which on an iPhone get translated to the blue bubble but when sent to an android become the infamous green bubble.
The interesting thing is that the green/blue bubble thing is only infamous in the US.
As you say, outside the US, people use messaging apps like whatsapp or wechat.
TBH boomers and gen-z are quite alike when it comes to tech savviness and social media use, especially when something isn't an app.
TBF soaring energy prices are one of the main contributors to inflation. Not that much the tories can do about that.
Europe is in a proxy war with Russia. It's unreasonable to expect that to have no consequences.
"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
I honestly doubt she's particularly rich.
I googled and a private helicopter from NYC to DC costs 10k. But she shared a helicopter with other people. That can cost as little as 1.5k. It's the budget option. Sure, that's not nothing, but it's the kind of thing even someone on a relatively average income could save up for.
Oh, and obviously rich people aren't necessarily that smart. Plenty of complete morons have won at capitalism. Plenty of highly intelligent people are stuck doing menial jobs. It's also quite common for high intelligence to be a handicap.
Bit of a tangent, but what I find interesting about this lady, is that I don't know if she's 50 or 20. These pictures are photoshopped, but other pictures of her and her skin looks really rough.
She's clearly a heavy smoker, tans a lot, and has had plenty of plastic surgery, so I have no clue.
Also Orwell on Hitler:
It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
And Sartre on anti-semitism:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Fascism is boring. It hasn't fundamentally changed in almost a hundred years.
It says a lot about the human condition, that a sadomasochistic death cult is still so deeply appealing to so many of us.
One day soon, and it will be relatively soon given he's an unhealthy fat cunt, Trump will die. Soon after someone will publish the last story about Trump.
As the days grow shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, as the world seems to spiral out of control, as yet another last chance to stop climate catastrophe is missed, if you're feeling incredibly sad about it all, if your life increasingly sucks, if you've lost all sense of joy, remember that. Something to look forward to. Something to keep living for.
It's hilarious if you ever off-road.
They're really shit off tarmac driving anything through anything more advanced than a field. Too long wheel base, far too wide, shit turning cycle, too long nose, not enough weight on the rear wheels when not fully loaded.
You can run rings around them on an off-road track in a Suzuki Jimny or even a 50 year old Lada.
But obviously don't tell the truck people that. These are cars that are sold on the idea of being able to drive off into the wilderness at a moment's notice. Pointing out that's a lie, that they just spent too much money that if anything offers them less freedom than a conventional car, often results in an emotional reaction.
Both hilarious and infuriating.
I assume those are American concepts, part of American racial politics that primarily focuses on skin colour. But those genuinely aren't as relevant to countries half way around the globe.
America is not the world. Foreign countries are genuinely foreign. No, really. Allow me to illustrate:
Example 1: imagine you just heard someone complaining about racism against white people.
In an American context, you'd likely (often correctly) assume they were a right wing lunatic or a racist.
But here in Europe, the Sámi and Irish travellers would likely seem 'whiter than white' from an American racial politics perspective. IRC there are some theories that suggest Irish Travellers are the descendants of people who lived in Ireland before the celts arrived. We're talking millenia. And yet they face plenty of outright and often pretty nasty racism to this day.
Example 2: Israel.
My understanding is that Mizrahi Jews (sometimes known as 'Arab Jews' although that's considered a pejorative by some) historically and still do face plenty of racism in Israel from 'white' Jews....
And yet they also vote for Netenyahu and Likud en masse. The far right Itamar Ben-Gvir is (still?) the current Minister of Security. Iraqi and Kurdish heritage. Not 'white' by American standards. And yet here's an excerpt from his wikipedia article:
Itamar Ben-Gvir ... is an Israeli lawyer and far-right politician who serves as the Minister of National Security. ... His father was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish immigrants. ... His mother was a Kurdish Jewish immigrant ... Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. ... He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology. ... Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election ... He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel. Ben Gvir is "widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities" ... led several visits to the Temple Mount as activist and member of Knesset, contentious marches through Jerusalem's Old City Muslim Quarter, and set up an office in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which witnessed several evictions of Palestinians. On 3 January 2023, he visited the Temple Mount where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, spurring an international wave of criticism that labelled his visit purposely provocative. As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jewish radicals and terrorists on trial in Israel. ... Prior to entering politics, he defended Jews spitting at Christians as a "an ancient Jewish custom". ... Ben-Gvir is married to Ayala Nimrodi... The couple has five children, and they live in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba/Hebron, which is deemed illegal under international law, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
TLDR: more complicated than 'brown people/white people'
Stupid question, but does imessage allow you to record messages, post videos, pictures, gifs, attach files, hold polls, start groups, etc?
Or is it still mainly an sms based thing?