It had taken me years to be at peace with the notion that some people love Maroon 5 and think Adam Levine’s voice is angelic.

Thankfully, none of the Maroon 5 fans I know are Bateman coded, but I did date a guy who unironocally worshipped Billy Ray Cyrus and he was probably the biggest psycho I have ever known.

It’s the same in the animation industry. The greats are struggling to find work.

A lot of things are going on in Denmark right now to move away from American influence. You just don’t hear about it. I think we should officially condemn the US as well as Iran, but I’m not a politician. All I know is what I see in my day to day life and the general discourse in Denmark and that is that we are moving away from America. Actions taken in recent times have shown that we are ready to sever ties with America, we just do it slowly as to not upset the orange monkey, because if we go out and make ourselves too visible to America right now, there is a actual real chance that we will be invaded too.

I trust that my politicians know what they are doing, though.

Remember, we are a very small country and we are under real threat of a US invasion so there is a lot going on behind the scenes right now that most of us don’t know about.

That’s not how it went where I lived. People were actively protesting the Iraq war in the streets in my country and very vocal about our involvement in those wars. We are also the country that lost the most soldiers per capita to fight a war that didn’t have anything to do with us because America demanded it.

Which is also why it was a deep insult when Trump and Vance decided to attack Zelenskyj for the world to see, then subsequently threaten my country to give up Greenland and calling us shitty allies and starting a tariff war with Europe as a whole. We literally bled for them and gave up our dignity for them - it was a massive hit to the Danish self image to join the wars in the middle east - and the thank you we get is to be pissed on and for them to shit on Zelenskyj, piss on the rest of us and threaten to annex Greenland.

My distaste for America’s entitlement and arrogant tactics that we had to adhere to for years with the promise that they would help us if we needed them, was turned into a raging fire the second trump and vance did that to Zelenskyj. Every other thing that happened after that has just kept that fire alive, but I lost any and all respect for America when they invited Zelenskyj to the White House to act like a couple of high-school bullies.

I will never forgive and never forget. Ever.

Yeah, I guess I should have explained myself better, that my issue is that I have felt for a long time that my culture has increasingly been replaced with American culture due to the import of American entertainment. So our language has been altered and we have adopted American traditions while slowly phasing out our own and it has bothered me for a very long time. That isn’t Americans’ fault that we began adopting these cultural things, but if we end up separating ourselves more from America, then my hope is that we will also maybe start looking for cultural influence elsewhere and start embracing more of our own old traditions again.

Yeah, and in my weakest moments of anger this January, I certainly had some not so nice thoughts in that area, but honestly, I don’t think most of the people who voted for trump understood or expected him to be this crazy. Hell, I was fully preparing for him to pull out of Ukraine, which I thought was the worst thing he could do at the time, but with the Ukraine issue alone, the way he treated Zelenskyj actually pissed me off more than when he threatened Greenland for the first time. Anyways, I expected him to betray Ukraine, but he has done so much more than that in a fraction of the time I thought was possible. I couldn’t even in my most anti-American thoughts, have predicted or imagined the reality we currently live in.

So yeah, I’m willing to give many of his voters the benefit of the doubt. They probably believed he would help with inflation and secure jobs and yadda yadda. They probably truly believed he would be the better choice even if they didn’t agree with him on everything or just didn’t want to vote for the democrats or whatever. I imagine many have bitter regrets now. Especially the farmers who supported him, lol. But yeah. I try to extend an olive branch because this timeline is a total clown show.

Things will get better, though! We just need to strap in for the next couple of years, and then things are going to get better. It’ll probably take America decades to repair what trump has destroyed in less than two years, but am confident that something good will come from this nightmare for Americans as well. Big hugs!

If it is any comfort to you, most of us know that the people of America are largely decent and just want to live their lives and not bother anybody. My main issue with America has always been with the country and the culture, not really individual people. It would be foolish to hate on millions of people who have harmed nobody and just happened to be born somewhere.

