I’ve read about this tactic in effing up diplomatic relations 101

dumb uneducated.

Probably even with dry statistics you can’t really compare the two that much. I also wonder how much it is because people don’t want to or feel the need to travel outside of the EU/USA, versus them not being able financially. Beside culture and climate the financial means of people within the US and EU differs a lot.

Business Insider has a long running series called World Wide Waste, with some very interesting videos. One of them about this woman in Nigeria (!) who started a business recycling tires because her community literally got sick of the tires that where left behind everywhere around her. It really makes me sad rich western countries can make their trash disappear and have people in much worse conditions deal with the consequences. I really enjoy those videos by Business Insider because they shed a light on the people who do the right thing despite of the shit the worlds pulls on them.

https://www.businessinsider.com/one-nigerian-aims-to-recycle-millions-of-waste-tires-2023-10

In The Netherlands you can get an X in your passport if you identify as non-binary / 3rd gender person. Nobody knows how border security will treat you if you don’t have an F or M in your passport, guess aren’t many people willing to go find out either. Really wonder how this is gonna go in the following years when US hosts important diplomatic/technological/sports events. Also some scientists are calling out to boycott scientific conventions in support of lgbtqi+ persons.

Too bad nobody saw this coming, they could have made a great movie about this 10 years ago.

How about the fact they put in much more effort now, compared to 33 years ago? Also technological advancement?

The more pro-putin posts you see, the less likely you are to doubt if its genuine of course.

If this happened in any other country people consider this an intentional leak to the media, because any other explanation would be delusional.

I think since the introduction of euro and Schengen the percentage of eu-citizens who never been outside their country has dropped close to zero. Also think the percentage of eu-citizens who has never left eu is smaller than us-citizens leaving the us is. States are big yes, but the difference between states is smaller which means it makes less sense to travel ‘abroad’.

sans paywall: http://archive.today/2025.03.23-234832/https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-wants-to-inspect-immigrants-social-media-prof

For anyone who’d like a more substantial argument: A Guide to Trump’s Fascist Presidency — From Ignoring Judge to Erasing History

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You are wrong, the article you mention states “According to the snoop.ro report, the Romanian tax agency found that the Liberals had paid for a social media campaign on TikTok through influencers and by promoting a hashtag which ended up being hijacked to benefit Georgescu instead.” It has been proven that his TikTok campaign wasn’t organic while he declared not paying for it. The fact that the liberals where the first to use a certain hashtag doesn’t mean they were involved in his campaign. He is still under investigation. Do you have any sources backing up your claim it wasn’t Russia? Politico doesn’t mention it. For others interested in reading more, here’s an explainer by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-is-calin-georgescus-romanian-presidential-bid-being-blocked-2025-03-10/

It’s because there is not enough tariffs in place.

I have seen too many videos of small monkeys and big apes throwing their dong to agree with your paper ball theory. Also frogs don’t throw balls but are great at catching insects, a lot of other animals have great spatial awareness when it comes to hunting prey. But tbh, I doubt wether they could grasp the concept of a box going up and down like humans do.

Have seen too many videos of dogs trying to take long sticks through narrow doors to disagree with you there though. Personally I think dogs are just not that smart after all that (in)breeding we did. I’m not calling dogs stupid, don’t want the world to dislike me.

But only after it no longer was ‘allegedly’ if I understand correctly.

The biggest party in the Netherlands is called the freedom party, their mainly anti-immigrant and against the freedom of religion and the freedom of education. Totally agree they’re great at marketing (though it’s more about being loud and talking about social problems than it is about having ideas of how to solve them). They’re considered to be far-right populist, their leader (Geert Wilders) is aligned with Marine Le Pen and Georgia Meloni. The left has lost their working class-base traditional base to them because of them being more relatable (and less high-brow) than the labour party, the socialists and the greens.

Yes but 50.000 × 2 = 100.000, large numbers get confusing without dots

For the people on the streets it doesn’t change anything, but it’s weird how little blame Erdogan is getting here.