The presence of far-right politics has really seen an uptick in recent years. It seems to have started in America but has spread to Europe and other countries like a plague. You have the AfD in Germany who claimed second place unseating a centre-left government, the entry of Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK party into the British parliament (even overtaking the traditional Conservative Party in recent polls), the fourth consecutive election in Portugal where the nationalist Chega party has gained seats, and Canada narrowly avoiding electing Pierre Poilievre the “Maple MAGA”.

Surprisingly enough, prior to Donald Trump blowing up the US-Canada alliance, Poilievre was predicted to win in a landslide in Canada with a 90%+ chance of his party getting a majority but somehow it really does seem like everyone who associates with Trump outside the US loses their election. The premiership really shipped right through Poilievre’s hands like a lump of dry beach sand. Lol

Yet another irreplaceable natural landmark destroyed by idiot hooliganism. There is nothing the courts can do that will ever bring that tree back.

Edit: Apparently the tree sprouted from its stump.

I have no idea how this screenshot illustrates your point but there is an “alt-left”… sort of. This term is not really used though. The term “alt-right” was used to describe far-right elements of the American population whose ideology was regarded to be extreme enough that mainstream centre-right politicians wanted nothing to do with them. “Alt-right” is (was) essentially a polite euphemism for right-wing extremism.

If you want, you could consider the left-wing version of this to be the socialist and communist groups, but they are politically irrelevant in the US, not only because the centre-left absolutely refuses to even acknowledge their existence but because the “alt-left” also hates the centre-left and isn’t willing to co-operate with them to get into power. The “alt-right” holds political sway only because the centre-right realised they were useful in riling up the right-wing voter base and they could be used to get into power. Unfortunately, this really just meant that the centre-right has disappeared in America and been replaced with only alt-right or alt-right-sympathetic politicians. The “alt-left” of America is completely unrepresented in any institution of government. Again, I want to make clear that “alt-left” is not a term that is in widespread use but if you generalise the prefix “alt-”, it’s what it would mean.

I have to agree with the sentiment expressed by the social media posts shown in the article. If your country’s electricity infrastructure is so fragile that a monkey could take it offline then it’s probably time to take a hard look at investing in improving its resilience.

I want to add a third thing to this list:

3. Feeling left behind by mainstream political parties.

The parties in power surely pay lip service to the issues that concern the young but very rarely do they actually do anything about it.

Machiavelli wrote about this. People don’t need to love you for your power to be secure, and in fact, it’s far preferable to be respected because people fear you than to be respected because people love you.

I’ve heard it said before that most of China’s geopolitical strategies can be explained with two statements:

1. War is bad for business.
2. China is big on business.

Nothing wrong with Boost Mobile, or any other discount telecom provider either. It’s not like the phone signals taste different lmao

It’s just a hallmark of “I bought the cheapest domain name TLD available”.

That’s not necessarily bad if all you need is something to get the job done, but there is a stereotype associated with it.

For those who don’t know, a “goon cave” is “an area or room dedicated to long masturbation sessions”, or “gooning”