Aceticon @ Aceticon @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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The leader of the modern Dutch Far-Right some years ago, when it really took of, was very openly gay.

I suspect that you're from a society where sexuality and sexual orientation are massively affected by Moralism and heavilly politicized - in other words treated as heavy and important subjects aligned with certain political forces - which is totally different from many other countries, most notably The Netherlands were they just treat all sexual orientations as just normal (which is why Dutch Far-Right muppets couldn't care less that their leader was gay).

All this to say that your reading about the sexual orientation of a countries top politicians and what it says for populist politics, doesn't at all apply outside very specific societies with wierd political takes on such subjects.

The Far-Right really took off in the Netherlands under the leadership of Pim Fortuyn who was very openly gay.

Think about it: one of the first leaders of the modern Dutch Far-Right was openly gay and nobody cared to the point that he was politically very successful as a Far-Right leader. In which other country in the World would the Far-Right types be fine with their leader being gay?!

In my own personal experience (I actually lived there for almost a decade), the Dutch have the healthiest take of all when it comes to sexual orientation: it's all normal and in domains outside sex and romance treated as just about as relevant as people's eye color (i.e. pretty much nobody cares).

All this to say that from a Dutch point of view the sexual orientation of the prime minister being homosexual is irrelevant.

Beware of projecting the weird Anglo-Saxon viewpoint on sexuality and sexual orientation onto events taking place in a Dutch context.

Yeah, in a way they're really just saying out loud the quiet part: that their job is to arrest people who "don't look right", quite independently of being an illegal immigrant, legal immigrant or even a citizen.

Having the "app" as an intermediary in the decision process is just a "computer says" way to isolate themselves from the responsabilities of what is in fact their choice (as the app was still configured/trained per their instructions so it's nothing but a computer agent dirctly or indirectly executing their instructions)

This is Politics, it's not 1D or 2D, it's N-Dimensional (with a very, very large N): it's not just possible but pretty much a Mathematical certainty than in a country were there are only 2 parties they will match perfectly on some dimensions, even whilst not at all matching in others.

Trying to dismiss away that aspect of Reality (which is incoveninent for tribalists) with sloganeering like "bothsiderism" is just parroting propaganda meant for simpletons who see reality as having just one dimension where there is nothing more than 2 sides.

It's pretty evident by their actual policies that strengthenning of police powers and the surveillance state are things in which both sides of the power duopoly in the US agree in the most, and it the face of both of those parties being shit on that domain your "yeah, but

<tiny difference>

Now, if you favorite party did start to diverge in that, you would have reason to celebrate, but it ain't hapenning and discourse such as yours makes it even harder that it will ever happen - why would the tribe's leadership change their ways when there's a veritable army of tribalist peons going "yeah, but, bothsiderism" at any criticism of what they do, even those parts which are undeniably shit.

In case you haven't noticed, the system in place now in the US became what it is today under both Republican and Democrat Administrations.

One has to be a tribalist useful idiot to deny that "their side" has done as much to create a Surveillance State as the "other" side - amongst those few things which have bipartisan support in the US are strengthening of police powers and erosion of privacy.

The comparison with most of Europe (with notable exceptions such as Britain and Russia) is very telling: it absolutely is possible to have low crime without reckless invasion of privacy, widespread civil society surveillance, draconian police powers and a pay-to-play Judicial System.

I vaguelly remember reading how SUVs are 70% more deadly in collisions with pedestrians than conventional cars.

(Because their front is flatter and taller, so pedestrians are less likelly to roll over the hood and instead tend to be projected away)

I believe those kinds of cars started taking off back then.

Also the fraction of Israelis who descend from Holocaust survivors is minuscule since the origin of the vast majority of those who immigrated to Israel is Russia.

Unlike the image they try and push with things like their "Western Values" talk, Western Europe and North America are the origin of only a small fraction of Israelis.

You can see the numbers here

In Israel the Holocaust is little more than a tool for nationalistic propaganda.

In my experience AAA games from around 2000s and early 2010s often have problems running in Linux, especially if they have DRM.

In some cases a pirated version will run just fine whilst the official one won't.

It has been my general experience over the years that with just about all electronics devices with "everything and the kitchen sink" in them, you're actually better off buying functional elements separatelly as discrete devices.

For example, you're better of with a "dumb" fridge plus a good tablet and something to hang it on the fridge door. Another example is how a "dumb" TV and a TV Media Box separatelly are a better choice than a Smart TV.

