Hyperreality

This is grossly unfair. Not all billionaires bullied, cheated and lied their way to a fortune. Plenty of them inherited.

American, right? Perfectly feasible with good public transport in a dense European cities like Stockholm. It's not a particularly large area either. Sidewalks and cycle paths everywhere.

If you read the article, you'll also read that exceptions will be made for the disabled, large (hybrid) vans, emergency services, etc.

TBH plenty of European cities, taking your car into the city centre is for rich people anyway. Parking can easily costs you 50 euros per day or more.

Meanwhile, you can often park for free (or next to free) at a so called park and ride at the edge of the city, then hop on public transport to the centre for 5-10 minutes and avoid congestion almost entirely.

If Thrawn manages to make that whole Exogol / the emperor's not dead thing believable, I don't know if that makes him the ultimate villain or hero.

The problem with great villains is they have to lose at the end of the day.

Meh. The Villain always loses, but the suspense is often in how much damage they cause before that time.

For example, Thrawn could end up destroying a few entire planets or beloved characters before his ultimate demise. He could seduce a good character into joining the dark side. He can 'win' that way.

The whole 'actually you're too late' trope is often a fun way of doing that. You can also subvert stuff. Make the villain turn out to be (inadvertently/ultimately) good and/or make the villain (inadvertently/ultimately) evil.

The problem with Star Wars, I think, is that it's often far too obvious whether someone's a villain or not. Characters like Baylan Skoll(Ahsoka), Luthen Rael(Andor), or Qi'ra(Solo) are far more interesting.

The Clone Wars did similar things with Doku, Maul and Ahsoka. It's a shame Ahsoka is so obviously good in this show.

Overall, we rate the Hindustan Times Left-Center Biased and questionable due to poor sourcing, numerous failed fact checks, and the promotion of propaganda

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/hindustan-times/

In this case, the title is apparently misleading. It's a member of the Knesset, not a member of the government. As with stories like this or that story about the beheading of babies, ask yourself if it agrees with what you already believe to be true, and if that's why you're more likely to believe it. Double check with credible sources.

Once you've 'picked a side' on an emotive issue like this, it's very easy to fall into cherry picking and/or cognitive dissonance.

BBC news has a super Israel bias, .... The UK will always pretend Israel can do no wrong because they created them.

I went on the BBC's news site just now and looked at the top stories from the middle-east.

Here's a BBC article which suggests that Egypt warned Israel days before Hamas struck, despite Netenyahu denying it:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047

Here's an article which features the video diary of a (crying) Palestinian girl. "Gaza: Children screamed in the street"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67077224

Here's another video. Title: "Gaza: 'I wish I could be a normal child living with no war'"

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-67058592

Does the BBC have a 'super Israel bias'?

Or are you biased which makes you mistakenly think the BBC is 'super' biased in favour of Israel and claim the UK 'will always pretend Israel can do no wrong'?

6% of revenue is apparently 300 million. IRC last year, twitter had 1.2 billion in interest payments, but only 1.1 billion in cash flow. Unless twitter has suddenly increased cash flow or repaid loans, a 300 million dollar fine may mean it's impossible for twitter to repay interest payments. It's potentially an existential threat and could tip twitter into bankrupcy.

It's not nothing and it's certainly better than nothing. And that 6%? That's just the tip of the shit berg.

For example, Germany NetzDG fines can be as high as 50 million euros... PER CASE. Tech Crunch:

Even just in Germany if the BfJ were to act on the 600+ illegal hate speech cases that have already been reported to it that could sum to fines of up to €30 billion for Twitter, based on the maximum penalties set out in the NetzDG law. ... Of course a theoretical maximum outcome is unlikely. But there’s clearly no shortage of cases the BfJ could enforce — meaning fines for Musk-owned Twitter’s failures to purge hate speech could nonetheless quickly stack up. ... “The law expects fines of up to €50 million for each case. It is possible that at first they will not take the full amount. There’s actually a table… that states the intensity of the failure. So I would expect something between €5M and €20M to be the first fine,”

Obviously Musk is a top tier genius with a full legal department, and I'm sure twitter clamped down on illegal hate speech in the past half year so that only 600 cases are reported to German authorities, but that 300 million may just be the trickle of shit before the pipe fully bursts.

