Germany’s tax euros at work everyone.

Rules for thee and not for mee.

It was amazing watching the FDP not even have to think about approving the last €100B Schuldenbremse-excluded military gift basket.

Ah yes, because the last time Germany changed its constitution to pursue military aims it went so well for everyone.

One whistleblower who carried out benefits reassessments for a triple amputee recalled the claimant saying he felt he had to keep proving his limbs had not “grown back” to ensure his money was not cut.

This is already policy in Germany. Anyone with a disabled status has to regularly prove that they’re still disabled, even when it’s something as stupidly obvious as an amputated limb.

To put it simply, the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow precisely when you need electricity, at least not all the time. You need to store solar generated energy from midday so that people can turn their lights on in the evening, and you need to store power from windy days to use on still days. Otherwise the electricity is wasted in the moment and non-existent when you need it.

I hate Musk and his companies just as much as the next person on here, but in this case it’s a physical limitation. Starlink, as well as all the other orbital mesh networks in construction or proposed, all have to deal with these issues or simply not exist (I personally don’t think such orbital meshes should exist).

We already have satellite internet using satellites in geostationary orbit. Those can stay up for a long time (they’ll function until the satellite hardware fails, then continue to orbit for thousands of years), but they’re much more expensive to launch and performance is really bad with regards to latency and bandwidth because they’re few and very far away.

Starlink tried something new, which was a low earth orbit positioning for better internet performance, but that means you need lots of satellites since they’re so close to the earth, and they come down relatively quickly due to atmospheric drag. Even at the 550km or so where Starlink is orbiting, there is enough atmosphere to create drag that eventually pulls satellites down, unless they have propulsion of their own which adds weight, cost, and complexity. And even then, the satellites will come down once something fails or propulsion fuel runs out.

Planned obsolescence. They’re supposed to come down.

My understanding was that golden rice is really useful, but due to the propaganda campaign against lab-developed GMOs it’s only sparsely grown.

If you follow EU politics, yes, otherwise, not really.

She’s Kaja Kallas, recently PM of Estonia and now the EU representative for foreign affairs. She’s a rabid Russophobe and excitable warhawk.

The threat of the AfD is going to be used as a cudgel with which to keep the left in line, even as the CDU (and inevitably the SPD) end up adopting pretty much exactly the AfD’s position on immigration thinking that this will win back AfD voters.

That’s exactly what we’ve already seen over the last ten years of the AfD getting ever stronger, and especially the last year or so after the Correctiv exposé on what the AfD says in private. The AfD even bragged that this is what’s happening and it’s what they want, but nobody paid attention to that part.

I’ll see if I can listen later today.

On first thought, this is proof of US influence. Sure the currently governing US capitalist faction (tech billionaires) likely won’t see their party of choice (AfD) in government, but the traditional Wall Street and MIC establishment will be very happy to see a hawkish Chancellor from Blackrock in Berlin.

But of course this result was made possible by older people voting CDU as they always have, regardless of the candidates, contemporary policies, and conditions. Younger people tended to vote for non-centrist alternatives, whether reactionary or nominally leftist.

Former Al Qaeda affiliate HTS

Sure

Wouldn’t air resistance pose a similar problem for wheeled trains and maglev? Or is it the air resistance of the wheels and supporting structure itself that creates the difference?

You aren’t truly free if you don’t have the ability to burn a gallon of gas for every mile you drive and run over cyclists like a kid stomping on ants.

/s

Reminds me of the Business Insider article a few years ago which was extremely positive about the Nazi tactics on the eastern front.

There must already be seismographs which are sensitive enough to detect a crash landing and explosion from 2000km away.

To your question, this was already really noticeable in his first term. By being brash and uncouth and calling things what they are, rather than using doublespeak or just doing things in the shadows, he made the contradictions of imperialism really uncomfortable for a lot of people. In being direct he created the beginnings of pushback from people who would otherwise be perfectly fine with kids in cages, seizing other countries’ natural reources, etc.

I used Hopscotch briefly, which looks a lot like Postman but it’s FOSS and can be self hosted.

At this point that’s the only way Ukraine can pay even debt maintenance on all the “aid” they’ve been getting from the US and vassals.

Imperialists have been salivating over Ukraine’s natural riches for a while already.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/09/16/senator-lindsey-graham-ukraine-trillion-minerals/