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On April 13 2026 06:59 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2026 06:25 D_lux wrote:On April 13 2026 04:55 Falling wrote:Fun Fact: Hungary might do the funniest thing and elect a guy who is named Peter Hungarian. Péter Magyar to be exact. So something like the UK electing a guy called Johnny English? I'm so glad to see Orban gone as he has been a continual block to EU's support to Ukraine. And then the US Vance sent out to 'support' the sinking Orban ship. What an amazing ally the US is to the EU... Haha yes exactly! Nomen est omen maxxing. My favourite was the Belgian football team being managed by Dominico Tedesco Dominic the German who was… Italian. Not confusing at all, at least Peter Hungarian is simple. Also lmao at Vance and also IIRC Trump going to bat so hard for Orban to seemingly no effect. Probably a slight negative if anything, get fucked. Am I going senile or is this overt campaigning for candidates in foreign elections involving ostensible allies, something the US hasn’t tended to do in the semi-recent past? And us Euros or ANZACs tend to not do at the state level, much as the temptation is there Perhaps I’m being bombarded with too much noise to accurately remember.
Straight up campaining for a candidate in a different country was always a big diplomatic no-no, but to me the weird part is that they thought it would help. The average person outside the US has no idea who the fuck Vance is, and Trump is the guy that just increased their fuel cost by 20% for giggles.
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On April 13 2026 08:32 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2026 06:59 WombaT wrote:On April 13 2026 06:25 D_lux wrote:On April 13 2026 04:55 Falling wrote:Fun Fact: Hungary might do the funniest thing and elect a guy who is named Peter Hungarian. Péter Magyar to be exact. So something like the UK electing a guy called Johnny English? I'm so glad to see Orban gone as he has been a continual block to EU's support to Ukraine. And then the US Vance sent out to 'support' the sinking Orban ship. What an amazing ally the US is to the EU... Haha yes exactly! Nomen est omen maxxing. My favourite was the Belgian football team being managed by Dominico Tedesco Dominic the German who was… Italian. Not confusing at all, at least Peter Hungarian is simple. Also lmao at Vance and also IIRC Trump going to bat so hard for Orban to seemingly no effect. Probably a slight negative if anything, get fucked. Am I going senile or is this overt campaigning for candidates in foreign elections involving ostensible allies, something the US hasn’t tended to do in the semi-recent past? And us Euros or ANZACs tend to not do at the state level, much as the temptation is there Perhaps I’m being bombarded with too much noise to accurately remember. Straight up campaining for a candidate in a different country was always a big diplomatic no-no, but to me the weird part is that they thought it would help. The average person outside the US has no idea who the fuck Vance is, and Trump is the guy that just increased their fuel cost by 20% for giggles.
The Chefs kiss was Vance claiming that EU was trying to influence their elections, while actively trying to influence their elections.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1353 Posts
Steve Bannon has been openly trying to support European right-wing politics for a better half of a decade now.
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Northern Ireland27269 Posts
On April 13 2026 09:17 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
Steve Bannon has been openly trying to support European right-wing politics for a better half of a decade now.
Aye, but while he’s been prominently floating around in the light or the shadows of this admin at various times, he isn’t actually in it.
Even folks who have their fingers in various pies are still private individuals to my sensibilities, although I think a good case can be made that a Bannon or Musk type are ultimately more damaging.
Be it decorum or whatever, there is something more aggravating to me on a level of basic principles when it’s representatives of a state doing it.
With the caveat that I think it’s appropriate if say, a state is engaging in anti-democratic violence or electoral fraud or whatever, then it’s appropriate.
Perhaps I find it particularly irritating because we tend to hold to that vague convention this side of the Atlantic.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1353 Posts
I think the Elon Musk case is even worse than the Steve Bannon case.
While neither are elected representatives, Steven Bannon I believe technically started funding these groups after he had left the position of White House advisor. So technically... he was a private individual.
Elon Musk was actively campaigning while he was head of DOGE, and thus a political appointee at the time.
