interolivary

High tariffs and other economic sanctions would essentially be just that, but like another comment said the west isn’t ready for it.

We’ve managed to entangle our economies too deeply with cheap Chinese production, so actually sanctioning them would be painful to say the least and they know it

Are we assuming that everyone is always going to be biking with no other options? I don’t think anyone is even advocating for that.

BUT WHAT IF YOUR LEGS ARE BROKEN? WHAT IF THERE’S A NUCLEAR WAR???

The people who seem to think that biking is an untenable option because you might have to very occasionally use other modes of transport make me wonder if that mindset comes from the fact that people feel that it’s normal to only use one mode of transport pretty much ever, because that’s how many people are with cars.

I figure you’re right, it really doesn’t seem all that likely but it was just a thought that popped into my head.

But yeah, it’s interesting to see what this current “turbulence” will lead to. Requiring consensus only has a chance to work if everyone is acting in good faith, so when a member state is well on its way to becoming essentially a dictatorship with aims that are directly at odds with the EU’s goals, there’s simply no way consensus will work.

It’s interesting that the EU really doesn’t have too many good mechanisms to do anything about bad-faith actors in the first place. Eg. using Hungary’s funding as a lever has been tried, but because of the consensus requirement, Orbán can essentially hold decisions hostage until he gets what he wants.

Too many systems have been built with the implicit assumption that all participating actors are acting in good faith, and a single bad-faith actor can actually cause remarkable amounts of trouble because there’s no mechanisms for stopping them

I wonder if he’s being treated with kid gloves because he gives an excuse for not aiding Ukraine. “We wanted to, but it’s that damn Orbán”

He’ll be dealt with before he becomes an actual threat

the people earning a lot of money (suggesting responsibility) are wimpy losers who cannot solve this problem.

That’s not the problem, but I really wish it was. The problem is that the people who are actually in charge are psychopaths who don’t give a shit about doing anything to the problem, and are more motivated to actually make things worse

True! For all you non-Nordics, that’s a Finnish Spitz and they’re certified good boyes. My personal favorite is the Finnish Lapphund because they’re so incredibly floofy, and it’s an interesting breed because it was originally bred by the Sámi for herding reindeer:

Wait we do? I didn’t realize we even had one official animal, let alone 4

Edit: the Finnish Wikipedia claims we have 6 official animals, one of them being ladybugs:

You are a nerd and your back hurts

You are a nerd with a CS degree

Yes I suspect that indeed was the joke

Ah I thought you pulled that from some Eurostat database and they were using wonky country codes. The AU / AT mixup is a classic one, and since the spelling of Austria and Australia is so close it’s easy to miss that mistake – just like I did

statistia-netcontrib.csv is using some weird country code that isn’t ISO 3166-2, because it’s got what I assume to be Latvia with the code LA which is actually Laos, and that’s reflected on your chart too – I was initially a bit puzzled as to why Laos was listed as being in the EU. At a quick glance it seems to be the only weird one though

The cruelty is the point, as with nearly all conservative policies

We’re going to see more and more openly fascist policies in the EU as more member states elect fascist leaders. A previous example is the end-to-end encryption ban and mass content scannning ostensibly to combat “child porn”, and which many politicians have already suggested could be expanded to cover other cases as well.

I think your problem is that you took the Kremlin at its word.

This policy isn’t meant to do anything but further subjugate women, because right-wing authoritarians generally despise feeeeeeeeemales

We see a need to adjust up to 1,500 personnel capacities

“Adjust personnel capacities” is a new one. Loving the corporate newspeak

Well, they elected a literal neofascist government so I guess anybody left of the Strasserites is a leftist now

Oh yeah it’ll work for any “sensitive” statement

Better than no data, I guess