Putin is so popular in Russia, that even the dead vote for him.

At the time when I became inactive on Reddit, Azerbaijan was building up to finish the Nagarno Karrabach conflict once and for all. There was a lot of blatant anti Armenian, pro Azerbaijani misinformation being posted in relevant discussions (that they were tolerant, only wanting peace, there was never any ethnic cleansing, …), and most of those comments went without anyone posting a simple fact check to debunk it.

I suspected that they had been sharing a blocklist and had blocked most of those who would call them out on their bullshit. I didn’t bother either since I just expected to be blocked as well and I had basically given up on the platform anyhow. I found swapping accounts to read threads annoying as hell, so it was easier to not comment and just be silently disappointed in humanity.

The fact checks that I did see at the time, were mostly posted as a reply to the top comment of the chain, hoping to go unnoticed by the one spreading misinformation, but that will only work for so long. Reddit is fucked when it comes to discussing political news or gauging public opinion (imo), it’s now designed for spreading misinformation (imo again).

For anyone wondering how the blocking feature has been weaponized to spread misinformation, in 2022 a redditor did an experiment: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/testing_reddits_new_block_feature_and_its_effects/

Afaik, the blocking feature is still in the same state as in 2022, which makes modern reddit a heaven for spreading misinformation.

All the usual suspects calling this decision antisemitic, makes me more supportive of it. They could have used other language to appeal to humanism or reason, but nope, straight to fake accusations of racism and hate mongering against the decision makers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia

Tldr:
Fled from gang violence in San Salvador as a teenager, married to an American, has american kids, was living and working legally in the USA, was still illegally deported to a prison in San Salvador, had to be brought back under court order, is then falsely accused of crimes in Tennessee and now they want to deport him to a country that he has no connection to whatsoever.

Ironically, to get the Tennessee accusations, the usa government struck cooperation deals with convicted criminals, one of which was going to be deported after his sentence, but now not anymore.

The cost for the USA government to persecute this 1 single person has to be already in the millions by now.

This page references several works by French missionaries: https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/lac-bac/explorers/www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/explorers/h24-1430-e.html

I could easily find the first mentioned book “Le Grand Voyage du pays des Hurons”. A scan of what I think is the original book: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k109515f/f2.item There also exists an English translation, but I couldn’t find a free version of that one.

I was wondering if what you were saying about Corbyn was true, so I looked up most of your claims (all true for those I checked), and I thought I’d share what I found for others.

Corbyn used Russian talking points as justification for not wanting to do anything about Russia’s conquest of Crimea: http://www.hscentre.org/russia-and-eurasia/corbyn-wrong-says-ukrainian-human-rights-legend/

Corbyn has indeed worked with RT. This article called him a frequent guest: https://www.thearticle.com/rt-is-putins-propaganda-channel-so-why-do-british-politicians-agree-to-appear-on-it

Corbyn is indeed against NATO: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyn-did-call-for-nato-to-disband-but-its-labour-policy-to-stay-in

And Corbyn does indeed oppose weapon deliveries to Ukraine because “it would prolong the war”: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine

Or they park in the most obnoxious places. I once saw a father waiting to pick up his kid in one, with 2 wheels on the pavement and his engine idling. This was in the eu and it had a typical macho pickup configuration: all black, spotless, tinted windows. I’d prefer it if those dickheads continued driving bmw’s instead of pickups, much less annoying when they’re tailgating you.

A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: https://expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/

Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.

Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don’t know if Paypal ever improved.

The setup of this movie reminds me of Locke with Tom Hardy. That’s also basically a movie where you watch 1 person in a static situation (in a car in Locke) conducting remote project management. I’d have never expected a full movie to work with that setup, but Locke pulls it off imo.

And the dystopia has become a little more dystopian.

The story reminds me of dystopian/scifi stories where someone is imprisoned and presented with problems that they have to solve to earn their freedom/food/… . The first problem is understanding the instructions, because they’re presented in a way that the prisoner doesn’t understand + there’s no outside help to help the prisoner understand.

BBC1 and BBC2 will each have several times more viewers than BBC News. The statistic in the op + the channels that GB News is comparing themselves too, are cherry picked by GB News.

If they are in the business of spreading misinformation and misrepresentation, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they also do that when they are patting themselves on the back.

When calling that number, the caller will need somekind of proof that they are in control of the car that they are trying to opt out of ads. Afaik, the easiest way to accomplish that when requiring a phonecall, would be pairing phone and car. But obviously Stellantis is not going for easy with this setup, so this is purely speculation on my part.

? Where did I say it was about cost? I don’t live in the usa. The 3 hospitals that I could potentially pick from are public hospitals and their cost for the same procedures would be exactly the same, since they have to stick to a government price list. But between those 3, I still have a preference.

Some people will already have a preference and not need to look up anything. I would have if the accident happened near where I live. Imo it’s not a bad question at all.

Apart from how insane it is to put obtrusive ads on a car dashboard, having to link your phone to your car and then call a phone number to opt out of touchscreen display ads is 🤯

There is going to be a reason that they’ve set it up like that.

Most European countries do not use first past the post, but proportional representation with multiple elected representatives per voting district. There is far less incentive for politicians to gerrymander with proportional representation.

A hydro reservoir has much higher evaporation than if there was no reservoir. That’s usually a big part of the discussion when a downstream nation objects against another nation building a dam upstream from them.

Depending on the source, nuclear uses a bit more/a bit less water than coal. But they are in the same order of magnitude.

Source: https://visualizingenergy.org/what-methods-of-electricity-generation-use-the-most-water/

Ps: biomass power generation is a crime against nature.

Generating power with coal/nuclear/hydro uses water, and since the LLM data centers use power that would otherwise not have been generated, this is one of the ways that they use up water.

For cooling many (most?) data centers use evaporative cooling. That evaporated water could be captured again with a heat pump (reducing the wasted water + recuperating heat for other uses), but it’s Texas, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the data centers have no intensive to be less wasteful. So the evaporated water gets released into the atmosphere and it’s gone.

Edit: about your question where the water is coming from: there is no simple answer, it’s coming from many sources and it’s being used for many things. But irregardless of the source, there’s only so much available and using more than is available is not possible. When the math is done, it turns out that Texas is running out of water. At that point choices have to be made, and apparently Texas is chosing to increase/maintain the supply to data centers and to reduce the supply to people.

It appears that in the future, Itch will allow creators to opt out of payment providers, meaning that it’s probably on a per game basis, not per platform. That Itch and Steam are not making a per game solution now, is most likely because their current software doesn’t allow it and they need time to rework it. Itch has promised various changes already, Steam has been mum afaik.

Source for Itch: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”. https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content