In essence, my biggest gripe with America has always been on the pathetic excuse of a welfare system you guys have. You all deserve so much better and it pisses me off that you’re being taught to eat crow and not only like it, but express gratitude and pride for it. Many of you are smart enough to see through the bullshit, but all of you are stuck living in one of the richest countries in the world while having third world social conditions. I cannot express in words how disgusted I am by that.

As for all the geopolitical and media stuff, those are institutions I feel disgust towards.

I hope that no matter what happens in the future, that you and your fellow Americans will have better conditions to live under and better, more responsible leadership.

I am, however, still glad that my country as well as most other European countries are moving away from the USA. It was not an equal and fair relationship in many ways and both sides have been at fault to some degree. I think we are better off separate and I think that the US as a whole is also interested in this separation to look for new alliances. I for one, am thrilled about Europe’s future, even though this transition period is going to be tough. We will be stronger in the long run without the US.

As a Dane, I cannot underline enough how fucking done we are with the US.

I’m almost grateful that he’s being this obnoxious, because it means that we might have way less American influence in Denmark in the future and that is something I have yearned for since Bush.

A girl can dream.

Like you mentioned, many of those videos are doctored to make common Americans look stupid. I would even venture a guess and say that some of them are straight up fake with people probably being paid to act as stupid as possible.

As for Europeans’ ability to place countries on a map, I believe it varies in the same way it does in America. Some will be super sharp at it, others, probably most, will know some and then blank on the rest. Few will be entirely ignorant about geography.

I have a flags of the world app that I use once in awhile to train myself to recognize flags from different countries. There is an option to also try and place flags on the map and you work your way through one continent at the time. I absolutely fucking suck at placing flags in Africa and Polynesia. I have gotten to a point where I recognize most of their flags, so there is that, but I am still hopeless with the map part. I have a few blind spots in Asia and South America too. I am pretty strong with Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia at this point.

For me, I started practicing with the app years ago exactly because I realized how terrible my geography skills were even inside Europe. Later on it became a matter of rebellion when the Ukrainian war went into full swing and I wanted to give a big fuck you to the invisible wall that still stands between western and eastern Europe. Many people I know have always been geographically blind to eastern Europe, but that seems to be something many of us have worked on in recent years.

Now it is just a longterm goal for me to take some time once in awhile to practice. Can’t hurt to learn some basic bitch geography.

Ironically, the one thing I’m worse at placing than African countries, is American States, but they also aren’t a part of my flag app, so I haven’t actually practiced them. Similarly haven’t practiced the German States since I was in 7th grade so I only know a couple of those and blank on the rest.

What on earth does that have to do with the Danish election?

The Danish left had a pretty solid election this year. The reason why the Social Democrats have lost voters has more to do with internal Danish politics than anything going on in geopolitics.

The Moderates and Venstre (Left) were in government with the Social Democrats for awhile and people have grown tired with them for different reasons. Also, Venstre (Left) are a right wing party, despite the name and the Social Democrats are no longer considered a left wing party by most Danes, but more so a center party just like the Moderates. Their goal is to have a centered government and people are trying to pull them to the left now, because we need our government to focus on environmental and social issues at home.

Venstre (Left) had the worst election result in the party’s history because they have had farmers lobbying for them for decades, which has lead to our current environmental crisis in our country.

The Social Democrats have still won the election despite losing voters. They were the party who had the most votes out of all parties in Denmark and it is Mette Frederiksen’s job currently to negotiate what constellation of government we will have. If she and Lars Løkke of the Moderates decide to form a government with Venstre again, they will be fucking toast next election. The Danes want a red government - red is left wing in Denmark. We are done with the blues and we are done with their anti environmental politics.

When it comes to all issues relating to Greenland and Ukraine, etc, it is not relevant because no matter what government we would end up with, every party agrees on Greenland and Ukraine. The fact that international news are trying to drag Greenland into the election is just misleading clickbait to make ignorant outsiders think that the Danes are punishing our Prime Minister for going against Trump. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the biggest MAGA dickriders in Danish Politics have withdrawn their support for him and are now trying to play the nationalist card and how we must stand together for Greenland.

