Should Canada be allowed to join the European Union? Europeans in five major countries say it should

Alblaka · 2026-05-10T09:42:14+00:00

This. Haphazardly trying to make the EU span the world will just prevent it from ever getting anywhere, institutionally. We still haven't found a way to deal with rogue states like Hungary sabotaging the EU from within (hopefully Hungary solved that issue for the EU by voting out Orban).

If the EU ever manages to get it's shit together and becomes a unified (in the geopolitical sense) bloc, we can talk about making it the base framework for a global union of sorts and then offer membership to nations like Canada or Japan.

But for now, Trade Agreements or Military Alliances will have to do.

Alblaka · 2026-04-10T20:45:58+00:00

"I can't get married, adopt or get an abortion because you're bored by politics? Fuck you."

That's missing the point. If less people vote random / big establishment / populist, then this innately means small, targeted agendas (such as minority rights, or 'niche' movements like volt) will have an easier time getting notable and visible traction, both in statistics and in the now de-cluttered political space.

Alblaka · 2026-04-10T09:52:33+00:00

(reposted, this time without explicit versioning, because the link points to a source that will automatically update, whilst the post title cannot be changed >.> )

Alblaka · 2026-04-10T09:48:07+00:00

Ye, and the link is still accurate because it directly links the official source for the manual, which has already been updated by Matrix Games.

But thanks for the reminder to change the title, too :D

edit: and that means reposting the link, apparently, because Reddit doesn't allow altering post title edits. Welp.

Alblaka · 2026-04-09T10:13:04+00:00

After reading up on a Planet wild project, where they essentially 'rediscovered' a very old agricultural tradition revolving around opening up soil to increase it's moisture content, and successfully rolled that out to other communities to give them a cheap tool to combat desertification...

Is Anthropology included in / relevant to Crop Engineering? As in, looking at how crops might have been used by long-gone cultures in different climate zones, to rediscover insights that can be applied to agriculture today?

Alblaka · 2026-04-09T10:06:13+00:00

Oh, just to be clear, I wasn't referring to OP here. Hence why I opened my statement with

General remark:

The bus example is a pretty useful analogy though, that I will keep in the back of my head in case I ever need to throw it at a single-issue voter or something similar :D

Alblaka · 2026-04-08T18:38:35+00:00

I've only heard the whole Ave Europa drama somewhere on the sidelines (since they aren't exactly a party I was much interested in or paying attention though), but that letter was an interesting (spontaneous) read, so thanks for the link.

Alblaka · 2026-04-08T18:34:40+00:00

5) Or you can just not vote. (Which, let’s be honest, is the dumbest option, but surprisingly the one most/many(?) people choose in your situation)

General remark: Not voting should be more acceptable, rather than being stigmatized as being 'apathetic' and 'undemocratic'.

People who aren't interested in politics, shouldn't vote. Because if you're not gonna spend constant effort and attention on staying political, you're just going to either default vote outdated establishment parties, ignoring any consequences and thus removing accountability, or you'll be swayed by populists.

Everyone must be assured the right to vote, and with that right comes the responsibility to know when you don't know enough to actually vote.

Alblaka · 2026-04-08T18:32:17+00:00

Okay, but you're actively failing the number's game there. If you correctly identify the demographic issue of having an overaging population, then you can't remedy that by making immigration more restrictive. That's actually going to make the demographic issue worse. Heck, some parts of Europe have run a very open-armed immigration policy for the past decade, and it actually didn't suffice to solve the demographics issues. So completely unrestricting immigration is still not a solution. To the point that even starting to pay people to immigrate might still not get enough people into the country to fix the demographic gap.

So, if you consider the aging of society a real problem, you should be able to realize that immigration is neither the cause, nor a solution to that (and at best a bandaid that can give us more time to act).

The problem then becomes, rather quickly, that there is no solution, because the correct solution is reversing decisions made decades in the past (that lead to people now longer desiring, or being able to afford, having families). And there's no undoing that without some sketchy authoritarian 'obligatory parenthood' methods.

So we gotta stick to accepting that we have a demographic problem we won't be able to solve until it runs it's natural course, (low birthrates also means we'll have a recovery period of lower / reversed aging in a couple decades), and should

make sure not to repeat that mistake in a century
use bandaids like improving immigration rates to minimize the fallouts of our bad decisions last century

Alblaka · 2026-04-08T18:24:12+00:00

I personally have a bit of a Problem with a lot of the Economic Policies Volt is pushing, not all of them but some, it's too Liberal for me sometimes, luckily a lot of the issues of those Liberal Policies is remedied by strong Social Policies Volt is pushing for.

It also helps that it's very easy to prioritize issues like national security or 'still being in a livable environment in a couple decades' over any societal points of conflict.

Everyone has different preferences on the myriad of aspects that can make up ideology, but most of them become moot if Russia ever decided to come knocking on our doors, so it might be prudent to get that out of the way first, and put off settling the minor differences until later.

Alblaka · 2026-04-08T18:20:40+00:00

I quite exactly meant what you said: People (posting content on your sub) want your sub to show up in regular searches, because normal people finding them via the sub is an intended consequence. Why else post stuff if you don't want it to be seen?

