Also a lot of the late Soviet Union military technology came from Ukraine, plus their military were also trained in the same kind of school of thought as Russia and still know it.

So it makes sense that, when push came to shove, the Ukranians would fast come up with asymetric war solutions against Russia, that Russia wouldn’t be as fast in effectivelly countering them and Ukraine would be quicker at developing new or adjusted solutions once Russia found a counter (or, more generally, that Ukraine would remain ahead of Russian in the cycle were each side develops a counter to the other side’s counters).

Had Russia’s initial blietzkrieg attack worked, it would’ve been a different story, but at this stage it makes sense that Ukraine has the technological edge, not just in the weaponry it gets from the West but also in their own weapons development, especially now that it has much better AA to protect the installations far away from the frontlines working on weapons tech.

Russian Propaganda: “Our Glorious Nation has acquired a brand new submersible to help its fight against NATO in Ukraine”

Clearly the profound racism never disappeared, otherwise the German power elites wouldn’t “unwaveringly support” a nation because of the ethnicity of the majority of its people and its leaders: the more visible artifacts of ancient germanic symbols, goose stepping and the brown shirts might be gone but the thinking that some people are more worthy than others purelly because of their ethnicity is still just as strong.

Additionally, that the German authorities are now going so far as shown in this and other news in support of the ethno-Fascists of a specific ethnicity, also indicates that the authoritarian tendencies too are alive and well in the mindset of the German power elites.

It looks a lot like the foundations of Nazism are alive, well and returning to prominence, with a different symbology and façade, but still the same view of humans as ethnics and the same authoritarian forceful imposition of a race-based view of the worth of human beings on others.

It’s actually quite scary to watch from the outside as Germany goes back to overtly using force to suppress dissent on its power elite’s racial supremacist views for the benefit of an extreme form of ethno-Fascism, even if this time around it’s not the Arian Race that’s being “supported”.

Democracy requires its 3 pillars - the Judicial, the Press and the Political - to be independent.

In the US all three are tied, some even Constitutionally.

It’s thus not surprised that the country only ever got close to being governed for the Many rather than the Few at times when other Civil Society movements (such as Unions) were strong and healthy. Certainly that’s not the case nowadays, not even close.

You were supposed to have an antenna.

Extreme behaviours such as exhibitionism and a very high concern with one’s public image are actually quite consistent with not growing up in a good and well-balanced environment.

Well balanced people aren’t overly concerned with being seen as stylish and heaving fun all the time, unless they’re in a profession that requires managing the image one projects to the outside world (influencer, performing artist).

It’s only wild if you believe their fable that their nation represents all Jews.

If however you see them as just another bunch of ethno-Fascists, it actually makes sense that many of the victims of the other large ethno-Fascist group in the last century wouldn’t get along with them simply because they recognize many of the same signs.

Even without the whole Religion angle, racists the world over just love ethno-nationalism: each ethnicity living in their own corner, separate from the rest, is exactly what these people want.

That would make it plagiarism, which ethically is a whole different matter than merelly copying that which is free to copy.

The anti-semites are probably ecstatic at the whole linking of a nation that commits Genocide and kills little children with snipers, bombs and starvation to the entire Jewish ethnicity.

It makes it incredibly easy for them to grab some particularly nasty action of the state of Israel as an example and say “See, that’s how Jews are like”.

Non-Jews going around telling other people, including Jews, that people who mass murder civilians, including very purposefully children, journalists and medical personnel, represent the Jewsih Religion and hence implying those actions are Jewishness, is the most antisemitic thing around.

The antisemitism is the linking of a specific nation state and its disgusting actions to an entire ethnicity even when members of that ethnicity very overtly and explicitly disavow that link.

Germany’s actions have all the hallmarks of German “tradition”: assuming that Jews are all the same, telling Jews what Jewishness is, implying there are good Jews (who follow Germany’s definition of Jewishness) and bad Jews (who don’t).

Clearly Nazi thinking was never eliminated amongst the German elites, it just got its lists of “good races” and “bad races” updated.

