Oh no, they’re just genuinely concerned European companies won’t be able to be competitive and to put them out of business! Bless them.

Like, which idiot would even entertain the idea that google has our best interest in mind.

We pretty much all agree the US sucks here, you’re trying to argue the mass murdering mess of the USSR somehow didn’t also suck. Whataboutism won’t help you.

So you’re saying they should polish their text to make it more coherent? Huh.

Here! -> !firesidefedi@tubefree.org

Love this album and song.

A “black mariah” refers either to a police wagon or a hearse. In the case of this poor fellow he’s got a wooden coat and he’s never coming home—the narrator is seeing the hearse coming, in the form of a big black Ford.

It gets a bit confusing when the Clash sings “no need for the black mariah” in Guns of Brixton—in that case they’re saying there’s no need for a police wagon, as the protagonist of the song has already been shot dead. Presumably they’ll need a hearse though.

Nick Cave uses the slang for a police car in the Curse of Milhaven, where the protagonist is “off to the asylum in an old black mariah”.

You’re being distracted from actually doing something.

A constant stream of awful bullshit, right to your screen. The feeling of doing something by shouting into the abyss.

Trump doesn’t care if you see pictures of him raping children or learn about all his corruption unless it is transformed into actual political action. Taking to the street, organizing, running for office, supporting those who do.

Everything is a distraction from action.

For real. Whenever I eat (Italian) pizza normally around a bunch of freaks using knife and fork I just silently rejoice about my superior cultural capital.

And if OP is American, chances are those people don’t even know how to use a knife and fork properly.

But the evangelical Christians want the Jews to trigger the rapture by fighting the final huge war in israel, and I imagine the antisemites are also fine with the Jews all being sent away to israel for then to be sent off to fight a senseless war to their deaths.

Somehow they managed to start off from different angles and both end up wanting Jews to die.

This guy couldn’t sound more fascist if he broke into German 1930s marching songs. This video should be used in education.

I only saw it a few weeks ago. It’s not like I was around to watch it during the theatrical run, and there is a huge amount of classics out there I still haven’t watched. So I appreciate that spoilers are not treated as having an expiration date. :)

I just watched Thelma & Louise for the first time this January and had somehow managed to not get the ending spoiled. It was amazing.

I had no idea - that’s really cool!

Germans also seem to be privacy oriented people, I can imagine this combined with recent developments could have a real impact.

0 to 1 percent: 22 years
1 to 2 percent: 8 years
2 to 3 percent: 2 years
3 to 4 percent: more unstable, but between 1 and 3 years

I would say it’s an encouraging trend.

When I started using Linux in 2009 it had around 0.6 percent market share on desktop. Windows had 95%.

Today Windows is measured below 68%, and Linux has been measured above 4% by statcounter.com.

These things move faster the more people make the change. Linux only reached 1% in 2013, 2% in 2021, 3% in 2023, and 4% was somehow first measured already in 2024. For every single person making the switch it becomes easier for others to do the same, and companies consider Linux support to be a little bit more important. One can only wonder at which percentage of market share it will be offered as a mainstream alternative when buying a new computer, but it seems pretty clear that we’re getting there.

I guess my point is that we all won when you ditched Windows. Thanks for that.

Turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts

Interesting contrast to the church itself, which has the capacity of turning people into passive consumers of thoughts that have been painstakingly processed for centuries.

Mojeek is the only usable engine I know of that’s European and truly independent at the moment. But the results are not nearly as good as in Qwant.

SearXNG also runs on Google and Bing in the backend, and I can never seem to find an instance that works reliably.

I think the Qwant/Ecosia index focuses primarily on the French (and German?) speaking web to begin with, but I’m hopefull it will get good in all languages eventually.

Yeah, “from a guy with a dead worm in his brain” would make for a better question.

What an incredibly absurd and unpredictable situation. It’s hard to say who is in the more precarious position, her or Trump.

Go back to the original European name - Vinland/Vineland/Wineland. Though that might have been in Canada, technically.

Better yet, find some pre-Columbian name for the land that was used by the actual locals. I’m sure there’s plenty of alternatives, and some of the most beautiful state names in the US came about that way. Maybe some Native American name for the Mississippi river could be a good starting point.

A piece of American optimism:

America has been awful since the start, in one way or another. It was never going to change because the majority population was either comfortable enough, or scared enough of the minorities that they would accept a certain discomfort as long as their fellow man had it somehow worse.

Right now nobody is having a good time over there. We’re approaching a breaking point. And that’s scary, but it’s also an opportunity to build a better world on the ashes of the old. We are on the verge of huge changes.

Change is no guarantee for improvement. Americans should not only protest the regime, but start preparing to rebuild. Get smart. Read your own history, especially the parts you’re not proud of. If you don’t know or fully understand those parts you will never manage to build wide alliances. Read postwar history, read about the French revolution and it’s messy aftermath. Read Arendt, read Rawls, read Steinbeck and Locke. Prepare yourself to grasp this historic moment. You have an opportunity unlike anything since the 18th century to change America for the better. Don’t waste it doomscrolling. Don’t think you know enough already. Prepare yourself to be the kind of person who is needed once the regime falls.

You’re not powerless—on the contrary, it’s an historic opportunity. And in power there is hope.

European optimism:

After the events of the last few weeks I think a lot more people are fed up with this fascist bullshit, and it seems even Eurosceptics now believe we need to stand together in solidarity across the continent. It’s a new European moment, and the American hegemony has been broken. I’m feeling genuinely optimistic.

The protests in Minnesota also fill me with joy.* I sincerely believe things are beginning to crack. Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu are all in extremely fragile positions, and dictators have famously poor life expectancy. Change is gradual, then sudden, and the destinies of these despots are intertwined. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

* I wrote this before they ended in more killings. It’s hard to see joy in it now, but I see equal amounts of hope.

True, there’s a lot of good research being produced as well. There’s just an insane amount of academic work being produced in general, both good and bad.