> Every generation believes it is living through the end of something.
Many generations are. Last century saw the collapse of the British and Soviet empires - titans by any measure - through mismanagement. Europe as an international power was also broken (compared to how they used to be). I can easily imagine 1900s me fleeing to America in fear of the end times and feeling quite justified in his choices with hindsight. Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
Most of the people who died didn't get an opportunity to complain, so we live with some serious survivorship bias on how bad things got.
While there's no magic land of opportunity to flee to, there are still many safe and stable places where one can raise a family and lead a simple life. Especially if you remove the abstraction of countries and look at cities and towns instead. It does depends on what you want and what you're willing to give however, as moving may mean learning a new language and assimilating a new culture. And then there's differences in wealth and earning potential as well, so I guess leaving the USA is more 'bugging out' than 'economic migration'.
OTOH, mobility is a privilege, and it's usually the least privileged who are the most affected by war. So I'm not exactly sure how I feel about my own advice, since it's most useful to those that need it least.
We made it a priviledge, but for a biological being, it's the most natural thing to do when you find yourself in a place that is shitty. There is a reason so many risk truly awful things to get a chance (chance!) at a better life: going to where food and safety is, is just what living beings do.
Sure, but I think what they mean is that when you do move somewhere, how you are treated by the humans already there depends on your socioeconomic status. Who may be disinclined to let you have food or safety.
how do you determine if that is good or bad? humans have lots of basic traits and tendencies that have been demonstrated over written history. does the fact humans have always done something mean it is good?
Why does it need to be bad or good? It's what separates animals from plants: locomotion. You might as well think breathing air is too pleistocene for you?
because it affects real public policy. so, how do you determine if the use of this mobility is good or bad? because that's what's going to inform one's position on public policy.
I also sometimes think how people don't realize how good they have things; while Poland is no longer a poor country, it would take an absolutely colossal disaster to reduce the average living standard of America to that of Poland. America hasn't even reached the 'terrifying' level of European petrol prices.
It also depends who you are. A very large fraction of American trans people (not a large absolute number, only a few hundred thousand) have moved from R states to D states recently due to repression, such as Kentucky revoking their driving licenses.
I do think the best political-economic era of my life was 1997-2001: election of Tony Blair until 9/11, covering the first internet boom. That was the closest to "world peace". That includes the Israel-Palestine peace process and the reconciliation of the post-Soviet states into Europe. If that had worked better, with a democratic Russia, the world would be a very different place today.
I'm sure you can throw out statistics that prove otherwise, but I think the average living standard of Poland is already better than America. Again, anecdotally, but I'm American and I've lived in Poland for about a decade. Food, healthcare, housing, access to parks, public transport, etc. are all better quality here at the average-person level than most places the US.
Americans just end up paying for a lot of things that are either undesirable for many Poles (e.g., a huge McMansion in desolate suburbs and the car to drive there) or paid for via other means (e.g., healthcare.)
Which country has a better average living standard depends on if we are talking about mean, median, or mode. The American mean is higher and since most of the HN crowed works in higher-paying jobs in urban centers they tend to look at their own experiences to think that the US is a high standard of living country. If you look at the median or mode of living standards across a country then places like Europe are where you find more people experiencing a higher standard of living.
Oh, best of luck convincing Americans that paying twice as much for shitty health insurance than you pay in 'high' general tax levels is somehow a bad deal for them. Until they actually live the experience they just cannot comprehend the second and third order benefits of a real social system.
In terms of nominal GDP per capita, the US is around $85k with Poland at $25k, so US GDP would need to fall around 70%, which would be an unprecedented fall, the kind historically only associated with mass bombing or extreme hyperinflation.
GDP is irrelevant when discussing the well being of the ordinary person. A more relevant measure would be median income together with purchasing power parity.
US median income is just over 19 k international dollars, Poland is just under 9 k. Still a big difference but just over a factor of 2 instead of over 3.5.
America has not just a lot more people, but a lot more immigrants, refugees, and more.
In a more homogenous society, such as Poland’s in comparison to the United States, it also in my observation trends to be easier for wealth distribution to flatten.
Maybe the US has more kids per capita too which would also affect that value depending on how it is being measured. Not to say that anything is being hidden there, just something to think about that may make you interpret the data differently or think about it differently.
Petrol prices mean nothing for standards of living or overall desirability of given country. If that would be true, then I have 2 random samples which have supposedly way higher standard than US - Venezuela and russia.
US folks have more money on average, but are forced to spend them in ways ie europeans don't have to - top notch education and healthcare costs are huge in US for large part of population and compose big part of expected savings of parents and older folks, while an afterthought in Europe. How do you compare that.
Plus places in Europe like Switzerland have long term way higher living standards by any measure than even good places in US. Europe is big and diverse in ways US simply never was, it would do you good to travel the world a bit and see and experience it with your own eyes.
Last century saw two world wars, followed by the cold war which could have lead to the end of the world. Also a wave of communist revolutions and their aftermath (famines and purges in the Soviet Union, The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the death of a quarter of the population of the world).
I think mismanagement is not accurate. The Soviet system was flawed and inefficient and could not compete. The European empires were made untenable by the world moving on: economic, technological and political changes.
I think Europe and America had a golden age when they were at peace and dominated the world economically from the 80s to this century, and forgot neither of these is a given.
> Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
How are you supposing that it looks like the US may crumble? I don’t understand where these kinds of comments come from, aside from perhaps verbalizing something one might want to see instead of what is factually true.
The world bought only 20% as many treasury bonds in the past year as in the year before that. This is what a slow decoupling from the US reserve currency looks like.
The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
The US has canceled all military guarantees and aligned with two different fascist states, so military cooperation is unwinding.
It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
> The world bought only 20% as many treasury bonds in the past year as in the year before that. This is what a slow decoupling from the US reserve currency looks like.
That's not what a decoupling looks like. Investors are probably just not buying because they know rates are going to go up. The Federal Reserve already strongly signaled another rate hike by end of year. Why would you buy something today that you can wait and buy for a better price later?
Second, if you want to make an argument about interest rates or the debt, you first have to make that argument and resolve it for the UK, Italy, France, and others.
Third, the USD is just the dominant reserve currency. It's not the only one. A reserve currency is just one that banks hold in reserve. The reason the US is involved in the Middle East is to protect the Petro-dollar which generally "requires" oil purchases to be settled in dollars. The trade off is we keep Iran in check from destroying the gulf countries.
> The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
This doesn't make any sense. The US is also the largest oil and gas producing country in the world. Even for the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea you can read for yourself that the US has been able to break through and Saudi Arabia has quickly repaired the east-west pipeline and 3.5+ million barrels are flowing through there now (IIRC 60% or so of pre-attack volume). Either way, most of those flows go to Europe and Asia, not the US. So while the US is oil dependent (all countries are) I don't think your assertion is entirely accurate.
> It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
That doesn't make any sense either. We manufacture all kinds of things, including incredibly advanced equipment. We make airplanes, we make semiconductors, pharmaceutical goods.
> What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
If we don't have oil neither does anyone else. Except that we do have oil so our nuclear powered aircraft carriers would just use our own oil for the jets.
The US isn't just a land. It isn't even just an economy or a currency. Most fundamentally, it's a set of rules that limit the power of government, and thereby allow more freedom for people. Everything flows from that, even the reserve currency. (Why put your foreign currency holdings in a currency where the government can arbitrarily decide to change the value? This is why the renminbi isn't catching on, despite China's power.)
That limited government is looking shaky right now. It's mostly Trump, but it's not just Trump - Congress has been increasingly worthless over the last couple of decades, and so the President has to rule more and more by executive decree. But Trump is pushing the boundaries of what the Constitution allows the government to do far harder than any President that I remember, even Nixon.
And if we lose the limited government, then within a generation or two, we're going to lose the rest. It won't be immediate (unless you fall afoul of the government), but it will come.
> This is why the renminbi isn't catching on, despite China's power.
Well it's part of it. The other part is China does not want the value of its currency to rise and as an export-oriented economy they have a desire to manipulate their currency to keep it lower to ensure exports are highly competitive. That's not an allegation or a conspiracy or anything, but a fact. Being the dominant reserve currency as the USD is (remember it's not the only reserve currency) has a lot of benefits but some drawbacks too.
I don't think that American limited government is looking shaky right now. I agree Congress is becoming increasingly worthless but it's something that can be fixed if we want to. I also would suggest not being confused about Trump does big headline thing as a representation that America's government is shaky or something. He has pushed boundaries, but some of those boundaries are quite literally up for interpretation and while he may push those boundaries he also doesn't go around and advertise all the court or legislative set backs that have occurred.
The Iran war is actually a decent example - he does not have an authorization to use force beyond the limit authorized by Congress. While we're conducting limited retaliatory strikes (Congress wouldn't disagree with doing so except maybe the pro-ayatollah/anti-liberal faction (Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for example) and engaging in a naval blockade, Trump has had to follow the rule of law here and step back more grand ambitions and plans. Now of course he may do something and we'll have to see how the system responds, but everyday law and order and such is proceeding as it has for quite some time. To be frank, it's actually a little bit worse but that's not really due to Trump so much as it is to policing failures and anti-social behavior we're tolerating when we shouldn't.
- To maintain fellowship, the empire spreads money to buy influence
- eventually this starts to cost too much, so the empire reduces spending
- wars ensue and independent voices emerge
- unable to establish order, the empire loses its influence and collapses
You can see this patterns as the US is overspending (high debt / trade deficit) while reducing its diplomatic influence on international programs. Not sure how they can save the USD value over time.
Criminals and medical doctors are funnelling a fortune into domestic and foreign real estate, and into premium cars. Nearshoring and outsourcing centers are fleeing the country. Polish army expenditures are at the level of Israel, Turkey, and South Korea. The budget is spent on 40 years old retirees while Russian drones and missiles are freely entering and penetrating the airspace. I'd say so long Poland, a failed experiment again.
I feel you... the situation is more or less the same for Greece (and many other countries).
Things are not looking very good and I don't know how all this situation is going to stabilize or even better come back to normal.
True. Certain things changed and improved but many remained the same. Having corrupt politicians doesn't help at all.
We're caught in-between bigger players and we're just following along. As the OP stated, many countries are suffering from consequences of the actions by some "great powers".
It's true, but things are not as bad as 2015. Just not as good as 2007. In general things seem to be going in the right direction, cost of living excluded.
The west wanted a confrontation with Russia (pushed Zelenski out of the Misk accords; keeps supplying weapons for the lost cause Ukraine; Merkel lied about seize-fire intentions; NorthStream was infighting in the coalition pushing Germany further from Russia).
The Israel wanted a confrontation with Iran, and used it's --as we now all know-- pit-bull lapdog USA to do most of it for them. They killed Iran's leader and some of his family: something we long ago decided is "not modern".
Both countries are not giving in. And they should not. These are existential matters for them; they crossed red lines; they are illegal escalations by all rules and conventions. But the west can do what it wants.
Now Europe is caught in the middle. US has fuel, and basically annexed Venezuela. Europe has to pay through the nose for energy.
The narrative has never been more blatantly misconstrued in the corporate media: Russia will not attack Europe, and if genocidal-Israel can have illegal A-bombs while refusing inspections why bother with Iran doing the same?
Fearmongering. All to "save our democracies and freedom". It's getting old really quick. And combined with ridiculous immigration policies they may destroy Europe as we know it in a few decades, I'm afraid. But saying so, results in the immediate "extreme right-wing Putin propagandist" label, and thus can be disregarded.
- what action specifically is the west pushing Zelenski away from Minsk?
Both Minsk and Istanbul accords would have been signed if the west did not encourage Zelenski not to sign. The BoJo visit is widely quoted.
- why is the Ukraine war a lost cause if it is tying up Russian military resources?
Ukraine itself it lost. Maybe the west-coalition still finds it useful. But the country is now conscripting women. They do not have the men anymore. No airdefence. Losing land at an ever increasing pace. Attack on russian industry are countered with 10x harder attacks on ukrainian industry. Supporting coutries less willing to give to Zelenski. Country is in shambles.
- how does Merkel wish for a stronger Ukraine defense indicate a wish for confrontation instead of a deterrence against it?
If you are a guarantor country for a de-escalation peace deal, it is dirty to merely hold up appearances in order to buy Ukraine time to strengthening them for the confrontation that you know will come. That's two-faces guarantorship.
- how does northstream, which seems to be Ukraine going against “the west”, an evidence for the west wanting a confrontation with Russia?