For starters, bulk copying a person’s documents without their approval sounds like mass copyright violation.

Since the user did not approve it, it sounds like mass copyright violation to me.

Actually in the old days a lot of “disruption” was basically removing middlement: for example putting a newspaper online avoids having to pay a commission to the newspaper stand.

It’s just that in the last 2 decades it’s mostly been Regulatory Avoidance instead of removing middlemen: basically exploiting new technology and a gap in existing legislation to avoid regulation altogether, such as how Uber’s service is not legally a Taxi Service but rather a Driven Rental Car Service because people “book” them rather than physically hailing one on the street and similary AirBnB is not a Hostel, it’s a Short-Term Let Service because of how you have to book upfront.

You also see a lot of leveraging of Networking Effects and brand name (both anti-competitive Market imperfections, especially the former) to quash small operators without actually delivering significant improvements, for example in food delivery or even Social Media (if you consider normal websites as “small operators”).

Once cabbies got their own apps, the only market advantage Uber had was lower costs because of not obbeying regulations, which wasn’t there in those contries which forced Uber to obbey the same regulations as cabbies.

Uber has variable pricing, whilst taxis do not (it’s the whole point of the meter, which is why shady types try to “play games” with it).

Nowadays taxis will also take credit cards (I guess in some countries maybe some don’t).

Agree on the superiority of having a rating system, though.

Not in the EU it doesn’t, unless they got the user to review that Agreement and agree before the sale took place.

After the implicit contract which is the sale has been agreed to by both parties (the buyer gave the money, the seller took it), one of the parties can’t force the other party to agree to a new contract before they’re allowed to get the contractual benefits of the original contract (i.e. the buyer getting to use the product they bought, the seller getting to use the money they got).

It doesn’t matter if the seller has such power de facto - legally they most definitelly can’t blackmail the buyer by denying them their side of the contractual rights they got in the Act of Sale by blocking their use of the product they bought until they agree to a new Agreement from the seller.

Real Life^TM is a Role-Playing Multiplayer Game with the best graphics resolution in the Industry.

Sadly, it suffers from severe game play balance problems, most notably that most of game play time is spent in boring tasks which should’ve been simplified into just the core gameplay element for a better gaming experience, plus it’s heavy reliance on grinding, to the point that most players literally have to spend at least 8h per day in the game grinding merelly to not lose the game.

And don’t get me started on it’s Pay To Play elements.

To add to both your posts, a pretty good general rule is: don’t confuse famous with knowledgeable.

The only knowledge they’ve proven is of “how to become known in a specific domain”, which at least in social media is mainly about self-promotion (and more generally it’s about grifter skills) rather than specific domain knowledge.

So yeah, the likes of Andrew Tate will do it by looking confident whilst telling tons of bullshit and plenty of female influencers will do it by looking good and showing some skin - they’re good at self-promotion online but that doesn’t mean they know shit about anything else.

It’s my impression that it’s actually a lot more about national pride for Spain than about Gibraltar’s fiscal paradise status, since Gibraltar as not part of a member country can just be treated the same as any other offshore fiscal paradise, such as the Bahamas, which includes it being added to black lists. In this day and age, it’s not geographical proximity that matters when it comes to fiscal paradises.

This makes sense since Britain too doesn’t really gain much from having possession of Gibraltar so holding on to it is mainly a question of national pride for the UK - it would be strange if Spain’s motivations were wildly different.

PS: Also it’s funny how during the Leave campaign a lot of the “reason” why the EU would give Britain quasi-membership rights (without the responsabilities) after leaving the EU were a lot like this, about how those other countries or interests inside those countries would do it because they stood to gain monetarilly from it in the short term. All that turned out to be mainly wishful thinking and a serious misreading of the motivations of the leaders and people in said other countries.

Just found it funny how there are still people around thinking other countries are mainly motivated by the short term gains in sovereignty affairs, even whilst Britain itself again and again keeps doing things motivated by national pride when it comes to such affairs - one would’ve expected that “they’re a lot like us” would somehow been figured out by now.