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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Already share a border - Finland/Baltics/Poland. But you are of course right. We’re too decadent and complacent. Our politicians refuse to tell us the truth of how dire the situation is, even if top generals do.

    Their losses have been heavy, but the Russian economy is now on a war setting, they’re ramping up production of everything. If Ukraine falls, it’s not impossible Putin’ll try something stupid in the Baltics, especially if Trump wins the election or if there’s chaos due to the election.

    I mean, will NATO start a nuclear war over Russia invading a very small bit of the baltics? I have my doubts. Especially if there are plenty of populists in power, who refuse to join. Hungary, Turkey, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy… Not impossible that they say they’ll put ‘their people first’ and refuse to join in defending the Baltics. Possible that Putin decides to make a gamble on this.Our militaries here in Europe are too weak to respond conventionally which makes him more likely to take that risk.

    The man’s always been a fan of the salami slicing tactic.




  • The problem with linux, and I say this out of experience, is that even if it works on 99% of games and 99% of hardware that’s not much comfort if you’re part of the 1%.

    Sometimes you’re just shit out of luck. At which point linux is just the worst and you genuinely are better off using windows. That’s invariably not linux’s fault. It’s the manufacturer or developer’s fault.

    TBH I’m going to try linux again some day, but I’m going to make sure I have compatible hardware. This is the way.



  • However, it’s also possible that they saw it described as a 20 minute read

    Bit of a tangent and anecdotal, but I went back in to higher education a few years ago. I’m middle-aged, I was surrounded by younger people. We’re asked to read an article, everyone starts reading. I read it through, underline the important bits, I’m done reading. I look around. Everyone’s still reading. Oh well, they’ll be done soon. Nope. I think it took most of them 15 minutes to read an article I’d read in under 5. I was a bit perplexed. This is higher education, these aren’t idiots, these are people who should be able to read articles quickly.

    There are plenty of reports of functional literacy decreasing. That children are slower at reading and are less able to understand what they’ve read. Anecdotally, it seems like younger generations really aren’t used to reading longer articles anymore. I grew up reading books as a kid. That’s what we did before phones and the internet. I wonder if younger generations simply don’t have that much experience reading, which is why it takes them so long to read, which is why they read even less.

    In the case of this article, they see 20 minutes, they’re scared off. So they simply guess what was in the article. That’s pretty worrying if that’s what people do. If you’re unable or unwilling to read longer stuff, you’re likely to make ill informed choices or be more easily influenced.






  • The BBC did it first, in part thanks to a lack of ad breaks and shorter seasons.

    Eg. the UK version of House of Cards is genuinely excellent and arguably better than the US version, even before Spacey.

    were all determined by the details of how broadcast television was organized in the late twentieth century, with seasons and sweep weeks and all that crap.

    Another thing is the production schedule on some of these shows. They’d be doing 12 hour days, 6 or even 7 days a week, sometimes writing shows that were going to be released within days. Far harder to create a coherent arc or plan stuff, when you have to write and direct far more episodes in a limited time frame.


  • Read the article you posted. It doesn’t say France is selling Sudan weapons.

    It says “Amnesty International representatives call on France and its European partners to press for an effective international arms embargo to be imposed on Sudan” and that “France and its European partners should urgently pressure states concerned by these sales, and international bodies, to impose an effective international arms embargo on Sudan.”

    The article mentions who those states are. The UAE, Russia/Wagner, China, and Libya. It also mentions that a lot of the weapons are of Soviet and Iranian design. It does not mention France supplying Sudan weapons.

    Also, how is France supposed to impose a weapons embargo without a military to monitor shipments? That was a rhetorical question. No need to answer.

    Anyway, agree to disagree and all that. No point continuing this discussion.


  • It’s cheaper, but not that much cheaper. Anecdotally, my current car is 8 years old and has cost me roughly 400 euros a year in repairs and servicing. Manual gearbox is fine and should outlast the car.

    Also, if I do a simulation for extended warranty and servicing (8 years/210k km) on the manufacturers website for a petrol car and for an equivalent electric car, the difference is roughly 600 euros per year. I suspect that’ll be down to the battery. Traditional car the costs are spread over a longer period. Electric the battery or whatever sneaks up on you. The whole thing becomes doubly annoying when you factor in high electricity prices, meaning (sometimes) fuel costs are lower than electricity costs.

    To be clear, electric is the future, it’s a good thing they’ll be banning the sale of new ICE cars here in the foreseeable future, and an electric car almost certainly is cheaper to run. It’s just not _that _much cheaper. I assume prices will come down when they’re forced to start making more of them and competing with the Chinese.





  • War has never been beneficial to an economy unless they’re selling the weapons instead of waging war with them.

    Which is why you need a strong military as a deterrent. It demonstrably reduces the risk of war.

    The west has been massively oppressing other countries for about a century now with their “defense”.

    Imperialism is wrong, whether it’s the west, the Russians, or the Chinese doing it.

    There is already a job shortage and you say we need to waste even more workers on making weapons because jobs? Because bombs are going to build houses or something? Especially now the economy is stagnating

    You need to increase military spending to prevent war, not for jobs.

    But if the economy stagnates or goes into recession, this will lead to job losses, so this argument doesn’t make much sense.

    It is possible to build more houses and spend money on defense. Once again, this is the false choice fallacy.

    Afghanistan and Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and many others don’t exist according to you.

    Would the Israelis be carpet bombing Gaza right now, if the Palestinians had a very strong military?

    Would the Soviets or Americans have been more or less likely to invade if Afghanistan had a very powerful military?

    Sudan has been ruined by France and NATO for the last few decades.

    What is now Sudan was a British and not a French colony.

    It sounds like you’re confusing Sudan with French Sudan, which is present day Mali, or perhaps Niger which has been in the news recently.

    In any case, Sudan broke off relations with the west in 1967. They were in the Soviet sphere of influence for decades after that. They’ve had close ties with Russia and China for years now.

    This extra spending has nothing to do with previous purchases.

    The F16s were going to be put out of service. That decision was made decades ago.

    If the F16 wasn’t being replaced with the F35, Rutte wouldn’t be sending them to Ukraine. So as a matter of fact, Rutte sending F16s has a lot to do with the previous purchase of F35s.

    Increasing military spending to 2% was agreed upon years ago, before Rutte became PM.