I replied there.

You won’t hear this often in mainstream media but NATO expansionism

Dont sovereign countries have the right to join alliances? Would you support the US invading Mexico if Mexico joins a chinese led alliance? Would you support a cuban invasion during the Cold War for similar reasons?

the involvement of neo-nazi far right paramilitary groups in the Maidan revolution in Ukraine were legitimate grievances for Russia.

Putin is also supported by neo-nazis. The premiere russian military organization in Ukraine was named Wagner. What is your argument here? Shitty people follow shitty ideologies. You fight with the people you have, not with the people you want to have. This is problematic but it isnt as if Ukraine was left with many alternatives.

Ukraine is not that different to Russia in the end. Both have insane corruption issues and both have neonazis. Neither is an excuse to invade anyone or to not help the victims of an invasion.

Russia’s resources are vast and they are supported by China. Ukraine is backed by the deep pockets of NATO.

Russia has the gdp of Italy. Russia is big in terms of geographical area but not really in terms of economy. If you think Russia has vast resources, wait till you find out about the resources the West has. It’s all about political will.

And China doesnt really support Russia, at least not in terms of military help, at least not for the moment. China supports Russia as much as Turkey supports it, ie it facilitates trade and takes advantage of Russia’s lack of alternatives when it comes to trading.

Over half a million troops on both sides have been killed

Casualties are not dead. It is dead+injured.

A diplomatic solution three years ago could have possibly prevented all that.

What diplomatic solution would have prevented Russia from invading? Should have the West pre-emptively sanctioned and cut off Russia from the world economy in order to prevent the invasion? Should the West have said “ok, we wont let Ukraine join NATO and EU”? Should countries not have the right to choose what they do?

Even during the early stages of invasion, Macron legitimately thought he could stop it, he still wanted to keep the bridge with Russia alive. Go back and read some articles. Now Macron is one of the most anti-Russia politicians in the world? Why? Because he eventually realized that there was no alternative and that Putin was bullshitting him the whole time.

In Russia’s mind there are 2 types of countries, sovereign countries where rules do not apply to (the US, China, Russia) and minor countries that are just following what their “master” country tells them. It is inconceivable to the russian mind that 2 countries could freely associate with each other. Hence the whole “NATO expansion” narrative. As if NATO tanks marched in and forced those countries to join it.

The exact opposite happened actually. Eastern Europe was so afraid even after the USSR collapse, that some of them blackmailed NATO to let them join. Poland literally threatened to get their own nukes if they werent allowed to join NATO.

Ask yourself, why would all eastern european countries want to join NATO? Your answer is the Ukraine invasion. They wanted to join because they didnt want to be like Ukraine is now.

So invade your country, grab a few parts, then we have a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution where i keep the land that i already got. And then i repeat it. Is this a “pro-peace” stand? Or is it a “pro-conquering” stance, that enables this behaviour?

Would he have the same opinion about nazi Germany invading and conquering other countries? Maybe a peace for our time kind of deal?

An ai can help a lot of non tech savvy people. Imagine every time they want to do something, they could just ask the ai on how to do it, instead of asking you or having to go through a billion SEO garbage google results.

They have US military bases there

There are no US military bases in Cyprus. There are british ones(since Cyprus used to be part of the British Empire).

And there is 0% chance that Cyprus would let israeli military launch attacks from Cyprus.

Nor is there much strategic reason to do so, unless Hezbollah has some s-300/400 and Israel needs to go around them and attack from a different direction. But they dont. And even if they had, Cyprus has basically no reason to allow Israel to do that and there is 0 precedent for that either.

I think it is just Hezbollah being an attention whore.

Because not many europeans primarily identify as “european first”. This is slowly changing but for the most part, people identify by whatever european nation they inhabit. But i bet most chinese identify as “chinese first” instead of whatever region/city they are from.

In fact, China likes to brag about how “advanced” they are, that they solved this “issue” centuries ago, while the EU is currently trying to “copy them”.

TLDR : If you ask a chinese tourist “where are you from?”, they will answer “China”. If you ask a european the same, noone will say “Europe/EU”.

Cyrillic is literally greek+glagolitic and it was partly a diplomatic creation of the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire), in order to bring the slavs culturally closer to them.

Russians have nothing to do with it, other than them claiming they are the continuation of Eastern Roman Empire, something which is kinda laughable but whatever dont let your dreams be dreams.

Normal memory isnt supposed to be 100% reliable. Thats why you have ECC memory, which is used on mission critical computers(servers). It’s more expensive and more reliable but normal memory is reliable enough for most consumer uses and cheaper, thats why it is the default.

Normal DDR5 modules have something like a “light ecc” function built in but there are actual DDR5 ECC modules that are obviously better.

PS Your motherboard needs to support ECC memory in order to use ECC memory modules.

From what i have read, it was a freelancer dude who wrote 1 article for Al Jazeera, 5+ years ago. I dont know why there is this need to make everything so biased/black and white.

No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.

But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters “hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me”.

Basically Macron is saying “You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win”. It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).

As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.

The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.

Technically it is “democratic” because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor “politicking”.

PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.

Reminder that Mirage 2000 is the only plane to have shot down an F-16. A greek Mirage 2000 shot down a turkish F-16. The event was kept secret in both countries for almost 20 years, to avoid escalation. Greece still today denies that it shot down the F-16. From wikipedia

On the eighth of October 1996, seven months after the escalation of the Imia/Kardak crisis, a Greek Mirage 2000 reportedly fired an R.550 Magic II missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D over the Aegean Sea near Chios island. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of a RF-4E on the Syrian Coast, Turkish Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz confirmed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II in 1996 after allegedly violating Greek airspace near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and they saw one parachute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Turkish_F-16_shootdown

The turks had almost certainly shot down a greek military helicopter earlier and that was also kept a secret/both sides claim it was an accidental crash.

