Aceticon

The expression "back to baseline" comes from Science and Engineering and literally means that something has gone back to the previous ~~average~~ flat level (for example: "the power line noise level spiked when your turned the machine on but is now back to baseline")

Edit: not average, but actually specifically the original flat level below which things would not fall. Sorry, it's kinda hard to explain in words but very easy to point out in a graph or a scope were it's just this flat line to which things always return.

That expression makes sense if you're talking about the rate of growth itself (i.e. the Lemmy rate of growth spiked at the time of the Reddit changes and eventually went back to baseline, since Lemmy is not growing any faster now than before the Reddit changes) but it doesn't make sense if you're talking about user numbers since the number of Lemmy users grew a lot with the Reddit changes and never went back to the average before them, not even close.

Your original post is not clear on which of those things you're talking about when you wrote "back to baseline" and your subsequent posts are mainly talking about user numbers, giving the idea that that's what your "back to baseline" is refering to, in which case you're using that expression incorrectly.

I've lived in The Netherlands and they're "complicated" if you're used to, for example, English-style of politeness or even Mediterranean-style exuberance.

They tend to be very direct, objective-oriented and seemingly cold/closed towards strangers (they open up more with friends and family), so for example if you're in a work environment and one person's trying to do things in broken Dutch is hindering the actual accomplishment of the work objectives (for example, in a work meeting), that will probably be pointed out to them, though I've never seen it done so rudelly.

They also tend to be pretty proud of their English-language speaking abilities and when you're just learning Dutch and try to speak to them in it, often switch to English when they spot (from the accent) that somebody comes from an English-speaking country (so for me, who am Portuguese, they didn't tend to do it and I could just silently ignore it when they did because they couldn't be sure I actually knew English, but I had friends and colleagues over there from Britain, US and Australia who constantly got that and for whom it was a lot harder to learn the local language), though I don't think that applies in your example.

It bet that happenned in a professional environment or some kind of professional situation.

That said, that specific telling off would be considered rude even in Dutch terms: if a person's attempts at using Dutch are hindering doing the work, one is supposed to tell them that as the reason to switch to English (say, "other people are waiting behind you in the queue" or "we don't have time to do this meeting in Dutch", though one will probably not get a "I'm sorry but" or "I'm afraid that" or other such decorations to soften the blow which you would get in most other countries. In that quote of yours the other person making it about themselves "I'm not your Dutch teacher" and just bossing the other person "we will"(!), would be considered rude even by Dutch standards IMHO.

Personally (and note that I lived over 8 years in the Netherlands and do speak the language), had somebody told me off like that my reaction would probably be to not give a shit and carry on speaking Dutch since that person made it about themselves and I'm just as entitled to do it the way I see fit as they are to do it their way and I very much suspect (can't be totally sure) this reaction comes from that part of me that are the elements of the Dutch mindset I've taken in from having lived there so long (certainly the whole "I'm just as entitled to my preferences as you to yours" feels very Dutch).

During the period when I was starting to learn Dutch on various occasions the other person switched to English (probably because my Dutch was really bad or I was having trouble following them) and I just kept on speaking Dutch, and I think I was once or twice told off for trying to say something complex with my really broken Dutch whilst buying something and I was holding the queue, but they simply pointed out I was holding the queue.

It's funny that I've never had bad experiences with the French and most of my visits to France were to Paris.

Then again I do speak French and try and take advantage of being over there to exercise my language knowledge in it as much as I can.

In my experience people almost everywhere (well, not in English-speaking countries, probably because English is the present day lingua franca so it's kinda expected that you can speak it) generally appreciate you trying to speak their language even if you're pretty bad at it and just trying to learn the local "good day", " goodbye" and "thank you" will get you a lot of goodwill.

What I find delicious is that he is implicitly stating that being on any Meta platform is not virtuous.

Sometimes ethanol (i.e. rubbing alcohol) works.

If not, try acetone, same thing used to remove nail polish.

Cats will just attack because they feel like it, no need to scare them with sudden movements.

Yeah, I was an EU immigrant in Britain at the time and the Delusions Of Grandeur of the locals were really placed in sharp relief and some of those were pretty shocking. These were especially bad for the Brexiters but for example many Remainers claimed that the UK should "Stay in the EU and shape it from the inside" (so a "we Britons know best than the rest" view, and remember that the Leave Referendum happenned after the UK Government demanded from the EU, once again, even more special treatment and was told "No").

