I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

I remember from an older article that it’s a very small college and the new republican dean/president/chairman (I forgot what he was) is being paid $ 700 000 per year, about $1000 per student. I’m certain that he isn’t the only person making bank from this. It seems to be a grift to funnel tax money into the pockets of friends and sycophants, and while the college board tries to make itself relevant in the eyes of their maga public, the future of the students appears to not be a consideration, because they’re not the ones paying for this circus.

Apparently fighting the republican culture war is very profitable for republican grifters.

In the eu terms like butter and dairy can only be used for milk products.

But our legaslative pendulum did swing a bit too far in the other direction (imo): terms like soja-butter and so on were also banned.

They don’t have to prove that someone is not a qualified elector to disenfranchise them, throwing up barriers to make it very hard / impossible to vote is enough. In the past the federal government could intervene if something like that happened, but that’s not really possible anymore thanks to the current scotus, so it’s up to the states.

And this state is now laying the legal groundwork: If “every” persons with xxx qualifications has the right the vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it practically impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then those people had a right withheld from them.

If “only” persons with xxx qualifications have the right to vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then … nothing. That’s the difference between “every” and “only”. Changing the wording to “only” allows the state to legally pile on extra requirements and barriers.

Examples of groups of people that I’ve seen disenfranchised by state actions: Prisoners, felons who have done their time, college students, minorities, inner city people, military abroad. Some of these news articles will have been attempts that were not (yet) successful.

I haven’t read the full wiki article, but I expect those examples to be in here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

Unfortunately SCOTUS gutted the power of the federal government to enforce those guarantees based on the old provisions + republicans filibustered the democrat bill that was meant to address that. It’s as if the republicans have a plan.

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-does-the-constitution-say-about-the-right-to-vote/

“The ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, has been jeopardized both by recent Supreme Court rulings and the failure of Congress to enact new voting rights legislation.”

“With the federal government and the Supreme Court unlikely to protect voting rights in a substantial way in the near future, it’s up to the states to take action to protect voting.”

And now there’s a state changing the law so that they can more easily disenfranchise voters of their chosing. Imo this is no coincidence.

EPP is centrist, not far right, and they work together with greens + socialists + liberals. The national parties that are members of the EPP, that I know, are the old christian democrat parties and in terms of the USA Overton window, they would be to the left of USA democratic party. The far right only has about a quarter of MEPs.

"Combined, the three political groups on the right have 187 MEPs, just over a quarter of the total, but they are viewed as unlikely to form a coherent and united bloc. Following the election, leaders of the EPP, S&D and Renew Europe groups stressed their commitment to working together as a pro-EU “democratic alliance”. The S&D and Renew Europe, together with the Greens/EFA, also stressed that they rejected cooperation with groups on the right, including the ECR. "

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10068/

The parties that I know in the EPP (Belgian and dutch) are definitely to the left of the USA democrats, which isn’t very hard. On the national level, member parties of EPP will work and have worked together with their s&d counterparts in many countries. And in the eu parliament, s&d, renew and EPP have indeed worked together for many years.

So yeah, they definitely would not be in Trump’s camp. I don’t get how one can claim that EPP is far right.

I’ve got the impression that Tucker Carlson is going after Alex Jones his audience. Tucker Carlson peddling crazy conspiracy theories right when the chickens are coming home to roost for Alex Jones, imo that’s no coincidence. Tucker never was stupid, he just has no morals, so he never had a problem with publicly stating stuff that he personally didn’t believe in. Grifters gonna grift.

Is this from Spain?

It sounds like what they are doing is clearly illegal and you probably could do a lot of people a favor by complaining to the authorities.

Generally for the eu: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-003934-ASW_EN.html “If users receive unsolicited communications after having withdrawn consent, they can file a complaint with the national regulatory authority. In addition, they have the right to a judicial remedy before national courts.”

The responsible agency for Spain: https://www.aepd.es/

Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.

Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.

Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.

Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.

The consequences of prolife politicians and their voters: “This corresponds with a 7% absolute increase in infant mortality overall ( ≈ 247 excess deaths; 95% CI, 73-421) and 10% in infant mortality with congenital anomalies ( ≈ 204 excess deaths; 95% CI, 60-348) in relevant months after Dobbs.”.

The excess deaths are still ongoing probably and i’m interested in extrapolating it to a per year statistic, but I can’t make out over how many months this data was, that part of the article reads like a convoluted mess for me and I have no desire to decipher it.

