Joined the Mayqueeze.
How is this mildly infuriating? If this Weekend at Bernie’s vibe turns out to be true, that wouldn’t be mildly infuriating. If it’s the story of an evil politician clinging to life like dog shit to your sneakers, it also isn’t just mildly infuriating. And if it is the story of an old man surely not long for this world, this isn’t infuriating at all.
It’s a stressful situation, a funeral. It seems insurmountable before it happens and once it gets going it becomes mostly manageable. I get why you don’t want the stress and all the family dynamics and the religious top layer.
That being said: yes, you are unreasonable. If you like going to funerals, there is something wrong with you. Nobody likes it. For much the same reasons as yours. That’s the baseline.
Think of it as a game and try to avoid talking to all the family members you don’t like. And since it will be your father’s funeral, you have the perfect excuse to have a thousand mile stare and be monosyllabic. And then you treat yourself when it’s over.
There is no need to make your father sad now. Tell him you’ll attend. Because it matters to him. Even if you have no intention to show up, which you should though. He’ll either come back to haunt you from the afterlife (slim chance) or the only people who will maintain a grudge are your living relatives. That’s the bed you’ll be making for yourself and you can avoid a whole lot of additional shit in the future by investing half a day and attend the goddamn funeral.
Could it be the books are wrapped to protect against humidity? This may not be the whole reason why they do it but it wouldn’t be the worst one.
I kind of expect this sort of hidden ad shenanigans these days. Which I shouldn’t, of course. But as a result I find it more infuriating to have a link to the “article” next to the already opened very same “article.” Come on, algorithm! That’s just unforgivable.
Yes, I did hear that before.
Eff me, that wasn’t intended!
I am conflicted here. On the one hand, I agree that subtitles would have been nice. On the other hand, I think folks with hearing disabilities get shut out of other content so much that I don’t think this somewhat solitary case makes it good mildly infuriating material. It’s most likely just an oversight. Much less likely a clever scheme to highlight ableism.
This is a problem of their own making having started off so lenient with account usage. In the end, it’s their house and their rules though. Deal with it or set your sails.
In a way this might be explained away with changing expectations by the audience or it’s a way to grab audience attention. I think it also depends which media you consume and how that’s funded. I think public broadcasters like the BBC are less likely to add music to their proper news segments than CBS because they don’t need to sell commercials for pharmaceuticals with an unending list of side effects. In my European view, American news at least since CNN became a thing has always had an emphasis on form over function with more pretty people reading the news, sound effects, animated graphics, breaking news alerts, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of that has filtered through elsewhere as well.
Music on news is nothing new though. I remember Enya infused VTs of collapsing World Trade Centers and videos of the tsunami and exploding nuclear reactors in line with some trip hop beat. And I remember people getting mad about that back then as well.
If you are something like 4chan or a descendant of that type of website, the answer is as easy as that. If you are Xwitter or Facebook it is not. You’re too big. You may have opened an office in the country, either because it was a legal requirement to continue operating in the country or because you collect money through it. So throwing your hands up and saying eff you we just don’t serve your country any more comes with a cost. Your ad money now needs to be paid abroad, which comes with the danger of increasing the cost for advertisers who now need to pay in dollars rather than pounds. And the representative in the local office, which you may want to close now, may find themselves in court for all the infractions that occurred before you threw your hands up (something that happened in Brazil IIRC). Also, you want the people who make the laws continue to use your platform to give it relevance. A Melon Usk Xwitter hissy fit may finally drive the rest of the politicians away. Loss of relevance will translate to loss of money.
The internet is multilaterally interdependent and scale matters.
If they’re going to Singapore, do tell them because bringing durian on public transport can get you in trouble. I think it’s just a fine and not a caning but still.
This looked totally legit until
secure communication channels below. TELEGRAM
I don’t disagree with your opinion that war is newsworthy in general. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons why you don’t see the stories you expect to see though. Chief among them the fact that search on the fediverse is absolutely unreliable. It ain’t Google when it was still good. Also, other news outlets may have different standards in terms of what they can report. They may need more sources, more eye witnesses. A search for “Iran” may be the wrong search term because there is a certain US politician who loves a headline and the media kind of like him for that. So there is a spam of stories about his unsuccessful deal making that will algorithmically obscure any other Iran content online. Or it might relegate military strikes by other but much smaller nations to a subordinate clause in paragraph #13 of a story with an orange headline. It also stands to reason that local news sources would be better, especially if this is a developing story, and that it’s possible that it simply hasn’t filtered through to English language media.
And more generally, war or senseless loss of life in general and the reporting thereof are not mildly infuriating content.
You are making this up.
I don’t think I am. I was in at least two threads where people just referred to them as Nazis and in a stage of outrage weren’t open to other interpretations. However, my post can be taken as all users who got mad called them Nazis. Some got mad and didn’t call them Nazis. That’s why I said assholes are still assholes.
It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.
It’s mathematically correct to say a portion of your fees in the past may have ended up in the coffers of the Örebro Party. It seems likely that continuing payments to the company may filter through Daniel to them as well. Facism is traditionally associated with right-wing extremism. This party is a Frankenstein monster of traditional associations and they lean further to the left than to the right, except on immigration. With “remigration” as the de rigeur pipe dream corner stone. Xenophobia alone doesn’t fascism make. The Soviet Union wasn’t exactly a hit destination for immigrants. So we either enlarge the definition of fascism to include these horseshoe loonies. Or we need a new word. Or we just agree to call them assholes and any continuing payments to Mullvad carry a mathematical risk of further financing assholes, more than one.
Daniel is one of the founders of Mullvad and part owner. He took a big chunk of change from his private wealth and donated it to a horseshoe loonie party. Horseshoe because they try to marry ideas from the extreme left to immigrant hateful ideas from the extreme right. Loonie is self explanatory. His donation made it possible for that party to run a nationwide campaign.
Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly. Which isn’t true. How much of this donation truly came from VPN fees is also a matter of debate. They aren’t strictly Nazis, more xenophobic communists. But assholes are still assholes and people choose labels differently. There is a lot of kneejerk reacting going on.
The company seems to want to ride it out. They correctly point to this being a decision by a private citizen who may exercise his free speech by donating to the loonie party. But they either don’t recognize the PR hell of being guilty by association as a company or they know the subscription drain isn’t as bad as the online outrage makes it look like. They publicly say this is all about free speech, which is their DNA, yada yada yada.
If you want something European, I’d throw AirVPN in the mix. I went there and never to Mullvad. And now I’m glad I didn’t and at the same time I’m looking forward to hearing inevitably what corpses my current provider has in the cupboard.
I dislike Proton, which I quit after the CEO praised 47 on his big tech regulation and before they handed the email account of some environmental activist over to the authorities, in France IIRC. They want to be your replacement for Google and keep pushing more services at obscure subscription levels at you. In terms of VPN, they were good though.
They seem to be on the inertia as a strategy train. Most users won’t have heard about this so they’re not in danger of losing them. A few who have won’t abandon ship because it’s a pain. And the rest they seem to tolerate losing. That’s unfortunate, say I who isn’t even their customer. I would have thought they do more but maybe another two weeks of ended subscriptions can lead them to reason and get rid of Daniel.
Fast food is slop anywhere.
I don’t think the Morisetteian irony of watching a movie that’s equally fucked up in its premise as you found out your life is would move the needle much. The rug would’ve been pulled out from under you and this wouldn’t cause more than a wry bored smile a couple of weeks later when the shock has subsided a bit.