Never trust a rapist.

And if he (so his oligarch handlers) want those trade agreements and treasuries back, hold the US accountable. Get concessions with very documented repercussions for when he inevitably tries to stop once he gets what he wants.

NATO without the US is dependent on each (simplifying) EU nation’s military.

The EU, like sane people, focused on their own economies and people. The US focused on having one of (if not THE) largest standing militaries on the planet.

And with war increasngly on the horizon? Most NATO nations aren’t going to want to deploy their troops until THEY are “safe”.

We’ve already seen it with the hemming and hawing over what to actually send Ukraine in terms of weaponry

… That might be so despicably evil that I mostly just fixate on how many cops around the world must feel out gamed.

The US attacking allied territory of the EU is basically the death of NATO, one way or another. WW3 is a hop and a skip from that.

I’ve not been following super closely for mental health reasons, but if it is just Denmark? We are looking at another Ukraine. Everyone is going to hem and haw and say “just give it to the pricks” to “avoid World War 3”. Whereas, if we start seeing other EU/NATO nations deploying troops to protect Greenland… there is a chance that SOMETHING remains and we don’t just have russia running over everyone else one by one.

I mean… yeah. Missiles can cause serious damage. This has been true since (ass pulling) the 1950s/1960s.

The reality has always been that it doesn’t actually take much to take out some VERY expensive equipment. Which is why combined arms have been the name of the game since folk were in armor on horseback.

Oh. It would go about 4.45x worse (ignoring Alaska). And russia can’t even properly protect their border and prevent Ukrainian strike teams from crossing it.

You are taking the position right now that America’s descent into fascism can be attributed to Muslim and Arab Americans in Dearborn who decided not to vote for Kamala after she promised to kill their brothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon with an extraordinarily “lethal military”. These people are the true fascists, according to you.

As opposed to trump who outright called Biden a “Palestinian” as an insult and accused other ethnic groups of “eating cats”?

But hey, sure. They hated Kamala because she was associated with Biden who “good Palestinian” aside, has always been a racist asshole across his entire political career.

Can you, or anyone else, say that they honestly expected trump to be better for the Palestinian people than Kamala and Biden (who wasn’t even running…)? Again, he outright called Biden a “Palestinian” as an insult.

So, at the VERY best, you are looking at two candidates who are equally horrible for one group. And then you look at anything else and realize trump is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH worse for basically everyone else on top of that.

So… yeah. I do fucking blame the Arab Americans and anyone else who decided to sit out the election (and effectively give trump their votes). Because, at the very best, they were doing the same knee jerk “someone else” voting that got trump elected in 2016.

And, in the process, they actively harmed the people they claim to care about. Let alone everyone else.

And I’ll ignore the rest that mostly makes it clear you don’t give a fuck about Palestine and are just puppeting tankie talking points where “accelerationism is good because Reasons”

I’m… “optimistic” is not at all the right word considering how depressing all of this is.

But I’m Something that the US has no intentions of using military force against Canada (so just economic and political…). trump can demand whatever he wants but even the lowly colonels will soil themselves at the thought and find ways to refuse.

Because starting a war in The Middle East or Venezuela or even Europe is one thing. Pretty much nothing can actually hurt the continental US without fighting through a fleet of aircraft carriers and all our airbases.

Whereas Canada and Mexico share pretty massive borders with us. If they want to retaliate, they will.

Of course… its trump so he might very well just tell people on twitter to go throw pipe bombs across the border to get the war he wants.

Why do democrats need to earn your fucking vote against a rapist who led a violent insurrection against the us government? Because clearly trump already did. I mean, sure, he TOTALLY had a much better platform for how to minimize the harm to the Palestinian people. He’ll give them jobs in his hotel!

Really showing your ass there. What next. Is it Hilary Clinton’s fault you didn’t vote? Could she have done better to make you care about a rapist warmonger?

A few reasonAs the polar ice caps melt even more and war likely ramps up, having a very large base of operations in the North Atlantic has a lot of strategic value. That makes the generals like it.

The oligarchs like it because, as global warming intensifies, Greenland will likely be prime real estate. It is similar to why they want to annex Canada.

And putin wants it because it will likely kill NATO and the EU. Because Greenland is… weird. It is technically part of Denmark but also isn’t. It is an ally of the EU but it isn’t actually IN the EU. So it will be very easy for the EU to basically say “We don’t want a war. Whatever. Take one for the team Denmark” which will pretty much guarantee its death because no nation will trust any other nation to “have their back” in the event of a war.

I mean… there is a shitty golf course he loves a lot more than anything outside of his daughter’s snatch.

Yeah. I don’t give a shit.

trump was a known evil. This wasn’t 2016 with “ha ha ha, maybe the reality tv star will be fun”. He led a fucking violent insurrection and was campaigning on hate.

I don’t fucking care how sad folk were that they didn’t get the candidate they wanted. By not voting they effectively voted for trump and the entire fucking world is suffering for it.