I don't know what your threshold for private individuals are, but considering positions like head of CIA are also government appointees, this seems like as much of an official public servant as you will ever get, and in many cases actively worse than an elected official, who usually have less actual hands-on power to unilaterally make decisions.
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It's great that the opposition won supermajority in the Hungarian parliament. This will give them both the legitimacy and the tools to restore the rule of law effectively instead of getting sabotaged at every step by Orban's appointees.
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I wonder what will happen to our fugitives. Will they run to Russia now?
For those who do not know - some Polish politicians (PiS affiliated) are hiding from Polish authorities in Hungary. Orban was protecting them and refused to execute the European arrest warrant.
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I think they'll seek refugee in the US and if that doesn't work they'll try South America. Would be hilarious to see them whine about the Polish democracy from Belarus though.
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Well, the list of countries that will welcome is very simple to obtain, just look who showed up in Orban's campaign videos providing support, you have the classics of the world wide right wing cadre, the ones (still) in power are Fico, Nethyanahu, Milei, Trump, Putin, they have plenty of places to run to, plus, I'm sure that if Madyar even tries to prosecute Orban Trump will have his back and will (just like in the case of France and LePen and Brazil and Bolsonaro) threaten Hungary with consequences if they try to go too hard after him.
In my opinion, best move for Madyar is to start with reversing all the constitutional changes, reverse the changes to the courts and open investigations in to how Orbans cronies obtained their media companies, potentially reversing those decisions and putting these companies back on a fair, public market.
That seems like plenty to do in the first year, he'll get plenty of support from EU and I think Hungary can have a great path forward and a much brighter future after that. Some of the things that Orban tried to do economy wise weren't even bad, just had a bad timing and ironically Trump really cemented his demise, so I think that Madyar can capitalize on unfreezing EU funds and seeing these projects to fruition (battery and car factories).
Just like what happened in Canada, Trump, a "big friend" of Orban and EU right wing came in and shat all over all of Europe, Hungarians might have been propagandized a lot, but they aren't stupid and they can see that siding with an "ally" who will do whatever they want, up to and including causing an oil shock which will also cause a new wave of inflation and in the longer run a new wave of ME immigrants is simply a fools errand.
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On April 13 2026 15:59 Silvanel wrote:
I wonder what will happen to our fugitives. Will they run to Russia now?
For those who do not know - some Polish politicians (PiS affiliated) are hiding from Polish authorities in Hungary. Orban was protecting them and refused to execute the European arrest warrant.
Someone posted an image on reddit about Zbigniew Ziobrot, he was seen at the Budapeset Airport leaving the country. I don't really know who he is, but he is probably someone you were thinking about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1sjreuc/hovahova/
Also for those who like pretty graphs and pie charts and what not, here is the official page about the hungarian election results. English language is available.
https://vtr.valasztas.hu/ogy2026
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Congratulations on getting rid of Orban, @d_lux.
I was seeing the reactions in our subteddit and people are fantasizing about the day when we finally get rid of our mafia party in power.
I really hope that Madyar is what Hungary needs, he seems to be saying all the right things so far, I'm really rooting for you guys!
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There are signs on both sides, he didn't campaign on much concrete in terms of policies at all, and his past as you mention. And now he represents opposition to the far right, which means that Europeans will lean toward defending his positions. All of that is not very good.
But also, his victory speech was quite good? He went with pretty strong rhetoric and promises in terms of change and attacking the conservatives, he wasn't forced to go as strong as he did. He also remained strong on siding with EU, which shouldn't be the main focus but since we're mainly not Hungarians I'm sure we will be looking at that a lot. If you want to have hope I think you're allowed to at this point. I'll remain cautious for now.
Edit: and yeah eat shit Orban, obviously. Possibly one of the most direct consequences of having him out is that Orban was funding a bunch of international far right stuff, and that will, as I understand it, no longer happen, so that is a blow that will be felt outside of Hungary.
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On April 13 2026 22:12 D_lux wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2026 15:59 Silvanel wrote:
I wonder what will happen to our fugitives. Will they run to Russia now?
