I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?
Politics and Current Affairs
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A right wing party in Romania called Pace stole the logo of Polish right wingers Konfederacja, and didn’t realize the outline of the logo was based on Poland’s borders.
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Interesting. Germany tries to build up its military but people are so brainwashed to think “military = bad” that they refuse.
Weeeeeeeeell, this is an opionion piece and what Sanyal fails to mention is that actually 2/3rds in Germans are in favour of reinstating military service. Yes, the young people who actually have to do this service are mostly against it, but German politicians have really created an absolute communications disaster around it. Articles like Sanyal’s aren’t helping because it suggests that youths drawn into military service will be sent to Ukraine to die, which is just complete nonsense.
If German wants a military that would be able to defend itself in case of an actual war, there’s probably no way around a general military service. BUT as before (we had this until 2011), it’d be possible to serve in civil service instead, as quite a lot of us did. AND as before, in military actions outside of Germany, only professional soliders will be sent, never those who are doing their mandatory service year.
The real reason this is being discussed so hotly is that the politicians have failed to make those points clear to young people, and that the CDU fucked up in not just supporting the Defence minister’s original proposal in which they’d first try and get as many voluntary conscriptions as possible – at a time when the military isn’t equipped to deal with a sudden influx of military service year members anyway, which is where the whole lottery nonsense comes from.
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Interesting. Germany tries to build up its military but people are so brainwashed to think “military = bad” that they refuse.
Weeeeeeeeell, this is an opionion piece and what Sanyal fails to mention is that actually 2/3rds in Germans are in favour of reinstating military service. Yes, the young people who actually have to do this service are mostly against it, but German politicians have really created an absolute communications disaster around it. Articles like Sanyal’s aren’t helping because it suggests that youths drawn into military service will be sent to Ukraine to die, which is just complete nonsense.
If German wants a military that would be able to defend itself in case of an actual war, there’s probably no way around a general military service. BUT as before (we had this until 2011), it’d be possible to serve in civil service instead, as quite a lot of us did. AND as before, in military actions outside of Germany, only professional soliders will be sent, never those who are doing their mandatory service year.
The real reason this is being discussed so hotly is that the politicians have failed to make those points clear to young people, and that the CDU fucked up in not just supporting the Defence minister’s original proposal in which they’d first try and get as many voluntary conscriptions as possible – at a time when the military isn’t equipped to deal with a sudden influx of military service year members anyway, which is where the whole lottery nonsense comes from.
Fair enough, thanks for the explanation.
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Yeah, same here. I’ve always advocated for re-introducing a service year, just with the emphasis on civil service and the additional option of serving in the military.
That was one of the best years of my life, and I never learned so much in one year (well, 15 months). And I mean that in terms of pragmatic skills, of social experience and most importantly about myself.
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Interesting. Germany tries to build up its military but people are so brainwashed to think “military = bad” that they refuse.
It’s a bit similar in the Netherlands I think. People often just refuse to acknowledge Russia is an enemy. Those drones that were spotted in Western Europe recenty, some people just refuse to think they are real and call it all fake news.
You get ingrained beliefs. Germany have since 1945 been told not to spend on defence, The Netherlands has been very fiscally conservative on borrowing for just as long. It’s hard to change attitudes on a dime even if it’s 100% true Russia is a danger and they need to do it as the US will no longer foot a chunk of the bill.
You get a similar conflict in the UK (and probably US) where an ingrained attitude hates the idea of national ID cards while they simultaneously moan about immigrants coming to work in the black market on the right or not everyone having access to ID for voting on the left. There could be a solution…..
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What’s strange about the likes of Thiel and Musk is much of their “wealth” isn’t real, it’s all bound up in the stock market. That in turn tends to respond to consumer activity. People reducing or stopping buying is a problem, yet in their desire to reduce wages, increase employment insecurity and undermine democracy, it doesn’t occur to them that they are undercutting themselves.
