fn-ix

@fnix.link

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web developer, linux enthusiast, trekkie, left-socdem, love 80s and 90s music (new wave, aor, italo disco, eurodance)! 🇵🇸🇺🇦🇸🇪🇪🇺🇺🇳🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

RSF press freedom index 2025, top 8 are EU countries while the US places 57th.
Chart from the Economist comparing countries on the three measures of GDP per capita, adjusting for PPP, and for PPP per hour worked. In the latter, several EU states outrank the US while others are only slightly below.
Comparison chart of the EU and US on several quality-of-life measures, all of which in the EU comes out ahead of the US.
RSF freedom of press index 2025, top 8 are European countries, while the US places 57th.
Robert Kagan in The Atlantic: "Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two oceans away. Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of “who we are” but because of where we are."
Jan '26 poll showing 61% of Italians want the EU to become a Federation, including a majority of Meloni voters.
Chart from the Economist comparing the economic productivity of countries by different measures.
Rankings of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index with the top 8 all being European countries while the US comes in at the 57th place.
Voting intentions of EU publics if they had to vote in the '24 US presidential election, with majorities everywhere for Harris except the most shock-therapied & Russia-friendly eastern EU states.
Rankings of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index with the top 8 all being European countries while the US comes in at the 57th place.
Timothy Snyder on Twitter: Putin, failing in his east European war, summons his American clients to organize a diversion in western Europe. Quote-tweet of Snyder by Bruno Maçães: This is a religion. US can do no wrong, so it must be Russia’s fault it wants to annex Greenland
Rankings of the 2025 Press Freedom Index with the top 8 all being European countries while the US comes in at the 57th place.
Screenshot of the podcast’s Patreon subscription tier ‘The Northern Welfare state’ described as "more or less free at the point of delivery. The jewel of European social-democracy.".
Picture of the 2024 Renault 5.
On June 15, 2022, Weimer appeared as a guest on the talk show Maischberger and declared that Russia had already won the war against Ukraine. He said that the West had also lost the “international battle for majorities” and that Berlin must present a peace plan.
Early on, Ta-Nehisi Coates observed, “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy . . . and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”
Graph showing the Merz government spending plans in Germany outstripping both the Marshall Plan and Reunification spending as a pct of GDP.
State of Global Trade Union Membership, Nordics on top, Eastern Europe & the US at the bottom.
% population who are absolutely certain god exists, with the US being ca. 60% while Europe is ca. 25%.
Conrad Black on European anti-Americanism: "undistinguished cultural and political antecedents. It figured prominently, for example, in the writings of Werner Daitz, the head of the Third Reich's Central Research Institute for National Economic Order and Large Area Economics, and of Vichyite apologists such as Drieu La Rochelle and Francis Delaisi. Obviously, current Euro-integrationists draw no inspiration from such distasteful precedents, but these disreputable forms of anti- Americanism still lurk on the extremes of European politics and have the capacity to impinge on the centre at times of tension and crisis. The main home for such sentiments remains France, where they are espoused by both pro- and anti-European forces and, indeed, sometimes expressed at the very top. Thus, Georges-Marc Benamou, in Le Dernier Mitterrand, quotes the late French president as having said in his latter years: "France does not know it, but we are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, an economic war, a war without death. Yes, they are very hard the Americans, they are voracious, they want undivided power over the world." And at the EU summit in November 1995 in Madrid, President Chirac, himself ostensibly a conservative, extolled the alleged victory of "European values" over the ideology of world conservatism (led by the United States). The unhelpful, not to say neurotic, French response to the pre-eminence of the United States in the world is well illustrated by recent French antics in respect of Iraq."
European voting intention on 2024 US presidential election.
Why were Democratic administrations not as ambitious, determined, ruthless, aggressive, risk-taking, not to say brave, in pursuit of our agenda as MAGA are in pursuit of theirs? MAGA may be bonkers and foolhardy. But they are willing to take risks in a way “we” were not. “Our democracy” may have been competent, but it was also conformist.
Aardvarks on nature camera look like they're dancing
Guardian headline: Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza
Richard Hanania on Twitter: Trump year-to-date cuts in scientific fields at the NSF Mathematical sciences: -72% Physics: -85% Chemistry: -57% Astronomy: -53% Biotech, energy, and health sciences: -9% Earth sciences: -80% I feel stupid for once talking about DEI threatening science.
April '25 poll of Trump approval ratings, Gen Z men and women least approving.
Graph of the average annual wages at constant prices in Greece 2007-2024, with the 2024 level being ca 75% of the 2007 one. Source OECD.