As long as the NS is operating, Germany and Russia have strong economic ties. Breaking those ties by an act of industrial terrorism (by Ukraine on Germany -- which should trigger a NATO-art5 in normal situations) is bringing NATO more together. Germany has to buy energy from the US now. Lol.
Every thread has a cynical AI accusation from someone looking for an excuse to dismiss long articles, so I tend to gloss over them, but this one's mind-boggling.
Literally how did you come to the conclusion this was written by ChatGPT? The text is clearly written by a polish person that speaks fluent english as a second language - I know cause I am one. Telltale signs are sentences like "Meanwhile, shares are at records" which is an overly direct translation of the polish equivalent, where the word "rekord" by itself implies a record high whereas in english you'd make it explicit.
Every writer has a style and if their style is strong enough you can identify the writer by reading enough of their works. AI style is very easy to spot.
There may have been some human involvement with this website but they certainly didn’t edit it for style. Unfortunately if you don’t edit for style then people will default to the assumption that it’s entirely vibecoded.
- "But the same closure that empties a granary fills somebody’s brokerage account." Claude is obsessed with comparisons linked by "the same". There are several instances, like "Poland made the same swap, with oil" (but that one is odd because "the same" isn't referring to anything).
- "Europe’s potato belt tells the story in a single season": Claude also loves this "noun verbs the noun in a single noun" phrasing.
- "A country that loses its regular supplier does not only pay more. It ends up dealing with people it does not know." Claude's classic "it's not X, it's Y" constructions.
- "Strategists do not describe a stampede home. They describe Japan quietly ceasing to be the buyer everyone could count on, and long-term borrowing costs rising everywhere as a result." A variant following the pattern "it's not X, it's Y, and Z as a result." This is an interesting pattern, one that I don't think I've ever seen a human write. A human would likely write "...leading to rising long-term borrowing costs" or similar.
- The use of a verb (rising) there in the third part is typical Claude, as it really likes to verb when a noun would read better. Other examples: "markets price another rise"; "volume freezes, prices stay put and sellers wait"; "after five years the rate floats".
- "The test Tusk describes is a test of belief, and it arrives just as the Pentagon decides how many Americans stay." The juxtaposition here (a test that arrives) is very odd and typical of Claude.
- What's also generally striking is the proliferation of "X becomes Y" phrasings, which is something Claude loves to do. Price shock turned into empty pumps. A story is told in a single season.
I'll stop there.
What's fascinating to me is that I personally find this kind of text exhausting to read, but apparently other people don't notice it at all.
If we ignore the AI stuff, I will still say this is not good writing. What's so grating and noticeable for me is the monotonous style. The short, clipped sentences like little stabs of information. It never varies; the tempo is just fact, fact, fact. It's absolutely exhausting to read pages and pages of this.
Good non-fiction writing is enjoyable to read for a myriad reasons; authors use metaphor, juxtaposition, tempo, humor, irony, allusion, and all sorts of techniques to make an article enjoyable to read. Just throwing down facts one after another with this kind of breathless, staccato noir voice is not that, in my personal opinion.
I don't know how much AI is to blame, maybe the Polish version is different or if this is a deliberate style.
For instance: it's mentioned that EU gas storage is at 67% and Germany's at 56%.
What is not mentioned though is that Poland's storage is at 97% because the previous administration, for better or worse, was paranoid enough to invest in a sizeable marine gas terminal and the current one stocked up early.
Regarding real estate: adjusted for inflation prices peaked 2.5 years ago, interest rates are also much lower than back then. Nobody is buying because all the Ukrainian refugees who were moving to Poland are here already and that's the last bump in population this country will see for the foreseeable future.
Also there's the threat of war on Polish soil, which affects investor sentiment.
Real estate in Poland is the only investment option without capital gains tax. You only have to keep it 5 years, extremely simple. A condo is tax free, risk free brokerage account. Even if drones start hitting these mostly empty buildings, the prices will keep rising.
Depends from person to person, what you want from life, what career your in, what your finances look like and what your family/relationship status is. One can argue that the smaller cities in EU are often times better to live in than the capitals and major economic ones, that is if you aren't dependent on the corporate/big-tech careers that are mostly dominant in the major cities which tend to suffer from high housing shortages and higher crime or at least more roughness. But then, if you avoid the big expensive cities, you also miss out on the more developed public transport, meaning a car might be required to save on commute times, the big airports with cheap international flights, top hospitals and medical specialists, etc. In the end, everything is a tradeoff, you can't have it all, all of the time.
>Maybe it doesn't matter how livable or beautiful Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Stockholm, Sardinia, or whichever is, if you are never going to get roof over your head there.
That's also how I see it. The whole "X city is most livable" is so fucking subjective, that I just can't take those "livability" rankings I see online with a straight face.
Just because the numbers might be small if germany doesn't has enough gas and some old fragile human being might die of this or because they cant afford the gas, its still no way to die in a country like germany.
The fact that you have time to "xD"-reply to some comments but won't address the other ones basically marks you as a troll. Good to know, shame HN doesn't have ways to block/mark users as ignorable.
Your comment implies Germany can just somehow command Poland to please hand over their gas, which obviously makes no sense, so I think you either forgot to include some key detail or you’re just talking out of your ass.
Unless you mean nazi invasions ofc in which case you’re just a troll.
On the ad absurdum: They'd also go the other way. The integration with the Dutch gas fields and system in Groningen is good enough and there is at least two decades of gas left in the fields. While closed, they can be reopened within a relatively short time and there are storage fields abound there (Groningen and Drente storages account for half the Dutch supply). And since it's ad absurdum, the earthquakes do not matter.
Poland barely had any oil. If you want to go "historical", Romania was the source of oil for Germany during WW2 (and Austria-Hungary also wanted to take over Romanian oil fields in WW1).
For instance, Italy has more storage capacity per capita despite very similar consumption (~10TWh/1mln population) and they're already at 86%+.
Meanwhile indeed Poland has much less storage (about a third of Germany per capita), but it also uses it less (half the consumption of Germany per capita).
I must ask: what the hell are the Germans waiting for?
Our minister responsible for energy is Katherina Reiche, a lobbyist for fossil companies. She has been suspected to dawdle on refilling gas storage to make it easier for her former employers to make a quick buck when gas becomes scarce in winter. She's also botched the transition to renewable energies by removing the incentives for state and industry to build out electric infrastructure, so it would not be out of character.
Plus, our chancellor has zero experience in governing anything (he's not even been mayor before) and is firmly stuck in thinking like a Blackrock executive.
So, to answer your question: We are waiting for a government that is not entirely in the pocket of those that want to stick to the status quo and profit from crises as long as possible.
Which former employer is going to make a quick buck? The grid operator or the grid operator lobbyist? Besides, who is going to profit from a price spike when the whole point is that the summer-winter spread is inverted, so no one expects to make money from injecting?
> Which former employer is going to make a quick buck? The grid operator or the grid operator lobbyist?
Well, both. Katherina Reiche was CEO of Westenergie until she joined the current government; and was, at the same time, listed as a lobbyist. She also caused controversy when she presented a plan for energy politics that was _very similar_ to plans by major electricity providers (including the parent company of her previous company). Or when she directly asked the electricity provider EnBW for better arguments why we should build more gas power plant (directly violating lobbying laws). That's just a small excerpt; the list of controversy is long.
But tbh, I don't think there's a big conspiracy about the empty gas tanks. Yes, Reiche is most likely corrupt (which is a huge deal), but afaiu, the gas tanks are empty because nobody wants to pay for the gas right now.
PS: Just today, Reiche ordered Sefe GmbH to stockpile more gas [1]. Sefe is conveniently a public company. So private companies don't have to buy expensive gas, because the public is going to take care of it.
Regarding filling gas storage, I might have been too quick to judge. It seems that prices are just too high atm. However, this has been a long time coming and she did not act, so that's on her.
I stand by the rest, though. She's really a blight on our energy policies and development.
I never liked Schröder very much. I somewhat respected him for working his way up to the top coming from a very poor family. But Schröder was not a lobbyist before he became chancellor and his actions during his reign do not strike me as guided by taking care of his cronies.
They are massively increasing their medium sized drone capacities (ie Geran) while improving on those drones too. Faster, harder to detect and shoot down, no GPS/Glonass navigation necessary so jamming won't do much.
A country that is rained on by 500 drones daily delivering 125KG explosives (so like a proper standard bomb dropped from airplanes) can overwhelm local military defense capacities quickly, leave infrastructure in crumbles (as in no water, electricity, gas, heating, gas stations working and so on) and at least in dictator's mind local population may crumble in weeks. You don't need to put a single foot in the country to reduce critical infra to rubble.
I can't imagine Polish folks would ever bow to russians after horrible things they repeatedly done to them, but ie in Slovakia it would be a very quick victory even if country wouldn't be ruled by ultra corrupt folks who would just give whole country to russians for some more corruption promises for later.
If puttin' will try anything in eastern Europe now is the best time. But I would expect more something along Moldova or baltics, Poland is far from russia and any extra force concentration in Kaliningrad would be easy to see.
The baltics have even more vivid memories of soviet life don't they? And nato trip wire troops so any attack would be killing french and uk soldiers (nuclear powers). Trump was talking about taking Greenland by force right up until the trip wire forces arrived. It is an odd job as a soldier to be a hostage I think, but it seems to work. It would be more reliable for Poland to obtain its own nuclear deterrent, along the lines of the buffers vs dependencies argument in the post. There has been talk, but that seems difficult.
Every period of history is dramatic; sometimes I rewatch old episodes of a UK satirical news quiz, Have I Got News For You, and even in the best of years there was plenty of drama.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Are people more pessimistic now? While there are ebs and flows to the generate state of various societies I feel that objectively the 2020s are no better or worse that any of the preceding post WW2 decades??
Is this an effect of social media and the 24 news cycle that has negative headlines on repeat?
I would say that the 1950s were better economically, at least in the US. If you were working class, you could make a living, and offer your children a better life than you had. That led to optimism.
But if you look at health, there were still a bunch of diseases that hadn't been conquered. Today is much better... if you can afford health insurance.
Technology? Today. No question.
Culture? They weren't on the 24th Marvel movie in the 1950s. Sure, there was a lot of schlock, too, but the original stuff was still original, not retreads of the same old stuff.
> They weren't on the 24th Marvel movie in the 1950s. Sure, there was a lot of schlock, too, but the original stuff was still original, not retreads of the same old stuff.
While there was a lot of innovation, we can say "original stuff was still original" even today. How would you classify Sorry to Bother You, Beau Is Afraid, or Hundreds of Beavers?
Plot wise, cinema back then still had a lot of stuff lifted from decades previous.
I don't think we're even that much more pessimistic, overall, though we might be.
24 hour news cycle may do something, but we had daily bad headlines for a long time before that.
If anything new is making us depressed, it's likely algorithmic attempts on our attention. A/B testing on the most engaging content, leading to addiction, as in people who hate that they waste all their time on their devices and yet can't bring themselves to stop. At least some of that may lead to negative affect, including pessimism but also dysmorphia and rage etc. depending on what the A/B testing finds works best for your demographic.
And zoning and giving landlords great benefits (some countries not taxing wins from rents, others allowing changing rent easily, etc.) really solved the problem? Multiple major countries (in which rent control is not a thing) have huge housing issues, so something should be done. For some places I would much prefer reducing regulation required for new constructions, but this is very situation dependant.
Why does this might not apply to other cases? Paris is very dense already, not a lot of places to build anyhow. What other policies are required? Ensure people do not buy only for investment and leave things empty - they raised the uninhabited tax to discourage that, will see if enough to make a dent.
Also in countries where rent control is a thing. About 20 years ago the government decided it was "good enough" and stopped nationally planned housing projects (which resulted in decentralized planning and mostly expensive, high profit, housing being build), 'motivated' the market by providing tax breaks (giving higher profit and less investment in non-controlled renting) and as a bonus taxed the subsidized housing market a flat rate on top (result: hardly any new construction or investment in subsidized housing).
Almost all measures since have been detrimental to new housing, great for real estate owners, extremely poor for renters and allowed house prices to skyrocket. None of these things are on their own and it's a more-or-less global thing but they've done a great job making it worse.
And as a bonus: this was projected to happen by the governmental planning agency and rejected as fearmongering.
In this instance, the price cap is working exactly as intended. The state pushes Total to introduce a price cap by threatening a windfall tax on the industry as a whole. Total accepts, and introduces a voluntary price cap, selling at the below-market rate in a first-come-first serve regime (which it can afford to do, as it's an integrated producer). Total serves fuel to the majority of motorists at the below-rate price. When Total runs out of fuel, motorists who do a lot of travelling then need to pay the above-market rate at E.Leclerc instead.