Denmark is not the US. Not even close, and I would appreciate that people read up on it before spewing a bunch of irrelevant nonsense.

This makes me think about how Jean-Michel Jarre’s Calypso sounds like the most fun water level ever.

In case you haven’t seen it, he made a longer animated movie called It’s Such A Beautiful Day, where you follow a deeply mentally ill stick man and how his brain interprets the world. It was so disturbing that the annoying family with noisy kids fell completely silent a few minutes into the film and then hurriedly packed up and left the cinema.

It’s got to be a decade since I watched it and it still haunts me sometimes. You feel so friggin bad for that stick figure and the hell he had to live with in his mind 24/7.

Kinda rude to refer to Lemongrab like that.

To me it looks like the democracy is working. Imagine if it was for a cause you are for. Then it’s nice to know you can have more than one attempt to get your cause implemented. That said, there probably should be a limit to how many times the same issue can be pressed before it has to be put in a sort of quarantine period for an agreed upon number of years. Maybe they already have that. I don’t know. I’m no expert on the matter.

Just a smidge ;b

I have always liked that 1984 and A Brave New World are sort of dystopian companion pieces because they explore opposite sides of the spectrum of societies where free will is being suppressed. It has been a minute since I read both, but to me it’s a mistake to compare them in terms of which version is worse to live in because yeah, 1984 would win that competition on the surface.

For me, when it comes to A Brave New World, the scary part is the idea of pleasure being used as a weapon to make people apathetic to the world around them and to thinking. There is something so incredibly sinister about this level of pleasure based compliance because there will be people who look at it on the surface and go: it’s not so bad. Could be worse.

And it could. It can always be worse. I’m pretty sure that everybody would agree that 1984 is a better world to live in than the world of The Road. It’s all relative.

But it’s the idea that someone could read A Brave New World or a similar dystopia that disguises itself as a utopia, and ignore the warning signs and think it’s fine. Because that, to me, means that such a world would be easier to implement. If people comply willingly, get lulled into that life and just let it happen because it feels good, is conventient and makes their dopamine go bzzt, then there is no need to use force. It’s also why several aspects of A Brave New World has become more real in today’s world than 1984 has. We have all walked right into it and we stay there because apathy and the nature of convenience and pleasure is something we don’t want to give up. In 1984, they want to change the system, but fail. In A Brave New World they behold the outsider who tries to scream sense into them like he’s an exotic animal and they do not care to understand his points because to do so would demand effort and hard work for the reward of a free life.

In my country we recently banned smart phones in all schools because the signs of longterm apathy towards learning has started to show in younger generations. Why should they put effort into their homework and assignments when they can get their dopamine hit on tiktok and snapchat with the snap of a finger? In adults in my country, the sense of community and togetherness has dwindled partially because we spend out free time on the phone and don’t get bored enough to get together with our neighbors. There’s a bit more to it than that, among other things that we outsourced child and eldercare to the state, so we don’t really need each other like we used to.

In the world we currently live in, I think it is very important that we keep in mind that if we make everything easy and we waste our time on distractions that doesn’t challenge or build us up, we will become apathetic and easier to control. I’m not talking about the state either. Those who control us are the tech giants and everyone who support them in order to steal our attention and time to waste it on additive, shallow nonsense all so companies can sell you stupid shit through ads.

Yeah it was /pol/ that Epstein supposedly helped start. Fuck man. If I find the source I stumbled on, I’ll share it, but it’s like weeks to months ago that I saw it and was like “huh, that’s fucked”, but I didn’t think to bookmark it at the time.

So what you’re saying is that 4chan is just like reddit.

I heard that Epstein actually active tried influencing 4chan in a certain direction. I forget the details, but he was involved with that site and the culture and political views that was spread from there to the rest of the internet.

Almost feels like tinfoil hat shit, but it’s supposedly there in some of the leaked files that Epstein had a lot to influence internet culture and politocal leanings early on. If true, then yikes.

Feels a bit like a self report.