Depository for off topic / political posts (NO brexit related posts please)

My gripe with paywalls is that they are a very crude way to block content. I’d be happy to pay on a per-view basis, but I’m not interested to subscribe to, say, the whole NZZ when I only want to read their – excellent – foreign reporting. Same for The Times, although I wouldn’t be too happy to feed the Murdochs. I do subscribe to a few newspapers and a couple of magazines but would happily put money in the jar of many more news outlets if I didn’t have to pay for a whole month of news I’m not interested in.

I think online newspapers have the same problem as web forums that carry advertising: the “clicks” are being lost to the “instant satisfaction” social media (twitter, instagram, facebook, etc) and while the audience you are losing in this way is mostly not audience that would have contributed to “your” site’s content (these other media carry mostly one-liner drivel) you are losing advert clicks which is the whole reason why “your” site exists in the first place. This is why advert-carrying GA forums (most of them) really dislike EuroGA, while we don’t need to worry about losing that traffic.

Another thing is that anyone even half IT-capable is running Adblock (or FB Purity on facebook). What amazes me is that nobody has yet AFAIK produced a browser which adblocks transparently. Currently, a site can tell if you are adblocking, because it can detect if all its content is or isn’t being rendered. Technically the solution at the client end is easy: render the content fully to a hidden page but the user sees only the sanitised copy…

The downside of today is that most young people, and a good % of “older” ones, never read the papers and never watch TV news, and get their entire world view from social media. These people live in a “bubble” of their own… We all choose our friends (there is an old saying “you can judge a man by his friends”) but never before have “we” lived in information bubbles as so many do today.

I find it sad to see how mainland Europeans often have a distorted view of the UK, based on reading the only “non-trash” paper which is free and online – the Guardian. Obviously, with me being ex-Czechoslovakia I am totally unlikely to be a Guardian-reading leftie but the Guardian is increasingly out of line with what the UK is like, and that’s before one gets onto more specific constraining factors like having to be ultra-PC. And I am sure the same disconnect exists in every other country; the press hacks live, drink, and bonk each other in a bubble of their own.

It is the same everywhere Peter. There is a universe between Le Monde and the average French.
Fortunately, only journalists read newspapers today, so this closed world is happy

Actually I thought the news channels are on twitter instagram and fb all the time – looking at the sort of often weird people they manage to dig out for interviews

In the old days you would have a team of researchers digging out interview subjects, and you would have a list of (mainly) academics who have offered themselves as available for interviews, and if you needed an “opinion” you would pump one of these.

Today, you hit some fb threads/forums and look for somebody who has written more than a few lines (usually only a few of these) of stuff that fits your agenda, and you PM them and invite them for a video interview.

Peter wrote;

Trump will be a showman till the very end; you can be sure of that

Assuming for the moment that he loses the election, I think the ‘very end’ means the moment when he’s going to meet his creator. I can see him continuing to tweet for years and keep on doing what he is doing right now.

On the other hand, I do agree with Silvaire and 172driver in their earlier posts that the US is in effect a multitude of countries and that Washington DC is far away for the majority.

I‘ve lived in the US as part of my education and have traveled to many corners in my professional life thereafter for years and have mostly experienced people not being all that divided, just getting on with their lives and communities. Although I need to confess that I’ve not been in the areas that are rough.. And that there is no doubt in my mind that polarization has increased.

Of course he will on twitter for the rest of his life, but you don’t have to be on twitter. I am not and have zero interest in it… same with instagram. I use FB for stay in touch with old friends, and to promote EuroGA Most people on GA FB are pumping up their youtube video subscriber numbers… It’s quite time consuming because (as is known from audience stats) FB posts basically vanish after a few hours.

If he loses the election he will be about as relevant as you and me

Peter wrote:

Of course they will concede! What else can they do? Do a military coup?

I would expect he would launch a huge tantrum challenging every single election result in the states he lost, blame it on "fake"mail in votes and on what not, trying to get the courts to decide the election rather than recounts. If I remember right, that is what happened in Florida when Bush got elected.

Beyond that, it is anyones guess what he might or might not do, but I think he would be out of support even from his own party rather quickly if he tried something unconstitutional. But this is one of the reasons people have their undies in a twist about the new SCOTUS judge being appointed before the election, which would then get the suppreme court in full republican control And if the SCOTUS had to decide on the election in the end, this might give Trump an advantage. Even though he might well be in for a disappointment there, electing constitutionalists into SCOTUS could actually work against him there.

@Silvaire, I agree that only spending time in the country and with nationals of the country involved would make it worthwile for people to learn about any place. I have actually spent time in the US repeatedly and in quite different places, East Coast, West Coast, bible belt, Texas, e.t.c over the years and I have quite a few American friends with whom I am in touch regularly, about half/half split in GOP/Democrat affiliation. I´ve also had the privilege of sysoping a forum of GOP supporters for a while and have seen them go quite divided on the current president. So it is simply from what I hear from those people over the last months which makes me feel uneasy about the massive division visible.

Of course he will on twitter for the rest of his life, but you don’t have to be on twitter.

Depends if he might be very quiet for a while while doing time in a federal prison, if some of his opponents get their way. I think this is what they are after and it may well be that it is one of the reasons he is so desparate to get re-elected. Once out of office, he looses his immunity. I have a suspicion that is what worries him more than moving back to Trump Tower and flying on the T-Jet.

I recall watching a talking head round a couple of weeks ago, can´t remember which station, which mused that he could possibly pull a Nixon like bargain and step down just before that and getting Pence to write him a presidential pardon…. just as Ford did to Nixon. I somehow fail to see that this would work, particularly if it may then be Pence who faces the music for that decision. Ford did after all partly because of this loose his own election.

But somehow I think the question won´t arise as I have a growing feeling Trump will get re-elected straight away. Then the problem will arise again in 4 years…

Jujupilote wrote:

I know nothing about today’s Poland. Could you develop tmo?

Basically a two party system (the smaller parties end up forming coalitions / alliances with the two main ones). The presidential vote split 49:51. The “us vs. them” rhetoric being forced by the party that has won the last couple elections (since 2015), etc, etc. I don’t feel qualified to offer an in depth analysis, I’m sure there are better sources, if one is indeed interested.