This is because those things usually have different technology life-cycles (i.e. the time period were a tablet is expected to remain useful and performant is much less than for a fridge) and some parts are useful on their own and hence are more flexible to use if they're separate (i.e. a standalone tablet has many more uses than one integrated in a Smart Fridge).

It's a way of showing one's wealth (and peak dunnig-krugger status when it comes to technology) to visits?!

Receives a letter at home from Panasonic containing a message, a color printed sheet and a fridge magnet.

Message reads: "Dear costumer, please use enclosed fridge magnet to hang provided advert sheet on your Panasonic refrigerator"

I lived in Britain for over a decade and every single government during that time had policies to prop up realestate prices.

Frankly I'm surprised it's only 44% of average wages.

I bet the picture is far worse if you look at the norm of wages (i.e. the value around which most wages are) rather than the average.

The average wage were I am - Portugal - is €1,741 before tax, whilst the average rent is €1,220 (for a 2-bedroom appartment)

Specifically for a 1-bedroom appartment it's between €1500 in Lisbon and about €600 in the cheapest possible city.

So the average rent (for a 2-bedroom) is over 2/3 of average wage, whilst for a 1-bedroom it's between 86% of a single average wage in Lisbon and 34% in the cheapest city.

Mind you, it has long been the case that, for example, to live near Lisbon in average both members of an university educated middle class couple must work full time, otherwise they can't afford it.

Oh, and minimum wage in Portugal is €870, which means that for example a couple both earning minimum wage in Lisbon can only afford a 1-bedroom appartment if they don't actually eat for most of the month.

Unsurprisingly birth rates in Portugal are some of the worst in the World.

The really entertaining thing is how successive governments have done all they can to push house prices up (same in Britain by the way: I lived there for over a decade and there too it was always government policy to prop-up the realestate market) so house prices in Portugal went up 17% just this year, and house prices going up invariably drag rents up.

(But hey, at least our Realestate Investor Prime Minister - who owns 54 properties - is 17% richer just this year).

Por que no los dos?

Which specific ethnicities are deemed untermenschen and which are deemed ubermenschen isn't what determines or not if somebody has a Nazi mindset. The ethnicities deemed to be in those categories are only important when talking about historically very specific groups of people with a Nazi mindset.

It depends who you mean by "you people".

If you mean "Liberals (in the American style)" you're probably right.

If you mean "Americans", you're wrong, not because many or most Americans think like that, but because many do not at all think like that.

PS: And I use "American-style" because I don't just mean those in America, rather any who believe in a certain kind of self-proclaimed "Liberal" politics which is the same as "Liberals" in America (basically Neoliberalism, with or without the Identity Politics decorative elements). People who believe in that kind of politics are definitelly not just in America.

That's also what popped-up in my mind at that title: giving money and weapons to an ethno-Fascist nation to mass murder children of another ethnicity is also "pure evil".

In pure ethic and moral terms letting people starve is actually less evil than helping murder children, simply because the former is mostly a passive action (doing evil by refusing to act) whilst the latter is active (acting to, or in this case to help, do evil).

If one sees the former as worse than the latter because the victims of the former are Americans and the victims of the latter are not, one being guided by something else than morals or ethics - most likely some form of tribalism such as Nationalism.

In summary this specific shit, whilst evil, isn't actually morally and ethically worse than what American Administrations have already been doing: the people activelly helping mass murder Palestinian children clearly don't have the morals or ethics to refrain from doing this not-quite-as-evil thing, so will do it (and keep on sleeping like babies at night) if they think they will gain from it.

This isn't at all surprising and not even close to the depts of evil they're capable of reaching.

As the Press keeps pushing (and pretty obviously so in the coveraged of the Gaza Genocide) If it's done under the aegis of a State it's all "the authorities" doing everything proper and legal, if it's not then it's a "group" and whatever they do is illegal and bad, even if morally both do the same thing.

It's all part of the standard messaging in our societies to obey unquestioningly authority and treat the Law as if it's some kind of holy perfect thing brought down from the Heaves rather than the product of lobbying, horse trading and even corruption.

I'm in Europe too and my experience with TOR is not quite the same.

Then again I'm in one the more peripheric bits of Europe and not surrounded by countries were people run TOR nodes, so TOR probably more bottlenecked than in a more central place in Europe.

That said, surfing behind a VPN (which I pay for) plus provides me the level of privacy which I need at the moment.

The correct reaction against a bully (especially one who, again and again, uses the very same threats that got him compliance before and only ever those) is exactly to double down on the thing the bully does not want.