Zionspilger on X - "We make our enemies monsters in order to give ourselves permission to be monsters to them."
See also: “They don't kill you for being a fascist. They call you fascist so they can kill you"
Nestlé’s boss was sacked over an office romance. Now France is in uproar - " Former French president Francois Hollande notoriously carried on a not-so-secret affair with actress Julie Gayet (who later became his second wife) during his time in office. When the “tendresse” was publicly revealed, it bolstered his public approval ratings by 5 per cent. And pretty much every French person I spoke to seemed proud that the funeral of Francois Mitterand was attended by both his wife Danielle and his long-term mistress Ann Pingeot... The interesting aspect is how divided French women often appear over such allegations. There have been prominent women-led movements denouncing sexism in France, such as the BalanceTonPorc (“denounce your pig”) movement launched by journalist Sandra Muller two days before MeToo went viral in the English-speaking world. The use of “pig” was partly a reference to Harvey Weinstein, who was privately referred to by that soubriquet at Cannes. But when the counter-sexism movement surged in France, it sparked a reactionary letter signed by prominent older women like Catherine Deneuve and the art critic Catherine Millet. One notable passage deplored men being disciplined at work or forced to resign “when their only crime was to touch a woman’s knee, talk about “intimate” things during a work meal, or send sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their interest”. It’s certainly notable that all the 50-plus French women I spoke to felt office romances were fine so long as any romance is consensual and, “you do what’s necessary to be discreet.” One Breton maman said passionately of Freixe’s dismissal, “Human nature clashes with the rules of corporate conduct and HR regulations.” Another woman from a grand country family, who also wished to remain anonymous, recalled that her “ultra conservative” grandmother called her travelling bag her “baise-en-ville” (there is no polite translation for “f—ing in town”), which she said tells you everything you need to know “about the French habits of rural people” going to the metropolis: “They expect a little excitement.”... A British journalist who lives in Paris told me firmly (declining to be named in case her spouse was alerted to her own dalliance): “Love affairs will continue to be regarded as a work perk, so long as you don’t flaunt them or throw a bin at your lover’s head once it’s all gone sour.” Or, as Francois Valentin summarised the matter when I questioned him, “The Swiss are very different beasts to us Frenchies.” It’s also fair to say we Rosbifs are very different to the escargot-munching French. Nothing about sex shocks our cousins over the Channel – except, perhaps, for a man losing his job over a love affair."
Meme - "What level of dysgenic egalitarianism are you on?"
"You are like a little baby, watch this."
Science girl: "A nanobot helping a sperm with motility issues along towards an egg. These metal helixes are so small they can completely wrap around the tail of single sperm and assist it along its journey"
Charles R Downs on X - "Osama Abuirshaid, a Trump-hating lobbyist who was meeting with elected Democrats on Capitol Hill, hit me twice, the first time after I asked him about Hamas, and the second time after I said, “This isn’t the Middle East, you can’t just hit people.”"
Cat owner fined £1,100 after pet enters neighbour’s garden - "A cat has been found guilty of trespassing into a neighbour’s garden in France, forcing its owner to pay €1,250 (£1,100) in fines. Rémi, who belongs to Dominique Valdès, left paw prints on the wall among other “criminal” offences, the court ruled. The ginger tomcat was found guilty of causing damage to the neighbour’s property in Agde by urinating on a duvet, defecating in the garden and leaving paw prints on fresh plaster. France’s league for the protection of animals fears the ruling could set a legal precedent for other pets. The initial ruling, handed down in January, saw Ms Valdès ordered to pay €450 in damages and €800 in legal costs. The sentence was accompanied by a penalty of €30 each time the pet crosses the fence again. The case came to light after the neighbour accused Rémi of reoffending, resulting in Ms Valdès being summoned to court again in December, with a new bill to pay that has risen to €2,000. She runs the risk of a further €150 penalty every time Rémi crosses the fence... The plaintiff’s lawyer produced around 50 black and white photos of cats in court – many of which did not match Rémi’s description."
