I don’t know about other downvoters, but i downvoted you because you said kids should be beaten into submission at school. Corporal punishment is the refuge of bad parents and it’s not a teacher’s job to harm your children that way. There is not a single justifiable reason that you need to be physically violent with a child to educate them. In fact, that only makes it worse. You either raise a fearful child or a hateful one. Either way, in my book, it’s child abuse and you were calling for it.

And boy would i cause all sorts of sky falling down trouble on the poor soul that decided to physically assault my child, undoing my job of teaching that violence is only a tool of self defense. I suffered significant corporal punishment growing up and i can guarantee it improved my life in no way.

I would say for this to happen, the biggest challenges facing Europe would be to massively develop its services and post soviet democratic countries would have to be on board with their exports losing competitiveness in the global market. Poland, for instance, is industrializing further but interesting to note that 90% of their goods market is the EU and only 10% goes of out EU. So in a way, post soviet democracies can still be goods exporters inside EU’s internal market. Letting go of industry is not something i believe post soviet democracies would ever accept.

Western, central and southern europe already survive on luxury and unique regional products to support their industry despite their high cost of living, so competitiveness is not a big issue there.

As for services, specially tech, European customers are used to having easy access to highly unregulated digital tech from the US, with union busting, privacy invasion and low taxation, that gives them an unfair edge against tech developed in Europe. Europe has begun to subsidize all European tech (you can even see some games and software with EU stickers for receiving subsidies), but i think Europe needs to tax US digital services and goods, otherwise there is no competing with massive billionaire fortunes that are president friends. There’s no competing when your competitor’s workers don’t have maternity leave, work 60-70 hours a week and have 10 days holidays a year and thank goodness nothing like that will ever fly around European unions. Trust me, Elon and Walmart tried. Without taxation motivation, there will never be a European alternative to US tech, but they don’t want to tax tech without an alternative. Catch 22.

And this is the EU. Anything that takes the US 10 years, takes the EU 20. This is good in a way, because everyone is heard and there is no crazy orange lunatic coming to change fundamental laws overnight, but to react against something like this will take a while. In the EU we’re used to wait, we understand why we wait. But international markets might not be so patient. Also by the time the EU starts changing meaningfully, it is very possible Trump is not president anymore, making the change pointless, so i see the EU doing their usual “looking busy and waiting” routine.

It might happen, just not soon.

As a European, the Euro can’t replace the dollar. It’s not about how stable it is, it’s about how many Euros there are. Whichever country will be the world reserve currency will have to produce so much currency to be used all around the world that their non digital exports will never be competitive. The Euro just isn’t produced in large enough quantities to be used as a world reserve currency, its production and distribution is tightly controlled for use in European and European partner markets. At least not right now. A long time ago some OPEC countries wanted to try out the idea of using Euros, but just couldn’t get enough liquidity to trade all the oil in Euros.

Donald Trump wants the US to both be a goods exporting powerhouse and the world reserve currency. He thinks it’s possible, that these diametrically opposed goals have a middle sweetspot where one can be just enough of a world reserve currency not to worry about debt anymore, but also a country that others depend on for manufacturing. That’s what all the tariff dancing is all about. I think he’s nuts, but hey, every economic theory needs to be tested. Just wish we were testing more sophisticated economic theories.

Anyway, as of this moment Europe is not geared for it. Not industrially, not financially and to be honest, i don’t think Europe is even into it. But it’s not impossible. It would just require a lot of changes.

100% agree on this. Usually i like geneva_convenience’s posts and comments, but if we’re going to start editorializing news articles, instead of just posting the original title and clarifying with information about the PA, the posts lose value massively for me. Where does the buck stop if everyone who republishes links “corrects” news titles as they feel ?

I don’t even disagree with the point of the OP, but this sort of sensationalizing articles just feels like a distant cousin of click bait. It’s what British newspapers do and why i absolutely loathe most of them. Is the new title wrong ? Possibly not, but that’s not the original piece of information. It’s like the reader is too stupid to be served the original information and thank goodness there’s someone to serve you the “correct” title.

I’m against Israel hasbara and disinformation but i find this isn’t the proper way to address it.

Colorectal cancer is a disease and i see 3 plates of red meat. Not great for you to eat red meat every single day. It’s a pretty well known and demonstrated fact that eating red meat every day increases your risk of colorectal cancer significantly. Have you seen colorectal cancer ? It’s a terrible, terrible illness.

Thanks! It’s interesting to find out how differently things are in military procedure in other parts of the world.