In Musk's defense:

Twitter’s press office auto-replied with a poop emoji in response to an emailed request for comment.

You misunderstand.

Proper old-school journalists, like John Simpson, won't be quick to call someone a terrorist. They will however report on someone who called them a terrorist.

It is their job to report the facts. That means that they report what they see and what they hear. Nothing more. That is journalism.

Coming to the conclusion that someone is a terrorist, isn't news or journalism. It's analysis or opinion. Often the journalist is in no position to form an opinion either way, and it's not really his job anyway.

The reason this sounds weird to many, is because journalism has gone down the shitter. This used to be standard. Reuters for example, is still quite rigorous in this. But most news organisations now mix factual reporting with analysis. Some 'news' organisations remove the news/facts entirely. Basically, reading an article written by a good journalist, you should not be able to tell what side of the argument they are.

Eg.

Good: According to Mr. X, the apple was red and tasty. -> the journalist is simply reporting on what Mr. X said. The reader can decide if Mr. X was telling the truth.

Bad: According to Mr. X, the red apple was tasty. -> the journalist wasn't there to see if the apple was red, Mr. X could be mistaken. The reader doesn't realise that the colour of the apple was described as being red by Mr. X and can't form their own opinion on whether to believe Mr. X.

The journalist doesn't avoid mentioning the apple is allegedly red. They just make it clear that they themselves aren't saying what colour it is, as they weren't there to witness what colour it was and because their opinion doesn't matter

And I know this may sound stupid, but it helps avoid (inadvertent) bias or accusations thereof.

Russia also has (or should I perhaps say had given recent events) quite cordial relations with Israel. For example, Russia bought Israeli drones and used them in Ukraine. Also still have visa free travel and there was even talk of a customs union IRC. Israel was also hesitant to sell weapons to Ukraine, because they didn't want to annoy Russia.

Russia's been playing both sides for years now. I think the problem is that they need Iran more than Israel right now, so Putin can't even manage to openly condemn Hamas.

Of course, this whole thing helps distract the US from Ukraine and possibly diverts weapons/munitions. That's good for Russia.

But it also damages relations with Israel, which IRC is also a large importer of Russian oil. That's bad for Russia.

It possibly undermines the nascent treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. That's good for Russia.

But China helped broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and this threatens to undermine that deal and embarrass Xi. That's bad for Russia.

But uncertainty and the scuttling of a deal between SA and the US, will raise oil prices. That's good for Russia.

But if Iran feels that a war with Israel is increasingly likely, they'll be forced to send less weaponry/drones to Russia. When this is done, and given Israel has clearly decided to stop pretending to give a fuck that's likely to sooner rather than later, they will be annoyed by Russia's stance and more likely to send more stuff to Ukraine. That's bad for Russia.

Etc. etc. etc.

TLDR clusterfuck. I wouldn't be surprised that you're right and that Russia helped Iran. They do seem to like shooting themselves in the foot and taking stupid gambles.

He could start by condemning Hamas, but apparently that's too much to ask. Too weak to get away with annoying Iran, apparently.

That's not fair. Russia doesn't back Hamas or Hezbollah. They back Iran and Syria, who back Hamas and Hezbollah.

You may be right. I seem to remember there being a free upgrade for the visually impaired, but I may be mistaken.

In any case, I haven't paid since I first bought this PC, which I've continually upgraded for over a decade. Ship of Theseus, basically. IRC because I never bought windows 10, and windows 7 (xp?) licenses weren't tied to the system, I just used that the one time it asked me to verify my license.

Seemed pretty obvious microsoft doesn't actually care about individual users with custom built pcs. They make their money off desktop pc and laptop makers. That and increasingly advertising/data harvesting.