Without introducing an unpopular tax regime, the French govt has found a way to progressively increase prices for higher mileage motorists. Supplying most motorists at a reasonable price, while having high-mileage motorists pay the unsubsidised price for most of their petrol.
Rent control is nonsense. We need to control the renters. Because they are doing something incredibly harmful at the moment. The reason *I* am now far from a city with offices is directly related to rents being unbearable and own housing unobtainable outside of 10% best paying jobs in the city.
There is no real win for any city that becomes an eye candy for the entire world. Removing rent control without completely revamping your zoning restrictions achieves basically nothing.
People bring in Tokyo as an example, but there’s even a rent control-esque thing here - right to refuse. Technically landlord can increase the rent, but you can challenge and refuse it, to keep paying the original amount. Like rent is going up heavily over here (my neighbourhood is about 10% YoY). You can’t really even build up fast enough to accommodate demand.
Once again the top submission of HN is a LLM-generated article. I know we're not supposed to speculate on people reading past the title, but I incur you to read 3 paragraphs and tell me with a straight face that you did not eyeroll at every short, empty phrase stated with enormous confidence.
Be careful with this, you'll get burned sooner or later. Short sentences and breaking up the rhythm are often taught as good writing style. The people will also pick up some LLMisms, especially the non-native speakers. I enjoyed this prose, I felt like author had a very personal perspective to share. My AI BS detector didn't spike and I think your post is the over-confident one.
I vouched for your comment. HN's automod agrees that the OP is LLM text; and it's so high-confidence in its assessment, it flagged your comment, for quoting three lines of it.
I really appreciate the self reflection. For those of us that see it right away it's bewildering to read defenses of it as simply "good writing style". Even in the very first section it shouts Claude to me. Skimming I can understand.
The scary thing is that most of these Claudisms can be tuned down easily if that's what Anthropic was trying to do (and may in the future). Then it would be nearly impossible to tell.
I did not eyeroll at every short, empty phrase stated with enormous confidence. :|
It was a pleasant, concise and informative read. I actually read it from beginning to end. Unlike many of the artisanal articles starting with how the author experienced the crema of the morning's espresso.
> Half of its six biggest diesel plants cut or halted output this month
Claude chose a weird turn of phrase here. Does this mean "the smallest of the three was the sixth largest"? If the Ukrainians hit a tiny plant, will it now be "three of its hundred biggest diesel plants"?
Blame too much connectedness. Humans are not designed to be affected by things that happen 100's of miles away. They shouldn't even know the names or those far away places or people. They shouldn't have dependency on things that are produced far away.
Tribal populations lived isolated lives. Most of human life on Earth involved only small-sized settlements with occasional visitors from the far away places.
Connectedness opens the flood gates . You get inundated with news from every corner as if it is happening in you neighborhood and as if those are your people.
This is a way over dramatized pessimistic perspective. If you think this is bad, then look into world from an eye of a pole during 1772 (where Poland was even wiped off of the world map) or 1939 or any year during the Soviet rule.
Poland has become a rich country within one generation after the fall of Soviet Union and one of the safest countries in Europe at the moment. There's always gonna be crisis in the world but at the same time you have to admit that we're living in one of the most comfortable times for humanity general compared to past generations.
Sure, but that's also the point: the current status quo is/was mostly good, especially for Europeans and North Americans, but the multitude of global crises - the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, the Trump administration's (and the far right's in general) war on sanity, the AI disruption (both by the technology itself and by the financial upheaval it causes), not to forget the climate crisis - might just induce you to worry how long this status quo can be upheld.
> AI disruption (both by the technology itself and by the financial upheaval it causes)
If it wasn't for the AI we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the linked vibe coded site wouldn't even be built
Also learn to choose your battle. If you focus on everything that's going wrong in the world and spend all your energy on that, you're gonna have mental problems.
Nitpick: Poland was wiped off the map after the Third Partition in 1795, not after the first one in 1772. There was a Polish "Constitution of 3 May 1791."
The world always had problems. It's like software, the work is never done. Sometimes new times ask for new solutions, and people need to find them. Adapt or die.
I do think though it's a little dishonest to be this alarmed now just because the crisis is at your doorstep. There is continuous misery all around the globe which everyone should acknowledge. The wars in the middle east brought destruction for generation and for entire regions. I am not sure those people are worried about the interest rates in Japan as much as they are about surviving. Including the current war. Think about Iran and its government what you will, but when a school gets bombed, innocent children die. I am not sure I find this less concerning than the state of natural gas capacity in Germany. And I live in Germany.
As for the energy crisis, the solution is in front of us. If you don't want to depend on foreign fossil fuels start electrifying and switching to renewables and batteries. You can do it cheap and fast. In fact, this is already happening in parts of the world and they are much more shielded from the current issues than elsewhere.
I'm Polish, but this is such a pessimistic, overdramatic take. The visualisations are impressive, but you're living in Poland's golden age. See this Hacker News story with 1,000+ upvotes:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.
It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
That is actually an interesting point to consider. I have been living without reading or watching any local media. I also do not follow any politicians on "social media". I do not use Facebook. I get my tech news from Mastodon and HN, some of the world news trickles through to the tech world, and I get my world news update from The Economist, mostly Leaders section (and Science&Technology).
I don't care what scandalous thing a politician said on any given day. I do not want to be advertising or voting material, to be riled up and pitted against others.
That means that I can judge the state of things by simply living in the country and watching what happens around me, comparing it to other places I visit. And that paints a very positive picture of the reality that surrounds us. Even on a practical level, living in a city that is safe and clean with good public transportation is something I've learned to appreciate. There are very few places in the world where I would consider living at this point, and in summertime at least, when the weather is nice, I simply wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
I agree. My grandmother was not allowed to make decisions over her body, own a bank account, or work after marriage until the late 60s. For many of us, it's definitely a golden age of rights and possibilities.
Suicide decriminalisation, abortion and euthanasia legalization, decriminalisation of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, gender recognition, disability rights, abolition of death penalty, indigenous rights and land sovereignty, probably a lot more. That's in the eighties, nineties and two thousands, depending on the country.
That is just hope-believe, i.e. it ain't happening.
> It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
I lived through the 1990s here in Romania, the future does not look bright in the slightest. Yes, materially speaking we do have more stuff compared to the 1990s, a lot more stuff, but the opportunities in front of us are as slim as ever (which wasn't the case back in the 1990s). But maybe things look different for the Polish.
I would wager Iran is barely hanging on. The question is which side can hang on longer. Its like their both dangling off a cliff with their fingers on the edge - one due to politics, the other because they weren’t as strong as they projected from the start. I suspect Iran might hang on to after midterms.
Worth noting mid east is all looking for other routes now 3-5 years from now Iran will be in a weaker economic situation on reduced flow. Hopefully Theocracy has been ended.
> I would wager Iran is barely hanging on. The question is which side can hang on longer.
I think this applies to both sides, and the issue is that the people in power are not affected by the crises that cause hardship to ordinary people. Fanatical leadership can live by "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make" .
The problem though is that people in the USA do have one lever to pull on their government, in the form of approaching midterm elections, that the people of Iran do not. And the leadership of Iran knows it They may be fanatical and awful but they're not stupid - causing fuel shortages causes economic pain to ordinary people causes political pain to the USA.
Notwithstanding that, this assessment of blame is correct ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907371 ), the missteps that put us in this mess with no clear way out all come from stupid leadership in the USA.
Yes, I knew all along that I agreed with what you said, I was not trying to dispute what you said. Apologies if that wasn't clear to you, I should have started it with "yes, and" so that you would not take mistaken offence.
I don't agree that the consequential points are just "more language". I said things that you did not.
No offense taken - I always find most people try and take an opposing view for debate sakes. I was merely hoping you didn't think that was the case. Glad to see we agree.
> I lived through the 1990s here in Romania, the future does not look bright in the slightest.
Why? Inflation was much higher then. There were almost no highways. Very little foreign tourism. Towns were ugly. Industry was barely functioning. Etc. Things are way better now. Just because Romania has high debt is no reason to be pessimistic. Everybody does.
I was talking about the perspective on the future, we had that back in the 1990s, it is sorely missing now. No-one even dares mentioning about any “light at the end of the tunnel”, it’s everybody for himself (and for his/her family/clan) right now.
I don't live in Romania so I don't know the details but that probably makes me more objective. I think the situation is better for the future than it was in the 90s. In hindsight, back then it took many years for things to get better. Whereas now with so much upheaval in the world Romania is well-positioned to keep growing.
Yeah I struggle to think of a time in the last three hundred years that Poland was in a better position than it is today. Maybe like 2019 or so? And that is basically still the same era.
Yeah, we're new rich, but we're also old poor - the majority of millennials and the entire gen x have seen what a proper 3rd world country Poland was back in the 90s - that's the bulk of the current workforce. We've navigated worse crises.
golden age was precovid we are passed the peak even thought we got into G20 I suspect GDP increased a lot of because inflation.
Been living a lot in SE Asia in the last 12 years but ever yeah in poland for few months. There has been really big inflation in the last 2-3 years and everybody notice it.
Been twice this year in Italy, one time in alps and last week in puglia and there is a reason so many Poles go there for holiday - its cheaper or similar price but better than taking a holiday in poland.
That exact experience was my first day in Poland in the 80's. As a spoiled Western kid this was quite an eye opener. Lots of stuff I took for granted was reviewed in those years, and it affects me to this day.
Remember this is a war that Iran has spent 40 years planning for.
Netanyahu has been doing the same "two weeks away" stand-up comedy since 1992.
Netanyahu asked ever single US president. They all took advice and then went back with a polite "thanks, but no thanks".
You don't need to have access to super-secret intel to know going into this frivolous war was a very stupid idea. You just need to look at a standard map and use your brain.
Finally Mr Netanyahu found a stupid enough US president.
And the problem with the current US president is he won't accept a loss.
He is not the sort of person willing to accept he has bitten off more than he can chew.
Nor is he the sort of person who is willing to sit down and have a proper negotiated discussion. Infact he's the very person who just tore up the JPCOA seemingly just because he doesn't like Obama.
So we have a stalemate. And a US president who doesn't believe in diplomacy, old-school politics or anything else.
The more likely hyperbolic step would be to blow up outgoing pipelines and apply secondary sanctions. Or, as threatened, blow up power and water treatment plants killing large swaths of the civilian population. Nukes wouldn't be necessary to cause mass death.
Its not my area of expertise by any means, but I would perhaps point out the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve chart[1] which is at its lowest level since 1982.
It may well be that the artificial party cannot go on forever.
The US Petroleum Reserve is governmental, not done by the oil industry. The US government buys and stores oil when prices are low to provide a buffer for volatility in the markets or for things like natural disasters. The reserve being low means that the oil companies are very close to having a market that has no alternative but to pay whatever price is asked for oil.
To your point about oil and LNG being expensive to transport - that just means oil corps can turn down production at the locations impacted, and jack up the prices for whatever is produced in the locations that aren't. Lower operating costs + higher revenues = profits.
It really is a perfect storm for massive returns for the major players. As a bonus, it's impacting the Saudi and Russian national players, which are their toughest competition since they don't need to file any quarterly reports. I agree that it can't go on forever, but the oil industry is rolling around in money like Scrooge McDuck in the meantime.
True if goods are non-essential, false otherwise. It price of water went up 1,000% in my city demand would still be fairly strong (though sure we’d ration as much as we can)
This is probably the worst thing oil corps could ask for, and I can guarantee you with every ounce of my being that they are furious over this.
It might check the phantom "short term profits" box, but anyone with any modicum of business sense (and the oil boys are no amateurs) see this event as probably the largest nail ever driven into the oil coffin.
Trump could not have given a bigger gift to the anti-oil crowd, making every human on Earth think "Damn, this shit is getting expensive and unreliable, what alternatives are available?"
> see this event as probably the largest nail ever driven into the oil coffin.
It will probably go like this:
war -> fuel costs explode -> economic crisis -> AI bubble burst -> bigger economic crisis -> eventually rebuild on the ruins of what is left and go electric
Very brave take. Still, I hope that your kids, should you have some and grow wiser, won't grow up in a world that russia or iran shapes. The united states doesn't negotiate with terrorists.
I’m hoping they don’t grow up in one the US shapes if it continues to be run by a dictator loving sexual predator who thinks corruption isn’t just ok, but a mandatory part of government.