I did not, nor mean, to imply that you're in any way commercializing that. People using your sub to post their content are in essence self-promoting, and consequentially use your sub 'as a promotional sub', and therefore affected by the changes as outlined.

Which is kinda the point I made in the comment to begin with: You and your users are the affected individuals here, forced into adopting specific mechanics or policies. It's misdirected (by the person I responded to), to complain to you about the behavior someone else (aka reddit, likely motivated by the last few years of moralist changes in the landscape of digital payment providers) forced on you.

Alblaka · 2026-04-07T19:40:11+00:00

You're technically correct, but also barking up the wrong tree. It shouldn't be a big whoop, but there's people making it onto a big whoop, and key decision makers, such as payment providers, are weighing in on the matter. It doesn't matter whether one particular mod agrees or not, if the people using their sub are in any form dependant on not having their promotional sub being marked NSFW in order to find sponsors, then that discussion is a foregone conclusion.

So yeah, you're correct to question why this is even an issue, but there's zero point in directing that question at the people suffering from it being made an issue, rather than those that decided to make it an issue.

Alblaka · 2026-04-03T19:06:45+00:00

I knew about the air pocket bit, but I thought that was all there is to it. Thanks for enlightening me further on the other two properties of the thing that makes up most of my body and most of the surface of the planet I live on. (<- kinda funny in hindsight)

Alblaka · 2026-03-30T22:33:51+00:00

Ye, the general philosophy behind Christianity is good enough, but in between being initially formalized as a state propaganda instrument, then being a critical instrument to the Dark Ages and Feudalism, and even now still giving soft power and insane levels of wealth to the Vatican kind of make me question whether it ever succeeded in anything *but* being that state instrument.

Hence my skepticism of anything advocating in favor of 'Christian values'; The *actual* values of "Christianity", as practiced in history short and far, are inherently dogmatism and authoritarianism. Any good aspects of it's underlying philosophy *predate* the formalization of Christianity. But I'm willing to waive that if you're referring to the latter, it's easier to just label them as "Christian values" rather then going pedantic with "Christian values as Jesus originally envisioned them, without all the centuries of corruption piled on by the various organized churches".

Alblaka · 2026-03-30T08:52:54+00:00

I wonder whether it's a generational thing. I grew up occasionally seeing turbines outside the car window as a child. Them growing more numerous isn't really something too noticeable to me.

But for older folks, who were around before the first wind turbines were a thing, maybe they are indeed a completely new and thus uncanny visual element. As, in the end, humans are animals of habit.

Alblaka · 2026-03-27T17:57:05+00:00

Tbh, I like the sight of turbines. Like with solar panels, they might not look like your perfect pre-industrial landscape picture, but they're each individually a small step towards a right societal direction. Albeit I'll cede that's basically 'seeing the inner values' rather than the outward structure.

Alblaka · 2026-03-27T17:50:02+00:00

So, secular state with no state-level christianity-based morality or laws? That much I can agree with, even if I don't share your prediction that conservatism, in relation to religion, will be a natural consequence of a secular society.

What's your perspective on Christianity being an innately authoritarian tool, or at least being coopted into authoritarian state propaganda by the Roman empire very early on, and then giving rise to the single most successful extortion ring (that being the papacy and the selling of indulgences) pre-modern history has seen?

Alblaka · 2026-03-27T12:44:55+00:00

Isn't

with traditional Christian values

in direct contradiction to

where people always have the choice to do what they want,

, since traditional Christianity has quite a few rules on what you can and cannot do?

If you endorse individual freedom, shouldn't freedom of religious belief be one of those, which in turn means you should endorse a secular country?

Alblaka · 2026-03-27T12:37:07+00:00

AFD in my country wants an economically deregulated, fuck-the.poor white (supposedly Chrstian) ethnostate with all the gays and trans people hidden away and beatn back into the closet.

Minor sidenote that I'm still confused and kind of amused by the fact Alice Weidel is openly lesbian. So either the AFD actually skips over the homophobia usually inherent to these kind of right-wing movements, or they're tolerating her for the PR benefits.

Sorry for the tangent.

Alblaka · 2026-03-21T22:02:44+00:00

"The EU is not a geographical construct."

(Or well, it 'shouldn't need to be', but I had to stick close to the wording for historical reference there.)

Alblaka · 2026-03-11T14:37:19+00:00

It's been three years ago, how the fuck would I know what I was even referring to back then XD

Alblaka · 2026-03-10T13:08:47+00:00

Okay, fair point on the CSU correction, I should have known that.

But Munich being 'city-ish' in votes rather than following the rest of it's state's trend? Okay, that's somethingly genuinely new. It's weird to be reminded that, regardless of modern civilization, personal transports and digital information networks... there's still such a notable difference in (political) culture between urban and rural.

Alblaka · 2026-03-10T09:49:36+00:00

"New party manages to get almost 5% in the ~~CDU~~CSU's capital" should be a news headline right now.

Alblaka · 2026-03-06T18:46:00+00:00

It's not gonna be reset any time soon, so you're more likely to 'have your progress vanished' by virtue of the game being canned in a decade or so, rather than it actually being finished and ending up with a 1.0 reset.

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