u/manxu — manxu

How very Ender's Game of them.

The amount of money they get for signing on is so staggeringly huge, it is one of the drivers of the high inflation they are having.

Absolutely. The only mention of phones, at all, is in conjunction with the masses taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. Which is such a bizarre thing (the painting being tiny and so incredibly far away) that you feel compelled to take a picture just to show how strange it is.

At the same time, thanks to the decline in US tourism this year, the situation in Europe is at an all time worst when it comes to cost, crowding, and annoyance. The strike, it is mentioned, was due to the overcrowding.

Still being one of the luckiest people in aviation accident history, he may just have opened the door and stood there, and when the plane hit the ground been thrown by chance in the direction out.

Thinking about it, this is probably the best option, statistically. Timing the jump has virtually no chance of succeeding, but if you stand by the door you have an almost 25% chance of being thrown out the right way.

the man [...] had called on French people to seek out and shoot people of foreign origin.

This happened near Fréjus, on the Cóte d'Azur, one of the most touristy places on the planet. It's crawling with Brits and Americans and Germans and Poles and any place far and wide. But of course, to a diseased mind like this man's, it's only "foreign" if it is the particular shade of skin he doesn't like: Middle-Eastern.

UBS Group AG analysts said in a recent note that investors’ shift away from US assets will channel €1.2 trillion ($1.4 trillion) into Europe’s stock market over the next five years.

I have a sense American oligarchs will regret their support of this administration for a very, very long time

We may very well in the future, of course! But maybe at the rate technology develops, it could be smarter to start working on it when the threat becomes visible.

I venture the uneducated guess that satellite to satellite might be the next space defense frontier ahead of space to ground.

I think it's because the threat model against which a Golden Dome defends is just not that plausible any longer. Given the distances, a space-based ground defense can only protect from long-range attacks, like ICBMs. Unlike in the 80s, the technology to intercept and destroy ICBMs safely is now probably there, but the threat of all out nuclear war is much reduced.

It's not just that kind of service. There are media properties to tariff - movies, shows, music. There is software and consulting for enterprises to tariff. There are financial services to tariff.

The USA is the biggest exporter of services in the world, by a huge margin. Trump can pretend all he wants that it's only goods that matter, but the moment US services are going to be hit with tariffs, the wailing will begin. All his ultra-rich friends made their money on services.

Hold up. From the article:

She was released to obtain documentation about the allegedly expunged convictions and presented them to Ice officials at San Francisco airport on 21 April, after which she was again detained and sent to the facility at Tacoma, said Holladay.

She brought documentation about the expunged convictions to ICE, so presumably she had some kind of evidence they had been expunged. I am pretty sure she wouldn't have been arrested under the Biden administration, or any other American administration before that. She posed no flight risk, and a judge would have had to review the evidence before an arrest would have been made.

You know, Due Process and all. It still existed six months ago, and the Constitution was still considered binding by a lot of people in government. Very many people. Some say, the best people.

It's sort of ironic that the one thing countries used to be most adamant about had to have their sovereign stamp of approval, national defense, is the one where the UK seems to be most accepting of joint efforts.

It's funny how the magic trick actually works: you force companies to affix information to a product, the consumer reads and reacts to the information, and the company has to create products that satisfy the informed demand.

Looking at you, Apple and Samsung, removing features from your products simply to force your customers into an ever more closed ecosystem.

At this point, it feels like anyone who gives up something of value for a deal with this administration is just cruisin' for a bruisin'.

Great summary! That's basically what they say. On both ballistic missiles and drones, Europe is nowhere near being able to shut down a major attack.

Of course, Europe under attack would not respond with the same forced restraint as Ukraine, that for the longest time wasn't allowed to strike within Russia.

I fully agree with you on the current liquidity issues, and certainly on the loss of manufacturing competitiveness that comes with having reserve currency status.

My main economic concern with Trump's policies is simply that "advanced" economies will never really be able to compete in the manufacturing field again. Trump should know - he is surrounded by the richest men in the world, and the only one that does any manufacturing at all, and only as a side gig is Musk. All the other ones only do digital and finance/investment.

I agree that Europe probably doesn't want to get into that space at the moment. I am afraid Europe is pushed into doing a lot of things right now it didn't and doesn't want to do. The decision point would probably come if Trump's tariffs are really just paused and start being enacted. Then Europe will have to massively increase its trade with other nations, which will also have to do the same thing, and then using USD becomes incredibly impractical, especially with the wild swings it is going to have if tariffs are re-enacted.

And, again, totally agreed. This will require a lot of changes, and they will be painful. It just feels like there aren't a whole lot of alternatives.

I am confused by the article's insistence that the Euro is not a viable alternative because it's "one currency, 20 countries". If anything, the sheer number of countries make sure that a single election is not going to affect financial and economic policies all that much - which is the main reason for the USD's fall from grace right now.

The amount of trade between EU countries forces them to have an equalized exchange rate. That has been true since long before the Euro was even implemented, and the constant pressure on a particular currency that had a hard time keeping the fixed exchange rate frequently brought turmoil. If you don't believe me, just look up Black Wednesday 1992.

The Euro is just the financial manifestation of that forced equalization. A manifestation that gives consumers greater price transparency in cross border dealings. If it really had had a major role in the rise of the far right, countries that use the Euro would have seen a greater rise than those that do not, and that really doesn't seem to be the case.