It’s also rich saying that the US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists while watching Trump verbally fellate Putin at every given opportunity.
The US very much has been trying to get Ukraine to surrender to Russia since Trump was elected. Quite nothing would seemingly please Trump more than Ukrainians rolling over and clearing the way to a fat kickback from Russia.
Trump recently signed a Russian sanctions bill and the State Department just cleared a $2.7 billion military sale to Ukraine. So, I don't know how you've arrived at your conclusions.
Yep, he says a lot of stupid stuff, but I care more about the actual actions that are being done. Despite what Trump says, the US has not stopped supporting Ukraine.
Have you noticed the small detail about the application of the sanctions bill that has been signed? Please tell us when you see something out of this bill, and the effect it has on whom.
War is big business. The biggest. My family, in Ukraine, would laugh at your basic level of understanding of the situation on the ground. It doesn't look like we're rolling over any time soon though, so there's that.
That's only technically true because "it isn't terrorism when it's done by us" is backed into the definition of the word terrorism.
The US is fine with state terrorism as long as it aligns with its interests. Especially evident with Trump as commander in chief, but that was also the case before.
Even the most charitable interpretation of this comment suggests that Trump is okay letting Iranians grow up in a country without electricity, clean water and denied any humanitarian aid. You'll note that many defense commentators called this a threat to commit war crimes, which the US has already supported through it's proxies like the IDF.
"When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons." - GM
I'm not a huge fan of the gay parade tbh, but I'm less a fan of countries that enact policies to hang those that would march in it. The world is moving forward, admittedly not everyone is invited. Sad all around.
>>You don't need to have access to super-secret intel to know going into this frivolous war was a very stupid idea. You just need to look at a standard map and use your brain.
Would that be the same Mark Rutte who referred to Trump as "daddy" during an alliance summit and sent him a flattering text message which Trump published[1] ?
Yeah. Erm. I think we know what side of the bread Mr Rutte butters his toast on.
Look up the paradox of tolerance. The tolerant should tolerate everyone except the intolerant. Trump and his cronies are clearly intolerant. Same reason you can’t let the neo-nazis hang out in your bar. They ruin it for everyone else.
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.” — Carl Sagan
Some of the smartest, honest and hard working people I know supported and voted for Trump.
We will see how history judges him as a president. My point is not that we should tolerate him out of principle but that you should try to understand his policies and the reason people voted for him twice. A lot of his policies enjoy majority support today as well and most of them are not straight up moronic as HN crowd would like you to believe.
Here we have NATO Secretary General and people are dismissing his opinion because "quote from random guy supporting Trump doesn't count". It's just ideological blindness/insanity at this point.
>>Trump and his cronies are clearly intolerant.
Well for one Trump ended a lot of racist policies of the previous administration so there is that.
In some areas he is way more tolerant and sensible than what US had before.
"Someone you don't like" is a bad way to describe it. It's not about disliking Trump (although I dislike the guy plenty). It's about the fact that he is, to quote his former Secretary of State, a fucking moron.
There are smart people I dislike. If someone supports them then I might look askance at that, but at least I can accept that this support might be based on that person's ability to think. Our disagreement is probably based on different values or different understandings of things, and that's useful to dig into.
When someone supports a profoundly stupid person, it's different. It's either a failure of judgment or it's a cynical ploy. Either way, there isn't a lot to be gained from analyzing the situation.
Although I support the idea that Rutte likely possesses a brain, I don't think he's a sensible example as an 'outside view' that tolerates Trump.
Put differently, I don't think a NATO can exist where the Sec. Gen. disagrees fundamentally with Trump. If that were to happen, NATO would simply cease to exist.
My understanding is that the US's longstanding evaluation is that their strategic goals in the region can't be met by brawling with Iran over the strait, and their best move is to avoid it. The actions of every previous administration align with this view.
Where Iran's strategic position can be improved by drawing the US into an open conflict. Disrupting global petroleum markets, forcing the US to spend disproportionate resources defending its regional allies or withdraw and admit it can't, weakening the US's influence as a diplomatic power, all are achievable (or, frankly, achieved) with this conflict.
The US has no comparable strategic wins to even aim for here. At this point their only reasonable goal is restoring open trade through the strait, the status quo before the conflict. Fighting a war to successfully reclaim the status quo that was disrupted by entering the war is, strategically, losing a war.
What do you mean by open conflict? I don't think you're taking in to account the costs to Iran and Iran's current capabilities. Iran's GDP has already contracted by 10%. We've already seen the most Iran can do.
> I don't think you're taking in to account the costs to Iran and Iran's current capabilities.
The US has incurred plenty of costs though....
Those very expensive billion-dollar THAAD radars of which there are "not many" in the world ? Those are not getting replaced any time soon. IIRC following the destruction they have redeployed the one they had stationed in South Korea, much to the annoyance of the Koreans.
All those very expensive fancy missiles that have been used ? Expensive to re-manufacture and long lead-time.
The jets, helicopters and drones the Iranians shot down ?
The cost of running those ships they have parked off the Iranian shores ?
Those AWS datacentres ?
And that's before we get to the broader indirect non-military economy impacts.
That's the whole point of this war and Iran knows it.
Yes, Iran's GDP might have contracted 10% but that's nothing compared to what the US has incurred and the impact on the rest of the world.
> We've already seen the most Iran can do.
Except as Iran has demonstrated with the entirely predictable Part 2, the Houthis enter stage-left and disrupt Bab.
So now the US have the mess they created in Hormuz, plus a second front in Bab.
The only way out of this is going to be the US accepting old-school diplomacy. More guns won't fix anything.
yep - very few know or acknowledge the damage the Iran war has done to the US GDP and war fighting (i.e weapons, industry) etc
largely due the us gvt hiding information, suppressing. e.g all the bases in the Middle East are toast in range of missiles or drones. that means the us will withdraw from them silently.
weapons stockpiles are almost depleted. and replacing them takes years.
I'll take "that" over a 10% GDP contraction every day of the week.
I really don't think you've considered the scale of these things. Yeah the US burned some billions of dollars and tens of lives. On the scale of the US, this is nothing compared to what Iran is experiencing.
It's not a stalemate. Best current estimates are that oil traffic through Hormuz is back to 80% of pre-war levels. This is not going well for the Iranian regime.
This is living in denial. Lots of Ukrainians didn't believe there's going to be war either. There are already Russian drones flying into Eastern European countries, while the US is lifting sanctions on Russia - you don't have to be a fortune teller to predict where this is going.
In 2016 I spoke with an Ukrainian in Germany. He was saying the war is in the easternmost regions, he's safe because he's from Kiev area. That's how war works, uninformed civilian never believes it's coming.
How? Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO on a front that it is continually pushing further west, with about 20% of Ukraine now lost. If anything NATO and the promise of US security is what has been shown to be weak. And I don't think the idea of US/Western superiority is ever going to come back to what it was given what has happened in the Ukraine and Iran theaters in recent past.
Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO
It is not. The primary reason that Russia can even keep up is that it has many more citizens that can be thrown in the meat grinder and can work in arms factories and it has a larger industrial base than Ukraine. If you would tell most experts before the invasion, that it would've ended up as it did, they would have laughed their heads off. They would have told you that the Ukraine army would not be a match for the Russian army and they would have told you that the response of the West would have been divided.
Russia has ~146M citizens, Ukraine has ~29M citizens within land that it currently controls. Russia's estimated GDP is $2.66 trillion, Ukraine's GDP is $225 billion. That's 5x as many citizens and a 10x larger economy.
A real conventional war against NATO would be a completely different story. Sure, NATO countries would have to catch up with drone production and defense, but a lot of knowledge transfer and co-development is already happening. But NATO's economy and population is several times larger than Russia's. If NATO countries switched to a war economy, it would not be a fair game.
Of course, Putin knows this and he also knows the real weaknesses: there is a change that not all countries will uphold Article 5 and coordination might end up in a mess if the US would bow out, because command & control has always largely been handled by the US. This is why he is constantly testing how strong Article 4 and 5 are on an escalating ladder. The other weakness are disinformation campaigns through social media, which are working really wel for them, both in the US and in various European countries.
(I don't think it's useful to talk about nuclear war, it will end up badly for everyone in a population center. There will be no winners, only losers.)
I am curious how Russian people feel about this propaganda line that they're fighting NATO. It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace." Russia borders NATO and there is no front there. Russia invaded a non-NATO country and immediately bogged down against an army that does not fight according to NATO doctrine. I have to believe this is something the average Russian realizes.
Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia.
NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union.
Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath.
Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest.
Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns.
The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve.
The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.
> Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
This is such obvious bullshit. Russia already has NATO on its borders, and is attempting to expand it's borders so they will contact even more of NATO.
Huh? Geography shows NATO borders Russia in Latvia and Estonia, now also Finland. Ukraine was neutral till 2014 when Russia invaded it. Russia is so full of shit. It's like 1984 war is peace type stuff.
> The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him
Not Russian either but also spent a lot of time out east.
Putin declared the war as a means of personal survival. The negotiations are possible only if he gets out of the way, and then, it's really important to make a Marshall plan for Russia because indeed lots of reputational damage has to be repaired by the "winners" in the Cold War.
That Putin has personal investment in this is not under question. I agree, there are things that he won't compromise on.
Does this mean the war continues till he dies? We could yet wait a long time.
Say he does fall over tomorrow, there's no guarantee what comes next is any better. Defeat in WWI brought about Nazi Germany. A Marshal Plan would more likely come from China.
He's had attempts on his life made. Do you think Russia will fall over if that's successful? Look at what's happened with Iran. Would Russia believe he had a heart attack if he had one?
It would be in everyone's best interests if this war was frozen exactly where it is, now. A continued war in Europe is bad for everyone, and could get much worse.
Defeat of Germany in WWII was followed by Marshall plan exactly to avoid the ressentiment that nourished the Nazis.
> He's had attempts on his life made
That's a dubious claim. Nothing that we know for sure. I've seen him hinting at that and at the danger to his family in interviews, but who takes his word for it?
> NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
NATO would not need to provide so much material, political, logistical, financial, and intelligence support to Ukraine if Russia just fucking left Ukraine.
The drain goes away if they stop invading a sovereign neighbor.
I'm not going to say that NATO materiel has had zero effect but I think what Russians (at least those in power) really can't reckon with is that their initial invasion got stopped by Ukrainian AD, artillery, armor, and soldiers operating on the same Cold War stockpiles and doctrine as they did. The single most valuable intervention from NATO was simply alerting Ukraine that Russia was about to invade, allowing the Ukrainians to disperse their units.
Russia committed to too many (and often poorly chosen) lines of advance and did not have a plan to keep their units adequately supplied and moving on the approach to Kiev. This meant even in the opening month of the invasion, their plan went south almost immediately and you had infamous miles-long traffic jams on the roads leading south. Their SEAD didn't work. Their soldiers were not told ahead of time that they were invading Ukraine. They didn't want to mobilize ahead of time, so they didn't amass enough forces. Against a large country like Ukraine you don't need to invent a NATO bogeyman to understand why the initial offensive failed. Credit to Ukraine, they did not allow a defeatist narrative to take hold and fought.
> Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Western companies, of course. Not oligarchs.
Please. Must be Western companies that threw orgies, spent hundreds of millions of rubles on parties and buying influence, started bandit wars, and feasted on leftovers of USSR industry.
> It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace."
Ukraine is armed in financially supported by NATO countries. Russian propaganda obviously exaggerates this fact. Western obviously propaganda downplays this fact. That's a Russian person's opinion you are looking for.
Do you mean a metaphorical front? Because on the ground, it's been a stalemate for the past year or so. Ukraine is often taking back chunks of territory.
Russia is claiming to fight NATO, but NATO hasn't even shown up yet, but Russia is struggling. If NATO were to go to war with Russia, there would be very little that Russia could do. The one thing they might be able to do is the reason NATO has been holding back.
Last time I was really paying close attention, there was heavy fighting in Pokrovsk, and Russia ended up taking it. Huliaipole was also a major fight. Ended up being taken. Myrnohrad, taken. Siversk, taken. These are all areas where I recall a lot of resistance and weeks or months long fighting. But in the end the Russian side prevails. However, I haven't been paying much attention in recent months. I've concluded that Russia is going to continue executing and will eventually end up with a settlement that they're happy with.
As far as NATO showing up, they have. To the tune of over 300 billion Euros. I'm not sure how you can claim Russia is not fighting NATO. Zelenskyy is constantly requesting more and more funds and weaponry from the west, because without it, the Ukrainian side would not be able to put up the resistance that they have been.
