Let me guess: Field research to (in)validate his belief is out of the question?

I’m not really deep into WordPress, but that Mullenweg guy seems to have a couple conflicts of interest.

How so? I haven’t really kept up with 4B, so this is a genuine question.

Not all batteries in the world have to be made of lithium. Depending on the use case other materials cab be even superior.

Unless you’re ready to fill the country with a thousand battery farms,

Oh I am totally ready to do that. A third of these batteries will be actually farms, a third will be sitting stationary in everybodies cellars and sheds and the other half will be rolling on the streets in form of electric vehicles.

Top off your own batteries and EV with surpluses during excess production and drain them during dry situations. Most people seem to forget that EVs can work both ways.

Russia also has one of the largest reserves of uranium in Eurasia as well, only behind Kazakhstan.

Also Germany would only trade one teat for another. Energy indepences is only possible by using renewables.

Lastly every energy corporation has said they won’t touch nuclear with a twelve feet pole because it is too expensive and there is no insurance agency willing to back them up.

The nuclear horse IS dead.

Ok, right continent, wrong coast. Close enough.

More info for people like me.

after this election that I have an unexpectedly pressing need to wave large obnoxious flags

I might be ignorant here, but was this a submission for the Maine state flag referendum?

Yes, but there is a quite a gap between ordering tanks and equipment and receiving said order.

South Korean armouries might have to start working overtime soon.

I have no English sources on hand, but there have been multiple parcels found across Europe that contained firebombs. In one case, the bomb didn’t go off mid-flight because the flight was delayed.

The heads of German intelligence agencies had their annual public hearing recently, making it very clear that Russia considers Germany an enemy. As far as I can tell, the response by our senior political figures has been deafening silence and inaction.

So Putin is not stupid at all. He is just counting on the continued indecisiveness of most western leaders.

Smoking accidents can happen everywhere! Only YOU can prevent forest fires!

inb4 Russian state media headline “Ukraine running out of troops. Hiring mercenaries! In other news: Don’t bother about the weirdly speaking comrades from Vladivostok!”

NATO maintains that it is a defensive alliance. If NATO starts adding countries Russia is currently at war with, it becomes an offensive alliance.

I don’t think so. Ukraine is in a defensive war. Actively joining their side doesn’t turn it into an offensive one. The difference between offensive and defensive conflicts is the goal: In an offensive, you want to gain something. In a defence, it is about keeping what you have. Just because NATO would come to their aid, Ukraine wouldn’t want to conquer Russia.

That being said, why wasn’t Ukraine added earlier?

Multiple reasons probably:

• Ukraine was and to some extent still is a post-soviet state: Oligarchs, corruption and all that comes with it.
• There was the Budapest Memorandum in place which guaranteed a sovereign Ukrainian state affectively as buffer between Russia and other NATO countries. Which was subsequently broken by Russia in 2014.
• “Don’t anger the Russians”. See where this got us?

Well, that’d be the point of Ukraine joining NATO currently.

Well, it was bound to happen at some point.

Many features probably have been investigated by Russia already anyway, since Turkey wrecked a bunch of their Leos in Syria a couple of years ago. But of course, having an intact one gives a lot more options.

[…] the factory where the Leopard 2 resurfaced is far from the front line in Ukraine.

Well, smoking accidents can happen everywhere.

Also, funny to see in the article that hinterland made it into English as well.

But I’m skeptical that this is a cannon fodder battalion.

Any NK soldier that isn’t a technician is effectively cannon fodder in Ukraine. The DRK hasn’t fought an armed conflict since its founding. They may be experts at marching parades, but have no actual combat experience.

Some 90% of Germans support stronger legal protections for animal welfare. That makes the debate more complicated than a simple for or against.

Why? If a law passes with 90% support in a democracy, the other 10% clearly have failed to make reasonable arguments against it. Given that most laws nowadays pass with quite a bit less than that, I fail to see the problem.

Also, if your hobby or business relies on hurting other beings it is not a good hobby/business.

Doesn’t matter. Scholz couldn’t have remembered the plan anyway.

Yeah, but did they take down the website only, or did they also take down the content they mostly link to?

In the past, there have been investigations by multiple news outlets where they found that German police would routinely seize forums and domains where links to CP were posted but would not request the hosting providers of the linked content to delete the material.

As far as I understand the reports, the headline is correct.

It ran aground on a reef and got damaged beyond repair. While it is not fully submerged, the term “sunk” still applies.