RunawayFixer

As I understand it, the public perception of Trump was distorted by how he was portrayed on The Apprentice: https://www.psypost.org/new-research-sheds-light-on-the-influence-of-the-apprentice-on-donald-trumps-political-rise/

The producers at NBC had to jump through a lot of hoops to make Trump appear competent. Their chief marketing officer from that time is very sorry for what he did: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america

Once Trump became the republican candidate, the right-wing media took up the responsibility of filtering and distorting what their audience got to see and hear about Trump.

It is theft though: they are taking something that would otherwise belong to someone else (the wealth difference that would have been accumulated), and they're keeping it for themselves. That fits the definition of theft. The method may be more indirect, but the end result is the same. Inventing euphemistic terms to describe something that can be described with a simple existing word, will only end up muddying the waters in my experience.

Republicans really have something against the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, it seems to get targeted at every opportunity.

Edit: as it turns out, republicans really do have a grudge against the agency, they've been targeting it since before Trump got reelected: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/conservatives-cyber-cisa-politics-00122794 Countering misinformation campaigns was a bridge too far for republicans.

It's not going away any time soon. There's currently 2 to 3 times as many humans as what would be long term sustainable with the way that we live. That means that it's going to be a problem for at least many decades, but more likely a few centuries. It's definitely not yesteryears problem. And sustainability should always remain a concern, in everything that we do. Many countries (not the USA obviously) are already taking steps to be more sustainable, but it's baby steps compared to what is needed.

To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.

Some estimates from Wikipedia: "Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population

Would the outcome have been the same without people in the media repeatedly bringing this to everyone's attention? Probably not, because there would have been no public pressure against it, while the shadow groups that want this would have still been lobbying the politicians.

Something bad is going to happen.
Some people advocate to stop that bad thing.
Even more people are holding their clutches that the bad thing might happen.
Because of public pressure, action is undertaken to prevent the bad thing from happening.
Thanks to those efforts, the bad thing is successfully averted.

Some random person: that bad thing was never going to happen, look at all those gullible people who were panicking over nothing, we could have just done nothing and the outcome would have been the same.

Also known as the "preparedness paradox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

I agree with the rest of your point, but I do want to remark that communist states do entwine state and religion: they don't leave people's religious beliefs alone, they promote atheism and discriminate against religious people, as well as gradually hijack leadership positions of religious organizations.

A direct link to the article from op: https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/

Reading that list of tactics was kinda depressing, because I could name a bunch of them with their debating name, even when they're not being named as such by the author. Gish gallop, misrepresentation, throwing shade, ad hominem arguments. I never learned any of these terms in school, yet I know them now, bravo internet. But here they were used not for the low stakes of winning an online argument, but with real life negative consequences for a bunch of seemingly well meaning people. I hope kids now are being prepared in schools for this new online reality, but I fear that's just not the case in most countries.

I found a moment to look up that edible part that you found: "For the purposes of this part, ‘meat’ means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, " So no, they do not define meat as the edible parts of the animals, they define meat as the edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I etc. You can't just ignore parts of a definition.

1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 is:

"Meat" means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8, including blood.

1.2. "Domestic ungulates" means domestic bovine (including Bubalus and Bison species), porcine, ovine and caprine animals, and domestic solipeds.

1.3. "Poultry" means farmed birds, including birds that are not considered as domestic but which are farmed as domestic animals, with the exception of ratites.

1.4. "Lagomorphs" means rabbits, hares and rodents.

1.5. "Wild game" means:

—

wild ungulates and lagomorphs, as well as other land mammals that are hunted for human consumption and are considered to be wild game under the applicable law in the Member State concerned, including mammals living in enclosed territory under conditions of freedom similar to those of wild game; and

—

wild birds that are hunted for human consumption.

1.6. "Fanned game" means farmed ratites and farmed land mammals other than those referred to in point 1.2.

1.7. "Small wild game" means wild game birds and lagomorphs living freely in the wild.

1.8. "Large wild game" means wild land mammals living freely in the wild that do not fall within the definition of small wild game.

Afaik fish is not considered meat, definitely not in colloquial language. With a quick search I found another EU article which mentions meat and fish, and they list meat and fishery products as being different things: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/hygiene-rules-for-food-of-animal-origin.html

What that article includes under meat: "Meat, including domestic ungulates (bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine species); poultry and lagomorphs (farmed birds, rabbits, hares and rodents); farmed and wild game; minced meat, meat preparations and mechanically separated/recovered meat; and meat products."

From the eu Parliament document: *3. ‘Meat products’ means processed products resulting from the processing of meat or from the further processing of such processed products, so that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has the characteristics of fresh meat. Names that fall under Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that are currently used for meat products and meat preparations shall be reserved exclusively for products containing meat.

These names include, for example:

• Steak
• Escalope
• Sausage
• Burger
• Hamburger
• Egg yolk
• Egg white*

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2025-0161_EN.html Use ctrl+f "burger" to find it in the text.

This not only affects vegetarian food, but also salmon steak for example. It's a populist political move that doesn't seem to be backed up by any linguistic science, as if mystery sausages haven't been a thing for centuries. As long as it looks like a sausage, it is a sausage imo. It's also not law yet, the member states still have to approve those amendements.

Ps, this gave me an idea for possible vegetarian branding: names like "not a burger" seem to still be allowed, so a line of foodstuffs called "not a sausage" etc might be fun.

"Label swindle" is the closest literal translation I think.