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Naomi Klein* talks about Trump, Putin, Orban, Bannon, Musk, Thiel etc representing “end times fascism”. Maybe a hyperbolic term, but there is some truth to this. They see a future of climate change, scarcity, and growing inequality, and instead of trying to fix it, they break down democracy and build fortresses for themselves to stay safe when the angry masses come for them.
*not to be confused with Naomi Wolf who used to be an advisor to Clinton and is now batshit crazy
Have you read Doppelganger, Klein’s most recent book which begins by talking about how the two of them are mistaken? It’s fascinating and talks a lot about the misinformation sphere
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I second the recommendation for the Shock Doctrine. It opens your eyes to a lot of things that go on in the world.
Is there a version of bookshop.org in the Netherlands?
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Endless migration streams are the entirety of human history, the only new part is the response to it. Plus the US has, for decades, sold itself as a nation for immigration. Meanwhile you have Trumo, Musk, Thiel and other US execs who think Darth Vader is a superb manager.
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Megyn Kelly on alleged war crimes: "I really do kind of not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out." pic.twitter.com/yvIWczKS5L
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) December 2, 2025
This is an example of that dehumanization. Just totally bloodthirsty. I’m sure some Europeans think this way about some of the refugees that die at sea though.
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The European far-right absolutely do. One YouTuber actually went out on the boats that were trying to stop refugees crossing and got done for firing a flare gun at them.
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It’s very troubling and I’ve been naive thinking there are not that many people who think that way.
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Megyn Kelly on alleged war crimes: "I really do kind of not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out." pic.twitter.com/yvIWczKS5L
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) December 2, 2025
This is an example of that dehumanization. Just totally bloodthirsty. I’m sure some Europeans think this way about some of the refugees that die at sea though.
Brought to you by Megyn “it’s technically not rape of kids” Kelly.
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Honestly at the moment I’m feeling pretty negative about the whole Russia situation. Maybe it’s time to get a bottle of vodka ready in case the Russkis overrun Europe.
I don’t think they can overrun Europe. They’ve spent years struggling over relatively small patches of Ukraine and France and the UK have very significant armed forces and tech that get called in if they enter a NATO country like Poland or Finland.
That doesn’t mean things can’t get very messy and dangerous though, with increased covert attacks and the ever present threat of nukes.
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Yeah I probably should stop following Russia news so much. It is scaring me. I know it’s a lot of bluffing and mind games, but it just becomes a heavy weight on my mind after reading articles about it.
It may be healthier to just skim headlines and avoid diving into articles.
I get a lot of push notices on my phone, so I have a basic awareness of what’s going on. I will occasionally check out the story if it seems important to me. I am also picky about the sources I choose to read the story. Associated Press is a fairly unbiased news source.
I would recommend reading other things than the news. Read some things for entertainment and education. A constant diet of news is pretty unhealthy.
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The only real fear for me with Russia is the nuclear aspect but MAD has stayed in force for a long time and the rather unique setup the UK has with Trident means it is basically suicide for Russia to launch anything.
If you don’t know Britain’s nuclear arsenal is not on land but kept on 3 submarines (hence trident), 2 of which are always in motion if the 3rd is getting maintenance. The captains of those subs have instructions that even if the UK has been hit by Russian nukes and the capital destroyed they can hit back in revenge and launch on Moscow.
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Spain, Netherlands, Slovenia and Ireland have all pulled out of Eurovision
After the shitshow with Isreal last time, I’m surprised they let them come back.
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Spain, Netherlands, Slovenia and Ireland have all pulled out of Eurovision
After the shitshow with Isreal last time, I’m surprised they let them come back.
This is in response to the EBU’s lackluster plans to deal with the aftermath of this year, which was basically to put a few restrictions on voting.
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They’ve spent years struggling over relatively small patches of Ukraine and France and the UK
A little comma after “Ukraine” would have prevented me from briefly wondering why I haven’t heard about recent Russian incursions into France and the UK.
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For fuck’s sake. At this point I’m ready for the Catholic Church to be forcibly removed from Ireland.
https://www.thejournal.ie/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-3-6894557-Dec2025/
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For fuck’s sake. At this point I’m ready for the Catholic Church to be forcibly removed from Ireland.