For those who do not know - some Polish politicians (PiS affiliated) are hiding from Polish authorities in Hungary. Orban was protecting them and refused to execute the European arrest warrant. Someone posted an image on reddit about Zbigniew Ziobrot, he was seen at the Budapeset Airport leaving the country. I don't really know who he is, but he is probably someone you were thinking about. https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1sjreuc/hovahova/
Thanks.
He is a former justice minister in a PiS government. Known for abuse of power and accused of embezzling large sums from a special fund made for compensating victims of crimes.
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We did good so I get to be happy for a minute. I honestly thought it would be pretty close.
https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/switzerland/fribourg-voters-reject-law-on-financial-restructuring-3205997.html
The voters of Fribourg clearly rejected the law on the restructuring of public finances on Sunday. With 68.57% of votes against, they rejected the State Council and the conservative majority in the Grand Council.
The turnout in the referendum vote was 32.3 percent. The aim of the law was to curb the increase in expenditure.
The cantonal parliament passed the law last October. A referendum committee then submitted over 10,000 signatures against the bill in January. A referendum would have required 6,000 signatures.
As a result of the referendum, the canton does not yet have a valid budget.
Those in favor of the law emphasize that it is necessary to "keep finances under control without raising taxes". Opponents of the law criticize that it is not "the responsibility of the population or state employees to pay for a decade of tax giveaways".
This breaks one of the traditional cycles of austerity politics where ten years ago we voted to tax businesses and capitalists less, and then ten years later the liberals come in and go "uhbuh we have no money, so now we need to cut back on a few things that the State does" and act like they're victims of their own ideology. This one was probably easier to beat than usual because the state has a bunch of money right now, the austerity measures were there because in the future we may have a problem but actually today everything's fine (and we can understand that what they would have done with that additional money in the future is just offer more tax cuts to the rich because that's what austerity is obviously about). Anyway, 70% is a great number. If you don't have enough money, just tax rich people more. Easy.
(Now let's win those hockey finals and we have a good-ass day)
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The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy:
Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in Croatia
Basically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant.
The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 (EDIT: it's 1.500, got the number wrong) to operate it after it's complete.
It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia.
It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy.
Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects.
To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes.
The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything!
Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing.
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Northern Ireland27269 Posts
On April 29 2026 04:59 Jankisa wrote:The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy: Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in CroatiaBasically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant. The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia. It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy. Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects. To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes. The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything! Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing.
I’m similarly split, mostly given I dunno how this whole AI craic is gonna go, equally I mean data centres can be repurposed, and in a more general sense the more that are in Europe with its somewhat stronger regulatory standards the better.
I vaguely recall some proposals in Iceland to do data centres in and around handy geothermal sources of energy and also utilise the rather handy property of Iceland being bloody chilly to assist in cooling needs and whatnot. Which was also to be accompanied by world-leading guarantees in terms of the ethical side of big data storage. Also this was years ago so pre-AI as well so maybe not especially topical, but I thought it was quite a fundamentally sound idea.
Not sure if anything became of that in the end, but it seemed to me a pretty sensible idea.
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The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. sounded suspiciously high to me. Upon reading the linked article press release from the AI company I learned they claim:
The project will create 1,500 permanent jobs on completion, with a further 3,000 roles during the construction phase
What happened there?
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On April 29 2026 04:59 Jankisa wrote:The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy: Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in CroatiaBasically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant. The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia. It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy. Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects. To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes. The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything! Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing.
Many countries go through a high level of corruption with high rate of growth period.
China, Vietnam, India etc.
The interest of the corrupted and the people align, even if the benefits is unfairly split.
And an increase in demand for energy is a good thing, it's what pave ways to more energy infrastructure in the long term, if the demand is stable.
Energy corp is one of the lowest profit margin sector, they don't expand unnecessary
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On April 29 2026 04:59 Jankisa wrote:The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy: Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in CroatiaBasically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant. The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia. It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy. Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects. To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes. The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything! Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing.
Sounds like a no brainer to me TBH. This should be done asap. They should also use excess heat of the data center to heat homes and living quarters and stuff.
Also, if Croatia regulations are already strict, what do you call Germany regulations then? xD
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EPT