Japanese army to tackle deadly bears
Nine schools in Queensland, Australia, teach pupils about wrong Caesar - "In 44BC, Julius Caesar was astonished to be stabbed in the back by a gang of treacherous government officials. More than 2,000 years later, pupils across nine schools in Queensland, Australia, might have felt something akin to that when they were told they had studied the wrong Caesar for an entire year – and only found out two days before their final exam."
If Ontario hates Ford why is he still there? : r/ontario - "Reddit hates Ford. Ontario voters not so much"
"Yeah, this is the answer. Do not assume Reddit speaks for all Ontarians. r/Ontario especially is very left leaning."
"I personally think it’s a very centrist, liberal space, but regardless, people in this space are engaged in politics to a certain degree. People outside of Reddit are either not as concerned about what the premier does, or are unaware and unable to engage. There’s a lot of apathy out there. Some of it is by design, such as the conservative-owned media example."
""we are very informed and smart but alas the others are so very ignorant and dumb".
Sorry man. It just comes across as smug and arrogant. There are absolutely low information voters but really low information disengaged people don't show up at the polls in the first place. In reality people have different situations and therefore different interests. There are millions of engaged people who pay attention to the news and prioritize different things than people in this subreddit. If anything I'd say there is almost the opposite dynamic going on to one where this subreddit is thoughtful and others are not. This subreddit is very partisan. If a Tory is doing it, it is bad. But outside you have an electorate that will support Doug as long as he says the right things and does what they want - and Doug has been very responsive to that. In fact I've never seen a politician reverse himself so much. He gets a lot of flack from his right flank for not being conservative enough. You see it over and over. He gets heat and he changes his mind, "puts water in his wine" and shifts course. He won't touch culture war issues. He caved to the Teachers union etc. But whatever course he takes this subreddit is not going to like because it just comes from a very left wing partisan place. And that's just fine. There's nothing weird about being NDP or NDP / Liberal swing. But assuming everyone voting conservative or being conservative liberal swing is a disengaged zombie voter is obnoxious. It's the kind of thing that's just created more and more of a backlash against progressive voices. People have reasons to want things like lower taxes and an easier commute in their cars etcetera. You may not like what they want. But they are engaged and they vote their interests."
If Ontario hates Ford why is he still there? : r/ontario - "On the political spectrum, Canadian liberals are centrists. They're a pro capitalist, status quo party that supports neoliberal policies and the current global hegemony (at least until trump 2.0 started threatening Canadian sovereignty). Even the NDP is barely a leftist party."
Communist logic - only Commies are on the left. Everyone else is a centrist at best. If you're on the right you're far right. When left wingers claim that there is no left wing party in the US, they mean the US Communist Party is powerless
Mother told to tear down Hallowe’en decorations after spooking council - "A mother has been ordered to dismantle a Hallowe’en tunnel that she created next to her home over health and safety fears. Paula Dewar and her family have covered their home and adjoining street with hordes of ghouls, ghosts and goblins for several years, raising hundreds of pounds for charity... North Lanarkshire council has ruled that the tunnel – which includes carved pumpkins, models of witches and skeletons and spooky artwork – is a “potential hazard” because it has plastic pipes and wooden rails. The local authority has ordered Ms Dewar to remove it after raising concerns that it could collapse and warning that she would be liable for any claims for damages caused by injuries."
