That’s not certain to be true. Also the existence of these guns can be helpful to an organized resistance, should one appear. So if I were in the US and could afford it, I’d get some weapons and store them for whenever needed, by whoever, not necessarily me. Worst case scenario (or best) - they never get used.

Ex-chief of staff in 3, 2, …

Government satisfaction has remained steady since September, with 11% satisfied (-1 vs September) and 82% dissatisfied (n/c), net of -71.

From Ipsos

At this point the Labour gov’t might no longer be working to attempt to redeem itself. Instead ram through unpopular, donor-friendly deals before their power expires.

The controversial Victims of Communism memorial in downtown Ottawa will no longer feature the names of specific individuals after federal officials determined a significant number could be linked to the Nazis.

It’s pretty common for victims of communism initiatives given who the communists fought.

There are counterexamples for sure but there are whole indistries that fell over to this pattern. E.g. TVs.

Unlikely. Their ODM bought them. Our home maps would however become part of their property. While I’m not happy about it, I think I prefer that than Amazon having it tbh.

Yet another example that the firms that actually make the things are the ones that matter in the long run.

Apparently Picea makes Roomba, Shark, Anker (Eufy). Maybe also some Dyson.

This Frank McCourt guy seems to be behind some investor consortium bidding to buy TikTok called The People’s Bid for TikTok. A consortium also joined by fucking Kevin O’Leary. From their website:

The People’s Bid for TikTok is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Americans to reclaim their digital identities and have a voice, choice, and stake in the future of the internet.

A bunch of billionaires bidding for TikTok are dressing this as “people’s bid.” Fucking surreal.

Good article. I was surprised by the reason.

Way more than several decades. They startded in the South-East Asia more than a century ago. Latin America shortly after.

For most of the world, capital is a malign actor and the US has the highest concentration.

For sure, but I don’t think there are non-Breaking Bad, non-cartridge, P100s. 😆 There’s normalish N100s though. E.g. this Moldex.

Cool. If only Google was still a decent company worthy of giving free mindshare to… 😅

An N95 mask keeps you from contracting whatever the person coughing three seats away is sick from, and apparently from breathing in ultrafine particles. :D

While not ideal, it’s totally standard state of affairs. Even in PC Linux there are often some binary blobs required for proper function of some hardware. E.g. non-free firmware in Debian.

That’s what I meant - slower delivery over longer period. It’s why I said we didn’t give more from the get go. Which is likely resulting in more total weapons expended, along with the people firing them.

Oh and this is not just a European phenomenon which is why I’m not singling out the EU.

Yes. The way things ate going, at some point it may become less harmful and easier to deal with unwanted Chinese tech than American. Pay much lower profit margins as a bonus.

If we gave them more than a knife from the get go, they may have done significantly better. But then the war would have stopped quickly and a lot less shells would have been made and sold overall.

Europe probably has more raw capacity for power in terms of labour and technology but it’s much less capable of marshalling it towards a goal. The fact that you have to go through the market economy makes all the resources needed to exercise power more expensive. Russian shells cost 4x less than Europe’s. More centrally managed economies tend to outcompete at this. Having to go through the 27 countries democracies to direct it is another challenge. All Russia has to do is get several Orbans in domestic governments to keep the power level low. In effect Europe is less strong than Russia even though it could be much stronger. And this doesn’t stop with milirary power. Even simple stuff like tackling internal security from sabotage, economic security etc.

There’s also other structural blockers to projecting power, like the external energy dependence. Europe was critically dependdnt on Russian fossil fuels. Now a significant portion has been shifted to the US. As a result, uncle Donnie has a significant say in EU’s ability to exercise power over entities he likes.

This is why Kallas’es statements look more like stern finger wagging than anything real to anyone aware of these issues. Or Germany’s stern warnings to the Russian ambassador. Kaja gives good strong vibes to the EU citizenry but it’s not changing the material reality. Eventually it would stop working. My guess is that’s gonna happen quickly once uncle Donnie decides to go through with taking Russia’s reserve money under her nose and giving it to his corporations to invest in Russia, like they’re planning to.