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’s not going away any time soon. There’s currently 2 to 3 times as many humans as what would be long term sustainable with the way that we live. That means that it’s going to be a problem for at least many decades, but more likely a few centuries. It’s definitely not yesteryears problem. And sustainability should always remain a concern, in everything that we do. Many countries (not the USA obviously) are already taking steps to be more sustainable, but it’s baby steps compared to what is needed.

To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.

Some estimates from Wikipedia: “Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population

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

From the eu Parliament document: *3. ‘Meat products’ means processed products resulting from the processing of meat or from the further processing of such processed products, so that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has the characteristics of fresh meat. Names that fall under Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that are currently used for meat products and meat preparations shall be reserved exclusively for products containing meat.

These names include, for example:

• Steak
• Escalope
• Sausage
• Burger
• Hamburger
• Egg yolk
• Egg white*

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2025-0161_EN.html Use ctrl+f “burger” to find it in the text.

This not only affects vegetarian food, but also salmon steak for example. It’s a populist political move that doesn’t seem to be backed up by any linguistic science, as if mystery sausages haven’t been a thing for centuries. As long as it looks like a sausage, it is a sausage imo. It’s also not law yet, the member states still have to approve those amendements.

Ps, this gave me an idea for possible vegetarian branding: names like “not a burger” seem to still be allowed, so a line of foodstuffs called “not a sausage” etc might be fun.

“Label swindle” is the closest literal translation I think.

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.

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.

Most European countries do not use first past the post, but proportional representation with multiple elected representatives per voting district. There is far less incentive for politicians to gerrymander with proportional representation.

It appears that in the future, Itch will allow creators to opt out of payment providers, meaning that it’s probably on a per game basis, not per platform. That Itch and Steam are not making a per game solution now, is most likely because their current software doesn’t allow it and they need time to rework it. Itch has promised various changes already, Steam has been mum afaik.

Source for Itch: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”. https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

I only use Steam myself, so I hadn’t checked Itch Io’s communication yet. I don’t know the platform myself so it’s quite possible that I’m misinterpreting this, but to me it appears that Itch Io will allow creators to delist payment options that they are not compliant with: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”.

Source: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content