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Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

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Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#421

Post by Symbiote »

watwut wrote: post #315
sfn42 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's two extremes. As with most things it's a spectrum, too far to either side isn't great. On the one hand you have racists and bigots, on the other you have people insisting that we should be asking everyone their preferred pronouns before addressing them and men who decide that they are now women should be allowed to compete in women's sports leagues, oh and actually gender is just a social construct because some…

Why is TERF as a term bad when it actually matches the ideology? You have to be against trans and otherwise feminist. Which is exactly what that is.

In addition to the other replies, plenty of words are descriptive until they get used offensively. Another example is "retard".

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#422

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

amarcheschi wrote: post #418
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honestly, Trump has said so many things that you can probably find everything and the opposite of everything coming out of his mind. I think he's been pretty consistent on the issue of European defense spending, actually. In any case, if Trump is inconsistent, that itself can be considered a warning -- that sometimes the US elects inconsistent presidents. >I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts…

The issue is not only usa getting far from europe - which on itself is ok imho -, just the fact that given an existing alliance - for which europeans fought war for the us in middle east and died as well - could have been reshaped with a slower rollout. It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome (just like the markets don't like trump's unpre…

>It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome

So you would prefer that the US just withdraws from NATO now, to reduce the unpredictability? That's fine by me. If unpredictability is your issue, Trump should be able to address that by withdrawing tomorrow.

>I do not see why usa should be "thanked".

If you think our involvement in Europe over the past 80 years has been positive, you should acknowledge that. If all you do is complain, it's natural for Americans to think "well, maybe our involvement in the continent isn't positive... perhaps it's time to pull out and see if they stop complaining about everything". You're not complaining about Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, or China the way you complain about the US. I think we need a reset to make the US/Europe relationship more like the Brazil/Europe relationship.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#423

Post by tossandthrow »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #362
tossandthrow wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of having a strong military is to deter your enemies, not fight them. That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war. > It's really striking the amount of anti-Americanism that comes out of Europe relative to other US allies. You broaden up the premise from lost casualties in war to the entire relationsship - I think that is multiple PhDs to figure out whether this is anti american o…

>That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war. lupusreal talked about the " risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war" (emphasis mine). By making Europe part of its security umbrella, and deterring the USSR/Russia, the US shouldered that risk. It's simple. I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me. Every time Europeans downvote my comments in this thread, it…

I don't think we will ever reach a conclusion, and it will take the next 4 years to learn whether the approach you represent is more productive than the approach I represent.

But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#424

Post by bratwurst3000 »

thyristan wrote: post #290
pjc50 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's still absolutely dominant in the western market - partly because they own a whole load of other brands, and they have absolutely unbeatable distribution. There's a few countries where Pepsi is more dominant. But the only place where a non-Coke/Pepsi soft drink is dominant is Scotland (AG Barr's Irn-Bru and other drinks). I think they even bought out the last other holdout (Peru's Inca-Cola)

Well, if you accept Irn-Bru as a Cola replacement then Germany already isn't a Cola country anymore. The vast majority of sodas consumed is rather of the Cola-Mix kind (there are two very common products named "Spezi" and a ton of smaller brands) and Apfelschorle. CocaCola dominates the Cola market only, the sum of all the other sodas is far greater.

I am from germany and this is true. I can remember the 90s and 2000s where coca cola was totally dominant and the only thing you can get in bistros restaurants etc. but now only cheap places like döners serve coca cola. what I meant is that they are still one of the most sold brands in western europe but not as dominant as it was with a steady decline. While in other parts of the world they can sell their sugarwater without regulation and thats where they make money. the rest of the world wants a taste of the free world drink.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#425

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

tossandthrow wrote: post #423
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war. lupusreal talked about the " risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war" (emphasis mine). By making Europe part of its security umbrella, and deterring the USSR/Russia, the US shouldered that risk. It's simple. I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me. Every time Europeans downvote my comments in this thread, it…

I don't think we will ever reach a conclusion, and it will take the next 4 years to learn whether the approach you represent is more productive than the approach I represent. But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.

