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yetanother12345 commented on The Denmark secret: how it became the most trusting country   theguardian.com/lifeandst... · Posted by u/PotatoNinja
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
There's a thin line between trusting and gullible, and the difference may be hard to perceive for outsiders.

Trusting and gullible alike also means easily exploitable, especially when coupled with hospitality which (believe it or not!) is, or at least was, a core value in DK. This whole line of reasoning has been very visible for the average Dane throughout the past 3-4 decades, as non-Danes have aquired larger shares of the general residency.

The general rule of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" has not really been observed at all by a significant fraction of those visiting or relocating to the country. And the Danes do notice that, although a fraction of the populace choose to wear the rosy-coloured glasses at all costs because principle, culture, tradition (culture matters a lot in DK, the culture is fairly conservative even though most Danes will deny that they themselves are).

The "trust" that non-Danish media likes to herald now is just a shadow of what it was, and it is steadily albeit slowly on the decline - especially in Dane-foreigner relationships IMHO.

If you dislike the facts, feel free to dismiss this as anecdata.

yetanother12345 commented on The Denmark secret: how it became the most trusting country   theguardian.com/lifeandst... · Posted by u/PotatoNinja
rayiner · 2 years ago
It’s not a “whistle.” Culture is virtually co-extensive with ethnicity in most places in the world. I come from a country whose name literally just translates into “country of $ethnic_group.” To the point where the largest country in the world, China, has lumped myriad different populations into the ethnic grouping of “Han Chinese” to cultivate cultural uniformity.
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
> a country whose name literally just translates into “country of $ethnic_group.”

FYI, this is the case with Denmark as well (as long as you permit Dane to be an ethnic group)

yetanother12345 commented on A formula for responsive font-size   jameshfisher.com/2024/03/... · Posted by u/jamesfisher
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
In your browser of choice, install the "Stylus" plugin. This is a plugin that will let you write custom CSS styles for any and all page(s). If your browser of choice does not have the exact "Stylus" plugin it will have a plugin of another (similar) name that will do the identical task.

As it seems from your post that you may not be extremely familiar with CSS, here is a ruleset that will do something close to what you wish. Font is set to 26px, not 14. You can easily change that.

Make it valid for "Everything" and it will be valid for everything but those sites that are extremely convoluted.

    *, html, body, section, article, div, span, p, i, b, strong {
        font-family: "Libre Sans" arial, helvetica, sans, sans-serif !important;
        font-size: 26px !important;
        font-weight: bold;
        line-height: 1.5em !important;
        background-color: white;
        color: black;
    }
    pre, code {
        font-family: "Libre Mono", Courier, monotype !important;
    }
   a {
        text-decoration: underline;
   }

yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
Added: Here is the ruleset I use for Hacker News specifically

    * {
        font-size: 23px;
        line-height: 1.5em
    }
    a {
        text-decoration: underline;
    }

yetanother12345 commented on A formula for responsive font-size   jameshfisher.com/2024/03/... · Posted by u/jamesfisher
stevetron · 2 years ago
I have found myself in my own private war against web sites over text viewability. Gievn that I am a longtime-coder, and longtime-electronics engineer, I had a life-altering experience a few years ago: as I was laying out a new circuit board design via CAD for a longtime client, a board which I would also have to write all the code for, my eyesight went all-goofy <technical term?>. I had to depend on family members to get me an emergency admission to an eye clinic, where I learned I had a detached-retina in one eye, was told it must hurt, and they didn't have anyone on-staff that could fix it. A few years later, and I have my vision blocked in that same eye due to a cataract, they won't do surgery becuase I'm 'allergic to lasers' and I need to shift to audio books. Huh. No, here's what I need from web pages and web browsers: an end to de-emphasised background comments that appear as light-gray on white background, and a quick button that let's me view everything in undecorated font Libre Sans (Libre mono for code), Boldface, and 14-pixel. The boldface is a huge sticking point, and I really need it. And nobody supports it :( My eyesight is like viewing everything through a 'snowstorm whiteout'. The thin strokes of non-Boldface are nearly invisible, and size-alone doesn't quite fix it enough. Then there are the web site that insist on havign a hard-lock on low-contrasty themes......they seem to feel their precious theme to be more important than the word.
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
In your browser of choice, install the "Stylus" plugin. This is a plugin that will let you write custom CSS styles for any and all page(s). If your browser of choice does not have the exact "Stylus" plugin it will have a plugin of another (similar) name that will do the identical task.

