💗 Schengen
“Have you ever wanted to fly across a border more than 40 times in one minute? No? As of last month, you can do it anyway: By hopping on a swing in the towns of Baarle-Hertog-Nassau, you can fly from the Netherlands into Belgium and back.”
https://europeancorrespondent.com/en/r/borders-are-a-construct-but-this-swing-isnt
@fj @herbert_tiemens If we estimate the length of the swing at 2.5 meters, then the period of the swing is 3.17 seconds, so the back-and-forth is 18.9 times per minute.
Did you try it, or did you calculate it?
This is how all borders should be.
@Provincial @fj Like this? Pretty wild border shape! 😆
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/876384634#map=15/51.43943/4.93196&layers=N
@ticho @Provincial @fj talking about OpenStreetMap, someone has already mapped it :)
like this:
in the beginning of 1963, the town of Elten was Dutch, but on August 1, it became German
Dutch and German traders moved their trucks into Elten with all sorts of cargo in late July that was usually subject to import tax (butter, coffee, etc)
so when the borders shifted Aug 1, there was no import tax, because the goods hadn't moved
the event became known as "Eltener Butternacht": Butter Night
it was so huge they had to do road repairs
https://duitslandinstituut.nl/artikel/539/eltener-butternacht-maakte-exporteurs-rijk
The US and the UK are alike in suffering vast consequences for this far right upwelling of stupidity. We both have a lot of fixing to do. I'm pretty sure the UK will slowly rejoin the EU piecemeal
Like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/uk/britain-erasmus-european-union-student-intl
All the ignorance and lies but what makes sense still and always will make sense and never goes away. Time and clearer minds will do their thing
@ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
"the same dark forces that campaigned for Brexit in the initial referendum haven't gone away"
and how do we fix it?
this plutocrat-bigot political axis
i'm not asking like i know the answer. it's a huge problem
@benroyce @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
Me neither but this map of it has stayed with me https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/114437610906205685
@benroyce @urlyman @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
You want an oof?
Compare that chart for 2019/2022 with this for c.2013 based on "The Political Compass" questionnaire and their assessment of current manifestos, & some historic examples.
I'm unsure how far this is an artefact of different methodologies (and I was a bit critical of TPCs), but the zero points may have undergone a substantial Overton shift by 2019. A uniform assessment would be interesting.
@electropict @urlyman @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
i think scotland leaving should happen *as long as* it's framed as a return to the EU. then it's not about the usual right wing goal of disintegrating the west (like alberta) but about fixing a mistake of disintegration. then if the rest of the UK rejoins the EU, no biggie, welcome back into the fold
then again, i'm american and we're always opening our big mouths on things we should just keep quiet about
@urlyman @benroyce @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
It occurs to me that it's a bit odd that this graph has an axis equating authoritarian to traditional and progressive to libertarian.
Is it so hard to believe in traditional liberties now? If the questions were framed from that perspective it might affect the outcome.
(I am reminded of a ceramic tile I saw, in about 1988, as part of a fireplace in a house in Stornoway, with the text: "A RETURN TO TRADITIONAL VALUES: CLASS WARFARE ✊")
@electropict @urlyman @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
i don't really like this graph. there's other dimensions of ideology. but what use is a 16 dimensional graph? and even then "you're forgetting the ideological divides of a,b,c,d,e,f..." so then you have a 738 dimensional graph. and even then...
left and right is fine
because that's the usual political axis across which people think. it's extremely rough, but we can't capture ideology this way so the approximation of 1 dimension is fine
@benroyce @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
All models are wrong but some are useful. And this one usefully shows a significant distance between where people place themselves and the positions taken by the representatives they vote for. Irrespective of values, that’s concerning
@urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
to be honest with you what i'm really saying is i resent the authoritarian - libertarian axis
1. libertarianism (in the usa) is not social libertarianism it's right wing economic libertarianism. useful fools for plutocrats since less economic control means the rich win
2. i don't believe in an authoritarian left. yes it's a thing but i see only fascists who haven't fully worked out the contradictions in their thinking. tankies suck
@benroyce @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj @urlyman
If I was to state my fundamental belief about politics & human life (at least in the modern era though it applies on a smaller scale earlier), it might be that we have to be adamantly toughminded about the necessity of being tender with one another, so that we will not collectively self-destruct.