We still can't get rid of Jacinda Ardern - "Jacinda Ardern – darling of the global elite – is rumoured to be in the race to be the next UN Secretary General. Following in António Guterres footsteps, any new candidate must be beloved of the media and political class and adore the sound of their own voice. Cue Ardern, fresh off a flight from Scotland promoting her new film about, err, herself. In many ways choosing Ardern as UN Secretary General would solve a lot of problems in mainstream media circles. Lacking high-powered women to write listicles about, Ardern’s appointment as the first female UN Gen Sec would keep many columnists in quinoa for some time. The fawning over her “gentler” approach to politics – from attending the UN General Assembly with her then newborn son to writing her memoir: Jacinda Ardern, A Different Kind of Power – makes out that Ardern is just the kind of kind, brave woman we need at the head of international relations. But this love-in masks the reality of Ardern’s political track record. In fact, like many politicians who go on to influential positions on the global business or political stage, Ardern’s career was a failure. Even her much-lauded and “brave” departure from politics – in which she stepped down because there was nothing “left in the tank” – was a performance intended to disguise the fact that she was indeed tanking in the polls. An embarrassing defeat loomed as Kiwis tired of her puritanical Covid restrictions, woke shenanigans and the fact that the economy and quality of life had sunk under Ardern. Her unpopular decisions to lock New Zealanders out of the country, refusing to let them say goodbye to dying relatives during Covid, or forcing the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill to allow trans people to self-ID do not feature in any assessment of her worth as a political leader. Instead, her toothy grin and photographs of her hugging sobbing survivors of the Christchurch mosque attack in a head scarf will be all that is allowed to endure. But make no mistake – Ardern as UN Secretary General would be an international disaster. Back in 2022, she revealed her disgust with freedom of speech during an address in which she slammed misinformation and disinformation as a “weapon of war”. Ardern, like her fellow diplomats, failed politicians and appointed grandees, views the public as a seething mass of hate and poison, crying out for an iron fist in a velvet glove to tame them with restrictions, legal curtailments and fierce control over what people can and can’t say to each other about – for example – restrictions during a pandemic. Ardern is the elite people’s princess – a wonder pick for anyone worried that Western publics are getting a little too populist and unpredictable. What can us mere plebs do about the prospect of such a woke authoritarian ending up with significant political power? Nothing much I’m afraid – unlike the EU, the UN doesn’t even pretend to have democratic systems. Our ambassador to the UN Security Council, who appoints the next general secretary, is Gordon Brown’s old private secretary. (Who?) While Ardern’s candidacy is still a rumour, the more you think about her right-on, undemocratic and unpopular political legacy, the more she seems like a shoo-in."
Canadians must act soon to prevent our standard of living from falling | Toronto Sun - "First it was Prime Minister Mark Carney saying that young people would need to sacrifice, now it’s the head of the Bank of Canada warning of a lower standard of living. It seems that Canada’s leadership sees us as a country in decline, but it shouldn’t be this way... Macklem made clear that the kinds of changes we need can’t be handled by the Bank of Canada. It’s up to the federal government and Canada’s business community. “These are more structural changes. I mean, fundamentally, as the senior deputy governor has hammered many times, we need to get our productivity growth up. And if we can do that as a country, we can bend that curve up,” Macklem said. Carolyn Rogers, the senior deputy governor, has been calling for Canada to make structural changes to our economy to boost productivity and incomes for years. She recently called for more competition in Canada’s banking sector, in other areas of the economy and in breaking down barriers between provinces which still persist. “Higher productivity won’t make Canada immune to US trade policy, but it would help buffer the effects of tariffs. And it’s the clearest path to boosting real wages, making life more affordable,” Rogers said in Toronto recently. Isn’t that what we should all want? Real wage growth and the thriving economy should be the central focus of all governments at the moment, but it’s not... In his pre-budget speech last week to university students, Prime Minister Mark Carney wasn’t exactly lifting spirits or expectations that things can turn around. “I will always be straight about the challenges we have to face and the choices we must make,” Carney said. “To be clear, we won’t transform our economy easily or in a few months — it will take some sacrifices and some time.” That’s a far cry from his election rallying cry. “We will need to think big and act bigger. We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations,” Carney said on election night. Now it will take time, time that we sadly don’t have. As Macklem pointed out in his media appearance on Wednesday, the national unemployment rate has risen to 7.1%."
