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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Yes. Just to be clear, I do think he overall has a pretty good track record, from what I know. I certainly don’t follow him religiously and especially since Trumps second term I have very little interest in US late night TV, too much US on the news anyway. That was just the one instance that comes to mind. Also the one instance when I was worried that he might start to boomer, though luckily it seems that was not the case.


  • The one thing I remember is when he had a guest appearance on TDS and pushed the Covid lab leak theory. Which afaik is pretty debunked scientifically now and already was shaky back then (the honest take would have been “we don’t know”). I remember most virologists back then already said that there’s no evidence for it. And TDS has a pretty big audience, that does repeat its talking point regularily, so sure, you can say it’s just comedy, but people do listen to these things, it does influence public discourse and I did find it a bit irresponsible at the time. Especially since a lot of the show is about commenting on actual news.

    Does this make him the devil incarnate? no. And some of the backlash for that one thing was way overblown. But then his reaction was mostly just saying how the backlash was stupid, and I would have liked a more nuanced/reflective response. If you have such a big platform, comedy or not, you should consider the effect of your words more carefully imo.




  • I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician getting applauded regularily, outside maybe of a talkshow setting. And not during a speech, maybe at the end when they finished. They also don’t really take center stage to give big speeches all that often. And having 7 presidents means less cult of personality.

    It mostly looks like This is one of the presidents giving a press conference, with several experts/advisors next to him (and more experts in the front row, should more specific questions come up). The rest are journalists. I’d say press conferences make up the majority of appearances, so there’s no crowds/“fans”. Heck even the concept of a fan of one of the presidents sounds weird. Maybe for the parties, but I have never heard of anyone being a fan of one of the presidents.

    Then there’s other events, but even for national day celebration speeches, it’s nothing crazy, this has some pictures of several of the presidents giving various national day speeches last year. No people in the background. But then I don’t think most people really watch any of this, so why bother?


  • “western food” is something that only exists in foreign countries anyways, like “asian food”. If it is something that is available, it’s not really what I’m used to from home, but some weird mish-mash of what someone thinks the typical american/british/german/other (in that order) eats. And on top of that, it’s usually terrible quality, not due to a lack of skill, just well, not having the right ingredients, not knowing the nuances of the food or what it’s supposed to taste like. So between a postmodernist interpretation of what someone thinks I eat, or proper local food, I really don’t understand why you’d ever not eat the local food.

    But it’s not only western people. Japanese/Taiwanese/Chinese traveling in Switzerland do like to buy/bring instant noodles and cook them at the hotel instead of eating local food (not that there really is local swiss food, there’s like 3 dishes and then it’s mostly an amalgam of italian, french and german cuisine). Part of that is the high price, but not only. And from the few times I traveled in other european contries with friends from those asian countries, it seems common enough that they prefer to eat at asian restaurants. Except for italy, where everyone loves the local food.


  • funny, I like it for the opposite reason. If I am buying a lot of groceries and want to pack them into my shopping trolley nicely, but there’s a line of 10 people behind me at the cash register. So I need to rush to put everything in as the cashier will just put more and more stuff on the conveyor to the point where other peoples groceries end up mixed with my stuff, because there’s only two lanes and the person right behind me only had 5 things, so the cashier is already handling customer 3 while I’m still packing.

    With self checkout, I can decide the speed I want to pack at, make sure I don’t put fragile stuff at the bottom, can take it nice and relaxed. there’s 6 other terminals, so it doesn’t feel like I’m the one blocking the line. Just an overall less stressful experience.