>But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.

I don't care about the US being a powerful country. I'm tired of being the world's police. I'm against so-called "American imperialism". I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone. Switzerland has a much healthier relationship with the rest of Europe, without toxic dependency.

That's my metric regarding whether an approach is "productive" or not. Give it 10 years until the US/Europe relationship resets to the Switzerland/Europe relationship. That's the goal.

I'd say Trump has already succeeded by this metric in terms of Europe taking responsibility for itself. That's the first step. You need to stop depending on us so you'll stop resenting us.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#426

Post by Symbiote »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #187
flohofwoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...I've only ever seen Fritz-Kola as a Berlin phenomenon tbh. There are some other regional brands though (e.g. in the Eastern German parts you're likely to see Vita Cola next to Coca Cola - completely different taste though).

I used to see it in Irma in Denmark. One of the Colas that tastes good enough to replace Coke in my experience.

I've seen it for sale in at least a couple of bars in Copenhagen.

A bar owner I know here says selling these more-premium sodas is a good way to make a bit of extra money on people who aren't buying alcohol — you can charge more for Fritz-Kola than for Coca-Cola.

A different bar owner I know chose Jolly Cola, avoiding an American product but keeping a low price.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#427

Post by jensgk »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #417
messe wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me They don't despise you. They dislike your government. > What I don't like is the notion that the US has a special obligation to protect Ukraine. Sure, it doesn't. But you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests? > You're saying that you don't like how antitrust is practiced in the US? Why is that any of your…

>They don't despise you. They dislike your government. Then why are my comments in this thread being downvoted? I'm trying to share my perspective, and I get sarcastic replies like "Cry me a river." All of my most acrimonious arguments on HN have been with Europeans talking about transatlantic relations. There just seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the US/Europe relationship. From my perspective, I'm…

> I haven't seen much hard evidence that Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine.

Hard evidence is too late. Putin (and associates) speeches and writings indicate more than enough. Why do you think that former Soviet countries boardering Russia are the most scared?

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#428

Post by fransje26 »

tored wrote: post #373
fransje26 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. France would disagree with the "didn't understand" part. They have been continuously ridiculed for holding that view, until very, very recently.

Agree, France is somewhat of an exception. I remember during the Chirac presidency how viciously France was attacked by the other European countries, especially my own Sweden, for doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific. Jump forward today and France is seen as a protector of Europe, especially in Sweden, because of its nuclear arsenal.

> doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

That was not the most glorious moment of Chirac's presidency, no..

However, as someone involved in numerical simulations, the argument that it was needed to calibrate their numerical models does hold (some..) water..

But Chirac did partly redeem himself by refusing to invade Iraq on bogus US claims of WMDs..

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#429

Post by fundatus »

c16 wrote: post #53
mentalgear wrote: post #3

It's one thing to visit the website, but I would be interested what % is actually migrating? For me personally, I had to install the "Go European" browser extension [1] before I actually started switching, due to more frequent reminders, from using mostly chatGPT/claude to LeChat by mistral (which feels at least as good). My Take-away: User stickiness is hard to break due to providers' walled gardens, even for me who…

This is absolutely true. I've added x/twitter to my hosts file in an attempt to break the muscle memory and instead use bsky. 4 months on, I'm still type twitter[.]com and finding myself on localhost.

Btw: The "Twitter to Nitter" browser extension is amazing if you occasionally still want to view a tweet, but don't want to connect to Twitter servers.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#430

Post by Symbiote »

flohofwoe wrote: post #83
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how much it gets consumed, but many places in Germany rather sell Fritz-Kola only.

...I've only ever seen Fritz-Kola as a Berlin phenomenon tbh. There are some other regional brands though (e.g. in the Eastern German parts you're likely to see Vita Cola next to Coca Cola - completely different taste though).

Fritz Cola is the western Germany equivalent. The company is from Hamburg.
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