In Britain the mindset that led to Brexit had been heavilly pushed by the Press and Politicians for decades, so this outcome wasn't totally unexpected. In fact I only know about Britons being expelled from Spain after the end of the transition period since they didn't register, because some British newspapers which had supported Brexit published outraged pieces about how Spain was expelling Britons), so even after the whole Brexit thing was done, at least part of the Press still pushed (and Britons still believed) the whole idea that Britons should have special treatment even whilst not reciprocating it.

As I see it Britain and Britons are suffering from one hell of a post-Imperial Hangover, which makes it very problematic for them to cooperate with other nations in any format other than "purelly competitive and always trying to gain an advantage over others", so they were always the odd one out in the EU and, frankly, De Gaule was right when way back he did not want to let the UK into the EU.

I remember back during the Leave Referendum that many Briton pensioners living in Spain voted Leave "To keep the Spaniards from entering 'our' country" and later were very suprised that they themselves were also impacted and had to apply to live in Spain (and apparently after the end of the transition period some even got expelled from Spain because they couldn't be arsed to register and became illegal immigrants).

Germany has supported Israel with weapons whilst knowing they were committing a Genocide, so the answer for Germany is probably "Yes", at least as an accomplice.

The answer for the Republic Of Ireland is as far as I know "No".

If you can't even follow the Mathematics of error margins when using one easy to measure characteristic as a stand-in for another harder to measure characteristic which is positively correlated with the former but not by a factor of 1 and whose correlation factor actually changes by the very action you're justifying, and, even more more sadly, have to resort to calling it "pseudo-explanation", there is no point in engaging with you using logic because that's not the level you're operating at.

Enjoy your quasi-religious relation to your ideological beliefs.

Some people genuinely have huge assumptions about the intellectual capability of women and/or their suitability for certain occupations: for example, the "women are very emotional" used as excuse for not giving them certain responsibilities such as management positions, is far too common, especially in countries were the main brand of sexism is the so-called "Benevolent Sexism" (called that not because it's actually good but because it's disguised as being for the protection of women) such as Britain.

Similarly there are prejudices about people with sexual orientations other than heterosexuality in the workplace, usually of the "they'll make other people uncomfortable" kind.

Sadly, still today, far too many people genuinely think along such lines and some aren't even aware that they're doing it because their whole lives they've lived around people who do it so for them "it's how everybody thinks" and the "normal" way of thinking.

I'm afraid that fighting oppression and restoring the past oppressed to a level playing field involves finding if actual individuals did indeed suffer from oppression and compensating them for it in some way, a far more difficult task than taking the Fascist's shortcut of presuming that everybody from a specific race, gender or sexual orientation are equally worthy or unworthy.

What my experience in The Netherlands taught me is that preserving the idea that you can presume things about people (including that they're "victims" or "discriminated against") - a.k.a. Prejudice - is a dead-end strategy for fighting discrimination because:

• It's anchored on the very same architecture of presuming things about people based on race, gender or sexual orientation - in other words, Prejudice - as Fascist ideologies are.
• Because it is literally Mathematically impossible for such a process to be improved to a point where there is full fairness of treatment for all: that process uses a person's race/gender/sexual-orientation as an indirect metric to determine something else altogether - if a person has actually suffered due to discrimination - so it has an error rate in the form of people who do belong to a supposedly discriminated against race, gender or sexual orientation but never suffered from discrimination. When such people are helped without deserving it, an injustice is committed, and the more the error rate, the more injustice is being done by helping people who do not deserve that help. The Mathematical impossibility happens because the more that process succeeds at its stated objective of reducing discrimination, the more people of a supposedly discriminated against race, gender or sexual orientation never suffered from discrimination (or in other words, the more the error rate of assuming that race, gender or sexual orientation implies being a victim of discrimination) hence the more injustice that process is committing - the closer the process gets to success the more injustice it is committing, only it's against people from different races, genders or sexual-orientations.

You can't Prejudice your way into stopping Prejudiced treatment, not Ideologically and not even Mathematically.