Their money shows up, their troops don't. NATO could send their own troops and probably liberate southern Ukraine quite quickly, but they're reluctant to get their hands dirty. The only way Russia is fighting NATO is how Nazi Germany was fighting the US on the eastern front: equipment and supplies.
And yes, Russia has taken some towns, but so has Ukraine. Ukraine just took Lyman back (again) as well as a bunch of land north of Lyman, undoing recent Russian advances there. It's the same story in many places: Russia spends a year making some small gains and extreme cost, and then Ukraine takes most of it back again.
It's a stalemate. There hasn't been any significant progress from either side in years. And what Russian progress there is, comes at a steep cost in lives, whereas Ukraine recently took some ground with nothing but drones.
Russia is on equal footing with a country third of its size that is supported by a small fraction of NATO's GDP. You can barely tell the difference between a territorial control map from 2023 and 2026. Neither side is capable of achieving its goals through military action.
Ukraine us unlikely to get back most of the territory it lost in 2022, but Russia is also unlikely to even finish capturing the remaining parts of the Donetsk oblast, let alone the rest of Ukraine. It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population. Donetsk oblast still has a heavily fortified urban area with a prewar population of 500k under Ukrainian control.
>You can barely tell the difference between a territorial control map from 2023 and 2026
Last time I was paying close attention (maybe 8 months ago) the fighting was heavy in Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and not yet in Konstantynivka. Now all three of those are well within Russian control. And that seems to be the story all over the front. There may be some temporary regressions, and occasional slow downs, but overall the Russian side is continually pushing.
> It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population
They're not moving quickly. That's the way they're choosing to fight the war, and also due to the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian side, along with roughly 300 billion Euros pumped into the war by NATO so far. I don't think the slow methodical approach is evidence of weakness. Taking the average territory capture rate since 2022, the entire Donbas would be under Russian control mid next year. Using only the relatively slow 2026 rates, the entire Donbas would still be under Russian control in less than 5 more years.
Russia isn't slow because it's methodical, it's just throwing all of the bodies it can buy at the problem, and the small advancements they get is what they buy with tens of thousands casualties per month. This is doing significant macroeconomic damage to Russia.
Years to capture Donbass is an absolutely pathetic rate of advance for an army that was supposed to be second in the world, fighting a war on its border.
Ukraine is large and conquering all of it would be a massive challenge for any army, but relative to resources Russia has available to it, its performance is awful.
If Russia was fighting the entirety of NATO, they'd lose the war in a week. They're fighting the entirety of Ukraine, with NATO dribbling in supplies to help out. NATO help is absolutely tiny compared to what they could be doing.
Dzień Dobry :-) Poland is very modern on the surface. Very clean. Very safe. And an economic success story. As long as private sector goes and its citizens ambitions it is doing fantastic. However the society is a bit anachronistic. The same goes with the public sector. Yes, you get mObywatel app, and so many public services can be done online nowadays including court proceedings. The problem is quite subtle, not easily seen on the surface. I.e. once you hit issues like, say, divorce, or taxes, or the army mentality, politicians, local government, out of sudden you are transported back to 1960s. Not even 1989 when the communism in Poland collapsed. Like two decades earlier than that. You need to persuade the court you can have divorce. Not like in any other Western country. It isn't sufficient you want one. You need to persuade the court you can have one. When they wrote the law in 1960s it made sense. In communism the Party decided if an individual can have a divorce (in a sense). Not the individual. In the West if an individual says, I want a divorce, they file the paperwork and they will get the divorce. In Poland, nope. You need to persuade the court the marriage can't be repaired. Doesn't matter what you want, the state (the party) knows better when your marriage is over. So they will drag you for months, years every time the judge asking: "are you sure you don't want to go back to her?". Because the state knows better and many people will go back just because in 1960s divorce was the end of the world. Today, in 2026, it is an administrative task. As long as the society lives in 2026 that is. The same logic still persists in polish courts for other cases. Not really anything got reformed in polish court system since 1960s. Other weird things, like lawyers inheriting positions in courts by birthright. Your dad is a judge? Well, you will be too. Your dad works in Ikea as a clerk? Well, good luck! That's not 1960s anymore. That's Middle Ages. The same with Medical Doctors, other public professions. They are inherited. Honestly, the whole public sector stinks. Never reformed. While the private sector -- built from zero and world class. Just saying, it is different deep down than on the surface level. And there is a much deeper problem to it. Historically, Army, in any nation, has been a product of public sector. Not private sector. Anachronistic, corrupted public sector won't produce modern army. It will produce corrupt public servants buying tanks as if it is... 1960s. And that's the real problem that Poland has now with Russian jet drones hitting targets in Ukraine mere meters from the border check points.
> You need to persuade the court you can have divorce.
What makes you think no-fault divorce is desirable? Stable marriages are integral not only to the individual well-being of those who are married, but to a healthy society in general. No-fault divorce is one of the worst developments in the West, because it feeds mediocrity, selfishness, convenience, and self-indulgence. Requiring a grave reason seems utterly sensible. Do vows mean nothing? Are they just nice little lies to tell each other?
So, making civil divorce more difficult to obtain is beneficial, because individuals are weak, and indeed one of the purposes of the law in general is to teach and to help guide people toward a good life. So, here, by making divorce more difficult, it assists in getting couples to work their issues out. Speaking from experience, I know marriage forces a kind of ultimatum: either ship up as a human being—either keep chiseling away at becoming a better person by becoming a better spouse—or prepare for a miserable marriage. And let's not flatter ourselves: many people choose the latter and reach for the easy way out with divorce.
Appealing to Western hyper-individualism falls on deaf ears, because we've seen the effects of hyper-individualism. Collectivism is bad, but the extreme of hyper-individualism isn't good, either. Why would you want to replicate the tangible failures of the West in your country?
To stop the advance and drag it into positional warfare whole europe had to scrape for surplus arms, US provides a ton of munitions and guidance, the financial burden carried by the EU is absolutely insane - Ukarine's military budget is 40% of its GDP excluding direct military aid, etc.
Of course the war didn't go as to RF's regime boasting, but of all things it actually proved that the regime is not to be underestimated - they are very flexible, can adapt well and are very fast at adopting technology into the field.
I mean, we know now that they are not as powerful as they marketed - but the only other country who has engaged in a direct war with a peer adversary is Ukraine, and we don't know how prepared every other country is in practice.
I wish all the best for Poland and Polish people, but I don't think we should hedge our bets on nation-states and the situation around that going forth in 21st century
does anybody else wonders how this isn't a good old wishful thinking, when with 350+ billions of dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine, all sorts of intelligence and tech help, total and forced mobilization in Ukraine (while only one partial in Russia in 2022), all sanctions on Russia you can think of - even with all of that "weak Russia" after 4+ years of war still controls almost 20% of the Ukraine counting Crimea and it's not really changing?
or maybe there is a difference between "not as strong as was thought" and "weak" after all?
The "not really changing" part is what shows Russia is weak.
Also, Russia cannot keep this going indefinitely. The West can. There is some question about whether Ukraine can or can't, but from an endurance perspective, there is absolutely no question who has the upper hand. Nobody west of Ukraine is on a war footing, we're all working our day jobs, taking vacations, and growing our economies.
$350 billion of foreign aid sounds like a lot until you realize the GDP of NATO is more than $55 trillion. We could keep this going forever.
Russia is spending 7-10% of its GDP, and fully half of its federal spending, on the war. And that probably understates because Russia forces war spending onto localities and companies. This will come to an end eventually; time is not on Russia's side.
I think weak compared to people thinking of them taking over Europe. They still have a lot of military though and the result in Ukraine is up in the air still.
Russia is not weak, Putin has millions who will run to their death with open arms into Poland. How many Poles are willing to die to stop him? He could send 400 Jet drones into Poland every night, how do you propose you stop him? 10's of 1000's of Russian saboteurs in the EU, how do you find them? You even have Political Parties that want to enslave their own people for Russia. Iran hasn't lost its grip in 40 years, the USA doesn't have the resolve to finish what they started or protect Europe.
Tell me how you would solve all the other issues, I am interested.
lol what a hypocrite. when he was getting uncle sam's money and security umbrella, he was happy and not questioning anything then now facing a bit of the reality scared my poor poles
This is generally a great article. I just wish the author would also mention how Poland (among other EU countries) is also hyper focusing on populist policies that benefit the older generations while heavily burdening the younger generations with a cost of these policies.
This is even a bigger problem than all these named external dependencies (which may or may not hurt us).
I think that's a problem in almost every European country. The politicians are creating policies to make their voter base happy so they would get elected on the next term and due to the aging population and low birth rates for decades the biggest voter base is the older, mostly boomer generation.
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[ 0.87 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadMany generations are. Last century saw the collapse of the British and Soviet empires - titans by any measure - through mismanagement. Europe as an international power was also broken (compared to how they used to be). I can easily imagine 1900s me fleeing to America in fear of the end times and feeling quite justified in his choices with hindsight. Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
Most of the people who died didn't get an opportunity to complain, so we live with some serious survivorship bias on how bad things got.
OTOH, mobility is a privilege, and it's usually the least privileged who are the most affected by war. So I'm not exactly sure how I feel about my own advice, since it's most useful to those that need it least.
We made it a priviledge, but for a biological being, it's the most natural thing to do when you find yourself in a place that is shitty. There is a reason so many risk truly awful things to get a chance (chance!) at a better life: going to where food and safety is, is just what living beings do.
It also depends who you are. A very large fraction of American trans people (not a large absolute number, only a few hundred thousand) have moved from R states to D states recently due to repression, such as Kentucky revoking their driving licenses.
I do think the best political-economic era of my life was 1997-2001: election of Tony Blair until 9/11, covering the first internet boom. That was the closest to "world peace". That includes the Israel-Palestine peace process and the reconciliation of the post-Soviet states into Europe. If that had worked better, with a democratic Russia, the world would be a very different place today.
Americans just end up paying for a lot of things that are either undesirable for many Poles (e.g., a huge McMansion in desolate suburbs and the car to drive there) or paid for via other means (e.g., healthcare.)
Oh, best of luck convincing Americans that paying twice as much for shitty health insurance than you pay in 'high' general tax levels is somehow a bad deal for them. Until they actually live the experience they just cannot comprehend the second and third order benefits of a real social system.
How do you define "average living standard", so that it would take a colossal disaster to have US reduced to that of Poland?
US median income is just over 19 k international dollars, Poland is just under 9 k. Still a big difference but just over a factor of 2 instead of over 3.5.
See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
In a more homogenous society, such as Poland’s in comparison to the United States, it also in my observation trends to be easier for wealth distribution to flatten.
Maybe the US has more kids per capita too which would also affect that value depending on how it is being measured. Not to say that anything is being hidden there, just something to think about that may make you interpret the data differently or think about it differently.
US folks have more money on average, but are forced to spend them in ways ie europeans don't have to - top notch education and healthcare costs are huge in US for large part of population and compose big part of expected savings of parents and older folks, while an afterthought in Europe. How do you compare that.
Plus places in Europe like Switzerland have long term way higher living standards by any measure than even good places in US. Europe is big and diverse in ways US simply never was, it would do you good to travel the world a bit and see and experience it with your own eyes.
I think mismanagement is not accurate. The Soviet system was flawed and inefficient and could not compete. The European empires were made untenable by the world moving on: economic, technological and political changes.
I think Europe and America had a golden age when they were at peace and dominated the world economically from the 80s to this century, and forgot neither of these is a given.
Too late to edit now.
How are you supposing that it looks like the US may crumble? I don’t understand where these kinds of comments come from, aside from perhaps verbalizing something one might want to see instead of what is factually true.
The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
The US has canceled all military guarantees and aligned with two different fascist states, so military cooperation is unwinding.
It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
That's not what a decoupling looks like. Investors are probably just not buying because they know rates are going to go up. The Federal Reserve already strongly signaled another rate hike by end of year. Why would you buy something today that you can wait and buy for a better price later?
Second, if you want to make an argument about interest rates or the debt, you first have to make that argument and resolve it for the UK, Italy, France, and others.
Third, the USD is just the dominant reserve currency. It's not the only one. A reserve currency is just one that banks hold in reserve. The reason the US is involved in the Middle East is to protect the Petro-dollar which generally "requires" oil purchases to be settled in dollars. The trade off is we keep Iran in check from destroying the gulf countries.
