Any similar acts you recommend? Besides Belgian Asociality and Channel Zero, not much comes to mind. Gauging from the releases list of Music Mania store in Ghent, there is quite a vibrant scene that’s passing me by, but I’m very picky, so always open to recommendations if you have any!

Political posturing to get into the news cycle, without any risk of it ever becoming a reality.

That’s about 95% of all political news it seems. Mostly used to distract from the many scandals.

Not entirely correct, I reckon that De Grauwe uses a fictional example to assert his point.

For the exact measures that are currently on the table, I can refer you to this VRT page, which says:

• exemption of 10.000 euros in profit
• a tax of 10% on all profits above 10.000
• And then the exemptions for the “strongest shoulders”: For people who own more than 20 percent of the shares of a company, there is an exemption of 1 million euros. The added value between 1 and 2.5 million euros is taxed at 1.25 percent, that between 2.5 and 5 million euros at 2.5 percent and that between 5 and 10 million euros at 5 percent. Only from a profit of 10 million euros you pay the ‘full’ added value tax of 10 percent.

Nuclear or batteries come with their own kind of logistical problems.

Edit: It might sound that I’m being a contrarian, but I’m with you. Europe has dug itself in a deep hole, and I’m not sure how it will manage its way out without depending on dictatorships.

Love Clutch, thanks for sharing!

So American LNG imports? Doesn’t sound too attractive an option nowadays, although a great bargaining chip in the tariff deals.

High school teacher in my case. I knew a bit of BASIC before his lessons, but nothing major. I couldn’t really see how to use it to make a whole program.

Then his TurboPascal lessons opened up a whole world of possibilities. Not only did I take in the basics of any programming language, I also saw how these little blocks could lead to whole applications. Then I applied what I learned to PHP for some class websites, and am happy to say I’m still coding PHP to this day. I’ll be forever grateful to that teacher.

I did not expect a mention of Dries Van Langenhove in the article. Convicted in Belgium for sowing hatred and denying the holocaust, so now he fled to the rest of Europe to spread his filth.

History might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme!

Well put! :)

There might indeed be ways around the filter, e.g. a stable, non-exploitative society but they would never reach space. The filter might indeed not even exist, space could indeed still be young but I’m not very convinced. If space were young, and if it were to expand as it currently does, civilizations would have fewer opportunities as there would be fewer visible stars to explore. As time grows, chances get smaller still.

Let’s say humans do cling on. I believe they will face challenges that are too steep to make long-term survival probable. Not only the heavily pollution and the unlivable climate, but the depletion of basic minerals will probably prove too great an obstacle. That band of humans must have held on and maintained all current technology, and have sufficient power sources, to be able to do some deep underground mining, as all easy-to-reach minerals have already gone. Without technology or those minerals, I’m not sure how we’ll be growing food or cleaning the air to breathe.

Increasing the reach of their power by risking internal cohesion. Brexiteers railing against Poles did not wake up the EU, apparently.

I believe we’re seeing a universal law in action: any technologically advanced civilization will end up destroying itself. Whether it’s the warming due to extracted fossil fuels, or a nuclear war, or AI, …, there is, and must be, a seed of destruction in every advanced civilization. I purposefully say ‘must be’ because of the Fermi paradox, which should indicate to us all how any sci-fi future is forever beyond our grasp.

Not only last year. The trend should break this year, but with the EU still faffing around with these new sanctions, I’m not sure whether it will.

I’m guessing he stands to earn more on the coming SpaceX contracts than he lost on Tesla.

The Office when Michael left.

Terminator 3 is the last of that series in my eyes. The others - although not too shabby (excluding Salvation of course) - I regard as fan fiction.

Arrested Development - that last season just did not agree with me.

Community - things dropped off quickly when Troy left.

Putting someone in charge of the granary! We should have never allowed that, curse these early humans.

I ended up on Readeck as well, very sleek interface, perfect for sharing articles via public links, self-hosting it was very easy to set up.

Meh every generation has its quirks. My college class in 2000 spent 1 whole week going over the Windows Start menu…

Party of a balanced budget cannot balance the budget after years of not being able to balance the budget. Shocker!

The plastics factory still irks me. 750 million given to a UK billionaire in return for 300 local jobs. If this were a government program, it would quickly be labelled as inefficient. In comparison, for that amount, we could’ve given those 300 workers unemployment benefits of 2000 a month for 104 years, and not have our earth and air polluted.