The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia. And now we’re going to buy liquefied gas from them.
A quick quote from the last link sounds like classic US policy to me:
"A much more truly ambitious apparent long-term US ambition seems to have been to instigate the breakup of Russia into smaller manageable countries, paralleling the emergence of nations in eastern Europe after 1989. It could then deal with a reconstructed historical Russia of smaller emerging statelets run by competitive elites at odds with each other. These new polities, anxious for revenues, will then, presumably, be eager to sign lucrative commercial deals with US corporations since the entire region is extraordinarily wealthy in raw material resources."
And if we look at the result of the current crisis (I'll quote myself from a post above):
"- Potential collapse of the Russian Federation and the economic benefits this would bring (for the West)
- Solidifying EU support of NATO
- Increased energy sales to Europe at higher prices
- Increased military sales to NATO countries due to new threat
- Increased budget for "the military industrial complex"
- Further the long term goal of preventing a peer competitor from appearing by both weakening Russia and making the EU more dependant on the US both economically and militarily.
- Mutually beneficial German/Russian cooperation is pretty much dead now so no threat of such an alliance appearing in the future."
I think its pretty well played on the part of the US; nothing to be ashamed about. I'm interested to see what happens next.
Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world.
Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.
Well, Azerbaijan seems pretty convinced, they wouldn’t risk fighting them otherwise. Georgia sounds interested too. And those are small countries, they are making a colossal bet here.
BREAKING: It appears Kazakhstan might be finally leaving the union they had with Russia; China just acknowledged they will guarantee Kazakhstan's security, which essentially means a huge middle finger towards the "second army of the world".
Unfortunately it also means Armenia is screwed. That's what you get for putting trust in Russia.
Russia is much more European than Yemen. So is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia.
Moscow and, especially, St. Petersburg are pretty European historically and culturally. Western Russia accounts for 77% of Russia's population and is predominately influenced by the culture of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv...
Europe isn't just Italy, Spain, & France...
Not every European country is Western European culturally...
Russia and Ukraine are historically and culturally European. Russian expansion deep into Siberia is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, they're not Western European, but that's not what you said in your original comment.
Moscow and St. Petersburg - which make up a huge chunk of Russia economically, politically, and in terms of population - are very European historically and culturally.
But Russia is a gigantic country with a lot of population that isn't particularly European in any sense.
Ukraine on the other hand is basically 100% European any way you want to slice it beside Putin's revisionist history.
Technically, the last traces of what is known as Western Europe (i.e. catholic/protestant culture/architecture) end somewhere in the western Ukraine. Orthodoxy/Byzantium culture then starts in the eastern Ukraine.
The Russian world is a Muskovite imperialist invention my dear friend. You can't write Russian history without involving basically any other European country. Well, you could maybe leave Liechtenstein and Portugal out?
Not all reduction of consumption decreases output. For example, leaks could be plugged, insulation can be improved, more efficient machines could be used.
Also, not all output is equal, not does all output have to be done at a fixed time. Heating homes has to be done during winter, but some factories can postpone production a few months to wait for more favourable circumstances.
Furthermore, it's only a reduction in a few energy sources that are required, with gas being the most important. Other sources could be used to compensate to an extent. We're seeing some gas power plants moving back to coal for example. Not great for carbon emissions, but it has more and more flexible sources.
If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.
(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)
That's a pretty bold claim that you're going to need to back up. AMD has been beating Intel in performance-per-watt for years now, and both are regularly trading blows when it comes to fastest consumer chip.
And that's not even talking about EPYC which is pretty thoroughly trouncing Xeon in just about every metric.
I must assume you are uniformed about the effects of most or all of Europes nuclear reactors losing their cooling. The relative limited catastrophe in Chernobyl is still rendering wild game in Sweden unfit for human consumption. Maybe you weren't aware?
All the nuclear reactors losing their cooling is less likely than global thermonuclear war. Actually, one nuclear reactor in the middle of war losing its cooling and going off is less likely than global thermonuclear war.
Source: recent events. Putin is out of control and has made numerous threats of global-scale retaliation. Zaporizhzhia NPP has made no threats, and is under control and ready to take offline.
Chernobyl is still rendering wild game in Sweden unfit for human consumption.
Not really true. Yes you can still measure heightened Cesium levels in wild game, as well a fish and mushrooms. However Those levels are consistently below the levels set as safe for human consumption in basically all game. The only exception are the levels in wild mushrooms and animals that eat a lot of wild mushrooms (like wild boar in certain areas)
Not the person you were asking but wild boars in Southern Germany are still considered unfit for human consumption because of soil contamination in forests.
The reason I’m asking is because hunting wild game in Sweden is very common and the parent poster made it sound like the consequences of the radiation fallout is a lot worse than it actually is.
Edit:
It seems the case is similar in Sweden. Wild boar in the regions hit hardest by the fallout is not safe to eat.
For those unaware: the reason boar are singled out is that they forage by digging up the ground, so they're more likely to be directly affected by contaminated soil, even if the contamination would normally be underground at this point.
I'm not sure what the situation is with burrowing animals like rabbits but I'd wager the problem with boar is also that they are more likely to actually ingest contaminated soil in addition to simply being covered in it.
Thanks, I tried that and it works! I use dark mode and now instead of a black background with lime green bubbles and white text, it's darker green (and blue) bubbles with white text. Both are easier to read! Functionality is more important to me than aesthetics for a phone.
Eh, it's maybe a bit less attractive but not "quite ugly". It mostly seems to take some bright shades (like reds, greens, and blues) and darkens them. It's not like MS's high contrast option (which does indeed make the whole system quite ugly, the perhaps does an even better job than the iPhone of improving visibility).
I’ve had my AirPods Pro for two years now and I’ve had to have both (left and right) replaced twice because of this. Unfortunately they are now out of warranty. I hope 2nd gen doesn’t suffer from something like this.
Got them replaced both for free in an Apple store, I thought only one was bugging out but their test machine said both were "broke". It was out of warranty since well over a year.
I have done this succesfully as well, even in another country than which I bought them in initialy. Nearly 2 years out of warranty at the time of replacement, replacement itself was not a problem.
This is in line with my experience, I got both AirPods Pro replaced out of warranty a couple weeks ago, even if only one of them was presenting issues. Apparently, the machine they use to check said both were affected.
I got them replaced in Spain while the original purchase took place in Germany.
i bet the rolling out of this program so close to the 2nd gen release is a subtle acknowledgment from apple that this issue is endemic to the 1st gen, and it's fixed now.
