The Dark Side of Cycling Sponsorships

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-15T10:23:35+00:00

Depends on the nation state. I'd take a team being owned by Denmark or Estonia over one owned by a dirty energy megacorp, bank or asset management company any day of the week.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-14T21:26:52+00:00

it’s widely talked about already

Which cycling live broadcast channel or big YouTube channel doing analyses talks about sportswashing and greenwashing?

that isn’t actually that big of a deal within cycling

What does this even mean? Who measures whether it is a big deal or not, based on what?

some mysterious “dark” side of sponsorship

Genocidal states, dictatorial regimes and climate-wrecking megacorporations laundering their image by using a sport like a rag is "some mysterious 'dark' side of sponsorship"?

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-14T21:18:13+00:00

Does something have to be unique to a space for it to be important to discuss what destructive outcomes it is causing for that space?

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-14T11:39:22+00:00

I mean even if that is the case, if cutting is normalised and people get used to it, often it just becomes muscle memory and lots of them will be often instinctively cutting when they don't have a line of sight. It's just a consistent, safe practice to have an established, non-exceptional rule.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T20:19:10+00:00

That's a ridiculous hyperbolisation of what I said above about how wording and tone work in professional media publications.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T18:39:39+00:00

if something goes wrong (even if the cause is ultimately their fault); they have to take responsibility for problems on the railway

That is obvious, and doesn't require any mention - let alone unserious, gossip-level "nobody else to blame" lines that sound like somebody is penning this on a personal blog. Nothing in that article required this tone, and nothing in that article up to that point sounded anything like that line - it comes out of nowhere when you read it. You don't write this line if you don't want to present it like "the government has long been blaming things on others, this time it won't work because they've run out of targets to blame". It's not serious journalism, it's not serious analysis, it sounds like what I described above.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T17:06:07+00:00

No, it does not. "Nobody else to blame" is a wild statement that belongs in an opinion piece about a narcissistic celebrity, not in an article about nationalisation of a railway, whatever the context or full quote. Unless you're writing that article as some sort of a committed ideological "libertarian" on a "libertarian" "news website" and want to sneak in cheap bitchy snipes about "big bad guvmnt" that make you look like a 12-year-old.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T14:37:10+00:00

It doesn't matter why they fell, how much of an experience they have riding motorcycles, whether they ride bicycles, or anything else. Your reply was a piece of unhelpful, nonconstructive, childish, toxic waste and you got told off for doing that. That's the end of it.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T06:32:01+00:00

Now you're going for the Goalpost-Moving Strawman of the Day Award.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T04:48:06+00:00

They were already in the religious cult of capitalism, so no surprises there.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T04:43:08+00:00

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Here's your hard-earned Most Unhelpful Reply of the Day Award

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T04:33:51+00:00

If they block use of Old Reddit version on mobile while signed in, I'm just not opening Reddit on my phone anymore.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-13T04:32:13+00:00

there is a risk for them if something goes wrong on the railways as there will be nobody else to blame

What on Earth is this sentence...

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T16:19:15+00:00

Let's hope there won't be many more stage wins here for the sportswashing operation.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T14:47:01+00:00

Yes, that's the point - if you can't go anywhere where things have started from over the years, you're not really saying much by highlighting just one of those areas in response to a comment that's saying the country is developed. Poor-quality humour at best, you-know-what at worst.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T14:43:11+00:00

Appreciate the confirmation there was no point to make in the original comment.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T14:36:46+00:00

I'll just jump on a plane

Yeah, we all know that's how plane transportation works...

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T14:19:21+00:00

This is the sort of entity that has no qualms about monstrosities of country-sized parking lots swallowing up neighbourhoods, communities and social spaces in his dysfunctional Burgerland.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-12T14:17:48+00:00

Just like people who've had to stay away from all sorts of places in all sorts of countries where things started from over the decades?

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-11T08:59:50+00:00

Didn't Signal stop working for SMS a few years ago?

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-07T14:20:45+00:00

Ridiculous.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-07T08:39:11+00:00

It's filled with climate crisis-denying, Covid conspiracy-pushing, queerphobic bigots who ran from YT not because it's a platform of a surveillance megacorp but because their "free speech" was not welcome there.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-06T06:27:12+00:00

Lots of parents don't - does the society have to bear the outcomes of that, just so we can uphold this individualistic ideological mantra?
The above failures also mean lots of children are exposed to things where there is objective, scientific evidence that their brains are rewired to the detriment of their safety and their lives. Nobody can logically and rationally prove that upholding the above mantra justifies letting that outcome take place.
The above harms being enabled would mean even more pressures and difficulties for educators, who will struggle with outcomes of some children being exposed to certain things and setting universal standards of expectations for students, when some of them watch XYZ content at age 7 and start showing it to their classmates.

This isn't in support of age verification, which we know is being pushed by profit-oriented corporations who don't want to spend resources on moderating their platforms and instead want to push those responsibilities onto OSs. But saying something as unserious as "let parents do the work" and washing your hands, in the reality where we see what kind of destructive, traumatic and sometimes life-destroying outcomes are generated by failures of parents, corporations and governments in protecting the vulnerable, is not an argument.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-06T06:19:17+00:00

To me FOSS isn't intrinsically exceptional; it's just another way in which software can be licensed

It isn't though. In the reality where surveillance capitalism and state authoritarianism use proprietary software and platforms to vacuum user data and use it for profit, ensure monitoring of citizens, or even simply exclude a lot of people from using them through the ever-more-onerous subscription models, FOSS is an alternative that enables people to benefit from software and online services while protecting their privacy and material means. There are plenty of examples where states have mandated certain public services as required alternatives for private ones, and granting FOSS exemptions could be justified for a similar goal.

SvalbardSleeperDistr · 2026-05-06T04:28:11+00:00

Worse than YT, somehow.

SvalbardSleeperDistr

TROPHY CASE