Europe has not yet perished, So long as we still live. philodoXia
Warsaw / God-shaped hole
Joined May 2011
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AG retweeted
You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland).
You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.
Wstyd nam przynoszą na cały świat politycy nasi wspaniali.
Polska anarchia wiecznie żywa 🙄
People sometimes debate whether Germany or Russia has been Poland’s direst historical enemy. Sometimes it seems the answer is Poles themselves.
The country manages to pair an objectively impressive economic and geopolitical rise with banana-republic levels of political instability: riot police at the Constitutional Tribunal, no ambassador in Washington because president and government can’t agree on one, and now the ambassador to China resigning in protest. From a laid-back Czech point of view, this kind of institutional disarray is simply bizzare.
On the other hand, I sometimes wonder whether this cut-throat, all-or-nothing politics and Polish economic dynamism are two sides of the same coin. Poland seems to thrive in chaos. It is almost its natural habitat.
AG retweeted
W tych kilku zdaniach jest samo sedno problemu imigracyjnego. To nie "lewacy", nie "wielka podmiana", to po prostu biznes ściągał, ściąga i chce jeszcze więcej ściągać imigrantów, bo są tani, pokorni, łatwi do wyzysku, nie trzeba płacić dobrze tubylcom, nie trzeba automatyzować itp. Oczywiście nie powie wam o tym probiznesowa ferajna mentzenowska i podobna. I oczywiście właśnie dlatego poza urządzaniem internetowych histerii mącących w głowach przygłupków nie robi ona nic konkretnego w takiej sprawie – np. nie proponuje projektów ustaw zakazujących zatrudniania przybyszów – bo naraziłaby się swojemu biznesowemu zapleczu.
AG retweeted
Orwell's great observation in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was that to shrink a person's vocabulary is to shrink his capacity to think.
An impoverished version of English removes the mental tools needed to formulate and communicate complex (and dissenting) ideas. Such is the deep, complex relationship between language and thought.
We don't read "difficult books" to say that we've read difficult books. We read them because they expand the boundaries of what we are capable of thinking and feeling — we ascend to their level. Vocabulary helps us to recognize truths otherwise beyond our grasp.
This revelation is worse than you may think. This must be reversed.
I am speechless. Thomas Aquinas College just dropped a study on the rigor of the new SAT.
It compares the 1980/87 test with 2026. The findings should terrify every parent and teacher...
Vocabulary has collapsed.
Old SAT: 70.6% of questions tested vocab.
New SAT: 15%.
The old test forced students to know a wide range of words through analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions. The new test abandoned that. Most vocab questions now just ask students to fill in one blank from context.
Reading passages also got radically shorter (average ~97 words vs 300–340).
The new test uses short expository passages and hands you the necessary background knowledge inside the text. The older tests leaned much more heavily on argumentative and persuasive writing, assumed far more historical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, and penalized students who lacked it.
This is a redefinition of what "college readiness" means.
If you believe that kids should develop rigorous vocabulary, be capable of sustained reading, and possess background knowledge, I have bad news for you. The SAT no longer measures these.
If you want a future where children can actually read difficult texts and construct complex arguments, the SAT must be replaced now.
This cannot go on.
AG retweeted
Tak czułem że mi w tej historii do pełnego bingo brakuje jeszcze jakiegoś szczegółu, takiego detalu finalnie osadzajacego całość we właściwej perspektywie - i proszę, voila.
AG retweeted
Meanwhile en Armenia:
- La oposición propone crear un "Ministerio de Mujeres insatisfechas" para mejorar las tasas de natalidad.
- El portavoz del Gobierno les pregunta si van a estar sus madres.
El resto es historia y una oda al parlamentarismo post-soviético.
Enjoy.
AG retweeted
This crazy article shows a hidden aspect of Islamo-Leftism: how, at some point, Leftist politicians are just too scared of Islamists and bow to them
AG retweeted
There's always hope.