Would love it if Ireland, Canada, and many other harmed countries all served warrants (at the exact same time) to the Roman Catholic Church using the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).
It fits, and it’s overdue.
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The Church is deeply entwined in our education and medical systems and it’s just not good enough any more. Our government is still intending to hand off the long delayed and massively overbudget children’s hospital in Dublin to the Sisters of Charity!
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The Church is deeply entwined in our education and medical systems and it’s just not good enough any more. Our government is still intending to hand off the long delayed and massively overbudget children’s hospital in Dublin to the Sisters of Charity!
The power is a major issue.
My wife’s family are all Catholics but it’s a real minority religion in Malaysia (as it was growing up in Wales where non-conformism was the norm). Looking from the outside the setup here in the Catholic church is pretty benign but they don’t get to control any big institutions. It’s a very different scenario to say Ireland or Italy, the entire congregation are minorities, about half of the members of their local church are factory workers from the Philippines and it’s actually quite lovely they all have a place to meet up on a Sunday.
(I told my son to stick with it as 100% of those immigrant workers are females aged between 20 and 35, work the odds).
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The numbers of native Irish people attending mass are way down as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant percentage of mass goers in Ireland these days are migrants as well. Even with that the numbers are incredibly low. I live right beside my childhood parish church. When I was a kid there were two Saturday masses, and Sunday ones on the hour from 8-12 with an evening one as well. Now there’s one a day.
It’s absurd that they retain such institutional power
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I think they do many good things
What’s the exchange rate between good things and all the selling, raping, enslaving and murdering of children?
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I think they do many good things
What’s the exchange rate between good things and all the raping, selling, enslaving and murdering of children?
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Note, I’m not saying get rid of Catholicism. People can worship whatever they want. But the Church has had thousands of chances in the last 30 years alone and continues to protect child abusers, continues to cover up their crimes and continues to refuse to pay into redress schemes they formerly promised to support. It’s a blight on the world and needs to go. Burn it to the ground, build something useful instead.
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Holding criminals to justice is not persecution. And we have records that this literally goes straight to the top. The Pope has defended some of these monsters.
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Chatgpt is telling me there is no pope Leo and the current pope is Francis…
I think in the end outlawing the church just isn’t the answer. I doubt that the case can be made that the church as a whole is a criminal organization. There are bad elements and that’s what you have to go after.
I read a bit about the culture of tolerance for child sexual abuse that existed for a long time in countries like France. Like there were writers that openly boasted about having sex with children and people didn’t care. I think “abolishing the church” is like saying we are going to get rid of France.
The Vatican is protecting the bad elements! Right now, today, they continue to protect them! It is rotten from bottom to top. WHY DO YOU KEEP IGNORING THIS?
I read a bit about the culture of tolerance for child sexual abuse that existed for a long time in countries like France. Like there were writers that openly boasted about having sex with children and people didn’t care. I think “abolishing the church” is like saying we are going to get rid of France.
You’d have a point if the nation of France was protecting French Paedophiles, rapists, murderers and slavers. But they tend to not do that.
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Do you think pope Francis in the recent past and currently pope Leo still shielded child abusers? Googling that stuff and using chatgpt gives me results on that that are inconclusive. Also you have to distinguish poor judgment from active shielding of abusers.
Pope Francis did defend paedophile priests, and even if they didn’t personally the office of the papacy did for decades. And people still in positions of power in the Vatican did. Are you aware of the lengths they went to to protect rapist priests? Hushing up their crimes, moving them to other parishes and allowing them to abuse again, then continuing the cycle? Are you this ignorant of the extent of the Church’s crimes? If so, how the fuck can you even think to comment on them?
I think it is all pretty complicated and not as black and white as it seems.
