u/RunawayFixer

I expect the €799 to include vat, while the $699 will be without. $930 /1.25 = $744, which is a lot more reasonable. Sony using the same sale price for the whole eu when each country has different vat rates, is probably because of profit maximization. Too many people only look at the first digit in 799.99, so no matter if after currency conversion + vat the price is €720 (20%) or €762 (27% in Hungary), they'll just slap on the sale price of €799.99.

For the other nations in nato it would be for the best (imo obviously). Republican usa is not a reliable ally and the other nato nations have not all come to terms with that new reality yet. If the usa quits nato, then it instantly removes all doubt and the remaining nations of NATO can immediately start work on improving the alliance, instead of being stuck in limbo for a few more years while they're hoping that the usa will somehow magically unfuck itself.

My bad for assuming wrong.

And yeah, sarcasm with just text doesn't work very well, got to add something for making obvious that it is sarcasm, or plenty of people (me included as you saw) will assume otherwise.

Fault? I didn't mean to imply that China is responsible for starting the latest bout of civil war in Myanmar, because they weren't. There's really no reason to believe that whenever something bad happens, some outside big boogeyman is entirely to blame. If you want to know what caused the current civil war to start, try looking it up, but please don't make assumptions.

If you can't look it up because of time constraints or other reasons, then accept that you don't know. It's impossible to know everything, so there's nothing wrong with not knowing some things. But imo not knowing something and knowing that you don't know, is a lot better than making assumptions and inventing alternate facts.

China is a direct neighbour of Myanmar, with a history of political meddling in Myanmar and also of setting up illegal exploitative businesses by entrepreneurs. But even without the meddling, they are direct neighbours, which should be enough reason for Myanmar journalists to want to know what is going on in China.

Fascists don't respect democracy or even other people's rights, so it's logical that democracies should not trust them in positions of power. It's basically the paradox of tolerance: "if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance."

And if you want to see what happens when these kinda of people are left unchecked in the cause of retaining the "moral high ground", just look at the USA. The USA democrats have been giving in for 40 years against increasingly perverse transgressions by republican actors, and now it's a dumpster fire on the cusp of becoming a full blown dictatorship.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html?guccounter=1

This article lists 7 schools that are known to have had funding taken away as punishment. Harvard is just the only one that dared to publicly speak out against the bullying and now the bully is trying to make an example of them.

The republican war on higher education is older than Bannon's graduation from high school. Trump already targeted them during his first term. Ron Desantis has been doing the same in Florida. Texas republicans have been going at it for years as well. And that's the ones that I know about.

It's retaliation for this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/harvard-trump-funding-antisemitism-columbia-b2733306.html So Harvard isn't the only target, but they're the ones that dared to publicly stand up against the bully and now the bully wants to make an example out of them. It's basically a repeat of Ron Desantis war on higher education, but now on a national scale.

Here's an overview of how other universities are faring:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html?guccounter=1

Emigrants likely consume less traditional media of their home country than people who still live in their home country, so they are more likely to form their opinion based on the (mis)information that they are fed on social media and hearsay gossip instead. Simion in particular is apparently very good at meme messaging: https://euobserver.com/digital/ar13f54193

Social media memes are very good for spreading populist propaganda like "easy solutions to complex problems" and "hatred of the other", but bad at nuance and informed discussions. They're a populist's wet dream.

The emigrants also do not face the real consequences of their choice. If Simion increases corruption/graft in Romania, hijacks traditional media, breaks education, ... The Romanian not living in Romania, will be far less affected by this than the people living in Romania. Same as what happens with the German Turks who vote for Erdogan: they don't have to build their lives in Turkey, but thanks to the wrecked economy their Euros are worth much more, so they get to live as kings when on vacation in Turkey.

My impression of the conflict: The partition of British India into independent India and independent Pakistan was very violent and traumatizing for lots of people, and also left some unsolved border disputes. The independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan was likewise very violent and saw India helping the Bangladeshi people gain independence. Both events are long enough in the past that people could have gotten over the hate by now, except that it gets refreshed with new violence every few years. In the last few decades there's been several terror attacks in India that were sponsored by the Pakistani state. But now India too has a religious fundamentalist government, so maybe they'll be trying to return the favor. Authoritarians love creating external enemies, it helps them stay in control of their own population.

Bart De Wever was never the chairman of Vlaams Blok. He's never been a member of Vlaams Blok/Vlaams Belang, which makes it kinda hard for him to have ever been their party leader.

It still needs repeating to counter propaganda from Russia and Russia's western supporters. If you leave propaganda unchecked, worse things tend to happen.

Not that hard, just got to look up how Crassus did it.

It seems like every time that I read Serbia's population number, it's less than the last time. 30 years of population decline must suck for a society.

The russian assets in the White House want to portray Zelensky and Ukraine as insufficiently thankful for USA aid and as disrespectful towards the usa, and to use those supposed slights as justification for cutting off aid. To reinforce this narrative with their audience, other fellow travellers are now repeating those lies.

This goes back to the white house meeting where Trump and Vance claimed that Zelensky was disrespectful because of how he was dressed (normal) and how he didn't thank anyone according to them (he had, profusely, there's video of it). It was a clown show and the meeting didn't deliver the desired images + soundbites, so now the usa republicans are working overtime in providing the necessary soundbites for fox news etc.