PS The surviving turkish F-16 pilot was immediately returned to Turkey after the rescue.

1. Lego horizon Adventures looks neat, hopefully it has more depth than other lego games but i dont expect much. At least it looks pretty. Atm it isnt on steam, but it is announced that it will be.

2. I am very hyped for Space Marine 2. This might be the best warhammer 40k game ever.

3. I am optimistic for Star Wars Outlaws by the division devs(i liked division 1 and 2). But it isnt even on steam, so it will fail.

4. Civilization 7 is definitely one of the most anticipated games ever.

5. And hopefully Battle Aces will revive the rts genre.

Swish is partly owned by the Central Bank of Sweden(which is 100% state owned) so it is basically state owned. But as with the digital euro, the private banks play a big part and atm are needed in order to facilitate the digital transactions. This could change in the future.

Your points are societal points and not currency related points. You are right, there are significant issues with swish, you basically need to be a swedish citizen(have a “personal number”). A lot of things in Sweden are gatekeeped by needing a “personal number”. This is an obstacle even for other EU(Schengen) europeans.

Societies are built with the majority in mind. There are holes that need to be fixed. But the existence of holes does not mean that they cant be fixed.

As far as privacy is concerned, you are right, this is a big attack on privacy. But it doesnt have to be, it is just that the governments want it to be. Not because of some megalomaniacal genocidal plan but for tax and criminal issues. Could it be used for more nefarious plans in the future? Sure. You can always use a cryptocurrency like monero though.

Sweden is a mostly cashless society. Let me try to respond to those points

1. In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.

2. You can still give individual people money with things like Swish. Yes, even “homeless” people have swish and they use it. Kids of all ages can have swish.

3. It costs 0(for individuals) or 10-30 cents(for companies) to transact on swish and minimum transaction is basically 10cents(1sek).

There are privacy issues and it is kinda controlled by banks. Maybe eventually things like digital euro can improve on that in the future. You can have an anonymous digital payment system with near 0 fees, it is just that the governments arent incentivized to do it. Thats where cryptocurrency could fit, if it wasnt a pump and dump, to the moon hellhole.

Trump is charismatic and funny, thats why he was on tv. If only people didnt take him seriously or give him actual power. Let me remind you that /r/the_donald was a joke subreddit.

Hillary has no charisma. Also her campaign literally promoted Trump, because she thought he would have been an easier opponent. She is smart and capable(or was, she is kinda getting older nowadays) but her political positions are abhorrent. She could have been the perfect “reasonable republican” candidate.

This looks awful. The rifle keeps going up and down while it is walking, no stabilization and they didnt show any accuracy data. You might as well ducktape a rifle to a roomba.

Aiming at targets far away is very hard. Even if it has to stop to shoot, how does it aim? By moving the body of a giant robot dog? That doesnt seem it has the sensitivity it needs. If the rifle is moving that much during walking, how can you accurately aim at anything, since you dont know where the rifle will be aiming when you stop? The camera seems to be on the robot and not on the rifle and everything is jiggling.

Also why even use a full goddamn rifle? You wont have a human holding it, you can just use a modified barrel basically. Are they not embarrassed by how bad this looks? Are they so clueless?

Because they dont have first hand statements, they are just using different israeli sources that independently verified it. Hence the quotes and the “allegedly”.

Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” Cohen did not respond to a request for comment. Bensouda declined to comment.

Ah yeah, Greece totally fought against communism /s

During WW2, the defacto resistance group was the communists, so most people joined them(even if they werent really communist). There was a right wing resistance group but it was much smaller and less relevant. After WW2, the communist resistance group had literally millions of members and obviously wanted to be part of the government.

That was not desirable by the british(and the americans) for obvious reasons. They demanded the disarmament of the communist group in exchange for some minor role in the new government. Eventually the deal broke down and the communist group protested. Then things turned to violence, leading to the greek civil war.

The greek civil war was the bloodiest conflict in Europe after WW2, till the war in Ukraine, with over 150k dead, most of them civilians. And because the right wing was outnumbered, they freed and armed the nazi collaborators. If you are wondering why a literal neonazi party was polling 15% at some point in Greece, was because the nazi collaborators were not only never punished but actually rewarded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekemvriana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Battalions

From the Security Battalions wikipedia article

After the liberation, the groups were only temporarily disbanded, and were recruited into the Gendarmerie to fight alongside the British and government forces against the EAM/ELAS in the battle of Dekemvriana in Athens. The Security Battalions always surrendered to the British, who usually let them keep the weapons the Germans had supplied them with.[24] General Ronald Scobie, who commanded the British forces in Greece, in contrast to his attitude towards EAM, whom he dismissed as mere “bandits”, treated the Security Battalions as a legitimate military force.[25] The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a very favorable view of the Security Battalions, saying, “It seems to me that the collaborators in Greece in many cases did the best they could to shelter the Greek population from German oppression”

The greek civil war still remains a taboo subject in Greece and it isnt taught in schools(because how do you teach that “the bad guys won” to kids). Remember, throughout history, the good guys always win eventually. Winners write the history and they are always the good guys.

PS Stalin didnt help the greek communists because he had agreed with Churchil that Greece would be part of the “West”.

It isnt a random london based think tank, PPP is a pretty standardized economic measure. It is one of the most used concepts in economics, especially when it comes to assessing wealth and quality of life. 100k in San Franscisco is basic wage, 100k in bumfuck South Carolina is “holy shit, you are rich”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Other than the ending dialogue, which i wasnt a big fan of probably because of the writing, her acting is superb. She is almost always silent so that makes it even more challenging. Her eyes do the talking.