Ironically, Denver airport actually is (mostly) shaped like a Swastika lol, and that's much more obvious than this supposedly is. Yet I'm sure the same people would claim that is a baseless conspiracy...
https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/denver/locals-guide-dia-conspiracy-theories
Denver Airport (not Stapleton - the new one) really is a very strange place - demon horse sculpture and all...
And I say that as someone who has spent far too much time in shitty airports around the world...
True that.
Though it's also woke corporate, too.
This is another "gem" I've seen today:
'It's cool to be different': Port ruck's unique approach to love and life
Which is similarly a woke word salad (buzzwords aplenty!), this time justifying grooming and "queerness" within a women's sports team as "inspiring young girls to be able to be different", lol.
By connecting the natural 'bush' environment to settler-colonial social issues and scenes, Gibbs's imagery and narrative reimagined the bush as a 'home' for colonizers, essentially 'indigenising' them in the image of white gumnut babies.
Fuck. This. Shit...
Just checked, my bridge edits are still there. Which very much proves your point, Heretic.
When you edit pages that the jannies/activists don't check, it's quite easy to get away with it, lol...
Someone did this with the page of an Australian (female) hockey player turned footballer turned pundit/influencer (yes, really). First they changed her nickname to "Nappies", and then when she had it changed back (because someone alerted her to it), they changed her birthdate to be nearly a decade older, lol.
Solid troll Though she sort of leaned into the "nappies" thing, afterwards, as a meme, so it worked out alright for all involved, I guess. Took it in good humour.
*Bark huts. IF that. Most of them didn't even get that far...
Though the propaganda has been so persuasive that my own parents now believe that they had agriculture, astrology, etc. (which they didn't)...
"Fields of yams", I'm now told. And "wild rice".
No one, literally no one would have believed those things, even 10-15 years ago, so it's quite astounding how quickly the "highly advanced civilization but also noble savage" myths have gained traction...
True, but in this case, that entire paragraph is sourced from the New Statesman article, which appears to be "original research". Obviously the Wiki jannie liked the sound of the argument it made, and pretty much copy-pasted the whole thing, which Goolag then quoted near-verbatim...
Which is pretty wild, when you think about it.
Lol, my IP address unironically got banned for "edit warring", when I tried to (anonymously) change a woke editor's claim that an Australian town is "sovereign, unceded Aboriginal land"...
So now I have to log in and/or spoof my IP address (obviously can use a VPN).
Though before that I successfully changed a few of those things, like removing the dual names in their Abo conlang (for example on pages for bridges over a river - reverting the name of the river to its European version. It's easy with obscure pages, as you point out), so believe me, this isn't my first rodeo, lol...
You also can’t turn off “AI Overview”, on Google search, on desktop, now…
For a while you could, but then naturally enough they killed that lol. Because of course…
Obviously you can ignore it, but the fact that it is now forced upon all users, everywhere (I believe), whether we like it or not? That’s pretty scary, too…
Pretty much, yeh.
I've noticed this a lot, lately, when it comes to the Abo stuff.
Like, on the TV yesterday, and Abo "activist" was yelling, "Captain Cook killed my family!"
Well no. No he did not. He didn't directly kill anybody. Nor did he introduce disease which did so.
Did his voyages indirectly lead to atrocities against Aboriginals? Sure, that's definitely arguable, but blaming the one explorer for something which happened long after his death is... Very Current Year...
Absolutely wild that this is where we are at, now.
The "source" in question:
The Wikipedia page has been edited since that archive to make the reference even more blatant, but the context of the claim is the same.
All of which, in turn, comes from a New Statesman article by one author with an agenda.
And that, ladies and gents, is how you change a narrative. Put out a bullshit, "original-research" article, get it in a "reputable" publication; have it cited on Wikipedia and then have Google's AI scrape the Wiki page and present its content as undisputed "fact".
Scary times.
On the topic of Australian government (or in this case, government agency) fearmongering, this fucking ad (disturbing, but SFW):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6NEn4NHxoY
They showed that to us in "Defensive Driver Training" in high school. It unironically scarred me for life.
