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Both are true. The standard of living did improve. But it was so abysmal, that even after the improvement only very few parts of Russia can compare to the rest of Eastern Europe, not to mention anything richer.
Both are true. The standard of living did improve. But it was so abysmal, that even after the improvement only very few parts of Russia can compare to the rest of Eastern Europe, not to mention anything richer.
And the attack was done by rogue non-state actors. Europe agreed to go burn a whole district because a thug who lived roughly there punched USA in the face. Now Europe faces an entire mafia from another town and Trump says “should’ve bought better gear, bye suckers”.
Is it really that good or is it just a meme?
If so is it good compared to other cheap brands or as good as the stuff I can buy in dedicated tea shops?
Oligarchs. You’re missing oligarchs. The issue with Ukrainian agricultire is that a lot of it is a big, concentrated business with ties to Western capital on top of the traditional post-soviet oligarchy. This influences actions of both Ukrainian and EU politicians. The matters of imports or transit from Ukraine could be very well sorted out for the short term, but no one in power is really willing to do so.
In the long term Polish agriculture faces a serious challenge from Ukraine when it gets more and more integrated with the west but it’s also not so binary in terms of who floods whom with produce.
I recommend everyone who hasn’t to look up the idea of “Potiomkin villages” (and subsequently Potiomkin anything eg. Potiomkin AI). In short: back in the tzarist days lower ranks put up mock villages which looked clean, modern and prosperous for higher ranks (and tzars) to see during visits. These mockups were essentially theatre decorations which hid the real state of the matters - dilapidated, dirty, poor and corrupt. For at least the last decade everything we saw of Russia was Potiomkin in nature - either to show off before the West or to hide corruption before own superiors.
Ahaha we’re so fucked. The sea temperature is not just higher, it was rising the whole previois year and it’s flatter than in the past. Say goodbye to seasons, we’re heading into the “flood season and heatwave season” territory. Last year I heard top scientists saying “it’s bad and anomalous but not exponential”, this looks… increasingly exponential.
No no no no. It’s, you know, just warfare. Terrible things happen at wars. But you can always send more missiles and bombs so Israel can end the war faster! No genocide to speak of! Just mundane defensive war.
(/s obviously)
Yes. Most people don’t have the awareness of a lot of what’s been said in the comments or they suspend it in their daily lives. They do what they feel is right and since most were socialised in a similar way the signal-response expectations match. Then a certain rapport can be formed by the empty interactions borne out of the semi-conscious feeling that it’s “right” or “nice” to initiate a small talk and respond to it in kind. In this way indeed most of us are like 15 yo girls, just somewhat more serious and self-controlled.
If I were in a condescensing mood I’d say humans generally are bots following Pavlov’s reaction patterns imprinted during upbringing. But this would be a severe oversimplification and a little a-hole talking through me.
OK so what does it mean for Haley?
That’s an amount of gear and people comparable to what a mid-sized European country could have and what a big European country could muster on short notice. It’s “only” a factor of 2 or 3 less than what Russia prepared for Ukraine at the beginning. It’s likely more than the combined forces of the Baltic states’ militaries and the NATO contingents stationed there.
With a generous dose of optimism it is a force that would at least hold a conventional invasion at bay, if not defeat it via superior tech and sea support. It is a lot even in absolute terms, for an exercise it’s massive.
…until morale improves.
Whether pro-Israeli bots like it or not, numerous acts by IDF do fit perfectly into descriptions of the acts forbidden by the convention. Even if the case is eventually dismissed it will be on technical grounds such as “it’s actually a war crime not a genocide” not because “IDF did nothing wrong”.
Oh I know, but I wanted to make sure no one has any grounds to accuse me of prophecies or something worse. Also the precise date doesn’t matter.
Care to elaborate why is this relevant?
Oh and I forgot an important one:
There is no way this could be prevented!!!
What could cause this??? What a mystery!! Why would people succum to viruses?!?!?! Inexplicable!!! If only here was a reason why so many people have weakened immune system??? No one could foresee this, also covid case number is low, don’t look in this direction.
Solidifying control over the Suez Canal - note that Saudis and Iran are (at least for now) not at their throats so some or other kind of cooperation for mutual trade profits may be in order. Their agreement was brokered by China, and the Chinese are very much interested in keeping Suez open. For the local powers the best case scenario is to make westerners GTFO. But the westerners won’t gtfo as long as their ships are under fire. It’s not unlikely that Houthi got “off the leash”, in such case the Iranian warship would paradixically sail there to discipline the attackers and reduce tensions. Howevwr obviously no one would admit it openly.
A more conspirational take is that the heat in the ME, from Hamas to Houthi, is a bid to pressure the US into unpopular moves (stubborn support to Israel, actual violence on the seas, maybe some diplomatic fuckups) and produce an electoral advantage for Trump.
Can’t scotus just stall, for example say that they will take up the case in idk 2026 and call it a day? I mean I would not like it and a lot of people wouldn’t but at this point they don’t even pretend to be unbiased, right?
The “Machine of Death” book was decent. It seems we’re in the “torment nexus” situation again.
Unless you want to take out a whole bunch of them. Swarm of nanosats with some kind of miniexplosives or even just one-use engines to force deorbiting would probably still be more efficient, unless…
Unless you want to go for geostationary. A real crowd of satellitrs which have a feature of always looking at the same part of the Earth. While it would be very easy to send a boom device to low earth orbit (also very crowded), erasing a bunch of satellites there would be a temporary inconvenience (let’s not talk about Kessler) since a lot of what’s important is either a global constellation (starlink, gps) or has redundancies (earth observation comes to mind). But explode a nuke in the geostationary over the US and suddenly America has no sat TV/radio, no weather sat coverage and it’s harder to patch up than “just” replacing missing nodes of a constellation.