I am still in it for a wonderful green future. Nature and wildlife, but also useful, accessible tech, art, and urban planning. Polish, living in Sweden. I love living in the EU and the values it represents. Fascinated by and open to the rest of the world.
Picture: “Blue Coat”, Paul Klee
Awesome list!
I was surprised not see Vinted or Sellpy on the second-hand list, but apparently neither works in Switzerland :O
You might be doing this already, but getting off Google Search is an essay thing that hurts the company a lot. And using adblock on YouTube.
The title is more dramatic than the event. They finished military exercises as planned.
Thanks for covering me!
Just an idea: Maybe Trump et al. are pissed off with the Mercosur deal? And that’s why they bring up the Monroe doctrine out of the graveyard of history. Why they provoke with Greenland. Why after trying to take over Venezuela, they directly imply that they intend to do the same with other, non-authoritarian countries in the region?
I mean, that’s been a clear focus of their international policy in recent weeks. The funny thing in this shitty situation is that trying to divide and conquer, they bring us closer together.
I am considering a similar thing, though migrating away from WhatsApp. I thought it is easiest to first make two channels for the community, to keep the original one and add something outside of Metasphere. Does anyone have tried this kind of solution?
It’s a typical Eastern European joke. The headline takes it too serious. It is as if she would say “We can kill two birds with one stone” and the headline would be “EU’s top diplomat encourages stoning birds”.
Note: It is also very non-homogenous. Some people would be hyper-americanized. Others would be like: “Marvel, what the fuck does that even mean?”
I mean that it is great that we look for culture outside of our small countries. But far too often, the “external” culture is just American/Anglophone.
I can give not-so-cultural example, which I think is especially detrimental. Political news. Of course, locals will know like tens of MPs in their countries, most major candidates in their city, and this should be the focus, this is what they vote for. But then, they would know details about some Naomi Whatever who is a wife of a third-tier role figure in the Trump’s administration (or whatever US administration), while they would often hardly recall the name of the Spanish president, despite him being the leader of top four country in the Union.
I (slightly) exaggerate. But I used to know hardly any European leaders (apart from like German counselor, French president, UK prime minister if you count that, and fckn Orban), and I would hardly notice elections in even the large EU countries, while I would know details of both Democrat and Republican primaries in 2016. For me, now it is nearly opposite, but that was my active effort.
Also: If you, for example, check the most popular songs, or the most popular TV shows, in Poland they will very often be Polish. I would dare to say: More often than not. In Sweden, they will be Swedish. The problem is not strong local cultures - which might go unnoticed for you, if you speak English all the time. The problem is we look too little at each other. Surprisingly, Polish are more European in that sense than the Scandinavians.
For an alternative perspective of a USAian in Europe, I really like the articles of Alexander Hurst in The Guardian:
I live in Sweden, and I come from Poland. I would say, yes, of course, people in Europe watch a lot of American TV and Movies - maybe even more so in Scandinavia. I think the Nordics feel part of the global “Western” culture. They are like: “We are small, and we have our small part in it, with Abba, LEGO, IKEA, Ibsen, the Nobel Prize, Avicii, Sara Larsson, Joachim Trier, Lars von Trier, Björk, Volvo, Bluetooth, the zip locker, etc.” I mean, check who made the “Barbie Girl” song.
I once listened (in person) to a Danish man responding to comment “But you all speak English so well”. His answet was: We know we are small, we need to learn whatever the international language(s) are.
The deeper answer is about European identity, and what it means to people. I’m very much social-democratic, but until lately, I still viewed the US as a wicked part of the “free world”. Like, of course, they have issues, we would joke about the American crime, injustice, inequality, obesity, ignorance etc. with contempt. I would probably say they are not socialist but at least they are democratic. And Russia has long been neither democratic nor socialist, and meddling in the region.
The relationship felt comfortable. We could reduce our military spending, which helps grow more democratic, participatory societies. We had a common and external language and culture with other Europeans, and with people from around the world. The Americans were largely absent, a reference point we could scorn and yet still look at. We were also very much present in the American stories (imagine a Polish person watching The Pianist being and international hit - the whole world watching with awe and terror story of your country, that you’ve heard repeated so many times by the traumatized elders of your country). I don’t say it was good - but it was easy.
Also, the most vocal alternative was to revert to our own, national cultures. This was the looming past. The benefit of the Scandinavian perspective is that the local cultures are too small to fool yourself that this is a viable alternative.
One more point: If you go into modern European history, there was always somehow imbalanced international culture. Like, Newton, Copernicus, and Linnaeus wrote in Latin. Many early 20th-century scientists wrote in German. War and Peace is almost half written in French. Etc., etc… We were often looking at American, British, French, German, Spanish, etc. culture, not fully awere that Americans were looking just at American culture, ignoring the rest.
I am glad this is changing. I am thrilled. I do not agree with most points given above - but they should give you a vibe. Personally, I’ve been dreaming of an alter-globalist culture, and of a stronger European integration, long before Trump. I might have betrayed my personal opinions to portray the societal vibe, though still leaning into my bubble.
Nevertheless, it takes time. Cultural shifts like that take a lot of time.
Short answer: Yes, it is.
Long answer: 59% of their shares are in free-float, and 43% of the free-float shares are owned by some institutions from North America (The non-free-float shares are owned by European organizations). The rest of free-float is European. Assuming all the North American shareholders are from the USA (which is likely not true), 75% of shares are owned by European institutions:
https://group.hugoboss.com/en/investors/share/shareholder-structure
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Also, according to Eurobarometer, more Hungarians now distrust their government than the EU.
The polls look promising. Your fatalistic belief everybody just blindly follows propaganda may well be disproven this year (disproven again, but in a new country).
Mr Crabs is definitely not acting as if he was a CEO of a million $ company.
It’s not either or!
I agree with all of you, but…
We need institutions that can both challenge and rival Big Tech. EU has been doing okay, great in comparison, regulating Big Tech. Small to medium companies have big part of the market, but are constantly eaten up big bigger ones, and have hard time combating many mono/duopolies (like mail or social media, which technically are easy to keep diversified).
I don’t know what is the answer. Federation that do not collaborate with Big Tech - thank you, Fedi - are a great way forward. Consumer movements (e.g., Buy European) and smaller companies getting their niches working with Big Tech and only slowly diverging from it (see, e.g., Ecosia) can also have an impact.
The article poses a wrong question. But a related question is interesting: How do we challenge Big Tech at scale? In this sense, Europe not having any tech giants might be lucky for the world at large, as we still have enough power, talent, and influence to pose the challenge. How do we do that?
I’ve lived in Poland and Sweden.
In Poland, Allegro dominates, it’s much more convenient than Amazon.
In Sweden, I used Amazon once. There is no other general website like that I know of for first-hand stuff, buy you can get half-price new stuff from sites like Tradera or Blocket, or Vinted (very European), or Sellpy. I would try to pass by a charity store first, but for example for shoes it is very hard to find what I am looking for and in size 47 there.
For first-hand stuff, in Sweden, I just search (or know websites for the kind of product I am looking for), and rarely would Amazon be even competitive. For example, to buy books I often use Adlibris, and while it is not as nice as the local bookstore, they do sometimes have things I would have trouble finding otherwise (including a broad selection of books in English).
PS: I’m shocked by Neutrogena. They got me with the Norwegian flag (WTF?!), I didn’t even check it.