It used to be that the first result to a lot of queries, was a link to the relevant Wikipedia article. But that first result has now been replaced by an ai summary of the relevant Wikipedia article. If people don’t need more info than that summary, they don’t click through. That Ai summary is a layer of abstraction that wouldn’t be able to exist without the source material that it’s now making less viable to exist. Kinda like a parasite.

Would the outcome have been the same without people in the media repeatedly bringing this to everyone’s attention? Probably not, because there would have been no public pressure against it, while the shadow groups that want this would have still been lobbying the politicians.

Something bad is going to happen.
Some people advocate to stop that bad thing.
Even more people are holding their clutches that the bad thing might happen.
Because of public pressure, action is undertaken to prevent the bad thing from happening.
Thanks to those efforts, the bad thing is successfully averted.

Some random person: that bad thing was never going to happen, look at all those gullible people who were panicking over nothing, we could have just done nothing and the outcome would have been the same.

Also known as the “preparedness paradox”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I only use Steam myself, so I hadn’t checked Itch Io’s communication yet. I don’t know the platform myself so it’s quite possible that I’m misinterpreting this, but to me it appears that Itch Io will allow creators to delist payment options that they are not compliant with: “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.”.

Source: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

Do you have a source of where they are saying that?

I have seen an article about the Australian political action group that was claiming credit for getting the games banned. The story behind the start of the controversy.

And I have seen an article about the communication from Steam that they were banning games which were in conflict with the rules of their payment providers. The result basically.

But I’ve only seen conjecture and speculation about what went on to get from the start to the result. I haven’t seen any article that spelled out exactly what the different payment providers demanded from the gaming platforms, nor anything about what they discussed in between them.

Edit: after 12 hours there’s 4 downvoters and 0 sources. Another victory for vibes over facts.

I don’t get why the gaming platforms are removing games instead of removing the objecting payment providers as a payment option for purchasing those particular games.

If visa doesn’t want people to purchase game X with Visa, then remove Visa as payment option for buying game X.

I’ve done some reading and it turns out that Reform is now sometimes polling at a percentage equal to what Labour last won the elections with (~34%). Labour is polling as low as ~20%, the greens at ~10%. So yes, Reform and Tories are splitting the rightwing vote, but no, the left cannot afford to further split the left vote.

Because of fptp, that 34% result was enough to bring Labour to a 63% majority. Which apart from being ridiculously unrepresentative, also means that Reform could achieve the same result.

As an external observer who would rather not have Reform get in control of the UK, I see 2 possible solutions:

1. Get rid of fptp asap.
2. If that’s not possible for reasons, then coordinate in between moderate parties to let the top moderate candidate run unopposed against Reform, the French way.

The UK still has a fptp election system. Splitting the leftist vote, seems like a good way to move the UK further to the right again.

I thought that internal opposition within the Labour party, would have been the way forward. I had the impression that Starmer was very unpopular with Labour members, so why can’t they get rid of him and his clique from within the party?

This was new to me so I tried looking it up as well. I found a lot of results right away with startpage, which makes me wonder what search engine you were using?

They (the evangelicals) are apparently calling it “toxic empathy” and they jump through a lot of loops to claim that it’s bad to have empathy with the victims of USA republican policies.

My first result was a long opinion piece criticizing evangelicals for their newfound crusade against empathy: https://churchleaders.com/news/511911-the-scandal-of-evangelical-empathy.html/4

2nd result is an evangelical that does a bit of mind bending to explain why empathy with outgroups is “toxic”: https://unityinchristianity.com/2025/02/03/the-truth-about-toxic-empathy-and-why-its-becoming-a-controversial-topic/.

The 3rd article has a claim that Jesus Himself was not empathic: “Clearly the Lord Jesus Christ can be sympathetic, but He cannot be empathetic in the sense of identifying with our sinful emotions and desires.” https://www.e-n.org.uk/features/2025-03-the-problem-with-empathy/ That article also references a book by an evangelical called “the sin of empathy”.

Modern USA could be summed up by the old Russian adage: “And then, somehow, it got worse.”

FYI, some numbers. The guardian article is still definitely worth reading, it just had no statistics.

*Nationally (USA), Tesla drivers had 26.67 accidents per 1,000 drivers. This was up from 23.54 last year.

The Ram and Subaru brands were again among the most accident-prone. Ram had 23.15 per 1,000 drivers while Subaru had 22.89.

…

As of October 2024, there have been hundreds of documented nonfatal incidents involving Autopilot and fifty-one reported fatalities, forty-four of which NHTSA investigations or expert testimony later verified and two that NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations verified as happening during the engagement of Full Self-Driving (FSD).*

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/

For the other nations in nato it would be for the best (imo obviously). Republican usa is not a reliable ally and the other nato nations have not all come to terms with that new reality yet. If the usa quits nato, then it instantly removes all doubt and the remaining nations of NATO can immediately start work on improving the alliance, instead of being stuck in limbo for a few more years while they’re hoping that the usa will somehow magically unfuck itself.

My bad for assuming wrong.

And yeah, sarcasm with just text doesn’t work very well, got to add something for making obvious that it is sarcasm, or plenty of people (me included as you saw) will assume otherwise.

Fault? I didn’t mean to imply that China is responsible for starting the latest bout of civil war in Myanmar, because they weren’t. There’s really no reason to believe that whenever something bad happens, some outside big boogeyman is entirely to blame. If you want to know what caused the current civil war to start, try looking it up, but please don’t make assumptions.

If you can’t look it up because of time constraints or other reasons, then accept that you don’t know. It’s impossible to know everything, so there’s nothing wrong with not knowing some things. But imo not knowing something and knowing that you don’t know, is a lot better than making assumptions and inventing alternate facts.

China is a direct neighbour of Myanmar, with a history of political meddling in Myanmar and also of setting up illegal exploitative businesses by entrepreneurs. But even without the meddling, they are direct neighbours, which should be enough reason for Myanmar journalists to want to know what is going on in China.

Fascists don’t respect democracy or even other people’s rights, so it’s logical that democracies should not trust them in positions of power. It’s basically the paradox of tolerance: “if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”

And if you want to see what happens when these kinda of people are left unchecked in the cause of retaining the “moral high ground”, just look at the USA. The USA democrats have been giving in for 40 years against increasingly perverse transgressions by republican actors, and now it’s a dumpster fire on the cusp of becoming a full blown dictatorship.