Apocalyptic Super El Niño map shows where most people will die from record-breaking calamity trib.al/Dd8lXBi
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The NY Post sensationalizes a Climate Impact Lab map as showing where "most people will die" from an "apocalyptic" calamity; the tracker estimates ~373k additional heat deaths (Oct-Mar) via statistical models vs. baseline, not certain outcomes.
impactlab.org/el-nino-heat-m…
factcheckafrica.net/explainer-what…
AG retweeted
Reminded me of this Ottoman miniature
“An unhappy wife is complaining to the Kaddi about her husband's impotence. Her evidence is a zibik (dildo)”
AG retweeted
🇵🇱 Gotta love Poland
Throw trash on the roadside, and they'll make damn sure you pick it back up
Writer: Ian
AG retweeted
BREAKING: Claude Code found 12,847 photos of my face on my iPhone that I never took.
It looked like the phone was taking them every time I picked it up. From the club. From home. At a red light while I was driving. Almost every time I took the phone in my hands there was a frame.
They were sitting in a system cache with timestamps and location data. None of them were in Photos.
I plugged the phone into my MacBook and asked Claude Code to scan for any front-camera files that weren’t in my Photos library or Recently Deleted. It flagged Private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.faceid. Over 12,000 files. Mix of infrared frames and regular front-camera images. Each one had a timestamp and GPS coordinates attached.
I started scrolling. Most were from the last 14 months. Then I saw one from four seconds ago. I was still looking at the folder.
Apple says the TrueDepth system turns the capture into a mathematical model inside the Secure Enclave and discards the image. On this phone the raw frames were still in the cache. Several of the processes that wrote to the folder belonged to system diagnostics. A couple of old apps with camera permission also had access to the same directory.
I turned off diagnostics sharing and revoked camera access from every app that didn’t need it.
If you want to check your own phone, plug it in, run a backup, and ask Claude Code to look for front-camera files outside the Photos library. The folder path above is where mine were.
Claude Code found 145,763 photos I permanently deleted from my iPhone.
Three years of deleted photos and videos still sitting in a hidden cache. Any app with file access can read them.
I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook to run a backup. Claude Code was doing the security audit from my last post and flagged a directory I wasn't even looking for.
PhotoData/Thumbnails. Over 146,000 files. Photos, videos, screenshots. Every single one was something I deleted.
Photos from 2023, 2024 and 2025. The ones I deleted the second after taking them. The ones I cleared from Recently Deleted. The ones I deleted three separate times because I wanted to be sure they were gone. All still there.
Passport photo I took for a visa application in 2023.
Screenshots of my bank app with full account numbers visible.
Private photos I sent someone and immediately deleted after a breakup.
Screenshot of my crypto seed phrase I took temporarily in 2022.
Photo of my ID and credit card I took to remember the numbers and deleted 5 seconds later.
Screenshots of my ex's private Instagram stories I saved and permanently deleted in 2023.
Some were full resolution. All organized by date going back to 2021.
When you delete a photo on iPhone, iOS removes it from your camera roll and Recently Deleted. It keeps a compressed copy in a Spotlight search index cache so your phone can find things when you search. Apple never clears it. Not after 30 days. Not after a year. Never.
They told you it was permanently deleted. It wasn't.
I checked which apps on my phone had Files and Folders access. 23 apps. Weather apps. QR code scanners. PDF readers. A flashlight app I downloaded in 2022. Any one of them could have been reading every photo I ever deleted this entire time.
Went from 23 apps to 3 in about two minutes.
Full step by step below. Takes 2 minutes. Save it so you don't lose it and send it to anyone with an iPhone.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The author is posting AI-generated engagement bait text with various random claims of deleted photos or videos on a daily basis.
1. x.com/coolerwave/sta… - "BREAKING: Claude Code found 12,847 photos of my face on my iPhone
2. x.com/coolerwave/sta… - "Claude Code found 214,856 photos and videos I permanently deleted
AG retweeted
to jest niewiarygodne, prawnuk Il Duce zajebał debiutanckiego gola w barwach PIERDOLONEGO LAZIO RZYM w rocznicę rozpoczęcia Marsz na Rzym.