As it seems from your post that you may not be extremely familiar with CSS, here is a ruleset that will do something close to what you wish. Font is set to 26px, not 14. You can easily change that.

Make it valid for "Everything" and it will be valid for everything but those sites that are extremely convoluted.

    *, html, body, section, article, div, span, p, i, b, strong {
        font-family: "Libre Sans" arial, helvetica, sans, sans-serif !important;
        font-size: 26px !important;
        font-weight: bold;
        line-height: 1.5em !important;
        background-color: white;
        color: black;
    }
    pre, code {
        font-family: "Libre Mono", Courier, monotype !important;
    }
   a {
        text-decoration: underline;
   }

yetanother12345 commented on My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer   g1a55er.net/TikTok-Divest... · Posted by u/g1a55er
libpcap · 2 years ago
This is good for leveling the playing field. If Facebook, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc. are banned/blocked in the PRC, the US should reciprocally return the favor.
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
> is good for ...

... creating a massive pressure for sideloading and alternative/non-official app-stores. Don't for a minute think that those millions of people who currently enjoy that platform will suddently want to stop. Necessity is the mother of invention.

(No, personally I don't use TikTok, YouTube or any other cat video sites. I'm not in that demographic)

yetanother12345 commented on The internet is slipping out of our reach   injuly.in/blog/darker-int... · Posted by u/injuly
tiborsaas · 2 years ago
Why are you not using an adblocker if your current experience bothers you?
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
I think a better question is: Why do you insist on using Google?

There are several search engines on the WWW. Google is just one, and I hear people complaining about that one a lot. I don't use it personally, and I haven't done so for more than a decade. Life goes on perfectly fine without it.

(no, I don't use Kagi or Marginalia either, it's not one of those posts.)

yetanother12345 commented on The internet is slipping out of our reach   injuly.in/blog/darker-int... · Posted by u/injuly
injuly · 2 years ago
> This reads to me like a rant

It was. I agree with most of what you said.

> I don't even think communities retreating to Discord is a bad thing.

I don't dislike discord myself, but don't like the fact that most of it closed off. You don't get to see what's inside a server before creating an account and joining it.

yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
I don't know if you were around when the US internet was inside AOL? And the French inside Minitel?

All the rest of us didn't really care what you all did in there. Platforms and Walled Gardens alike come and go.

yetanother12345 commented on The internet is slipping out of our reach   injuly.in/blog/darker-int... · Posted by u/injuly
rchaud · 2 years ago
Is it happening? Is there anybody who would claim that Google and Facebook are showing them better-targeted content now than before?

Google and Facebook care only about shoving monetizable garbage in your face, be it through tainted search results, mindless "recommended" IG Reels/YT Shorts or FB Pages. That has driven people away from these platforms. Maybe not at the levels where their bottom line is being hit, but that is a lagging indicator anyway.

yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
> claim better targeted content

Any such claim is irrelevant. The personal opinion of the receiver of the content is not relevant, only that the content delivered somehow makes money for the sender.

> That has driven people away from these platforms.

Platforms? These entities do not derive profits only from visits to their own domains. Please inspect the source code of any random site you read next. On the majority of web sites in the Western hemisphere you will find either a Facebook script or a Google script, or both. Often more than these two.

yetanother12345 commented on The internet is slipping out of our reach   injuly.in/blog/darker-int... · Posted by u/injuly
nstart · 2 years ago
Someone once asked a question online about what each person's biggest fear was regarding the future of AI generated content. I thought about it.