French people do eat apple beignets, which are basically fried apples.

If you’ve never had one before, apple beignets are easy to make and delicious, plenty of recipes around.

That’s obviously what they meant. There was probably some translation error. Just cut people some slack, everyone makes small mistakes from time to time. There’s a few (atleast 2) languages where the native word for billion starts with an m and the word for trillion starts with a b.

In the next paragraph: “by the time of the Daubert hearing, the printer that Cybercheck had identified in its report couldn’t be located.”. I suspect there never was a printer. If asked leading questions by the investigators, then the company probably fabricates evidence that corroborates the suspicions of the investigators. And the quality of fabricated evidence is probably poor because of how cheap they are. Quality takes time and skill, and skilled time costs money.

Parallel construction requires real evidence though. This company just seems to fabricate evidence to confirm police hypothesises. I think what happens is: Police ask “was this person there at that time on that day”, the company conjures up a report that the person’s mystical digital profile pinged a wireless printer at that place at roughly the right time, but also at a second other time for a tiny bit of credibility (but by only changing the date of the timestamp, which actually makes it more suspect). People go search for that printer, and then there never was a printer.

And given that the only thing that external parties saw, was less than a 1000 lines of code for automatic searches and none for interpretation, it might not even be automated, but just a human pasting together reports. A human pretending to be ai.

I’d call it outsourced fabrication of evidence.

On the other hand, when someone claims something is impossible/something has never happened before/something happens every single time, but you have just 1 anecdote from a credible source that contradicts that claim, then that 1 anecdote is enough to know that they are wrong.

Example: some pundit states: our government has never executed an innocent man. You just need proof that they have executed a single innocent man to show that the pundit has no credibility on the subject and that it’s thus not an impossibility that other executed men were also innocent.

Sometimes knowledge is just an internet search away: https://www.qwant.com/?q=natural+disasters+in+europe&t=web

Or searching for specific kinds of disasters will also supply results, like fe tornadoes: https://www.qwant.com/?q=tornado+europe&t=web

How can you be so convinced of things which are so easily disproven? Why do you not try looking something up instead of just spouting the same nonsense again and again? Why do you resort to insults when it turns out that a belief you held strongly, turns out to have been a delusion? Notice how all this time I’ve been the one providing sources and quotes, while you just resorted to insults and doubling down when what I say doesn’t align with your feelings. You’d look far less like a fool if you would accept that it’s possible to be wrong about something.

I had found a good quote earlier by another American who had actually visited other places, I think now is a good time to share it:

"Americans who have never left their own little reality will tell you that American homes are actually solid… they’re not… I have lived in and visited many countries. American houses are built like shit.

My cousin built a house in Europe out of brick and concrete… and it’s WAY WAY WAY WAY better than the most expensive, nicest house I’ve ever been to in the US. I have anger issues and have punched through my walls on repeated occasions. You can’t do that with brick and concrete… probably a good thing I live in the US.

This is why when a tornado comes around, entire towns are demolished… All that would happen in other countries is some broken windows and shingles would come off the roof.

Americans pay more for their houses in terms of price, property taxes (insanely high), and repairs… to live in the lowest form of construction on this planet second to bamboo huts.

This is all due to American greed. America is a big mall where you get shit quality everywhere you go, but you think you’re actually winning because you are so self-deluded and isolated. Most Americans have never been anywhere else, but yet they will defend their garbage buildings that fall apart in a couple of decades or less. Speaking from my piece of shit house that was built 20 years ago that needs all floors and walls replaced because of mold seeping into the… wood… everything… wood and cardboard. ".

I also don’t get how you came to believe that there are no natural disasters in Europe. We have a stereotype of dumb arrogant Americans who are confidently incorrect, but still, what the hell man :)

“Their homes are robust, and built to last 400 years (estimated) without having to make substantial repairs.” You must have missed that part, so much for reading comprehension.

The difference in building quality between houses in the usa and northern Europe really is night and day. Tornadoes which would only take off the roof from European houses, tear down entire American neighborhoods. To us, it’s just shocking how bad those American buildings hold up. There are of course also Americans who chose to build to a higher standard, but they end up with smaller houses at a higher price, like we do in Europe. I don’t get why this is so hard to accept for you. We pay more for a smaller house, but that house is then build to a much higher standard. It’s really not a mystery.