Tell that to the children they’re literally digging out of the ground in Sligo right now.
but you can’t get rid of the church altogether.
sure you can
a religion needs its priests, bishops, monks, scholars
There are plenty of religions without a central authority. Let the people who want to maintain Catholicism do it themselves.
take care of the buildings and church property etc
Every last piece of church property should be seized and sold and the proceeds used to pay compensation to their victims. If the Church didn’t want it to come to this they should have paid they money they promised.
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One important aspect of difference here is the church in UK / Netherlands versus the church in Ireland. Despite Lorcan doing numerous posts that lay it all out very well, there’s that bonkers element to it when viewed from outside. The US may be closer to it, as that’s still a far more visibly religious nation. But for UK? The church having so much power for so long is hard to grasp.
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That might be part of it, the Church was everywhere in Irish society up until the 90s when the truth started coming out. The parish Priest was a cornerstone of the community especially in rural areas, you listened to what he’d say, went to him for life advice, he’d be invited to social events. A lot of it is a result of persecution of the native Irish population over the centuries, the Church was there for people when the state wasn’t. A lot of the leaders of the Revolutionary period who survived past the civil war were the hardcore Catholics like DeValera. It was only natural for them to hand large parts of the state apparatus to the Church to run. When we left the Commonwealth and declared a Republic, a panel of Bishops were consulted on the text of the Constitution, who inserted a ton of religious and misogynistic language into the text, which we’ve been working to remove for 50 years. (a referendum to remove the language about how mothers shouldn’t have to work too hard so they can stay at home and rear the family sadly failed last year). To this day, the vast majority of schools in Ireland are run by the Catholic Church, and there is no school in the nation that has no religious teaching at all. The closest we have is the Educate Together program, which teaches a values-neutral version of religious education. I don’t think there’s a single public hospital that isn’t owned or run at least partially by religious orders, even as the facilities are built and funded by the state.
And I can’t help but feel that if Ireland was traditionally a Muslim nation as opposed to a Catholic one that a lot of people would feel differently about how deeply entrenched the Church is in our state.
Ted’s rant at the end of this episode was based at least in part on the real attitude towards the church for a long time… Only thing was we thought the “blind eye turned to the occasional murder” bit was hyperbole
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Eh I’m certainly in favor of punishing all the evildoers, but that is not the whole church. Getting rid of the whole church is definitely a bit too far for me.
The whole church is the evildoers. Your refusal to pay attention to the facts is irrelevant
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https://www.rte.ie/player/series/ireland-s-dirty-laundry/SI0000012675?epguid=IP000066466
watch that documentary and tell me there’s anything worth saving. And that doesn’t cover half of what happened in this country
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Americans read more books.
That may be true, but it doesn’t prove that Americans aren’t dumb.
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I checked this on chatgpt
You checked something that just makes shit up
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So because I’m a sucker, I decided to check out the stats on reading worldwide, and basically there’s sod all data. The top google result is from World Population Review and it does indeed claim the US reads more books on average than any other country, presumably the source of ChatGPT’s answer, and it lists three sources. The only one of these that does show the US as the country with the most reading was CEOWORLD magazine, which based its numbers on a poll of CEOWORLD readers. Which isn’t exactly scientific.
The second source is a website called contentbvld, and they have an infographic from 2017 which cites the NOP World CultureScore Index, and has the logos of INDY100, The Independent and Statista. It lists the average reading time per week, and the US is 23rd on this list, with the Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, France, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Spain and Italy all listed above it.
The final source is a website called Lectupedia, and has a list of 14 countries and a source for each country’s data. This one is measuring the average number of books read again. The US is in third place, with France and Canada above it. The only other European countries on the list are Spain, Portugal and Estonia.
Further down the page is a 1973 issue of the UNESCO Courier, which talks more about how Americans aren’t as ill-read as Europeans assume, but at a glance it has no statistics and is more a German’s recounting of his experiences in the US not matching stereotyper. There’s also a 2009 article in Der Speigel, but it requires you to pay money or accept cookies, and I refuse to do either.
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Only so long as they’re alive and RFK Jr is doing his best to kill them. Not directly of course, but insurance up, vaccines restricted, winter time, new viruses on the prowl.