> The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
This doesn't make any sense. The US is also the largest oil and gas producing country in the world. Even for the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea you can read for yourself that the US has been able to break through and Saudi Arabia has quickly repaired the east-west pipeline and 3.5+ million barrels are flowing through there now (IIRC 60% or so of pre-attack volume). Either way, most of those flows go to Europe and Asia, not the US. So while the US is oil dependent (all countries are) I don't think your assertion is entirely accurate.
> It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
That doesn't make any sense either. We manufacture all kinds of things, including incredibly advanced equipment. We make airplanes, we make semiconductors, pharmaceutical goods.
> What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
If we don't have oil neither does anyone else. Except that we do have oil so our nuclear powered aircraft carriers would just use our own oil for the jets.
That limited government is looking shaky right now. It's mostly Trump, but it's not just Trump - Congress has been increasingly worthless over the last couple of decades, and so the President has to rule more and more by executive decree. But Trump is pushing the boundaries of what the Constitution allows the government to do far harder than any President that I remember, even Nixon.
And if we lose the limited government, then within a generation or two, we're going to lose the rest. It won't be immediate (unless you fall afoul of the government), but it will come.
Well it's part of it. The other part is China does not want the value of its currency to rise and as an export-oriented economy they have a desire to manipulate their currency to keep it lower to ensure exports are highly competitive. That's not an allegation or a conspiracy or anything, but a fact. Being the dominant reserve currency as the USD is (remember it's not the only reserve currency) has a lot of benefits but some drawbacks too.
I don't think that American limited government is looking shaky right now. I agree Congress is becoming increasingly worthless but it's something that can be fixed if we want to. I also would suggest not being confused about Trump does big headline thing as a representation that America's government is shaky or something. He has pushed boundaries, but some of those boundaries are quite literally up for interpretation and while he may push those boundaries he also doesn't go around and advertise all the court or legislative set backs that have occurred.
The Iran war is actually a decent example - he does not have an authorization to use force beyond the limit authorized by Congress. While we're conducting limited retaliatory strikes (Congress wouldn't disagree with doing so except maybe the pro-ayatollah/anti-liberal faction (Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for example) and engaging in a naval blockade, Trump has had to follow the rule of law here and step back more grand ambitions and plans. Now of course he may do something and we'll have to see how the system responds, but everyday law and order and such is proceeding as it has for quite some time. To be frank, it's actually a little bit worse but that's not really due to Trump so much as it is to policing failures and anti-social behavior we're tolerating when we shouldn't.
- To maintain fellowship, the empire spreads money to buy influence
- eventually this starts to cost too much, so the empire reduces spending
- wars ensue and independent voices emerge
- unable to establish order, the empire loses its influence and collapses
You can see this patterns as the US is overspending (high debt / trade deficit) while reducing its diplomatic influence on international programs. Not sure how they can save the USD value over time.
The Israel wanted a confrontation with Iran, and used it's --as we now all know-- pit-bull lapdog USA to do most of it for them. They killed Iran's leader and some of his family: something we long ago decided is "not modern".
Both countries are not giving in. And they should not. These are existential matters for them; they crossed red lines; they are illegal escalations by all rules and conventions. But the west can do what it wants.
Now Europe is caught in the middle. US has fuel, and basically annexed Venezuela. Europe has to pay through the nose for energy.
The narrative has never been more blatantly misconstrued in the corporate media: Russia will not attack Europe, and if genocidal-Israel can have illegal A-bombs while refusing inspections why bother with Iran doing the same?
Fearmongering. All to "save our democracies and freedom". It's getting old really quick. And combined with ridiculous immigration policies they may destroy Europe as we know it in a few decades, I'm afraid. But saying so, results in the immediate "extreme right-wing Putin propagandist" label, and thus can be disregarded.
- what action specifically is the west pushing Zelenski away from Minsk?
- why is the Ukraine war a lost cause if it is tying up Russian military resources?
- how does Merkel wish for a stronger Ukraine defense indicate a wish for confrontation instead of a deterrence against it?
- how does northstream, which seems to be Ukraine going against “the west”, an evidence for the west wanting a confrontation with Russia?
- what action specifically is the west pushing Zelenski away from Minsk?
Both Minsk and Istanbul accords would have been signed if the west did not encourage Zelenski not to sign. The BoJo visit is widely quoted.
- why is the Ukraine war a lost cause if it is tying up Russian military resources?
Ukraine itself it lost. Maybe the west-coalition still finds it useful. But the country is now conscripting women. They do not have the men anymore. No airdefence. Losing land at an ever increasing pace. Attack on russian industry are countered with 10x harder attacks on ukrainian industry. Supporting coutries less willing to give to Zelenski. Country is in shambles.
- how does Merkel wish for a stronger Ukraine defense indicate a wish for confrontation instead of a deterrence against it?
If you are a guarantor country for a de-escalation peace deal, it is dirty to merely hold up appearances in order to buy Ukraine time to strengthening them for the confrontation that you know will come. That's two-faces guarantorship.
- how does northstream, which seems to be Ukraine going against “the west”, an evidence for the west wanting a confrontation with Russia?
As long as the NS is operating, Germany and Russia have strong economic ties. Breaking those ties by an act of industrial terrorism (by Ukraine on Germany -- which should trigger a NATO-art5 in normal situations) is bringing NATO more together. Germany has to buy energy from the US now. Lol.
Literally how did you come to the conclusion this was written by ChatGPT? The text is clearly written by a polish person that speaks fluent english as a second language - I know cause I am one. Telltale signs are sentences like "Meanwhile, shares are at records" which is an overly direct translation of the polish equivalent, where the word "rekord" by itself implies a record high whereas in english you'd make it explicit.
There may have been some human involvement with this website but they certainly didn’t edit it for style. Unfortunately if you don’t edit for style then people will default to the assumption that it’s entirely vibecoded.
- "But the same closure that empties a granary fills somebody’s brokerage account." Claude is obsessed with comparisons linked by "the same". There are several instances, like "Poland made the same swap, with oil" (but that one is odd because "the same" isn't referring to anything).
- "Europe’s potato belt tells the story in a single season": Claude also loves this "noun verbs the noun in a single noun" phrasing.
- "A country that loses its regular supplier does not only pay more. It ends up dealing with people it does not know." Claude's classic "it's not X, it's Y" constructions.
- "Strategists do not describe a stampede home. They describe Japan quietly ceasing to be the buyer everyone could count on, and long-term borrowing costs rising everywhere as a result." A variant following the pattern "it's not X, it's Y, and Z as a result." This is an interesting pattern, one that I don't think I've ever seen a human write. A human would likely write "...leading to rising long-term borrowing costs" or similar.
- The use of a verb (rising) there in the third part is typical Claude, as it really likes to verb when a noun would read better. Other examples: "markets price another rise"; "volume freezes, prices stay put and sellers wait"; "after five years the rate floats".
- "The test Tusk describes is a test of belief, and it arrives just as the Pentagon decides how many Americans stay." The juxtaposition here (a test that arrives) is very odd and typical of Claude.
- What's also generally striking is the proliferation of "X becomes Y" phrasings, which is something Claude loves to do. Price shock turned into empty pumps. A story is told in a single season.
I'll stop there.
What's fascinating to me is that I personally find this kind of text exhausting to read, but apparently other people don't notice it at all.
If we ignore the AI stuff, I will still say this is not good writing. What's so grating and noticeable for me is the monotonous style. The short, clipped sentences like little stabs of information. It never varies; the tempo is just fact, fact, fact. It's absolutely exhausting to read pages and pages of this.
Good non-fiction writing is enjoyable to read for a myriad reasons; authors use metaphor, juxtaposition, tempo, humor, irony, allusion, and all sorts of techniques to make an article enjoyable to read. Just throwing down facts one after another with this kind of breathless, staccato noir voice is not that, in my personal opinion.
I don't know how much AI is to blame, maybe the Polish version is different or if this is a deliberate style.
It leads nicely into a conclusion that, even without the preface, seems reasonable: build personal buffers of water, electricity, and cash.
For instance: it's mentioned that EU gas storage is at 67% and Germany's at 56%.
What is not mentioned though is that Poland's storage is at 97% because the previous administration, for better or worse, was paranoid enough to invest in a sizeable marine gas terminal and the current one stocked up early.
Regarding real estate: adjusted for inflation prices peaked 2.5 years ago, interest rates are also much lower than back then. Nobody is buying because all the Ukrainian refugees who were moving to Poland are here already and that's the last bump in population this country will see for the foreseeable future.
Also there's the threat of war on Polish soil, which affects investor sentiment.
Depends from person to person, what you want from life, what career your in, what your finances look like and what your family/relationship status is. One can argue that the smaller cities in EU are often times better to live in than the capitals and major economic ones, that is if you aren't dependent on the corporate/big-tech careers that are mostly dominant in the major cities which tend to suffer from high housing shortages and higher crime or at least more roughness. But then, if you avoid the big expensive cities, you also miss out on the more developed public transport, meaning a car might be required to save on commute times, the big airports with cheap international flights, top hospitals and medical specialists, etc. In the end, everything is a tradeoff, you can't have it all, all of the time.
>Maybe it doesn't matter how livable or beautiful Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Stockholm, Sardinia, or whichever is, if you are never going to get roof over your head there.
That's also how I see it. The whole "X city is most livable" is so fucking subjective, that I just can't take those "livability" rankings I see online with a straight face.
Just because the numbers might be small if germany doesn't has enough gas and some old fragile human being might die of this or because they cant afford the gas, its still no way to die in a country like germany.
Though sometimes I still get pulled in, like now.
Unless you mean nazi invasions ofc in which case you’re just a troll.
https://energiedashboard.admin.ch/gas/eu-gasspeicher
For instance, Italy has more storage capacity per capita despite very similar consumption (~10TWh/1mln population) and they're already at 86%+.
Meanwhile indeed Poland has much less storage (about a third of Germany per capita), but it also uses it less (half the consumption of Germany per capita).
I must ask: what the hell are the Germans waiting for?
Bureaucracy, most likely. That and in-fighting (I count NIMBY as an example of that, but not the only thing).
Here's a train station in Berlin, whose upgrade is currently 20 years behind schedule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Köpenick_station
Plus, our chancellor has zero experience in governing anything (he's not even been mayor before) and is firmly stuck in thinking like a Blackrock executive.
So, to answer your question: We are waiting for a government that is not entirely in the pocket of those that want to stick to the status quo and profit from crises as long as possible.
Which former employer is going to make a quick buck? The grid operator or the grid operator lobbyist? Besides, who is going to profit from a price spike when the whole point is that the summer-winter spread is inverted, so no one expects to make money from injecting?
Well, both. Katherina Reiche was CEO of Westenergie until she joined the current government; and was, at the same time, listed as a lobbyist. She also caused controversy when she presented a plan for energy politics that was _very similar_ to plans by major electricity providers (including the parent company of her previous company). Or when she directly asked the electricity provider EnBW for better arguments why we should build more gas power plant (directly violating lobbying laws). That's just a small excerpt; the list of controversy is long.
But tbh, I don't think there's a big conspiracy about the empty gas tanks. Yes, Reiche is most likely corrupt (which is a huge deal), but afaiu, the gas tanks are empty because nobody wants to pay for the gas right now.
PS: Just today, Reiche ordered Sefe GmbH to stockpile more gas [1]. Sefe is conveniently a public company. So private companies don't have to buy expensive gas, because the public is going to take care of it.
[1] https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2026-09/gasspeicher-deutschla...
I stand by the rest, though. She's really a blight on our energy policies and development.
I still remember some of the lyrics to Der Steuersong.
I don't know if Putin is crazy enough to chance it, but I wouldn't put it past him to do so.
But even then, Russia would need to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops and that is not something you can pull off in a week, or even a month.
A country that is rained on by 500 drones daily delivering 125KG explosives (so like a proper standard bomb dropped from airplanes) can overwhelm local military defense capacities quickly, leave infrastructure in crumbles (as in no water, electricity, gas, heating, gas stations working and so on) and at least in dictator's mind local population may crumble in weeks. You don't need to put a single foot in the country to reduce critical infra to rubble.
I can't imagine Polish folks would ever bow to russians after horrible things they repeatedly done to them, but ie in Slovakia it would be a very quick victory even if country wouldn't be ruled by ultra corrupt folks who would just give whole country to russians for some more corruption promises for later.
If puttin' will try anything in eastern Europe now is the best time. But I would expect more something along Moldova or baltics, Poland is far from russia and any extra force concentration in Kaliningrad would be easy to see.
Is this an effect of social media and the 24 news cycle that has negative headlines on repeat?
