this one is missing

They’re probably right

You’re just building a straw man here, people went to demonstrate because of the water crisis that was also caused by mismanagement (and climate change for that matter); these protests were also answered with violence. My point was that I consider this a core government task, even so much that I don’t those that do it because it is the bare minimum.

Up to you to decide if you want to consider the “Great Man-Made River” as a success, it surely did improve water quality, but there’s no regeneration of the taken water and most of the water is used for irrigation. It also lead to the effect of ground water level lowering; how it all turns out remains to be seen, and from what I read, experts expect up to 50 years of water supply at the current rate (optimistic ones up to 250), not the 4000 years the Gaddafi government estimated back then.

I just don’t like how the posts like the one I answered to imply that this is all the US’ doing. They play a really big role in all of this, but the Mullahs are also shitty and some of their domestic issues – which have caused riots because people didn’t have access to water – were also caused by their own decisions. It’s not only interventionism… both sides can be shitty

The actual study and not just the short article is https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext. However, I don’t really find the claim backed that the EU is a major factor in that regard:

In specification 4, for example, US unilateral sanctions were significant for six age groups, whereas EU unilateral sanctions were not significant in any of the age groups. When we included the six sanctions indicators in the regressions in specification 5 (USA-based, EU-based, and UN-based unilateral and economic sanctions), we continued to find that US sanctions deliver the most significant effects

Not very familiar with how to read the data, but to me, EU sanctions have no really significant impact on mortality in any of these specifications that would allow to construct a hard causality; there is almost no entry for EU sanctions in table 3 where there’s a statistical significance, except for “Child mortality (5–10 years)” in Specifications 3 and 4, where it barely reaches the threshold (p=0.051 and p=0.052); in the latter, the UN sanctions have a MUCH higher correlation.

Not exactly sure how one can come to the conclusion that this is US+EU sanctions when there’s such a difference between those when viewed in isolation… that said, a correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, e.g. let’s say there’s a civil war and the government gets sanctioned, then you do have a correlation between deaths and the sanctions, but it’s the former that caused the latter and not the other way around.

That said, I’m not disagreeing that sanctions can’t have negative effect on a population, in fact it’s the normal people getting hit first because usually the targets of sanctions will make sure it’s their citizens suffering and not themselves

Have you considered that might have to do with Iranian geography? Like, surely you understand that it rains more in Paris than In Tehran?

The problem wasn’t only lack of rain, but also a lot of mismanagement that led people without water to riot.

Also, if water management is your metric for government success, do you give your allegiance to the Communist Party of China for it’s anti-desertification campaign in the Gobi desert?

Call me crazy, but I consider “providing your citizens with water” as a core government task; why you bring up the Chinese government with something totally unrelated is beyond me.

Yeah because issues are always absolute and there is no nuance.

Yes, water is mismanaged in Europe as well and it will bite us, but we’re not currently at Iranian levels where they considered moving the capital because the potable water situation was so bad.

The proposal made little sense all things considered, but this is the level of competence the Iranian leadership showed in that situation.

I mean the article literally uses a picture of Ursula von der Leyen, there was no point in history where she radiated competence or integrity

There’s also the water issue, and that definitely wasn’t because of sanctions; and even if the reason for riots might be due to external factors, it does matter to a population how the leadership responds to it, and the response has been horrible.

Ukraine is running a leftover buffet of export variant jets against a domestic S-300, so the results might not be comparable when roles are reversed, which was the case in Venezuela. Surely other factors were at play as well, but the US probably has other means at their disposal for dealing with air defense. But let’s see, I’m only armchair generaling and hope none of this becomes relevant

Used against the US? When was that?

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there

Wouldn’t rely on these too much, we’ve seen them in (in)action in Venezuela

Trust is hard to earn, but easy to lose - I’d be very careful to trust my data with a company that’s willing to play these games.

They’ve been caught lying before when they introduced the branded drives requirement, but it was too obvious to not see through it. Their backtracking was pure damage control.

Trusting your data with a company that’s just waiting for the right opportunity to extract money from you is not something I’d do. I’d consider their devices time bombs and would take measures to not be impacted when they hold your data hostage. I’m not saying this will happen, their made it very obvious that the risk is there.

Eine Sache, den Feind dazu zu bringen, seine eigenen Koordinaten rauszurücken.

Eine andere, ihm dafür auch noch eine Stange Geld abzunehmen…

Für mehr als staatlich finanzierten Terrorismus reicht es bei Russland nicht.

Ja Donnerwetter, damit hätte niemand gerechnet. Unvorstellbar. Aber das ist mit Sicherheit eh nur Fake News von Sleepy Joe / Barack HUSSEIN Obamna, denn Trump hat ALLES GEWONNEN, in der Tat so viel dass manche bereits müde vom Gewinnen sind (nicht er, er ist nur gelangweilt, nicht eingeschlafen).

Dumme ausgelutschte Witze außen vor natürlich ein Skandal, auf den eigentlich genauere Untersuchungen durch die Bundesstaaten erfolgen müsste, aber ich bezweifle, dass das etwas kommen wird.

Das ist halt das Problem, wenn man nicht mehr Opposition ist, plötzlich wird die Machbarkeit der eigenen Vorschläge relevant.

Yesteryear’s technology for the price of a complete system

My 2020 PC build has twice the RAM, and it’s also faster, yet it cost less - not the memory, the whole machine, with a ryzen 3900x, a graphics card, 1 TB of flash memory.

Ahahahaha that’s just laughable

The backlash when they only allowed self-branded (overpriced) drives for their systems was so large that universal hard drive compatibility was their main message at it-sa 2025. Huge banners at their stall advertising what you’d imagine is the bare minimum!

I never bought their shit because it was always overpriced. “But their software is so good and easy!” Thanks, I consider myself capable enough to configure a machine myself.

They’re sucha company that doesn’t understand that for proper enshittification, your users must not have alternatives that they can easily switch to. But there’s no proper lockdown effect for a NAS manufacturer: existing customers can just keep using their old systems, and new ones can use competitors / implement the functionality themselves.

But now they have revealed that they’re just as greedy as others and will happily squeeze you for some extra cash, without offering any more value. You need to hide the fact that your product gets worse for the money! Get rid of existing plans and make sure new ones have additional features (they don’t have to make sense, AI would be a perfect contender if people didn’t hate it) that you can use to justify the price hike!

Using zig and offering a flake gets my seal off approval

Not that it’s worth anything, I’m not a developer

Eine Steigerung des Konsums – sollte sie tatsächlich stattgefunden haben, ggf. geben es auch seit der Legalisierung auch einfach mehr jugendliche an

;)