)

Fauci case is weird. Fauci did pretty much what every other country was doing. If he did anything wrong it was doing too little too late.

The question isn't whether AI is worth it, but whether it becomes a commodity.

Singapore is a multi-culturial society and it is also known to be very safe and clean like Japan. You can definitely make people behave with top down rules, and eventually it just becomes 'culture'.

I used to believe Israel was a US colony meant to control the middle east. Now I believe the US is Israel's colony meant to control the middle east.

In the Champions League the top, let’s say, 16 teams can all beat each other, so that part of the NFL experience is still there. The thing is that these top 16 teams change every year and there is no clear definition which clubs are top teams at the moment. But that’s the charm of it.

Football is very tribal. People want to dream that their local club have a shot to participate and maybe win the Champions league. Think of Leicester and Girona. In the Netherlands there is now a club called NEC and they have a shot to qualify for it, and that by itself is a historic moment for the club.

I find it interesting that this seems to be an exclusively American conservative phenomenon, and it probably has everything to do with Trumps vindictive nature. The rest of the world has already moved on. Nothing what Fauci did was really different from what other countries were doing and if he did anything wrong, it was doing too little too late.

I followed development of COVID when it happened in Asia, before it became mainstream in the west. Countries like Vietnam had contained the virus much better than western countries by faster and more decisive actions, which came from their experience with the SARS virus.

The biggest problem what I noticed is that Western countries see pandemics as personal health issue and not a collective problem. If you woke up from a coma and someone told you there was an over death of 1 million people, then that could only mean two things: war or a pandemic. Fighting a pandemic is more akin to fighting a war, than fighting obesity.

I find it interesting to see that you got downvoted, and yet no one is rebuking you.

I remember how transgender suddenly became a massive issue a couple of years ago. I used to visit the meme site called 9gag a lot, and there was a moment when the platform got flooded with anti-trans content. There were even counter memes where people were joking how obsessed 9gag got with transgenders. This is Taliban level of reality detachment. Who ever got bothered by a transgender?

This is the destruction of Western civilisation.

In many places in Europe, there is only 1-2 weeks where AC is needed, and that is the main reason why many people don't want to bother with it.

I write by hand to hack my productivity.

I buy nice notebooks and nice pens that are satisfying to use. I practice my handwriting, so the finished work is satisfying to look at. I think it gives me a bit of dopamine boost.

I agree. That's why I am neither.

The problem with right wing populist parties isn't just that they don't adhere to some "woke" abstract moral concepts, but they are just terrible at governing. They are not serious in understanding the causes of any problem.

Even if you don't care about abstract woke moral concepts, the biggest problem with white supremacists is how terrible they are at governing. They have already decided what the problems are and have zero interest in finding real solutions.

No, this will give EU textile manufacturing an advantage, because they mostly produce low volume high value products. This will hurt fast fashion importers the most.

The average third world experience. Blatant corruption and no one does anything.

Additionally, India is currently banning starlink for national security reasons.

Trump likely ruined it for America. Balogun was completely invisible. All the controversy and negative attention did not do him good.

Companies like these enjoy artificial monopolies thanks to IP laws. Why don’t we have the freedom to copy their products and make them the way we want?

I wonder what would happen if someone would make a serie or movie with realistic historical fighting? It might just break all previous works. For example armour that actually works and spears being better than swords.

Old school forums would definitely ban you for bad behaviour. Comments like "Dumbass XD" that you would see on X all the time, will simply be removed.

Old school forums were also regulated by reputation, which means people had to put effort into their posts. This discourage low effort trolling and rage bait. If you had some crazy takes, people will eventually make fun of you. There was a time on 9gag where it was flooded with anti-trans posts. That could never happen forums, because people would ask why OP is so obsessed with trans people.

Democracies solve the succession problem. Autocracies often don't have peaceful transition of power and swing far more extreme. Sometimes even civil war.

In some meditation practices, the task is to observe the stochastic parrot in your head. You will soon realise that you cannot control this parrot. If you cannot control your thoughts, could it be that you are not your thoughts? And if you are not your thoughts--the word stream in your head--what are you then?

You should never consider that unless it is very obvious the other side will steamroll you. In that case you become a vassal state of bigger empire, which has different downsides, but it might be your only choice. Otherwise everyone can just come and keep extracting free stuff from you until you can neither pay the tributes nor defend yourself.

In a violent world we actually see the opposite: people become hyper violent when threatened or even when someone disrespects their honour. It seems irrational, but the fact that we see this behaviour consistently in violent environments means it is evolutionary stable.

I had fine robusta in Vietnam and it is really good. Strong, chocolatey and fruity.

Indeed, in my country the vast majority of people have nothing against new development near their neighbourhood. It’s always one or two people with way too much free time that are blocking development.