Dodatek dla pierdolca? Bramkarz którego pokonał Mussolini ma na nazwisko Turati, dokładnie tak samo jak wróg Benito, Filippo xD
AG retweeted
This is one of my favorite films, and it had a big influence on “Metal Gear.”
YEBISU GARDEN CINEMAにて開催
【ポーランド映画祭2026】
ワイダの名前を世界に知らしめた、
＜抵抗三部作＞の第二作
『地下水道』
上映日
11/16(月) 16:00
11/19(木) 10:30
festiwalfilmowpolskich-japan…
AG retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
nitter.gq/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
AG retweeted
Elon Musk reportedly invests $1 billion in the parent company of CNN and CBS News, gaining an ownership stake in both networks.
AG retweeted
It is funny to say that the possibility of Europe becoming “very poor” seems under-contemplated, since this kind of eurodeclinist slop-posting is incredibly prevalent on X. But it is economically illiterate. Not that Europe, or more accurately certain large European countries, does not have very serious problems. But for a continent that is supposedly about to become dirt poor, the numbers hardly add up.
The supposedly “totally uncompetitive industry” runs a surprisingly large trade surplus in goods with the US (and yes, a very large deficit in services, mostly connected to IT), which does not mean that China isn’t a substantial issue. Even in high-tech goods, where Europe has supposedly already lost, the EU exported €195bn to the US in 2025, with a surplus of €64bn. To be fair, a very large part of that surplus is Irish pharma, where US companies produce in Ireland for tax purposes and ship back home. But it is still manufactured within the EU, and it only shows how interconnected the US and Europe are.
Moreover, American companies themselves don’t seem to believe all that much in the possibility of a massive European decline. Europe holds 60% of the total US direct investment abroad, up from 52% in 2000. It accounts for almost half of the value added generated by US companies abroad ($782bn in 2023), a share that barely moved, from 52% in 2009 to 48% today. And it accounts for more than half of their foreign R&D ($43bn, up a third since 2019). There the share fell from 64% to 53%, but it is still over half.
EU government debt is about where it was in 2010, around 81% of GDP. US debt went from 96% to 124%. And Europe is the largest foreign holder of that debt: 37% of all foreign holdings are held in Europe, up from 23% a decade ago. Part of America’s growth is financed by European savings.
European households (excluding Russia) hold roughly a quarter of all private wealth in the world. To become “really, seriously dirt poor”, Europe would probably need to go through a nuclear war or be hit by an asteroid. But as the stats above show, Atlantic economic integration is so deep that the US would hardly be fine in that case either.
I'm noticing the growing possibility that Europe becomes very poor in the course of the next 10-20 years. You have the following factors:
- Heavy industry totally uncompetitive against China, automakers etc. rapidly losing ground
- Services industry totally uncompetitive against AI
- No natural resources, or regulatory hurdles making their extraction impossible
- No access to the new economy (no AI, no data centers, uncompetitive energy sector)
- Client states caught in one-way welfare ratchets, spend reallocation + investment well-nigh impossible
This seems under-contemplated. And we're talking really, seriously dirt poor: taken to its logical conclusion, many countries will have much, much smaller services and manufacturing industries -- economies may become much more heavily skewed toward natural resources and energy markets, where Europe has made it impossible for itself to compete.
And I'm not saying that this is likely to happen, it's an extreme case. But the probability is greater than zero and appears to be growing. The EV of that is so negative that it's surprising to me that it's not coming up more.
AG retweeted
🇺🇦 Ukraińcy podzieleni w sprawie UPA. Większość popiera stanowisko MSZ
Ponad połowa respondentów dla Radia NV poparł stanowisko ukraińskiego MSZ, które skrytykowało decyzję Lwowskiej Rady Obwodowej gloryfikującą Ukraińską Powstańczą Armię (UPA).
📊 Jak rozłożyły się głosy?
🔹 54,3% – poparło stanowisko MSZ Ukrainy
🔹 26,6% – opowiedziało się za uchwałą Lwowskiej Rady Obwodowej
🔹 19,1% – nie miało zdania