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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Jubal on Today at 07:52:12 AM »Box
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Tusky on Today at 06:07:30 AM »Mail
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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2024
« Last post by Jubal on May 16, 2024, 08:48:44 PM »European political news: the headline bit is that Robert Fico, hard-authoritarian prime minister of Slovakia, has narrowly survived an assassination attempt. The trigger seems to have been his attempts to bring state media under closer government control. I've often wondered why more people don't get assassinated in politics: don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it would be a good thing, but I think one can point to a fair number of prominent cases where it's worked in achieving political goals from the assassin's perspective. I think the main explanation is that senior political actors are much more scared of eroding norms against assassination than they are of, say, going to war, because the latter only involves a bunch of other people getting shot rather than themselves. I do worry that in Slovakia the failed attempt will now be used as a pretext for cracking down on the opposition.
Georgia is in turmoil and with continual protests over its 'foreign agent' law. I'm really personally sad seeing the country becoming more authoritarian: the new legislation adds large invasive monitoring obligations on anyone who recieves significant funding or payments from abroad, and is generally mostly intended as an attack on civil society institutions.
Also the Dutch now have a government! It's not a very good government, and we're still not sure who's going to be prime minister, but the four right-wing parties who were involved in coalition talks now have a coalition agreement, perhaps in large part spurred by polls showing that if the country had another election the far-right PVV would do even better at the expense of their now coalition partners, such that said partners had a strong negotiating incentive. The parties evidently hate each other and there are clearly VVD and NSC members who hate working with the PVV in particular so we'll see how that goes.
Georgia is in turmoil and with continual protests over its 'foreign agent' law. I'm really personally sad seeing the country becoming more authoritarian: the new legislation adds large invasive monitoring obligations on anyone who recieves significant funding or payments from abroad, and is generally mostly intended as an attack on civil society institutions.
Also the Dutch now have a government! It's not a very good government, and we're still not sure who's going to be prime minister, but the four right-wing parties who were involved in coalition talks now have a coalition agreement, perhaps in large part spurred by polls showing that if the country had another election the far-right PVV would do even better at the expense of their now coalition partners, such that said partners had a strong negotiating incentive. The parties evidently hate each other and there are clearly VVD and NSC members who hate working with the PVV in particular so we'll see how that goes.
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Jubal on May 16, 2024, 05:26:24 PM »royal
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Glaurung on May 16, 2024, 04:26:20 PM »theatre
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Jubal on May 16, 2024, 03:30:29 PM »lecture
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Glaurung on May 16, 2024, 01:42:15 PM »chemistry
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Jubal on May 16, 2024, 09:10:16 AM »physics
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Glaurung on May 16, 2024, 09:09:47 AM »quantum
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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Sex education in the UK - an update
« Last post by dubsartur on May 16, 2024, 03:30:47 AM »For sure, Russia and affiliated governments don't like any side of LGBTQ+ but I don't think they would like the model which I learned from queer people and feminists any better with concepts like performativity, the construction of gender, unachievable and self-contradictory gender ideals as a tool of social control, etc.