redditmademedoit

one of Europe’s greatest vulnerabilities: its heavy reliance on US [insert noun]

Mother fucker, I can see that’s your library card. Don’t test me. I’m elite hax.

Ok, NVM Trump is great, super reliableand Nato is not at all in a state of disrepair. Got it.

The UK is not in the EEA though

But boy what a stupid move it proved to be to join Nato in panic. Historic blunder by Finland and Sweden.

Rescued to a sinking ship with a mad captain, where the mid-level officers are just running around in disbelief, unable to decide between doubling down on loyalty to the captain or taking command for themselves. Who will the captain shoot next? Will he shoot at all against the people he’s sworn to protect you from?

That’s kind of an understatement with a party that can track it’s roots to Benito Mussolini.

Dems in 2026:
“OK, sounds good!”

Yes and no, it moves the goal post and makes it harder for some criminals/terrorists to launder money. But organized crime is one of the largest business sectors in the world, so many have large incentives to get around the rules.

It’s helpful to think of crime as a (or many separate) business sector(s) in this context, because at large scale criminals can benefit from much of the economic infrastructure that is required for legitimate international businesses, particularly modern businesses that sell things that don’t cost much/anything to produce (doesn’t have a fixed profit margin), such as subscriptions, streaming or intellectual property (e.g. music or games downloads).

Not long ago the circulation of this dirty money was a staple of many parts of the established financial system (see the Wachovia cartel scandal as an example). Today’s rules and crackdowns after the 2008 financial crisis has changed that somewhat.

You know how you can only withdraw a certain amount of money from an ATM even if you have more in your account and need it in cash?

That’s because of laws against money laundering and terror financing. The gist of it is that criminals and terrorists will finance/get cash out of their activities through using a bunch of middle men/fronts, cash and other ways to obfuscate the origin/destination of the money.

If you’re rich, you look good

That’s not news

Dry Cleaning – Anna Calls from the Arctic

Absolutely, I think games should dispense with the good/evil thing all together and, for instance,focus on whether choices are self-serving, “pragmatic”, diplomatic, earnestly attempting to be moral (i.e motivations). Of course, this only gets interesting if the game doesn’t consistently punish you for being amoral by imposing consequences that are harsher than the rewards. This also means not punishing the player with worse and less content for not following the “intended” story arch.

I haven’t played a lot of Frostpunk 2, but I think that game does a lot with similar concepts.

It’s a time honored tradition to treat foreign legions as disposable, even if Russia takes that to another level with the country’s general lack of regard for human life.

I don’t know how it works in Australia, but a plus to subsidizing solar installation on roofs is that the home owner still has to co-invest for a considerable part, so you kinda get a leveraged build out, as opposed to the government directly building installations. But the balance between private and public good should be weighed carefully all the same.

In Sweden, people – wealthy home owners – have gotten a lot of public financial assistance for mounting solar panels that would either way have paid for themselves in a matter of years, lowering electrical bills and raising house prices for the owners.

Overall that is a good thing, the pros of increased solar adoption outweigh the glaring inequity, but all the same it’s hard to feel that it’s a part of the general fuckery of governments competing on who can pamper the upper middle class the most. Sweden also subsidizes mortgage interest and has essentially abolished (hard-capped at a low.level) the property tax on private homes. And Sweden has in recent years given financial relief to households based on their electrical consumption, I.e. very little (or nothing if electric is added to the rent) to renters and most of the money going to people with big houses and year-round heated pools.

The discussion on equity needs to enter the debate on things like incentives for solar panels on private homes or grants for energy saving insulation. These are good things, but the money can’t just stack up on top of other political favors to the wealthy. Less useful subsidies need to go. They need to replace other benefits.

Tl;dr surveillance equipment working perfectly, used for dystopian surveillance. Major shocker.

In the context of parenting there are certainly better things you can do to prevent “shennanigans” other than subjecting them to surveillance. Like you know… raising them?

Terrifying with a generation of peole grown up under total control and expected to be perfectly obedient. They will be shitty adults. But hey, at least they won’t have memories of that time they snuck out at night to watch the stars.

So they are already running out of ressources to keep pumping that insane bubble and now need Europe to subscribe to their mass delusion, too?

The last years, possibly aside from the last weeks, I feel like I haven’t seen Ursula von der Leyen talk without rambling avout embracing AI. Nevermind that the EU wants to use mass surveilance against thought crime [cough] evil pedophile terrorist, no one else (promise).

There’s no way Russia could just nibble a little on an EU/Nato country with a full response from Europe, regardless of whether the US backs it up. Whether Europe is in good shape to deal with that is a different story, but I’d say there’s little room to do anything “small” under their own flag.

Yeah, he wouldn’t dare join a direct war against Iran, invade Venezuela or impose massive (even if not as big as he said) tariffs on the world…

Rutte is Trump’s most loyal ally and friend.