If you intentionally walk and talk slower than you used to, because of considered reasons, this article isn't about your kind of slowing down. It's about the involuntary kind, which isn't stigmatised any more than the mere act of acknowledging any other physical symptom.
There certainly won't be anything spurious about this correlation, even if there's no causing that can be proven. It's almost axiomatic that one comes along with the other.
Another advantage is anti-fraud measures and remedy (chargebacks). This (BTW clearly AI-generated) article mentions some fraud thing they're working on (Special Refund Mechanism), so we'll see how long it takes for that to take effect.
For now, I'll be using our Canadian not-quite-Pix called Interac to pay small amounts of money to people I trust, but I won't any time soon be buying a fridge with it, or booking a week-long cottage stay on a website I've never used before.
Canadian here who's not familiar with Pix; is Interac a pretty close comparable? If so, it's not the end-all answer for exchanging money for goods & services, but great in a small subset of transactions.
It's not run by a central bank and not mandated, but it "organically" became standard for banks and many vendors to support it. I hope they find a good way to combat fraud and the fee differential will make it more frequent for vendors to offer a discount for cash/Interac (or an extra charge for credit cards). It used to be common, then got banned, and is now allowed but uncommon. I for one don't really want to use an American credit card, but the fact that I get 1.5% cash back and fraud protection is a fairly strong incentive.
I think this is the hidden reason why the American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro types hate the EU with so much apoplectic rage. For all its problems, big-picture-like it actually works to gradually coalesce a huge rich continent with a bigger population than the US into something increasingly more coherent, and if it continues to work it will mean that the Western world now has two heavyweight leaders, not one. For people who tend to view the world as a giant zero-sum dominance competition, this is of course a big threat. One more big player = one more competitor.
(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
> (The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
I'd propose a different reason - the techbros disassociate with the EU because if someone want to work in tech that means getting fairly intimate with US culture, companies and markets. There is a reason this conversation is happening on a message board backed by a US company (moderated to US standards, I might add) - the Europeans don't have the ecosystem to sustain something similar.
If Europe were capable of building the ecosystems needed to fielding a large number of competent tech companies then techbros would start turning up there too.
Don’t make shit up about people you don’t understand.
>American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro
Bucketing these all together doesn’t even make sense. A “techbro” has completely different reasons to dislike the EU (regulatory regime unfriendly to tech startups) than some MAGA focused on US competitors.
As someone from the tech industry, I’m disappointed in the EU as it falls further and further behind on innovation. I love the EU though and frequently visit it (which is not something a MAGA would do).
All non-monarchies in Europe are republics too. It’s by far the most common type of democracy. It’s unclear to me why some Americans insist on making a distinction that doesn’t exist.
The funny thing is, if the guy wasn't quite so greedy with this racket, probably no one would notice. Surely if the number of your publications and citations shoots up exponentially and surpasses those of much more well-known scientists, folks are bound to ask questions. I wonder if this got out of control or whether he really did think it's a good idea to collude his way to such prominence.
This is typical behavior from psychopaths when they get away with the crime for so long, they believe they are untouchable and start becoming sloppy and get caught.
I'm torn about your comment. On the one hand, the context is interesting. On the other hand, it's almost unrelated to the substance of this post of his. I suppose there's a general anti-mainstream-science bias propagating through national-conservative/far-right/alt-right circles, specifically about how the world of academia functions. However, the facts of this post about how a corner of academia functions ought to stand up or fall down independently of all that. 95-100% of this is facts (falsifiable, and maybe wrong, but stated as such), and a tiny percentage is opinion.
Oh yeah, it's a fine post! Interesting read. But I don't think it's that silly to say that success for a person who espouses these views is success for the views themselves, and that a tone-shift might arise if gradually, more and more posts about inoffensive topics written by "Mr. Don't Worry About It ;)" make their way onto the front page.
I don't think it's strange at all to see this post, and the argument, in the context of Brunet's general antagonism towards academe. Certainly suggests that some arguments might be made in bad faith, or as performative gravy-train applications for the broader conservative news ecosystem.
It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war" without truly understanding what is happening on the ground.
The stark facts are simple - nearly 20% of Ukranian territory has been strategically captured by the Russians. Ukraine has no real chance of getting it back. Ukraine's counter-offensive has failed twice. It cannot launch any more counter-offensive because it doesn't have the men - any counter-offensive by recalling men from other parts of the frontline would weaken the defence line. So any new counter offensive launched needs to really bloody the Russians to completely back off, or the whole frontline will collapse and Ukraine will face a complete military defeat. Whatever Russian territory Ukraine had occupied has been recovered by the Russians. In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure (demilitarisation through de-industrialisation - https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/94244 ).
All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR (as it is the only way EU will keep funding Zelensky's government and the war), while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
>The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war"
All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
>In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure
You don't seem to be following this war very closely. Short of nukes, Russia has already done everything it possibly can, including trying to freeze old people in their flats during cold snaps, multiple times. They've been targeting industrial infrastructure since day one, but interestingly what's been changing is that Ukraine is increasingly playing that game too, focusing on demilitarizing Russia by targeting its defence industry and increasingly taking its oil exports offline. Turns out two can play this whole de-industrialisation game. It remains to be seen who succeeds, but things aren't looking as good on this front for Russia as they did in 2022 or 2023, that's for sure.
>All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR
Well and also to do things like take 46% of Russia's oil export capacity offline just when oil prices were soaring. You know, small trifles.
>while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
Slowly is doing all the heavy lifting here, to borrow a common AI slop refrain. Russia is now losing more men per month than it can recruit, somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40 thousand. Ukraine is extending the drone kill-zone to 30+ km from the so called "front line" (more of a zone). It produces millions of drones and is at the forefront of a drone revolution in warfare. In other words, its demilitarization is progressing swimmingly, but for the minus sign.
> All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
The break with factual reality in your post is enlightening. As is the misinformation of Russia "running out of men" when that is the situation Ukraine is facing. There is no "victory", is the point. There is no path to defeating Russia without a nuclear war. That Ukraine can bring about the economic collapse of Russia is a delusional fantasy.
You are just lazily "no u"-ing and projecting at this point, and your uninformed cheerleading of Russian fascism is profoundly uninteresting, so there's nothing further to discuss with you. You're either a Russian Z-bag, or one of those tedious people who make up their minds on a topic they mistakenly think they mastered and then shut themselves off from contrary information. Case in point, the hilarious timing of you saying the Russian economy isn't nearing collapse, when it's one of the main topics of discussion on even on Russian TV and press. Which of course, if you're the second type, you can't watch/read.
What is clear that you have no understanding of either superpower politics, military capabilities or how economies work. You are clearly one of those shameless EU cheerleaders who don't care about Ukrainians getting slaughtered and their country destroyed, as long as they "weaken" Russia in the process.
If all you've got is full political power and control over propaganda networks, your won't get the USSR. You'll get Hungary between 2010 and 2026. It works well, but in the critical moments when things start going wrong you need to kill people to maintain power, or else your nascent autocracy collapses as quick as Orban's.
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