The classic “Buy a reputable brand, cut costs and coast along on the reputation until you can sell off all your shares and move on to another company”. Bonus points for using legalised embezzlement share buyback.

More often dictators take control of the church and use it for propaganda.

Nah he’ll declare that the United States has become a fascist dictatorship and probably spout some lies about election rigging.

Remember when Twitter (pre-Musk) said it couldn’t ban Nazis because it would hit Republican politicians?

People talk a lot about the genericisation of brand names, but the branding of generic terms like this really annoys me.

I’ll use the example I first noticed. A few years ago, the Conservative government was under criticism for the minimum wage being well under a living wage. In response, they brought in the National Living Wage, which was an increase to the minimum wage, but still under the actual living wage. However, because of the branding, it makes criticising it for not meeting the actual living wage more difficult, as you have to explain the difference between the two, and as the saying goes, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”.

R loves to make voting harder under the auspices of “fraud prevention”.

They say, while their supporters are the ones committing all of the fraud.

They’re against anyone else indoctrinating children.

Crimea and Sevastopol both had majority votes for independence in 1991.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum

For anyone thinking of refusing to vote for Harris over Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_peace_plan

The submarine dock was in Sevastopol, which is Russian-occupied Ukraine rather than Russia.

I can’t wrap my head around how people can ignore all those red flags

They use threats and urgency to pressure people into paying faster that they realise it’s a scam.

I only ever read one, and all I remember of that was some kids being chased into a church by some demons, who then burn it down to get to them. The kids are put on trial for “forcing” the demons to burn the church, and they have to convince their lawyer not to throw the case because he’ll be executed if he wins.

Not a danger in the UK.

The cynical “Don’t idolize your politicians” line doesn’t teach people to read the tea leaves and pick better leadership. It just teaches them to throw up your hands and assume everyone is the same.

Saying all politicians are the same just rewards the worst politicians because it means they face no electoral penalty for their failings, and the better ones gain no electoral advantage from not stooping to those lows.

Does STAR have the problem of score voting that not giving every candidate either the maximum or minimum score (effectively approval voting) is effectively throwing half your vote away?

(also it looks like there’s a glitch because your comment appeared four times)

Heard an interview a while ago with a founder of Just Stop Oil who clearly said he doesn’t care whether they even stop climate change (around 40:00-43:00).

What does Vincent van Gogh have to do with the current state of the petrol industry?

It’s famous, so attacking it gets attention.

“Trump, I think that dictator is an imperialist! His Siberia is colonised, his Chechnya is colonised, and I’m pretty sure that Belarus is colonised!”

“A dictator who has lots of colonies is less likely to invade countries than a dictator whose colony supplies are low”

States are fairly arbitrary divisions of land and I don’t think they need representation separate from the representation their people have.

They’re both problems.

Never heard of it. It’s difficult to know how much of the difference is the actual occurrence and how much is the reporting of it.