Hi, Eastern European here. We begged to join NATO. We kicked and screamed, wheeled and dealed, anything we could to get that coveted NATO membership.

You know why? Because we’ve been dealing with expansionist Russian imperialism for our entire histories. Different coats of paint in different time periods, but it’s all the same shit. The US is an empire, but at least here it’s preferable to Russia’s imperial ambitions.

And then the rest of society has to pay for the healthcare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to subsidize or completely pay for the healthcare of those less fortunate than me via taxation, but that necessarily has to be combined with a protectionist attitude towards food standards to keep costs manageable.

I have a friend who does game QA. A lot of the time issues this major are caught, documented, and then management decides the extra delay to solve it isn’t worth the effort because “it’s not going to impact enough people to matter”. Then, once a firestorm erupts due to public backlash, they try and blame it on QA.

My friend has gotten very good at ass-covering, and makes sure every issue ticket is very explicit, not only in terms of what the issue is, the cause, reproducibility, but also how likely the average user is to hit it just to avoid blame.

Yup. Did specifically say that I was missing tons of stuff in that super short summary of the formation of Israel. Also left out the Balfour declaration, the White Paper of 1939, the Buraq uprising, the Black Hand, Lehi and their attempted alliance with Nazi Germany, and much much more.

Here’s the long version.

Short version is that in WW1, the UK conquered Palestine from the Ottoman empire. 1922-1948, the British ran the territory, getting shot at regularly by both native Arabs, the tiny number of native Jews, and the comparatively much larger group of immigrant Jews. In the 1940s, the UK asked for and got US help with counterterrorist operations, especially against Jewish ones. Arabs and Jews pinky promised to play nice with each other if the UK left, so rather than continue getting shot by everyone in the region, they left. Arabs and Jews immediately started a war as soon as the UK army left. Then, every single neighbouring country attacked the newly formed Israel, which they somehow survived.

(Missing HUGE amounts of context and nuance here, obviously)

If you’re interested, the short version is that instances (A.K.A servers) are run by different people in different places. A reason to move instances might be:

1. My admin, the owner of the instance, has been doing things I heavily disagree with (bans, blocks, etc)

2. I don’t agree with the rules on my instance.

3. The instance is run in a country which criminalizes something that I care about, and so has to ban discussion of that thing (piracy, porn, etc).

4. I want to run a community on a specific instance for whatever reason, and so need an account there

This is what underfunding education for decades and TikTok does to a country. Romania has the highest number of TikTok users per capita in Europe.

It applies to instances outside Romania if the user is Romanian in Romania. There are no major social media companies based in Romania, and yet the law still applies on TikTok, Facebook, X, etc.

The fact that the law is selectively applied against one side but not the other is a different issue.

This post is technically illegal, btw. You can try and convince people publicly to vote, but not who to vote for 24h before polls open.

Took time off work and have been campaigning hard for 2 weeks (you can guess for who xD) and am completely physically exhausted. Slept for 14 hours today now that the campaign is over. All that’s left is to vote tomorrow and see the result.

It’s an important weekeND.

To me, “guys” has been a gender-neutral term for a while now. At least that’s how it’s used here in my little bubble in Europe.

My younger cat taught me to play fetch with her. She finds a receipt or other small bit of paper, brings it to me, and wants me to crumple it into a ball. Then, after throwing it, she brings it back and drops it at my feet. This normally continues about 10-20 times until she gets bored or loses the paper.

Kill switches are almost entirely a misconception, as far as I understand it. What’s far more dangerous with US defence products is reliance on them for spare parts, repairs and upgrades. Piss off the US in some way, your very very expensive aircraft no longer gets spare parts, plane can’t fly safely, it’s functionally useless.

Customs union and single market aren’t the same thing. Customs union means no tariffs, and a unified tariff policy on those outside the union. Nothing more, nothing less. There are active discussions about doing this.

Single market is joining the EU, with regulatory alignment and free movement, as you quite rightly say.

Not only did he support the neonazi, the neonazi returned the favour by endorsing him.

Joining the EU right now doesn’t make sense politically. Far more useful and effective to work on getting a customs union in place. Most of the benefits without most of the headaches.

They could simultaneously work on regulation alignment, and then they’re off to the races.

Switzerland or Finland?

is it called Jewish or Jews in this case?

Jews. A thing can be Jewish, a group of people can be Jews. Another rule of thumb you can use is adjective vs noun.

There are plenty of anti-Israeli Jews. Don’t paint us all with the same brush.

My dad grew up in a communist country, and I know exactly what you mean.

I’m incredibly lucky that we have a kind of mutual intellectual respect, where we fact-check each other a lot and are both willing to change our minds about stuff. Consequently, I’ve managed to explain the differences between totalitarianism, communism, and fascism (had to explain why horseshoe theory isn’t a thing).

He thought I was being hyperbolic about the US’ slow descent into fascism in 2017, as I ran through the fascist identification checklist. As a victim of communism, he naturally tried to make excuses for Trump. That ended the first week of his second term, and we’re having some close calls with a similar candidate here.

I think for name recognition and not scaring off Americans who run in fear from the s word, maybe it should be called the Progressive Party?