The late medieval Burgundians will have been the first to call it the low countries (les pays-bas). They acquired these territories (various duchies and counties in Belgium + Netherlands + bits around it) over time, not as one piece of land. All those different territories had different laws and traditions, different crown laws (HRE or kingdom of France), different local charters, … It wasn’t one country, so plural makes sense.

Most of those do make sense from a 19th century or older viewpoint, so I suspect that it’s not just a coincidence that those words were linked to those countries. If it was only one or a few with an ulterior meaning, then I could believe it to be a coincidence, but it’s most of them. I more believe that there were chinese word artists at work who looked for words with both a fitting meaning and the right sound.

When it comes to nature, the USA is a really beautiful country. France gave the world the Code Napoléon, which is one of the most influential evolutions in law systems. Britain’s success in it’s colonies and in the industrial revolution was very often based on the endeavours of individuals, ie heroes. Northern Germans are sticklers for following rules, politeness etc (which was back then viewed very positively by others, but has since become a bit tainted because an attitude of the law is the law will often lead to inhumanity). Mexico: not a clue. Korea: I just have vague guesses. Japan, when seen from northern China, is where the sun rises.

NATO is such a big threat to Russia, that as soon as Finland had joined NATO, Russia moved it’s troops away from that area. Russia’s problem with NATO is not that it sees a defensive alliance like NATO as a threat, the problem for them is that they can’t bully and invade NATO countries should they feel like it. Which is also why all the formerly occupied countries that are next to Russia, want to join NATO. Who doesn’t want their country to be safe from invasion by a fascist state? Tankies apparently.

Maybe that the government reactions don’t engage with the anger, is what makes those reactions worthy of inclusion? Actually, scratch that, whether or not those reactions do or don’t acknowledge the anger is irrelevant to whether or not they should be included. Those reactions are relevant to the article because they inform us of what the other involved parties are doing.

In this article those reactions at the end do not fit in with the main story of the angry people, because they don’t acknowledge that anger. I’d call them tone-deaf reactions, but a journalist isn’t allowed to write that (except in opinion pieces), so the journalist can only give those tone-deaf reactions as they were (+ provide some context about them, which I appreciated). That the anger of those people was so far only responded to with tone-deaf reactions, makes those tone-deaf reactions very relevant to the anger of the people.

Not unfocused at all imo. The article says that Hong Kong would traditionally hold an open inquiry in cases like this and then goes on to explain why that is probably not going to happen for this disaster (hint: authoritarians don’t like open enquiries). And then at the end of the article there are some reactions from other more remotely involved parties + some context about those remarks. The end of an article is where those reactions are traditionally put and reactions from various parties are always going to be more varied in nature, but that doesn’t make them non topical or “unfocused”.

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.

As I understand it, the public perception of Trump was distorted by how he was portrayed on The Apprentice: https://www.psypost.org/new-research-sheds-light-on-the-influence-of-the-apprentice-on-donald-trumps-political-rise/

The producers at NBC had to jump through a lot of hoops to make Trump appear competent. Their chief marketing officer from that time is very sorry for what he did: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america

Once Trump became the republican candidate, the right-wing media took up the responsibility of filtering and distorting what their audience got to see and hear about Trump.

Republicans really have something against the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, it seems to get targeted at every opportunity.

Edit: as it turns out, republicans really do have a grudge against the agency, they’ve been targeting it since before Trump got reelected: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/conservatives-cyber-cisa-politics-00122794 Countering misinformation campaigns was a bridge too far for republicans.

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

Yep, undisputed. Except by religious zealots who resort to bad faith arguments when some of their cultist beliefs are not accepted as fact by non believers, but on those subjects, those people aren’t taken seriously by anyone except others from their cult, so yes, pretty much undisputed.

Then check the sources listed under that wiki article.

If you couldn’t be bothered to look up something as simple and undisputed as this, then it’s really silly to make a stand with “Wikipedia isn’t a source”, it just makes you look like a bad troll.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

You should have just looked this up yourself. It’s going to be the first result in most search engines.

I’m on Android and android has something called app pinning, but that still allows full functionality of the open app and is thus open to abuse. I looked up the guided access system and it’s a lot better than the android method, but it seems much more convoluted to set up. I just want a simple option: you can look at what is currently playing, but touching does nothing.

I want this, but not just for toddlers, just for handing over my phone to anyone really. Put on some media (photo, slideshow, video), lock your phone inputs, hand it over to someone else to look at, without having to worry that they will invade your privacy as a prank.

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia

Tldr:
Fled from gang violence in San Salvador as a teenager, married to an American, has american kids, was living and working legally in the USA, was still illegally deported to a prison in San Salvador, had to be brought back under court order, is then falsely accused of crimes in Tennessee and now they want to deport him to a country that he has no connection to whatsoever.

Ironically, to get the Tennessee accusations, the usa government struck cooperation deals with convicted criminals, one of which was going to be deported after his sentence, but now not anymore.

The cost for the USA government to persecute this 1 single person has to be already in the millions by now.

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.