Even so, US voters seem to be pathologically unable or unwilling to hold Republicans to account, they keep giving blank cheques.
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Only so long as they’re alive and RFK Jr is doing his best to kill them. Not directly of course, but insurance up, vaccines restricted, winter time, new viruses on the prowl.
That’s like the Downfall meme…”That’s alright, the older voters will die off before they next election because they’re not vaxxed…”
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The joke is – they’re voting Republican, for the very people making their lives harder and killing them.
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You do see what’s going on in the US currently?
Winter, measles, flu, falling use of vaccines, and in the last few hours, the politicians voted to let the health insurance subsidies expire which will send health costs soaring for millions. And that’s on top of the ongoing cost of living crisis. A pandemic isn’t needed to kill people, especially when RFK Jr is running the health department.
And yet, amid all of this, older voters, who will be more impacted by it, declare they will keep voting for the arsonists while complaining about the fire.
It’s going to be nasty.
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Even by the standards of this year, this is bonkers:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/trump-times-new-roman-font-return-state-department
Fonts are woke now, Calibri is woke. Next they’ll be going after subtitles.
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Ho-leee shit
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Robin Ince has been coerced into quitting his radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage after pressure from the BBC to be less vocal in his private life about things like expressing support for trans people or mildly cirticising Stephen Fry
I used to go see Ince regularly at his combination stand up/science lecture shows when he was a regular at the Science Gallery in Dublin, when there was a Science Gallery in Dublin and he always struck me as a witty, erudite and compassionate man. It comes as no surprise that he wasn’t going to last with the current atmosphere at the BBC.
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Even by the standards of this year, this is bonkers:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/trump-times-new-roman-font-return-state-department
Fonts are woke now, Calibri is woke. Next they’ll be going after subtitles.
Considering the idiots involved in this administration, I’m surprised they didn’t go with Comic Sans.
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Outrageous to see some politicians saying people protesting against Israel carry some blame for the attack in Australia. Fuck them.
Israel is still killing people in Gaza after the “ceasefire”.
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This should be done as standard for any shooter, with any declared religion.
https://www.news.com.au/national/ns…s/news-story/02de03b003a4e6b9e1b80b675c6e52dd
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Robin Ince has been coerced into quitting his radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage after pressure from the BBC to be less vocal in his private life about things like expressing support for trans people or mildly cirticising Stephen Fry
Oh man, that’s heartbreaking. I love The Infinite Monkey Cage.
I do hope this leads to complaints.
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Robin Ince has been coerced into quitting his radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage after pressure from the BBC to be less vocal in his private life about things like expressing support for trans people or mildly cirticising Stephen Fry
Oh man, that’s heartbreaking. I love The Infinite Monkey Cage.
I do hope this leads to complaints.
The worst thing is that the BBC has refused to discipline hosts in the past for making bigoted statements explicitly because they made them in a private capacity and went on record saying this. And it’s not like pointing out the hypocrisy will make any difference, they don’t care and it’s just an excuse to punish someone for going against the company line on trans people.
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Our right-wing extremists AfD have founded a new youth organisation. Two things about this were weird:
One of the people giving a speech (as a candidate for something or other) caused quite a stir because nobody could quite figure out if this was meant seriously, if it was a satire thing or some kind of arts performance.
It was all kind of funny, but distracted from the actual extremism of the AfD youth.
Also, there were a lot of protests against the founding in the city of Gießen, and there are now a lot of videos of police beating the living shit out of peaceful protestors.
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Crazy shit…this should sink Trump but it probably won’t. In short, Epstein wrote a letter to convicted pedo Larry Nassar, saying he and Trump are also pedos.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-files-larry-nassar-letter
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Jesus, the love these guys have for other pedophiles is kinda impressive.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-media
People examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.
It seems they essentially redacted sections by just highlighting them in black, which doesn’t destroy the text.
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My favourite bit of wild speculation is this was because DOGE cancelled a ton of Adobe Pro subscriptions in a cost-cutting measure
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