One could even argue the mainstream institutions were involved in disinformation narratives (e.g., in the case of 40 beheaded babies or widespread systematic rape on Oct 7th: did not bother to check the facts before spreading it wide).

You could probably count 100+ people in the death zone of the border crossing video alone. The final death toll will be terrible, with most never found.

You don't have to replace 100% of workforce, replace just the ones whose work is the easiest to do by a robot.

Replacing 50% of workforce buys you enough time that by the time your available worker pool has shrunk 50%, robotics and AI will be much better and you will be able to replace another big chunk.

Production-wise, shrinking demographics are not such a big deal (they still have a lot of youth unemployment).

Shrinking demographics is a problem due to a) the ratio of workers vs seniors, b) shrinking overall demand pool -> shrinking economy c) smaller overall talent pool -> less diversity, less 'geniuses', i.e. the real drivers of innovation, and less capability to mobilize for great projects

The Ukraine is bleeding and getting destroyed, day by day. And things are getting worse, by Russian reciprocal responses, for every escalation success Ukraine has achieved.

Recent examples: Attack ships in Azov sea -> Odessa ports essentially blocked, attack Russian warehouses -> your warehouses are getting destroyed.

What path of victory do you see enabled by US (or EU, for that matter) actions? It is just prolonging the war, by giving the Ukraine (and gullible western audience) an illusion that Ukraine can win it.

> In that sense some choices are more worthwhile than others, even when they involve concessions to a bully. So, despite recent Gallup poll showing that majority of Ukrainians are for negotiated end of the conflict a.s.a.p. https://news.gallup.com/poll/711992/ukrainians-sour-washingt..., it is worthwhile for European powers to give concessions to Trump, to achieve what? To bleed Russia more and hope that it somehow collapses (or suddenly decides to give up)? Despite the very real (bloody!) costs to Ukraine?

The countries of the south on the receiving end of US/western 'help' have been disabused of viewing US as 'a shining city on a hill' by their own experience, long time ago.

They saw Carney's Davos speech recognizing the hypocrisy of 'rules-based international order' as just another hypocrisy: you were quiet while those rules suited you, now you squeak, when you are on the receiving end.

But yes, the people in the west are waking-up.

I have gone through the fall of communism. From years when most people actually believed in it (I did not live through that, too young), to years where people knew the system is a sham, but things looked unshakeable, to years where 'something' was in the air, but a real change was unimaginable, to the sudden and very real fall.

We are in 'something is in the air' with the current western system. The problem is that for the communist countries, there was an alternative - the western system (yes, the west's soft power of jeans & coca cola worked). And the communist elites lost their will to power (or had already pre-planned path to oligarchy). Nowadays, there is no clear alternative, and the western elites seem determined to keep the system at all costs (see all the surveillance technology, the push for AI is also relevant). So, the change will be much messier and possibly bloodier than the fall of communism.

The whole 'security' was by intimidation, there is no actual meat on that bone.

I would have thought that it would mostly be because they can't resist that extra snack.

Or 'optimistically' underestimate the calories in the not pre-packaged food.

Serious question: Is there a significant variability in how the food calories are absorbed? Maybe different combinations are not absorbed equally efficiently (like with water/oil-based vitamins)

When I lived, in my childhood, in communistic Bulgaria/Czechoslovakia, nobody was starving. Yes, we did not have bananas and Argentinian steaks, but there was enough basic food, including the protein-rich one (eggs, cheese, even meat, although the best cuts were 'under the counter'). Still, few people were really obese; those were obviously sick.

Nowadays, there is plenty of junk food. The food is not really cheap (especially with the recent inflation), even the junk one. Still, being obese is (almost) the new normal. You can see that everywhere.

Yes, people spend more time indoors - but even in the old times people tended to spend a lot of time behind TV.

My hypothesis is that the junk food just does not have enough real nutrients, just mostly empty calories. So the body signals 'I need more nutrients', to which the typical response is 'here you have more empty calories'.

The infected unfed ticks have few spirochetes in them. The numbers grow by two orders of magnitude as they feed - the reason why old bites are much more dangerous than the fresh bites.

I could not understand how people can watch movie interrupted 10x by an add break.

Not wishing the return of communism, but yeah, I would simply ban all ads. No useful purpose to the society, whatsoever. Treat it like smoking and other drugs. Yes, can fill the coffers, but overall it is detrimental to the society.

If you want info about something you need, there are catalogues, consumer groups, enthusiast forums and internet search in general. Yes, the ads can be used to create new needs. Overall (if you really think what this achieves), that is a bug, not a feature.

Yes, there will be ways to sneak-in ads in a shady way, but that can be prosecuted. And the scale of exposure matters, a lot.

Yes, it can be done, and if we want to have a reasonable future, it should be done.

Put the following prompt into your favourite AI and enjoy the reading:

"How do rents relate to productivity in the area? How does Vienna compare to San Francisco?"

To respond to your previous post:

I (naively?) thought that the Treasury had some Euro reserves lying around (like other central banks have USD reserves) and used those, not issuing new USD debt.

I agree that issuing new USD debt just to avoid the need for Japan to sell its USD debt (treasuries) would not reduce the pressure on USD debt.

Most probably it was mostly psychological market manipulation ('leaked' notes).

Please, enlighten me what was the point of your post, I really, genuinely, missed it. To me, it reeks of toxic optimism and wishful thinking, nothing else. There is no justification whatsoever why it should be true.