Excerpt from previously linked article: Yes! The landscapers, the people serving food, the security guards, the janitors. There was not one thought for them. And these were the people, according to the prevailing narratives, who stood to lose the most from Trump’s victory. They are disproportionately immigrants and minorities. Yet the students didn’t begin by demanding that those people need a day off, higher pay, better benefits or protections, etc. They were focused on themselves. Nor were these ignored laborers — the people with the most at stake in this election — saying they needed time off because they were too traumatized. They showed up to work the next day and did their jobs. They weren’t making a scene, sobbing as they scrubbed rich kids’ mess out of the toilets. The juxtaposition was sobering. And I want to be clear, I’m not picking on Columbia students here. When I left campus, walking around the Upper West Side, or other affluent parts of Manhattan, similar scenes were playing out. Nor was New York City unique in this regard. Other knowledge economy hubs had similar scenes playing out. And the same drama that was playing out in Columbia was unfolding at colleges and universities across the country.
Excerpt from the previously linked article: Yes! The landscapers, the people serving food, the security guards, the janitors. There was not one thought for them. And these were the people, according to the prevailing narratives, who stood to lose the most from Trump’s victory. They are disproportionately immigrants and minorities. Yet the students didn’t begin by demanding that those people need a day off, higher pay, better benefits or protections, etc. They were focused on themselves. Nor were these ignored laborers — the people with the most at stake in this election — saying they needed time off because they were too traumatized. They showed up to work the next day and did their jobs. They weren’t making a scene, sobbing as they scrubbed rich kids’ mess out of the toilets. The juxtaposition was sobering. And I want to be clear, I’m not picking on Columbia students here. When I left campus, walking around the Upper West Side, or other affluent parts of Manhattan, similar scenes were playing out. Nor was New York City unique in this regard. Other knowledge economy hubs had similar scenes playing out. And the same drama that was playing out in Columbia was unfolding at colleges and universities across the country.
Destroyed Gaza
Choose your fighter Bryan Johnson: 100 supplements daily No booze or drugs Works out every day Rigorous health tracking $10 million a year spent Projected age: 100 Old Italian man: Chain smokes and drinks Lives by the sea Doesn't know what a calorie is Mostly plays cards with friends Hasn't exercised since WW2 Projected age: 112
European voting intentions on US 2024 elections by country. Western Europe more than roughly 75% for Harris, poorest East Euro states about 60% for Trump.
Inna Sovsun on Xitter: Putin backed Trump’s 30-day pause on energy strikes—then broke his word in less than an hour. Russia hit Sloviansk’s energy infrastructure, leaving half the city without power. Shocking? Absolutely not.
1980 campaign pin with a picture of Reagan-Bush, reading “Let’s Make America Great Again”.
Bild på en Deloitte prideflotta.
Meme showing a pink tank with the text "US tanks - they/them" and a destroyed tank with the text "Russian tanks - was/were".
Button from the 1980 US election reading: Reagan-Bush | Let's Make America Great Again.
Graph from The Economist ranking countries by three measures of GDP: 1) per person, 2) PPP per person, 3) PPP per person per hour worked, with several EU welfare states outperforming the US on the latter.
Boris Johnson on Twitter: When are we Europeans going to stop being scandalised about Donald Trump and start helping him to end this war? Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945. Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s. Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action. In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support. Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash? The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.
Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the Communist German Democratic Republic, referenced the song in a famous speech about copying culture from the Western world, by using the refrain: "Is it truly the case that we have to copy every dirt that comes from the West? I think, comrades, with the monotony of the yeah, yeah, yeah and whatever it is all called, yes, we should put an end to it".
"AI can't do [thing]" rarely means that it fundamentally can't do the thing, just that it isn't doing it yet.
Article in Foreign Policy titled “Britain Is on the Verge of a Big Global Comeback”, highlighted part: “Britain could be the one country where the light of responsible centrism shines bright”
Campaign button for Reagan-Bush in 1980: Let's Make America Great Again
@pefrase on Twitter: “Guys like Noah and Stancil follow a social media strategy popularized by Matt Yglesias, where you get ahead by baiting people into dunking on you for being consistently arrogant, wrong, and self-contradictory. The only winning move is not to play.”
The “Pyramid of Capitalist System” illustration, illustrating the class power divisions in a capitalist economy.
Screenshot of an SGI IRIX 6.5 desktop.
Biden polling numbers among Democracts & Democrat leaners, showing his increasing popularity the more liberal someone identifies.