I would say that the 1950s were better economically, at least in the US. If you were working class, you could make a living, and offer your children a better life than you had. That led to optimism.
But if you look at health, there were still a bunch of diseases that hadn't been conquered. Today is much better... if you can afford health insurance.
Technology? Today. No question.
Culture? They weren't on the 24th Marvel movie in the 1950s. Sure, there was a lot of schlock, too, but the original stuff was still original, not retreads of the same old stuff.
I like life now. But I'm not working class...
While there was a lot of innovation, we can say "original stuff was still original" even today. How would you classify Sorry to Bother You, Beau Is Afraid, or Hundreds of Beavers?
Plot wise, cinema back then still had a lot of stuff lifted from decades previous.
Like, Westerns date to at least 1903: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_...
And the first Western film was inspired by Wild West shows that started before the Old West era even finished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_shows
24 hour news cycle may do something, but we had daily bad headlines for a long time before that.
If anything new is making us depressed, it's likely algorithmic attempts on our attention. A/B testing on the most engaging content, leading to addiction, as in people who hate that they waste all their time on their devices and yet can't bring themselves to stop. At least some of that may lead to negative affect, including pessimism but also dysmorphia and rage etc. depending on what the A/B testing finds works best for your demographic.
It's almost s if economic theories actually describe reality! Given that it's economy 101 predicting that this would happen.
Still, people do it again and again. Rent control proponents for housing should take notice.
Rent control working depends on multiple other policies and on the characteristics of the place. For Paris for example it did seem to have a positive effect: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05315123v1/file/Morin%20et%20al.%20...
Why does this might not apply to other cases? Paris is very dense already, not a lot of places to build anyhow. What other policies are required? Ensure people do not buy only for investment and leave things empty - they raised the uninhabited tax to discourage that, will see if enough to make a dent.
Almost all measures since have been detrimental to new housing, great for real estate owners, extremely poor for renters and allowed house prices to skyrocket. None of these things are on their own and it's a more-or-less global thing but they've done a great job making it worse.
And as a bonus: this was projected to happen by the governmental planning agency and rejected as fearmongering.
Without introducing an unpopular tax regime, the French govt has found a way to progressively increase prices for higher mileage motorists. Supplying most motorists at a reasonable price, while having high-mileage motorists pay the unsubsidised price for most of their petrol.
People bring in Tokyo as an example, but there’s even a rent control-esque thing here - right to refuse. Technically landlord can increase the rent, but you can challenge and refuse it, to keep paying the original amount. Like rent is going up heavily over here (my neighbourhood is about 10% YoY). You can’t really even build up fast enough to accommodate demand.
The scary thing is that most of these Claudisms can be tuned down easily if that's what Anthropic was trying to do (and may in the future). Then it would be nearly impossible to tell.
It was a pleasant, concise and informative read. I actually read it from beginning to end. Unlike many of the artisanal articles starting with how the author experienced the crema of the morning's espresso.
Claude chose a weird turn of phrase here. Does this mean "the smallest of the three was the sixth largest"? If the Ukrainians hit a tiny plant, will it now be "three of its hundred biggest diesel plants"?
Tribal populations lived isolated lives. Most of human life on Earth involved only small-sized settlements with occasional visitors from the far away places.
Connectedness opens the flood gates . You get inundated with news from every corner as if it is happening in you neighborhood and as if those are your people.
You are not designed for this.
Poland has become a rich country within one generation after the fall of Soviet Union and one of the safest countries in Europe at the moment. There's always gonna be crisis in the world but at the same time you have to admit that we're living in one of the most comfortable times for humanity general compared to past generations.
If it wasn't for the AI we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the linked vibe coded site wouldn't even be built
Also learn to choose your battle. If you focus on everything that's going wrong in the world and spend all your energy on that, you're gonna have mental problems.
Which would be good - we don't need AI propaganda slop like this page.
I do think though it's a little dishonest to be this alarmed now just because the crisis is at your doorstep. There is continuous misery all around the globe which everyone should acknowledge. The wars in the middle east brought destruction for generation and for entire regions. I am not sure those people are worried about the interest rates in Japan as much as they are about surviving. Including the current war. Think about Iran and its government what you will, but when a school gets bombed, innocent children die. I am not sure I find this less concerning than the state of natural gas capacity in Germany. And I live in Germany.
As for the energy crisis, the solution is in front of us. If you don't want to depend on foreign fossil fuels start electrifying and switching to renewables and batteries. You can do it cheap and fast. In fact, this is already happening in parts of the world and they are much more shielded from the current issues than elsewhere.
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.
It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
Bro, try to open other media then tvn, onet or wyborcza. I dare you, because it feels like are living in a honey sweet liberal "eu is the way" bubble.
I don't care what scandalous thing a politician said on any given day. I do not want to be advertising or voting material, to be riled up and pitted against others.
That means that I can judge the state of things by simply living in the country and watching what happens around me, comparing it to other places I visit. And that paints a very positive picture of the reality that surrounds us. Even on a practical level, living in a city that is safe and clean with good public transportation is something I've learned to appreciate. There are very few places in the world where I would consider living at this point, and in summertime at least, when the weather is nice, I simply wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
I'm not discounting the value of the good things you mention, but is there anything else to add to the 'golden age' description?
That is just hope-believe, i.e. it ain't happening.
> It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
I lived through the 1990s here in Romania, the future does not look bright in the slightest. Yes, materially speaking we do have more stuff compared to the 1990s, a lot more stuff, but the opportunities in front of us are as slim as ever (which wasn't the case back in the 1990s). But maybe things look different for the Polish.
Worth noting mid east is all looking for other routes now 3-5 years from now Iran will be in a weaker economic situation on reduced flow. Hopefully Theocracy has been ended.
I think this applies to both sides, and the issue is that the people in power are not affected by the crises that cause hardship to ordinary people. Fanatical leadership can live by "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make" .
The problem though is that people in the USA do have one lever to pull on their government, in the form of approaching midterm elections, that the people of Iran do not. And the leadership of Iran knows it They may be fanatical and awful but they're not stupid - causing fuel shortages causes economic pain to ordinary people causes political pain to the USA.
Notwithstanding that, this assessment of blame is correct ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907371 ), the missteps that put us in this mess with no clear way out all come from stupid leadership in the USA.
I don't agree that the consequential points are just "more language". I said things that you did not.
Why? Inflation was much higher then. There were almost no highways. Very little foreign tourism. Towns were ugly. Industry was barely functioning. Etc. Things are way better now. Just because Romania has high debt is no reason to be pessimistic. Everybody does.
> That is just hope-believe, i.e. it ain't happening.
Best estimates are that 80% of the pre-war levels of oil are flowing through Hormuz right now. It's happening.
What are you hoping for?
Been living a lot in SE Asia in the last 12 years but ever yeah in poland for few months. There has been really big inflation in the last 2-3 years and everybody notice it.
Been twice this year in Italy, one time in alps and last week in puglia and there is a reason so many Poles go there for holiday - its cheaper or similar price but better than taking a holiday in poland.
No one in the West has had the Eastern European experience of queuing for bread for hours and discovering there isn't any.
In the West we have exceptionally strong normalcy bias and can't imagine a world with severe scarcity.
In countries like Poland that's still lived memory.
Remember this is a war that Iran has spent 40 years planning for.
Netanyahu has been doing the same "two weeks away" stand-up comedy since 1992.
Netanyahu asked ever single US president. They all took advice and then went back with a polite "thanks, but no thanks".
You don't need to have access to super-secret intel to know going into this frivolous war was a very stupid idea. You just need to look at a standard map and use your brain.
Finally Mr Netanyahu found a stupid enough US president.
And the problem with the current US president is he won't accept a loss.
He is not the sort of person willing to accept he has bitten off more than he can chew.
Nor is he the sort of person who is willing to sit down and have a proper negotiated discussion. Infact he's the very person who just tore up the JPCOA seemingly just because he doesn't like Obama.
So we have a stalemate. And a US president who doesn't believe in diplomacy, old-school politics or anything else.
At least he hasn't yet gone nuclear (metaphorically but also literally)
Maybe the only possible bit of credit we can give the guy is he said no when the Israelis wanted to use theirs.
Isn't it after all supposedly the world's worst kept secret that they have some too ?
But I'm also kind of concerned what happens in the unlikely event he does well in the mid-terms, and the same after the Israeli elections ....
It's at everyone else's expense, but so is everything else they do.
Its not my area of expertise by any means, but I would perhaps point out the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve chart[1] which is at its lowest level since 1982.
It may well be that the artificial party cannot go on forever.
[1] https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...
Might be the case, but that doesn't refute the argument? Maybe an empty reserve is even better for the (US) oil corps, financially.
To your point about oil and LNG being expensive to transport - that just means oil corps can turn down production at the locations impacted, and jack up the prices for whatever is produced in the locations that aren't. Lower operating costs + higher revenues = profits.
It really is a perfect storm for massive returns for the major players. As a bonus, it's impacting the Saudi and Russian national players, which are their toughest competition since they don't need to file any quarterly reports. I agree that it can't go on forever, but the oil industry is rolling around in money like Scrooge McDuck in the meantime.
It might check the phantom "short term profits" box, but anyone with any modicum of business sense (and the oil boys are no amateurs) see this event as probably the largest nail ever driven into the oil coffin.
Trump could not have given a bigger gift to the anti-oil crowd, making every human on Earth think "Damn, this shit is getting expensive and unreliable, what alternatives are available?"
It will probably go like this:
war -> fuel costs explode -> economic crisis -> AI bubble burst -> bigger economic crisis -> eventually rebuild on the ruins of what is left and go electric
It’s also rich saying that the US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists while watching Trump verbally fellate Putin at every given opportunity.
2025 November: "Trump’s peace plan is a demand for Ukraine’s surrender What makes this plan different from all the others?"[1]
2025 October: "Donald Trump Wants Ukraine to Surrender to Putin"[2]
2025 September: "Ukraine's refusal to give up territory to Russia stalls peace deal, Trump envoy says"[3]
2025 Feb: "Trump Gives Europe 3 Weeks to Accept Ukraine’s ‘Surrender,’ Says European Lawmaker"[4]
2025 January: "Trump says Ukraine should have surrendered to Russia and blames Zelensky for war"[5]
2024 September: "Harris meets Zelensky and slams Trump's 'surrender policy' for Ukraine"[6]
1. https://www.vox.com/politics/469993/trump-ukraine-peace-plan...
2. https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/donald-trump-wants-ukrai...
3. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ukraines-refusal-terr...
4. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47574
5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
6. https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240927-harris-meets-z...
The US is fine with state terrorism as long as it aligns with its interests. Especially evident with Trump as commander in chief, but that was also the case before.
United States decided that our children shouldn't have the right to grow up in this world.
So that, I say, I would rather not take part in any world that United States shapes.
What makes you believe this great exaggeration? If it was true USA would have nuked Iran and Iraq to kingdom come ages ago.
Even the most charitable interpretation of this comment suggests that Trump is okay letting Iranians grow up in a country without electricity, clean water and denied any humanitarian aid. You'll note that many defense commentators called this a threat to commit war crimes, which the US has already supported through it's proxies like the IDF.
I'm not a huge fan of the gay parade tbh, but I'm less a fan of countries that enact policies to hang those that would march in it. The world is moving forward, admittedly not everyone is invited. Sad all around.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte disagrees with your assessment: https://x.com/clashreport/status/2102671513337856357
Would that be the same Mark Rutte who referred to Trump as "daddy" during an alliance summit and sent him a flattering text message which Trump published[1] ?
Yeah. Erm. I think we know what side of the bread Mr Rutte butters his toast on.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/trump-rutte-text-message-nato-sig...
I'm perfectly open to people posting opposing points of view as long as they are made from an independent mindset perspective.
Don't just post a pro-war view from a man who we know is pro-Trump.
Its a bit like saying JD Vance disagrees with me. Well duh....
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.” — Carl Sagan
Here we have NATO Secretary General and people are dismissing his opinion because "quote from random guy supporting Trump doesn't count". It's just ideological blindness/insanity at this point.
>>Trump and his cronies are clearly intolerant.
Well for one Trump ended a lot of racist policies of the previous administration so there is that. In some areas he is way more tolerant and sensible than what US had before.
There are smart people I dislike. If someone supports them then I might look askance at that, but at least I can accept that this support might be based on that person's ability to think. Our disagreement is probably based on different values or different understandings of things, and that's useful to dig into.
When someone supports a profoundly stupid person, it's different. It's either a failure of judgment or it's a cynical ploy. Either way, there isn't a lot to be gained from analyzing the situation.
