Welp, I’ve taught my parents to use the fakespot site before doing a purchase on Amazon. Fakespot was never a perfect tool, but it was easy to use and better than not checking review quality at all.

https://www.tqcflex.com/

Borrowing 4k for 30 days, results in a total repayment of 4918$. Borrowing 4k and paying it off every 30 days for 12 months, results in a total repayment of 10593$. This doesn’t seem very christian.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)[b] is an initiative of the second Trump administration tasked with cutting federal spending which it characterizes as “waste, fraud, and abuse”.[8] It emerged from discussions between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and was established by executive order on January 20, 2025. DOGE’s actions have included accessing government data systems; organizing mass layoffs of federal workers; and cutting climate change initiatives, scientific research, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs.

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

One USA metropolitan area has as many as many people in it as many small countries. All these excuses that you’re making as to why there are no large protests because of American exceptionalism, they just sound hollow. Protesting or not comes down to people and ATM there seems to be a severe lack of high level activist pro democracy leadership.

Edit: I do appreciate your answer about it taking 2 years to prepare that march, that’s new info for me. But even then, I’d expect pro democracy protest everywhere and the Washington DC metropolitan area (or other densely populated areas) shouldn’t need to depend on further away regions to get large numbers to turn up.

So why was it possible to organize such a protest in 1963 but not in 2025?

Lack of democratic leadership is not a geographic problem. In your previous comment you claimed that it was because of distance that there were no large protests, but it’s pretty obvious that those distances are not the reason.

The civil rights movement managed to organize a massive march on Washington in the early 1960s. It should be far easier to organize something similar or even larger with the current technology and larger population.

Trump’s fascist coup d’état appears to be progressing nicely (for the fascists that is).

Hitler only needed 53 days to secure absolute power after having been appointed chancellor. Trump is now 33 days into his second presidency.

Officially it’s allowed after April 17th, but there’s already an extensive list of approved devices.

https://www.test-aankoop.be/woning-energie/hernieuwbare-energie/nieuws/plug-and-play-zonnepaneel

There’s probably a french version of that article as well, but test- achats/aankoop hasn’t made it easy to switch languages :)

These plugin systems shut down automatically when there’s a power outage. To make sure that they really do shut down when needed, in Belgium only plugin systems that have been approved by the network management organisation may be used. The other countries that allow these probably have similar precautions.

Many thanks for the links, was interesting.

Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can’t find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won’t turn up in an internet search query.

Redheads are probably less genetically diverse than the rest of the population, iirc it’s mostly caused by a recessive gene. So if someone is a redhead, then the chances are high that they share other special genes with other redheads.

Africans on the other hand are more genetically diverse than people from other continents. It’s possible that some African population groups require different levels of medications, but you won’t be able to tell those population groups apart by the color of their skin.

Pickups have their uses in Europe as well. Where I live, it seems like most pest controllers (rat catchers, an easy to clean open trunk is probably very nice) and land surveyors prefer them over other vehicles. They all use smaller sensible size pickups from Japanese brands though.

I think I’ve spotted only 2 different modern USA oversized pickups in traffic. Both full black, never a speck of dirt on them, always tailgating someone. They are vastly outnumbered by the sensible pickups, but you just can’t miss spotting them in traffic.

Do you have examples of this stuff happening in continental European countries? I’d love to jump down that rabbit hole.

In the past I’ve read descriptions of systematic bad practices in the industrialized Uk, but I can’t recall reading about similar things happening in other western European countries. Nothing systematic anyhow. I’d image that the french would have had a(nother) revolution if anyone had tried that stuff with their food.

It’s a self-coup, so people are correct in calling it a coup. It’s still in progress, so it’s not clear how much power the white house will end up usurping, but with what they’ve done so far, it’s imo already enough to call it a coup.

From Wikipedia: A self-coup or coup from the top, is a form of coup d’état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation’s constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

The wiki article also contains a long list of other historical self coups. Germany in 1933 is the most famous example.

The eu commission warning was officially only aimed at their internal services, it wasn’t a mandate that all organisations within the eu should stop advertising on x. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if it comes to a total ban in the eu, X is already under investigation for disinformation.

I didn’t read every little bit as well, but that was my take away as well. I saw an emotially invested CEO who could not bear seeing his baby dragged through the mud, and so he wanted to provide a counterpoint to what he saw as misinformation and accusations, but in a polite professional manner. My first instinct would be that he would have been wasting his time with that, but seeing as his comments got posted and they make a more convincing level headed argument then the accusations, maybe it was worth it.