(And yes, intolerance of intolerance applies here too.)
However, I'm fairly sure that any single fundamental belief is dangerous, so I won't.
@electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj @urlyman
well said
i'd frame it as:
moderation in all things...
including moderation
sometimes it is the right thing to do to go absolutist. depending on context. certainly not most of the time, not even some of the time. just those rare instances. such as on the very discussion of tolerance itself, which leads one to the position that intolerance must absolutely not be tolerated. which can be confusing, but works if you think it out
@benroyce @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
We have local, Welsh and Scottish elections here on May 7. I got a leaflet from the Independent Socialist candidate for my Scottish constituency. It's full of the usual things you might expect, but clearly also pro-Russian.
Ukraine can't win and 'the Russian threat isn't credible' (in bold). We should 'negotiate a non-aggression pact with Russia. Buy cheap Russian energy.'
Definitely tankie. I'm voting SNP1, Green2.
@riggbeck @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
i don't quite understand why people don't immediately see that tankies aren't on the left. they are obviously fake in some cases. in other cases, extremely deluded people who are somewhere on a midpoint in their ideological journey from a left background to becoming outright right wing fascists. a scam or future MAGA, that is all tankies are
@benroyce @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
That sounds a bit like the No True Scotsman fallacy. I think you can take different political positions, place them on the left/right spectrum, and still find arseholes everywhere. For example, were the Bolsheviks socialist or fascist? The government founded by them created a tyranny.
@riggbeck @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
no because the no true scotsman fallacy is an appeal to purity. as if tankies aren't pure leftists because they embrace authortarianism
but i am rejecting the classification of tankies on the left entirely. i'm not saying they are impure leftists, i am saying they aren't even leftists at all. either liars: agent provocateurs, or delusional idiots who haven't worked out the contradictions in what they say they believe
@benroyce @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
If I had posted the full text of the Independent Socialist leaflet, and just left out the tankie bits, he would come across as a genuine socialist.
@riggbeck @urlyman @electropict @ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
you can do that with anything
i can write a leaflet with electrifying glorious statements of environmentalism... then conclude with: lets consume more oil
you'd call that lying or delusional
not impure
the issue is disqualifying beliefs that places one firmly outside of a category, not impurity within a category
thus, anyone who believes in tyranny over the people, on behalf of the people, are working a lying contradiction
Wow. 😳
Does anyone know if such a mapping exists for #Deutschland #Parteien #Wähler_innen?
As bad as the US looks at the moment, there has always been an influential group of mostly privileged people in the UK who wish that Britain would adopt a similar approach to America's far-right.
....worth remembering here that there were significant factions in both the US and the UK that supported Fascist Germany in the 1930s.
@vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
@ReggieHere @vfrmedia @metaphil @fj
germany's (self made) wounds were so huge they had a culture shift
but usa and uk, where the same nascent fascism as germany also was, never had such a reckoning
for a long time the generations that saw the war recognized it and kept it in check
but those generations died off
and so it was just a matter of time before they hit upon a strategy that allowed them to come to the fore on minds that did not learn from history and do not understand the threat
😩
That's a neat summary.
I think Germany's experience was an object lesson to fascist groups, but the vast number of battle hardened and military-trained service men returning from a war and wanting social reform was a factor too.
The post-WW2 consensus was built on an Establishment fear of old institutions being deposed in favour of new socialist states.
....afterall, the economic reforms of the 1980s coincided with the collapse of the USSR.
There was a porous border in WWII in Konstanz on the Swiss/German border. People were allowed to pass small packages from CH to DE like coffee, sugar & clothing in sight of boarder guards. I knew some Milwaukee German families who’d emigrated to the US in 1860s that sent packages there.
This probably happened in several places. Basel, CH is the juncture of CH, DE & FR.
@fj Imagine this 80 years ago! It is remarkable how far we came from a continent always at war. Not everything is perfect, but we are on the right track.
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