Time for more regulation, and when living standards drop even more because of that, that will be proof that capitalism has failed
55 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents fear violence on transit - "68 per cent of people in Metro Vancouver feel safe in their neighborhoods at night. But it’s a different story when it comes to public transportation. With 55 per cent saying they fear being victims of violence while riding a bus or the Skytrain... some people CityNews spoke to say they’ve even experienced or seen violence on transit. “We were on Hastings and one of the buses there – and a couple of people got on and got into a full-on brawl,” a transit passenger told CityNews. “That was intense.” “I’ve seen some incidents where people who maybe have mental health issues, and they’ll be having outbursts – sometimes physical, sometimes verbal,” a different transit passenger said. “And I’ve witnessed this a few times.”"
Time to make driving even more expensive and inconvenient so selfish and inconsiderate assholes must take public transport. If you drive instead of taking public transit, you're a bad person
How does the United Arab Emirates’ financing of the Rapid Support Forces perpetuate political violence against civilians in Sudan?
A terrorism supporter claimed that "Zionists" were funding RSF in Sudan because "The modus operandi looks similar to how IDF & Zionists fund ISIS to kill Muslims. They misrepresent Islam & spread Islamophobia. #falseflag #BloodyZionists". Turns out "Zionists" are really Muslims. Even after I showed him this, he continued ranting about how "Zionists" were to blame for Sudan. You can't cure virulent anti-Semitism
Meme - Elizabeth Warren: "If company can break the entire internet, they are too big. Period. It's time to break up Big Tech."
unusual whales @unusual_whales: "Amazon $AMZN's AWS is still down. Here are some of the sites affected: Adobe Creative Cloud..."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "AWS is not a monopoly. It represents 30% of the web. Sen, Warren also overlooks the fact that many providers went down because their services relied on a single AWS region, a malpractice that is not Amazon's fault. It did not affect Google, X, and many others."
Meme - "r/interestingasfuck
My smart water purifier unable to dispense drinking water because aws was down."
"503 Unavailable"
Meme - Internet of Shit: "hahahaha the bed sends 16gb of data month oh god"
Michael Zimmermann @zimm3r...: "Is 16+gb/mo a normal amount of telemetry? Can you not do any local compute of "get hot" or "get cold" with a multi core processor and multiple gigabytes of memory? Can't just repeat the previous nights settings?"
"It gets better! So the ALWAYS ONLINE BED that uploads 20g of data a month requires a 200 dollar subscription to work lmao. If the bed can't access AWS, it can't confirm you have paid the subscription, so it lifts itself upright to keep you from sleeping on it"
What Is ‘Heavy Soda’? The Midwestern Gas Station Secret Is Now a Trend - "if the photos are to be believed, stop at the right gas station and you might be rewarded with the option to choose a soda with extra syrup added straight from the spout... several people messaged to say they — or rather, their teenaged children — had found comments online referencing the C-Barn convenience store in the small town of Farmington, Missouri, not far from my brother-in-law and his fellow pharmacists. Sure enough, the store’s Facebook page posted about running machines with a higher ratio of syrup in September of 2024. “Here at C-Barn we have Heavy Pepsi, Heavy Mt.Dew and Heavy Dr.Pepper!” the post reads, “Aren’t we lucky in Missouri!!!” I spoke to C-Barn’s store manager, Joyce Meadows, and she says it’s a very popular item at several of their local stores. “There are some key things that people say they just have to have, and heavy soda is one of them,” she says. “They say when the ice melts, the flavor is still there.” Co-owner Ray Johnson says that the ratio they use is 3:1, and that it’s been offered there for eight or nine years. It started when the owner of another regional store, Bill Brookshire of C-Mart, decided to address customer complaints of weak soda by turning the syrup up — way up. Johnson remembers that Brookshire, now retired, coined the name “Heavy Pepsi,” and pretty soon, C-Barn customers were asking for it, too. “I personally don’t drink it,” says Johnson, adding that it’s “a little much for the belt.” So, even though many people (including me) have been skeptical that it exists, it’s real. It’s just that it’s found exclusively in a limited rural area and only a lucky few have encountered it. You know, like Bigfoot."