Own up to it.

Friendly reminder that Denmark is about 44 km^2. For context, the UK is 244 km^2

Which matters a lot. Because the various postal services around the globe? Letters are petty much a side benefit. What they are really for is delivery of important packages (e.g. medicine). Particularly to rural underserviced areas. And when you have routes that head out to the boonies 3-7 times a week, carrying a sack of letters is “free”

This? I don’t know all the details and don’t have enough of a basis to gather them from a short article. But this definitely feels like it is going to be depending on third parties for package delivery and so forth… which is what certain, really fucking stupid, countries are trying to do by privatizing/defunding their postal service.

Like I said, Denmark is tiny. They will probably be fine. But this… feels like the kind of thing that will bite people in the butt a decade or so down the line.

Skimmed the abstract and couldn’t see how they define “salt water”. Did not see it.

Theoretically, this has utility for shipping. So let’s say you have a pallet of water bottles. The bottles themselves will likely stay more traditional plastics. The plastic wrapping the 32 pack’s cardboard could potentially be this. The plastic wrap around the entire pallet of a bunch of stacks of those 32 packs? I… would probably still go traditional plastic, honestly.

Because a LOT of beverages are shockingly salty when you look at them (because salt is good and helps us retain water). If that is enough to even come close to triggering degradation then you lose the ability to store those bottles “indefinitely” and you drastically increase the risk that someone’s bottle breaks in their hand while they are leaving the 7-11. Which… defeats the purpose of WHY we use plastic for all this. And… it is a lot cheaper to have “one” bottle factory rather than one for each type of beverage.

As for that outermost layer? I would honestly just be terrified of a loading dock in the winter. Salt the ever loving hell out of that to minimize ice growth. And then suddenly you have pallets falling apart because of “quick” degradation.

It still does make sense considering that russia is literally invading Ukraine (at least once a decade…) and continue to probe NATO nations. Because, in that regard, it is less a “military base on foreign soil” and more just a NATO base on NATO soil. And, in theory, it is a good idea to let the country dumb enough to spend most of their GDP on a massive standing military to foot the bill.

But considering that the US is just as likely to be on russia’s side in WW3…

That ship sailed closer to decades ago than not.

Spend some time with ER workers (and pay for their damned drinks) and you will learn just how toned down The Pitt actually was.

There are layers to this.

Yes, there is zero chance any of these investments are going to turn a profit.

But research and technology is fundamentally built around developing capabilities for long term power (soft or hard). That is WHY governments invest so much into university groups and research divisions at companies to develop features of interest. You are never going to make back the money that funded hundreds of PhD students to develop a slightly more durable polymer compound. But you will benefit because you now have hundreds of new graduates aligned with fields of interest AND a slightly better grip on your military grade sybian.

And, regardless of what people want to believe, AI genuinely does have some great uses (primarily pattern matching and human interfaces). And… those have very big implications both in terms of military capability and soft power where the entire world is dependent on one nation’s companies for basic functionality.

Of course, the problem is that the “AI craze” isn’t really being driven by state governments at this point. It is being driven by the tech companies themselves and the politicians who profit off of them. Hence why we are so focused on insanely expensive search engine replacements and “AI powered toaster ovens” rather than developing the core technologies and capabilities that will make this more power efficient and more feasible for edge computing.

And… when one of (if not ) the super powers is actively divesting itself of all soft power at an alarming rate… yeah.

That is a distinction without difference. It doesn’t matter what mechanism is used to collect those metrics. The fact is they are there

And, at a glance: Forgejo/Codeberg definitely has stars and watches and fork tracking as well

Which is all fundamentally the supply and demand aspects of consumerism. It is the idea that people can identify what there is a high demand for and work to provide a supply. Which is not at all a bad thing and extends far beyond capitalism.

But it goes back to the previous poster’s comments about how they don’t like that netflix analyzes everything they do and greenlights projects based on that. That extends FAR beyond netflix and well into even open source projects.

Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data. And many of them are specifically designed to fulfill a role that industry standard tools aren’t (or are too expensive for) and… guess where the data on that comes from?

The reality is that you cannot escape consumerism in the modern world. You can pretend you are but… you aren’t. What you CAN do is focus on supporting tools and media that you want/approve of and making your own life better as a result.

And a big chunk of that involves actually thinking through consequences.

I mean… depending on how new an item is and what “tier” the restaurant is? They are 100% watching for stuff like that and probably making a note that you got up after eating only a quarter of your burger. Because if the burger were good, you would want to finish it. Is it too sloppy? Did you feel the need to wash your hands mid bite? Did it make you nauseous?

Same with taking out your phone. Does it look like you are telling a friend what a great burger you had? Or are you feeling bloated and trying to digest a bit before you eat more?

This level of market analysis is not at all new. Streaming services just have a much easier time automating it but… give it time until startups are selling cameras to monitor the dining area and automate analytics based on who ordered what and did what.