The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time

(Wikipedia )

So if you could timetravel back a bit more and see if rebooting fixes this whole thing…

One of the few areas where representation is fair is assholery. There are real assholes from all genders, ethnicity and religious backgrounds.

You can be non-white, non-binary, non-wasp and still be an asshole. And other assholes will accept you, if it helps shield their evil agenda from the most obvious accusations.

And guess what political side has learned to leverage that fact? I’ll give you a few hints. Neonazi AfD in Germany has a lesbian leader with a Sri Lankan partner, the italian far right party (staunch defender of family values) has a leader who’s a never married single mom (and now she’s Italy’s prime minister), then you already mentioned Trump and Vance.

Don’t get me wrong, Usha Vance, Melania Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Alice Weidel aren’t being exploited. They are all formidable persons who got to the top by out-assholing everyone else on their side and by actively banking on their “non traditional” status to emerge in ultra-conservative environments.

So they don’t need to rationalize anything. It’s all already quite rational and by design.

Was Steven Seagal ever relevant? I mean besides the “so trashy that it’s occasionally fun”, guilty-pleasure type of relevance he briefly enjoyed in the 1980s?

measles…

Hahaha, I like how you think and I’d like to know more about you. For instance what is your mother’s maiden name?

it is. But who said that **you ** get to decide what’s relevant for you? Welcome and learn to trust your algorithmic overlords

I meant something even more radical than translating language. This is Google maps changing borders for disputed territories depending on what side of the dispute the user is: https://theweek.com/speedreads/451127/google-maps-changes-chinas-borders-based-viewers-locations .

I imagine Apple has similar policies too where they adhere to local regulations or just don’t want to piss their users in any country, so they just show everyone what the want to see.

So yes, they do have the tools to do it and on top of that they also have a consolidate tradition of doing it.

I don’t know… Isn’t naming (and even country boundaries) already localized based on where the users are? Isn’t a possible scenario that Apple and others could show Gulf of America to US users and Gulf of Mexico to everyone else without even spending too much effort?

or from windows for even shorter periods. Very popular in Russia

I agree with you on the web privacy legislation, but the point u/Filthmontane was making is that the CCP could have our data anyway, by buying it from Meta or Google, so at least giving it directly to China is better (in that at least Meta and Google don’t have it). I think that argument is only half-serious, but after the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle still more serious than it should be…