To this day my biggest fucking fear is becoming paralyzed and dependent like the girl in that video. Yeesh.
So, did it "work" in scaring me? Yes (though it hasn't exactly changed my behaviour, subsequently. I still take lifts with randos, lol). Was it necessary, as something to beat schoolkids over the head about? I'm not so sure...
I think the UK is more oppressive in some ways, and Sweden is perhaps more "Kafkaesque" (annoying, petty bureaucracy, essentially), having lived there for a bit, but part of the trouble with Aus is how isolated we are here, and how damn hard it is to get out (if you can even afford to, given CoL at the moment)...
Which the government obviously took advantage of during Covid. They know this, which is why and how they get away with what they do.
I mean, fuck, even Singapore is 5 hours from Perth, which is ~4 hours from the East Coast itself, so...
I think that plays into our psyche more than people perhaps realize.
Plus all the immigration from autocratic Asian countries (and lately, Africa) in the last few decades. That has definitely fed into it...
Honestly, living here (again), I'm continually astounded by how apathetic most people here are, about shit like this. I hardly know anyone IRL who gives a shit, and certainly don't know anyone who will change their vote because of this issue...
As long as people have their reality TV slop, the cricket team is doing ok, and the media tells them that anyone who disagrees is "like those Trump voters in Yankee-land", then people will just lap this and pretty much applaud it, as their rights are taken away...
Not that Germany, NZ or Sweden would be any better. But nonetheless...
If you were in/around Duisburg or, I believe, Gelsenkirchen, then kind of, yeah…
There is a hell of a lot of Turks, at the very least.
Also Köln seems to have quite a few, as we saw from the attacks a few years back…
Eh, I’m not sure they are, per se…
At least if we removed the historical context of last century, anyway. And I guess you also have to factor in that they don’t have free speech, so who knows what they think and say privately (from experience, it can be pretty extreme, lol)…
But it is interesting that even Duisburg and Kreuzberg (Berlin), while having a lot of Muzzies, haven’t been “taken over” at an institutional level to quite the same extent as Hamtranck, Dearborn, or even Western Sydney (Australia) have…
Nor has Malmö in Sweden, despite the very noticeable presence of these individuals there…
I’m not sure exactly why that is the case, but us Anglo countries sure do seem to struggle with stopping the Muzzie takeover, once they reach critical mass…
Scotland even had one as “First Minister”, FFS…
Tbf they’ve also interfered in Western European elections at a national/state level (mostly the two big ones of France and Germany), though of course in that case, those countries are in the EU (as is Poland), so it’s a bit more… “Expected” or “palatable”…
I’m not so sure about the case of Zelenskyy. You could argue that they’ve kept him in power, but in terms of him getting into power in the first place… It did seem fairly organic. Of the candidates at play in that particular election, I’m not sure the EU would have chosen him. But honestly, who knows?
That feels like a very long time ago, at this point, given everything that has happened in that region since then…
But yeah, I do absolutely think he should step down at some point, ideally once martial law is over, and then we can start looking into all that more seriously…
But we shall see what happens, I guess.
Regarding the election result (also from Reuters): https://archive.is/rzdSb
We seem to be back to the bad old days (arguably, the 80s) of "this despot/ethnocentrist is a goodie, because they're our political ally". Not that this is anything new, of course. They're just more blatant about it now.
She's like Ardern or Trudeau, but in a much more corrupt, arguably less "democratic", poorer, non-Anglo country...
See also Poland's very own "I want a federal EU" prime minister Tusk...
There seems to be more “clusters” of F2Ms, though… At least among teens and young adults.
I believe there was a cluster in Palo Alto (surprise surprise) of all places, a few years back…
I was trying to find the article prior to writing this, but it seems most of the evidence has been scrubbed, since (again, to no one’s surprise)…
But I do recall the “social contagion” angle being talked about in various publications. Which lines up with the anorexia and other “mental illness” (people on TikTok claiming to have one, etc) comparisons…
When it comes to adult trannies, though? Yeah, you’re generally right…
Which makes sense I guess. There’s a lot less perks to being a mediocre, ugly “man” than to being a mediocre, ugly “woman”, I imagine (in reality)…
Huh, TIL!