So military question, in America do civilians salute ? I see Trump saluting in a suit. In my country that’s a no-no. Only military personnel in uniform and appropriate head apparel may salute, like all the soldiers next to Trump. Or is the president considered a military person since he’s commander in chief ?

I mean civilians can salute if they want. There’s no penalty. It just doesn’t carry any meaning from a civilian. Military personnel can’t salute out of uniform, though. You may get disciplined over that.

Maybe AstraZeneca CEO should figure out where the massive windfall covid vaccine profits went and invest them wisely instead of filling the pockets of shareholders. Dude got massive taxpayer investments, spent the last 5 years acquiring smaller healthcare companies, snubbed a uk plant investment because they didn’t get enough money from the taxpayers and bragged about how much money they were making about a year ago from the pipeline investments.

Clearly there isn’t enough space here for AstraZeneca’s shareholder greed and progress it seems, but it sure as hell isn’t the job of the European taxpayers to prop these guys up.

In my EU country you also get that co-op without getting together with anyone before the building is built. Some company builds the building and sells out the apartments. After purchase you are legally bound to your Condominium, which you have mandatory fees depending on the amenities, such as elevators, insurance, sometimes swimming pool maintenance. Residents are just expected to organize themselves. The building is considered cooperatively owned by the apartment owners and therefore you are cooperatively responsible for its maintenance and integrity.

You also have meetings to democratically decide on what to spend on, like electric chargers, which kind of insurance to get or hiring a new administration company to manage things. You can skip the meetings if you want, but legally, you must pay the Condominium dues they give you.

It’s not just 3-4 story buildings either. I’ve been part of 11 story condominiums, with 3 apartments a floor. I never thought this would be something fascinating in some parts of the world. It’s quite normal here. What changed recently is now many condominium meetings are online, because it’s easier.

The worst country on planet Earth. The lowest of the low. A nation of evil demons from hell.

I did not meant to come across as saying that HDDs don’t suffer bit rot. However, there are specific long term storage HDDs that are built specifically to be powered up sporadically and resist external magnetic influences on the track. In a proper storage environment they will last over 5 years without being powered up and still retain all information. I know it because i use them in this exact scenario for over 2 decades. Conversely there are no such long term storage SSDs.

SSDs store information through trapped charges which most certainly lose charge through quantuum tunneling as well as generalized charge leakage. As insulation loses effectiveness, the potential barrier for the charge allows for what is normally a manageable effect, much like in the CPU like you said, to become out of the scope of error correction techniques. This is a physical limitation that cannot be overcome.

I doubt it. SSDs are subject to quantuum tunneling. This means if you don’t power up an SSD once in 2-5 years, your data is gone. HDDs have no such qualms. So long as they still spin, there’s your data and when they no longer do, you still have the heads inside.

So you have a use case that SSDs will never replace, cold data storage. I use them for my cold offsite back ups.

Zionism doesn’t mean that. What kind of twilight zone is he living in ?

Jewish people are perfectly able to determine their own future without Zionism. Zionism is the repossession of inhabited land from people who are currently living on it and create an ethno state where the Jewish religion is in control of it to the detriment of everyone else, through the use of force and murder if need be.

I’m sick and tired of this whitewashing of Zionism. It’s like when in 2015 some US groups were trying to redefine jihad as a personal struggle in life. No, it doesn’t mean that, it means death and murder through holy war.

If you call yourself a Zionist, if you are a Zionist, you agree with the murder and mistreatment of people who are guilty of existing in a land that you decided to take for yourself in the name of your god Yahweh. I know you don’t like to say his name in vain, but I think it’s important to make the name very clear here, we wouldn’t want to be unclear about whom are you killing all these children for and to whom you will answer to if it turns out you are right about his existence. The worst of humanity is being committed by Zionists for Yahweh specifically.

Top quality comment. Developing Russia into a strong nation would be a century long effort and would require a complete change in way of thinking.

If anything, they only expanded their cannon fodder doctrine to their economy as well. Russia will never be a great nation by itself. They will only be one by taking great nations next to it. Putin knows this and it is what i suspect the reason for these senseless wars. Even the atomic bomb is useless to them if nobody attempts to go into Russia. Brickwalling them economically and militarily will lead them to degenerate and die, owing to their self destructive policies, which is why Putin is so against a defensive organization forming around them. It’s why he’s so invested in Donald Trump to turn around the already forming brickwall.