While the fears of not being able to earn money for creative pursuits are a concern, my biggest concern remains around anonymity.

At some point, I fear that participating online with other humans will require "proof of self" and as AI becomes more and more able to generate convincing images/text/video/voice of being human, the systems will ask more and more of us to prove we are real humans which could lead to awful consequences in disallowing anonymity entirely.

That worry remains right up there in my list of AI related concerns.

The parallel concern to that are online communities become tightly gated with stringent requirements of relationships (i.e. invite only, possibly with multiple "referees") and proof of quality in order to participate. This outcome has its merits but can also lead to exclusionary environments which has many downsides, esp for newcomers. It could very well feel like participating in low quality ranked levels of a game for a long time before being allowed to climb out of the cesspool into higher levels where people take stuff more seriously. Not necessarily a bad thing but it's still an inversion of the idea of "participation allowed by default but you can lose the trust you are given if you behave poorly".

yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
> participating online with other humans

There is a more significant case of "the end of anonymity", that of doing any kind of sale or purchase. The more sophisticated the possibilities for fraud become, the harder the authorities that be will (need to) push for public non-falsifiable identification (e.g. linked to your biometrics somehow, as I don't suppose a transplant ("chip") is politically feasible). If you need to trade, that is.

Consider that the past few years the use of cash is increasingly being phased out, or even outlawed (for amounts over a certain size) in various Western countries. With digital money comes digital fraud.

As a spooky aside, the Christian horror story "Mark of The Beast" is remarkably accurate in that respect, even if perhaps a bit too specific in the details (on hand or forehead) - but then magic glasses and -watches are here already.

yetanother12345 commented on A Dutch Quandary Offers a Glimpse of a Deepening Problem for Europe   nytimes.com/2024/03/11/wo... · Posted by u/RestlessMind
yetanother12345 · 2 years ago
As for "glimpse" ...

One or two general elections ago[0] the Danish Peoples Party (which at the time was often declared far right and compared to the likes of Geert Wilders et al) got a 25% vote.

In the media it was described as a "protest vote". It was a landslide and IIRC they became the second largest party in terms of votes.

So, what happened next? First off the party leadership at the time declared that they did not want to join government, which was kind of weird given their extreme share of votes.

Second, a very normal government coalition formed, having the DPP as support but not as members. In local terms this was a "right wing" government (in US terms probably not right wing enough /s).

Third, parties across the full political spectrum began being verbose on immigration (ie "asylum seekers" because, well, IDK... that's the term they prefer I supose, while immigration is seen as beneficial, or... well, it's complicated) at the very least creating an image of concern, and in some notable cases even calling for action. The new government IIRC even crafted a few new media-friendly laws in this area - notably a law on "ghetto demolition" which got a lot of media attention even internationally

Time went by, and the traditional government did more or less what it would have done in any case, with a bend towards being tough on "foreigners-and-Danes-with-certain-foreign-ancestry-but-only-those-related-to-select-geographical-areas-and-mostly-criminal-ones-unemployed-ones-or-asylum-seekers" (sorry, I find it hard to find a single descriptive word here).

As the next general election came the vote of the DPP plummeted to near nothing. Next government was once again a very normal coalition in that region doing what they otherwise would have done, only with a slight bend towards being tough on "x, y, but not z unless a, b ,c ...". Since then the DPP has been split up, and the most of the "right wing" has gone though some hardships, so it's not really the same political landscape now.

I'm not sure this tale is comparable to Dutch politics. In Denmark it was more of "a glimpse" than anything else, and the media and political establishment right now is entirely focused on something else than "those people" (US interests/"Foreign Policy" mostly, domestic not much).

[0] I don't recall if it was the election where the PM accepted an offer of a well paid NATO job while on duty, or the one where the former PM accepted an offer of a well paid Facebook job immediately afterwards... (as for our current PM, she alleges publicly that she "is not interested if an offer should come" confirming the trend by denying it... )

u/yetanother12345

KarmaCake day188February 27, 2022View Original