I didn’t know any of that (I should have, about Cyprus at least, but I didn’t). Thanks!
All very complicated…
The Soviets’ tendency to move ethnic groups around at will obviously contributes to that…
I guess what you say about the Baltics applies also to the Russkies that stayed in Poland, East Germany, etc., after 1991..?
Honestly, this is all definitely interesting, but I guess I haven’t thought about it in detail before…
The only Russians I met in Sweden presumably had citizenship (as they owned property), lol.
Are you Romanian then? Definitely an interesting part of the world!
Romania is very corrupt. Moldova, I believe, is more so. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the criminal entities there are cross-border, plus probably the politicians are in cahoots (kick backs, etc.)
But it’s also some sort of historical revisionist thing, i.e. “Moldova was always historically part of Romania, and only split off by the Soviets to serve Russian interests.”
Which is only partly historically true, and is, almost to a tee, very much the same argument Putin uses to justify Ukrainian-Russian “brotherhood”…
Which is… Ironic.
There’s also the desire to destroy anything from the Soviet era (such as the writing system, political structures, old textbooks, etc.), so I guess this plays into that…
Which is kind of what Ukraine has done as well, albeit replacing Russian things with their Ukrainian equivalent…
It’s all very stupid.
I suppose though, to give them their due, it’s a bit like East Germany, in that Moldova is poor, and barely produces anything of large-scale economic value (except wine, lol), so it’s in the economic self-interest of the elites to merge with the larger, less-poor, EU-member “mother country”…
However the majority of ordinary people do not want this merger, and unlike the 90s, with the breakup of Czechoslovakia (also an elite project with limited popular support), I don’t see this one being quite as easy to ram through…
Edit: it’s worth noting that Moldova is effectively land-locked, and only has one port that is capable of handling large ships. Whereas Romania (which wants to buy said Moldovan Port, because of course they do)… Is not.
All of which suggests to me that Romania is almost certainly manipulating large parts of this, a bit like Bulgaria (yes, really) does with (North) Macedonia, for similar reasons…
I’m interested in how that works - is it much like how NIrish residents can get it through having had previous generations of relatives in the Republic..?
Which raises interesting points in places where this doesn’t apply (such as ethnic Croats in Bosnia, for example)…
But I suppose we can’t possibly expect them to apply the same rules everywhere. Tis an interesting thought experiment, though…
I don’t even know how Cyprus manages that (presumably they’re just not in Schengen?), let alone all these other cases…
I… Realize that everyone’s circumstance is different, and I’m glad you’re (presumably) close to your mother, but I personally would recommend thinking about that decision extremely carefully, and maybe even trying it out, short to medium-term, first…
Because (almost) everyone I know who has done that, for the same reasons as you mention (and it was the same for me), has… Ended up regretting it.
I think there comes a point once you’ve been out of their house for a bit where it just… Doesn’t work to go back. Or, at least, it isn’t necessarily a positive outcome for one’s mental health.
But that’s just my 10 cents.
Do whatever you feel is right for you and your circumstances!
It really, really feels like that in Australia now, too.
Hell, even in one of the big local subreddits, someone said pretty much exactly the same thing. So when even they admit to it, it’s probably true…
See also the Moldova thing, and current state elections in Aus, for much of the same…
On the latter paragraph - I've always found that weird and irritating. Like, I just don't take photos of myself, most of the time. Even when in front of the Eiffel Tower recently, including myself in the photos was secondary to trying to get the best shot of the damn thing...
But almost every woman I've been with, and far too many men, spend almost the entire time either taking selfies, or demanding I take photos of (and more occasionally with) them. It... Really annoys me. And I always think less of them afterwards...
My father is one of the worst, for this, though, so it's definitely not just a woman thing. Perhaps that's played into me going the other direction, though...