Put differently, I don't think a NATO can exist where the Sec. Gen. disagrees fundamentally with Trump. If that were to happen, NATO would simply cease to exist.
This is why its a bad example.
So has the US. But as the saying goes: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
My understanding is that the US's longstanding evaluation is that their strategic goals in the region can't be met by brawling with Iran over the strait, and their best move is to avoid it. The actions of every previous administration align with this view.
Where Iran's strategic position can be improved by drawing the US into an open conflict. Disrupting global petroleum markets, forcing the US to spend disproportionate resources defending its regional allies or withdraw and admit it can't, weakening the US's influence as a diplomatic power, all are achievable (or, frankly, achieved) with this conflict.
The US has no comparable strategic wins to even aim for here. At this point their only reasonable goal is restoring open trade through the strait, the status quo before the conflict. Fighting a war to successfully reclaim the status quo that was disrupted by entering the war is, strategically, losing a war.
The US has incurred plenty of costs though....
Those very expensive billion-dollar THAAD radars of which there are "not many" in the world ? Those are not getting replaced any time soon. IIRC following the destruction they have redeployed the one they had stationed in South Korea, much to the annoyance of the Koreans.
All those very expensive fancy missiles that have been used ? Expensive to re-manufacture and long lead-time.
The jets, helicopters and drones the Iranians shot down ?
The cost of running those ships they have parked off the Iranian shores ?
Those AWS datacentres ?
And that's before we get to the broader indirect non-military economy impacts.
That's the whole point of this war and Iran knows it.
Yes, Iran's GDP might have contracted 10% but that's nothing compared to what the US has incurred and the impact on the rest of the world.
> We've already seen the most Iran can do.
Except as Iran has demonstrated with the entirely predictable Part 2, the Houthis enter stage-left and disrupt Bab.
So now the US have the mess they created in Hormuz, plus a second front in Bab.
The only way out of this is going to be the US accepting old-school diplomacy. More guns won't fix anything.
largely due the us gvt hiding information, suppressing. e.g all the bases in the Middle East are toast in range of missiles or drones. that means the us will withdraw from them silently.
weapons stockpiles are almost depleted. and replacing them takes years.
so 10% of Iran GDP vs that --
I really don't think you've considered the scale of these things. Yeah the US burned some billions of dollars and tens of lives. On the scale of the US, this is nothing compared to what Iran is experiencing.
I have Google maps open on another tab. Could you clarify what should I be looking at?
It's not a stalemate. Best current estimates are that oil traffic through Hormuz is back to 80% of pre-war levels. This is not going well for the Iranian regime.
Its funny how the goal posts shifted from traffic to specifically oil traffic.
> 80% of pre-war levels.
and what happens when the US NAVY stops escorting?
Or blackmailed enough? People seem to be forgetting about that aspect of the Epstein ordeal.
>Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz
citation needed
How? Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO on a front that it is continually pushing further west, with about 20% of Ukraine now lost. If anything NATO and the promise of US security is what has been shown to be weak. And I don't think the idea of US/Western superiority is ever going to come back to what it was given what has happened in the Ukraine and Iran theaters in recent past.
Ukraine is taking back terrain currently:
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-has-retaken-745-sq-km-...
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/85252
Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO
It is not. The primary reason that Russia can even keep up is that it has many more citizens that can be thrown in the meat grinder and can work in arms factories and it has a larger industrial base than Ukraine. If you would tell most experts before the invasion, that it would've ended up as it did, they would have laughed their heads off. They would have told you that the Ukraine army would not be a match for the Russian army and they would have told you that the response of the West would have been divided.
Russia has ~146M citizens, Ukraine has ~29M citizens within land that it currently controls. Russia's estimated GDP is $2.66 trillion, Ukraine's GDP is $225 billion. That's 5x as many citizens and a 10x larger economy.
A real conventional war against NATO would be a completely different story. Sure, NATO countries would have to catch up with drone production and defense, but a lot of knowledge transfer and co-development is already happening. But NATO's economy and population is several times larger than Russia's. If NATO countries switched to a war economy, it would not be a fair game.
Of course, Putin knows this and he also knows the real weaknesses: there is a change that not all countries will uphold Article 5 and coordination might end up in a mess if the US would bow out, because command & control has always largely been handled by the US. This is why he is constantly testing how strong Article 4 and 5 are on an escalating ladder. The other weakness are disinformation campaigns through social media, which are working really wel for them, both in the US and in various European countries.
(I don't think it's useful to talk about nuclear war, it will end up badly for everyone in a population center. There will be no winners, only losers.)
Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia.
NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union.
Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath.
Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest.
Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns.
The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve.
The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.
This is such obvious bullshit. Russia already has NATO on its borders, and is attempting to expand it's borders so they will contact even more of NATO.
Geography and Istanbul would be agreement to make Ukraine neutral tells exactly the opposite.
But "let's just fight" (c) Boris Johnson (GB PM at that time). Yeah, why not?
The excuse is such transparent bullshit it has to be a deliberate litmus test to see who will repeat the bullshit uncritically.
Not Russian either but also spent a lot of time out east.
Putin declared the war as a means of personal survival. The negotiations are possible only if he gets out of the way, and then, it's really important to make a Marshall plan for Russia because indeed lots of reputational damage has to be repaired by the "winners" in the Cold War.
Does this mean the war continues till he dies? We could yet wait a long time.
Say he does fall over tomorrow, there's no guarantee what comes next is any better. Defeat in WWI brought about Nazi Germany. A Marshal Plan would more likely come from China.
He's had attempts on his life made. Do you think Russia will fall over if that's successful? Look at what's happened with Iran. Would Russia believe he had a heart attack if he had one?
It would be in everyone's best interests if this war was frozen exactly where it is, now. A continued war in Europe is bad for everyone, and could get much worse.
Defeat of Germany in WWII was followed by Marshall plan exactly to avoid the ressentiment that nourished the Nazis.
> He's had attempts on his life made
That's a dubious claim. Nothing that we know for sure. I've seen him hinting at that and at the danger to his family in interviews, but who takes his word for it?
NATO would not need to provide so much material, political, logistical, financial, and intelligence support to Ukraine if Russia just fucking left Ukraine.
The drain goes away if they stop invading a sovereign neighbor.
Russia committed to too many (and often poorly chosen) lines of advance and did not have a plan to keep their units adequately supplied and moving on the approach to Kiev. This meant even in the opening month of the invasion, their plan went south almost immediately and you had infamous miles-long traffic jams on the roads leading south. Their SEAD didn't work. Their soldiers were not told ahead of time that they were invading Ukraine. They didn't want to mobilize ahead of time, so they didn't amass enough forces. Against a large country like Ukraine you don't need to invent a NATO bogeyman to understand why the initial offensive failed. Credit to Ukraine, they did not allow a defeatist narrative to take hold and fought.
Western companies, of course. Not oligarchs.
Please. Must be Western companies that threw orgies, spent hundreds of millions of rubles on parties and buying influence, started bandit wars, and feasted on leftovers of USSR industry.
Has anybody told NATO yet that they’re fighting the Russians?
If only we had known, right?
Russia is claiming to fight NATO, but NATO hasn't even shown up yet, but Russia is struggling. If NATO were to go to war with Russia, there would be very little that Russia could do. The one thing they might be able to do is the reason NATO has been holding back.
As far as NATO showing up, they have. To the tune of over 300 billion Euros. I'm not sure how you can claim Russia is not fighting NATO. Zelenskyy is constantly requesting more and more funds and weaponry from the west, because without it, the Ukrainian side would not be able to put up the resistance that they have been.
And yes, Russia has taken some towns, but so has Ukraine. Ukraine just took Lyman back (again) as well as a bunch of land north of Lyman, undoing recent Russian advances there. It's the same story in many places: Russia spends a year making some small gains and extreme cost, and then Ukraine takes most of it back again.
It's a stalemate. There hasn't been any significant progress from either side in years. And what Russian progress there is, comes at a steep cost in lives, whereas Ukraine recently took some ground with nothing but drones.
I also claim to fight Mike Tyson when I fight his nerdy neighbor who borrowed Mike’s money.
Ukraine us unlikely to get back most of the territory it lost in 2022, but Russia is also unlikely to even finish capturing the remaining parts of the Donetsk oblast, let alone the rest of Ukraine. It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population. Donetsk oblast still has a heavily fortified urban area with a prewar population of 500k under Ukrainian control.
Russia is about 28 times larger than Ukraine and 10x GDP.
Last time I was paying close attention (maybe 8 months ago) the fighting was heavy in Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and not yet in Konstantynivka. Now all three of those are well within Russian control. And that seems to be the story all over the front. There may be some temporary regressions, and occasional slow downs, but overall the Russian side is continually pushing.
> It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population
They're not moving quickly. That's the way they're choosing to fight the war, and also due to the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian side, along with roughly 300 billion Euros pumped into the war by NATO so far. I don't think the slow methodical approach is evidence of weakness. Taking the average territory capture rate since 2022, the entire Donbas would be under Russian control mid next year. Using only the relatively slow 2026 rates, the entire Donbas would still be under Russian control in less than 5 more years.
Years to capture Donbass is an absolutely pathetic rate of advance for an army that was supposed to be second in the world, fighting a war on its border.
Ukraine is large and conquering all of it would be a massive challenge for any army, but relative to resources Russia has available to it, its performance is awful.
What makes you think no-fault divorce is desirable? Stable marriages are integral not only to the individual well-being of those who are married, but to a healthy society in general. No-fault divorce is one of the worst developments in the West, because it feeds mediocrity, selfishness, convenience, and self-indulgence. Requiring a grave reason seems utterly sensible. Do vows mean nothing? Are they just nice little lies to tell each other?
So, making civil divorce more difficult to obtain is beneficial, because individuals are weak, and indeed one of the purposes of the law in general is to teach and to help guide people toward a good life. So, here, by making divorce more difficult, it assists in getting couples to work their issues out. Speaking from experience, I know marriage forces a kind of ultimatum: either ship up as a human being—either keep chiseling away at becoming a better person by becoming a better spouse—or prepare for a miserable marriage. And let's not flatter ourselves: many people choose the latter and reach for the easy way out with divorce.
Appealing to Western hyper-individualism falls on deaf ears, because we've seen the effects of hyper-individualism. Collectivism is bad, but the extreme of hyper-individualism isn't good, either. Why would you want to replicate the tangible failures of the West in your country?
They are not, and this is a good thing long term.
[0] https://www.oilandgasmiddleeast.com/news/strait-of-hormuz-oi...
not really, I think.
To stop the advance and drag it into positional warfare whole europe had to scrape for surplus arms, US provides a ton of munitions and guidance, the financial burden carried by the EU is absolutely insane - Ukarine's military budget is 40% of its GDP excluding direct military aid, etc.
Of course the war didn't go as to RF's regime boasting, but of all things it actually proved that the regime is not to be underestimated - they are very flexible, can adapt well and are very fast at adopting technology into the field.
I mean, we know now that they are not as powerful as they marketed - but the only other country who has engaged in a direct war with a peer adversary is Ukraine, and we don't know how prepared every other country is in practice.
I wish all the best for Poland and Polish people, but I don't think we should hedge our bets on nation-states and the situation around that going forth in 21st century
does anybody else wonders how this isn't a good old wishful thinking, when with 350+ billions of dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine, all sorts of intelligence and tech help, total and forced mobilization in Ukraine (while only one partial in Russia in 2022), all sanctions on Russia you can think of - even with all of that "weak Russia" after 4+ years of war still controls almost 20% of the Ukraine counting Crimea and it's not really changing?
or maybe there is a difference between "not as strong as was thought" and "weak" after all?
Also, Russia cannot keep this going indefinitely. The West can. There is some question about whether Ukraine can or can't, but from an endurance perspective, there is absolutely no question who has the upper hand. Nobody west of Ukraine is on a war footing, we're all working our day jobs, taking vacations, and growing our economies.
$350 billion of foreign aid sounds like a lot until you realize the GDP of NATO is more than $55 trillion. We could keep this going forever.
Russia is spending 7-10% of its GDP, and fully half of its federal spending, on the war. And that probably understates because Russia forces war spending onto localities and companies. This will come to an end eventually; time is not on Russia's side.
So advanced military - they use civil vehicles for assault operations.
So strong they lost the control of the Black sea to the country with no navy.
Tell me how you would solve all the other issues, I am interested.
Tragedy in Nepal was everywhere for a week. Advances in vaccination? Diseases cure? Green energy? Not much because it's very slow news.