I thought this would be about Truth Social, but it's mostly about stuff like Breitbart. But then at the end:
Baragona observed that Trump's Truth Social platform also saw a significant decline in unique users. In May of 2024, Truth Social had just 2.7 million unique users, which is a 14% drop compared to May of 2023. This marked the platform's second-worst performing month since its launch.
So that's dropping, too. I wonder where all the users are going?
I want to start by saying: you don't need to have a link to post to Politics! I think there's probably a subset of Beeple that prefer that anything politics related stays to that community, so they can filter it out easily if they don't want to engage with politics. My personal belief is that EVERYONE should be engaged with politics, but I know bad days happen and on those days just seeing Trump's name can push some people into a deeper spiral.
But you make a good point. For how conservative and corrupt this court is, it's surprising that they haven't been more brazen. In a lot of cases, when they haven't gone with the more politically-conservative ruling, it seems like they've aimed to reject the conservative argument on technical grounds more than anything. That said, they went scorched earth on the biggest rulings that have taken place since 2020, and to me, that says it all. They hear Congress and the President openly questioning their integrity, and they know this will lead to actual reforms of the Court if they let this continue. So they go back in their cave, and go back to making quiet little inconsequential rulings wherever possible. Then, when the bribe check is big enough or the ruling is important enough to the Conservative mission, they'll come back out swinging with a 6-3 ruling that ruins all of our lives even more.
But idk. I'm no expert, and it sounds like you are more plugged in to SCOTUS news than I am. Just some of my thoughts.
Christ, well that's not surprising, but that doesn't make it any less horrific. As you mentioned several times in the quotes, the UN is meeting with the Taliban this Sunday to discuss Afghanistan as a whole, and the Taliban has demanded that no Afghani women be present for this meeting. This report really calls into question the point of the meeting. If the Taliban are treating Afghani women this way, and the Taliban deny that they are even arresting women for "bad hijab", then what is there to even talk about?
I appreciate your willingness to question the narrative and push for peace even while everyone seems to have a real appetite for war. I found this article from 2014 that discusses the US's influence in the 2014 protests. The cited experts are Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. They discuss a recorded phone conversation where two US State Dept officials are going over who they want in power in Ukraine. Snyder seems pretty convinced that the 2014 protests and elections were genuine, regardless of State Department conversations about who they want to win. Then you have McGovern, who has experience in this sort of thing, saying that the CIA does not really do this sort of thing anymore, and so the State Dept does it instead. And as i'm reading, he seems quite convinced that the US was placing its thumb on the scales, and he seems to agree that maybe this should be resolved by everyone coming to the table.
McGovern's most convincing piece of evidence is this:
The other thing is, you know, Professor Snyder talks about the parliamentary vote, voting in the new government. Well, he must know that that was a rump vote. I think it was—I think it was unanimous, something like 253 to nothing, which, you know, really is sort of a nostalgic look back at the votes that I used to count in the Soviet Union. There’s something very smelly here.
But I looked it up, and it seems like in 2014, the Prime Minister Yatsenyuk was elected via a parliamentary election where he got 371 of the 372 members that voted. Which sounds suspicious, but you should factor in the other 78 members that were either abstaining or not voting. Is it strange? Sure, but here's another theory: the protests happened with no or very little Western influence, but the elections happened with lots of implied Western influence. There was a lot of crisis and turmoil, protests and corruption combined with Russian soldiers on the doorstep. The Parliament was under a lot of pressure to act swiftly and decisively to ease unrest. So they picked up the phone when the US called, and listened to their advice. In this way, the US got the outcome it wanted, but not by particularly manipulative means. They just offered their advice, and the Parliament listened. And so, all of the anti or neutral-to-Russia Parliament simply fell in line, to bring stability to the country.
Now, I have no evidence of this. This is just my extended thoughts on the matter after trying to understand your point of view. I think the reason many are quick to defend Ukraine's side in this conflict is that Russia has shown itself to be corrupt, fascistic, and manipulative in foreign and domestic affairs multiple times over the past decade or so. And in the context of what has happened and continues to happen, it's hard to be sympathetic to Russia's "position" when they've been shown to argue in bad faith over and over again. It's impossible for us to know what the people of Crimea want because they live under an authoritarian regime. It's impossible for us to make treaties and concessions to Russia because they always break them. Every barrier to peace seems to be created by Russia, so people side with Ukraine, the underdog that they know very little about.
Didn't realize La Pen was still haunting French politics. But then, I can't pretend i am particularly well versed in European politics as a whole. This NYT article helped me understand this a bit better. For fellow clueless Americans, the OP article makes a lot more sense after reading that NYT article.
i gotta say, this AutoTL:DR seems kind of...bad. "she tells NPR" is a pronoun attached to person that is not named elsewhere in the TLDR. Maybe Beehaw should look into banning this one? I'm not sure how to offer feedback to the bot's author.
Taranum, who only has one name and guesses her age at 34, sleeps here with her three daughters. She was recently diagnosed with typhoid, an illnessmore prevalent during heatwaves when water contaminates more easily. She said at the peak of her illness, she felt like she would die. She’s terrified at the thought.
“I can’t die,” she says. “We are homeless. Who will take care of my daughters?” She shakes her head: “But I can’t complain. Other people have it harder. Two babies died in this heat.”
Absolutely grim. Homeless single mothers stricken with typhoid that say "I can't complain because others have it worse." Remind me again, why are billionaires allowed to exist in a world where this happens?
Great explainer about the changes, and reasons why it actually behooves Google to continue to allow ad blockers in some form. All that said...this still reaffirms my decision to go Firefox, always and forever, to get the most complete privacy options.