The first EU country to introduce a speed limit for... pedestrians. Fast walking becomes illegal - "Walking briskly will soon be prohibited in Slovakia, after the Parliament in Bratislava adopted a legislative amendment aimed at preventing accidents… on the sidewalk. According to the new rules, pedestrians will no longer be allowed to walk at a speed exceeding 6 kilometers per hour if they want to obey the law. The amendment to the traffic law establishes a maximum speed allowed on sidewalks in urban areas of 6 km/h. The limit applies not only to pedestrians but also to cyclists, scooter users, or rollerbladers, who are allowed to travel on the sidewalk. The aim is to reduce frequent collisions between pedestrians and electric scooters... The average walking speed is usually between 4 and 5 km/h, but according to the British Heart Foundation, a pace of 6.4 km/h is considered moderate for a person in excellent physical shape. The opposition criticized the amendment, and the Ministry of Interior stated that it would have been more appropriate to ban electric scooters on sidewalks rather than impose a general speed limit... The amendment has also sparked a wave of humorous reactions on social media, where several users wondered if they could be fined for running after a bus."
Opinion | Surprising reasons Americans relocate - The Washington Post - "the future may not actually belong to the big “cool” cities; the economically vital “creative class” may not inevitably congregate in such places. This may have been the case before so many of those cities became overly expensive, overly taxed and overly dangerous. But today, people on the move, including the young, have shifted preferences in a major way. In its annual survey, Development Counsellors International, specialists in marketing economic development and travel, found that 41 percent of movers preferred suburbs; 16 percent, small metropolitan areas; and only 13 percent leaned toward large metros. More surprising, 30 percent were seeking rural locations. It isn’t just retirees who are seeking tranquility. Sixty-three percent of rural and small metro counties added residents between 25 and 44 years old from 2020 to 2023, more than twice the percentage of a decade before... One especially shaky speculation is that moves are motivated primarily by the perceived cultural or political character of competing communities. DCI’s survey shows that economics and personal safety dominate relocators’ decisions. When ranking their criteria, last year’s movers named the cost of living and housing affordability in a first-place tie, followed by safety/crime and housing availability. Short commutes, a friendly local population and quality health care come next. Proximity to family also scores high. Trailing far behind are nightlife, arts and culture, and the “cool factor.” At rock bottom are “political/social fit” and “diversity.” These characteristics also rank lowest in relocators’ criteria when seeking a new job. While governments throw millions in cash incentives at corporations, at $50,000 or more per potential job, savvy localities such as Tulsa are landing hundreds of new residents annually with a fraction of such costs. Offering a few thousand dollars for moving and other expenses often does the job, sometimes augmented by an intriguing array of low-cost perks: In Lincoln County, Kansas, the high-school football team shows up to help newcomers move in. Another stereotype that calls for caution: While numerically the hemorrhage of people from states such as New York and California to Sun Belt destinations is unmistakable, the flow is surprisingly two-way. MakeMyMove, one of the entrepreneurial outfits that have emerged to connect movers and Midwest host communities, tells me that, though California is the No. 1 sending state and Illinois an unsurprising No. 4, second and third place are held by Texas and Florida. The surge in remote work plays a role, but not a dominant one. Fifty-three percent of movers wind up taking a job in their new location. The 23 percent who work remotely mirrors the level at which fully remote jobs seem to have stabilized across the economy. The data suggests that state economic development strategies need updating. The standard practice of throwing subsidies at established businesses encourages reckless excess as politicians outbid one other for the opportunity to cut the ribbon on plants, sticking their successors with the tab. Now a hardheaded return-on-investment analysis says that a far smarter retail approach can pay off better, and quicker. One study found that the boost to state and local tax receipts from individual relocations is almost 10 times greater than that from corporate subsidies. The relocators typically bring above-average incomes, and therefore tax payments and consumer spending, and the economic lift starts within months, not after years of abatement."