It was never about the range of the nukes, intentions of the US or the alleged offensive intentions of NATO that never existed. It’s purely and simply because if Russia doesn’t take land to exploit from people who actually can carry out meaningful progress and development, they degenerate as a country. Their doctrine is self destructive and they have never known any better.

Wonderful, a separation from the US by the EU within my lifetime. I hate Trump but this is such a blessing.

No more supporting genocides, no more sensless peer wars, no more helping create high volume refugee crises, no more 20 year long wars on weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, no more “heroically” deposing dictators to put extremist terrorist groups in their place. No more random terrorist attacks from disgruntled extremist groups as revenge for random meddling going on since the 80s for cheaper oil prices. No more US influence. That’s how I’d prefer it.

Yet no developed country with high taxation on high income earners and women in the workforce has ever managed to even come close to the success the US had back then. Something you see, for instance, in several wealthy European countries. No, that’s not why. They had an entire continent of developed but destroyed countries paying off humongous loans under the Marshall’s plan and similar investments thereafter.

Yeah it’s true but they also always kinda sucked militarily. Today, they’re struggling against Ukraine. Their peak was during cold war soviet era and even then, they got their ass handed to them by the Mujahideen, which is seen as the event that broke them up. In ww2 they struggled against Finland and just barely made it out of their fight with Germany still a country. Only because the nazis were too confident and got into a two front war. In ww1 the eastern front was basically Russia stacking up defeats. Before that they got their ass kicked by Japan. In Napoleonic times, France handed Russia several defeats, even with other countries helping it. In pre Napoleonic times, again, just Russian defeat after Russian defeat.

It’s just a matter of fact that for as long as Russia has existed, they have always been a big unmaterialized threat. Even far back in the congress of Vienna in 1814 everyone was already assuming Russia was going to industrialize and how powerful Russia will become and in the end… nothing.

I seriously don’t think Europe needs even half of what the US has, even to face Russia. Nobody does, US military expenditure is ridiculous. I also think Russia is only still a country because no country in history ever wanted to occupy undeveloped tundra. Even the mongols only sorta occupied it by asking them for tribute and leaving them mostly alone.

Should Europe become complacent ? No, but seriously all Europe needs is a half decent unified army and a cooperating industral military complex for domestic use to go with it and i don’t really think Russia will ever be that big of a threat.

Hard disagree that we’re better off with relations restored. Even if Trump was not in the white house, the current internal political situation in the US is a powder keg ripe for abuse.

The US helped Europe in post war but it made enormous amounts of money with it. Why do you think in the 50s and onward Americans had a massive a massive golden age of prosperity where you could support a full household on a highschool diploma which led to a massive baby boom ? It was all piggybacking on the massive loans Europe took to rebuild itself.

Did they have to do it ? No, but if you know anything about Americans is that they love money. They didn’t do it out of the kindness of their hearts or because they feel Europe is such an important ally, they did it purely and exclusively for money. They wanted money and Europe could give it. When matters of money align, and we both stand to profit, no issues there - we should cooperate with Americans. But make no mistake, everything the US does is for its own benefit and nobody else’s and if they don’t stand to gain anything from cooperating, they will throw their allies under the bus first chance. Americans must be kept at arms length at all times.

They are not European allies, they have never been European allies, we just stood to gain together in the past. It was profit, pure and simple.

I drive but i wasn’t going to stay working in Texas long enough to justify the costs of buying my own car and transferring my license there, but same situation.

I was in Houston which has some buses and decided to use them. To do a 10-15 ish km ride, it took over 2 hours because there was just one bus that way and it stopped in every street corner. An uber took the same route in about 20 minutes.

I really disliked the way Texas looked, too much sprawl, cheap falling apart houses and whole blocks of abandoned houses and businesses. Definitely not enough trees. Also how it’s organized, but the people were fairly nice. Like 60% of the time.

There’s a lot of racism but i already was expecting that. I thought the racism would be whites vs everyone else, but honestly I’ve witnessed and experienced racism there from every race, towards everyone else. People also treat you better when they think you’re their own race, so being Mediterranean i had random acts of kindness from Arabs, Latinos and white people who thought i was from their respective race. I also met some Brazilian people who hated Europeans for some reason and were not shy to show it.

Holy fucking smokes. This was without a doubt the cringiest, most uncomfortable display of lack of professionalism and pure second-hand embarassment I’ve ever seen from a president and a vice president.

I have so much respect for Zelensky for putting up with that. What an absolute circus. Americans were made to look so feeble and insecure.