thisislieven

Well this is offensive if not blatantly racist. They could also just present general guidelines on cooking and personal hygiene and people can figure out how it applies to their personal situation.

How do things like this keep happening? (well, I know why but jfc)

More generally - most people don't use excessive water. The problem really lies elsewhere, perhaps focus on that.

Thanks. I find myself struggling a bit with Lemmy.

I check in most days but there's indeed relatively little going on and there's not really a blossoming European community. Happy to play my little part but at the same time it has to come down to everyone. I'm not sure what it takes to make it more thriving. Lemmy is nowhere near the numbers of Reddit, obviously, but it's enough to think more would or could be happening.

As for contributing - I prefer that over here as well, largely for the same reason. At the same time, putting effort into making a post (I am not the type to just post a link or something) you do hope to get some interaction.

It's really about how many people want to make the effort but also the fediverse remains confusing. Two friends of mine tried to sign up and even with my guidance they couldn't quite figure it out, had to wait for days to get login credentials, passwords somehow didn't work... and these are not troglodytes. That is an issue too.

We have agency when we unite and the good thing is that people all over the world are quite done with most of our ... leaders. The difficulty is that we're not united in which way to go.

I think that's our biggest challenge right now, and all forces are coming out to prevent people being organised and standing together. If we can fix that, and some good stuff is happening, the future is ours. My worry is if we can get there soon enough, and whether or not we can minimise the harm in the meantime.

I understand all that, I just fundamentally disagree with it.

To be clear, I am not saying you're wrong but I mean that this is just such irresponsible governing. It's laziness indeed, it's fear to take responsibility, it's whatever else. What it isn't is taking charge as leaders and feeling any kind of responsibility or accountability. This is something that could be done at a 10th of that amount if not less so.

I've worked a lot with governments myself in the past and the incredible wasteful spending just has me livid. From renting out entire castles to hold meetings to cleaning up walls, while also hollowing out just about all social services.

It's just - it wasn't always like this and I understand the politics behind but I will never understand it from a human point of view. It's utter insanity and almost no one is willing to change it.

Sure, but still that's just a price tag that can't easily be validated - even with a subcontractor (and, frankly, municipalities should have this in their ranks - also for removing graffiti and such).

There's a massive issue of government's wasteful spending, local and national. This is one of those things. More generally, as a society that we have price tags like this is just insane. At the same time, basic services can't be funded.

It just doesn't add up, even if you agree with the removal.

True, but on a personal level I also just really can't enjoy it anymore knowing who's behind it regardless of how I obtain it.

(I also just grew out of it, that too)

The work came for free, courtesy of the artist.

The cleaning fee of £150k comes from - I mean wtf is that price even? That's just absolutely bonkers on so many levels. Even if it requires some specialist work, this is just insane.

I hated the far right already but now I shall hate them even more.

When it comes to defence a) much of Europe is already working together while b) the EU also can't get its act together on a shared defence.

I am pro Iceland and Norway joining the EU but when it comes to defence I am not sure it particularly matters (for many other things it absolutely does however).

Hrm...

I may have miscalculated this. Technically we're still only at step 2 as I proposed it but with the North American and Asian equivalents of UEFA also against it, UEFA on a strike of sorts and people seemingly real mad at Infantino that might be the last step after all.

It'd be real funny if this caused the ouster of Infantino and he won't even get a third term.

Still, I am not yet 100% convinced it won't happen, or in some watered down version perhaps.

Well, that's why I added links...

Sure. It's genuinely a problematic situation. I'll include the Washington Post too.

More of a general point: there's little pan-European media and it isn't well known. What's mostly consumed is Anglo-Saxon, either from the US or the UK - neither of which are part of the EU and even the UK media sphere is barely European. They have different agendas, lack the cultural and institutional knowledge and measure the EU and Europe alongside their own standards. It frames the conversation in Europe, directly and indirectly, in a way not beneficial to Europe.

Most Europeans don't even recognise this is happening, and has for decades, and indiscriminately share things from the US or UK, including the worst of media outlets. It has consequences and plays a key factor in Europeans failing to recognise the US as anything other than an equal and an ally which they most certainly are not (and never truly have been).

The NYT and the WaPo are two of the most established newspapers in the US and considered papers of record, both are probably also the most read US newspapers outside of the US (alongside the WSJ - which is less problematic but leans right and is not as neutral as many Europeans consider it to be). All have a history going back well over a century, and a reputation that goes along with that.

Both have issues with framing. Even if the facts are technically right, the way they are presented can make things seem different than they are. There's a massive difference in how republicans are represented vs democrats, and more globally the right vs the left. Their difference in coverage of Biden and Trump is an extreme example of this.

WaPo was acquired by Jeff Bezos (Amazon) a few years back and he has editorial influence. One of the most notable things is that he told the opinion writers can only write about personal liberties and free markets. Anything to challenge this is no longer allowed.
Bezos also blocked WaPo from endorsing Kamala Harris in the last US election (whether or not you supported her isn't the point - the point is that a supposedly editorially independent paper did not get to make its own decisions).

As for the NYT, there are many issues and controversies. To focus on the two big, current, ones: their coverage of the war in Gaza (I'll let wiki do the explaining) and the incredibly biased writing on transgender people which has caused genuine harm. Alejandra Carabello (clinical instructor at Harvard) has done a tremendous deep dive going back several years.

As a side note: the parody NYT Pitchbot is a nice one to understand their pattern.

There's so much more but this was already three times longer than I intended to write.

I'll get off my high horse now.