But boy what a stupid move it proved to be to join Nato in panic. Historic blunder by Finland and Sweden.
Rescued to a sinking ship with a mad captain, where the mid-level officers are just running around in disbelief, unable to decide between doubling down on loyalty to the captain or taking command for themselves. Who will the captain shoot next? Will he shoot at all against the people he’s sworn to protect you from?
Yes and no, it moves the goal post and makes it harder for some criminals/terrorists to launder money. But organized crime is one of the largest business sectors in the world, so many have large incentives to get around the rules.
It’s helpful to think of crime as a (or many separate) business sector(s) in this context, because at large scale criminals can benefit from much of the economic infrastructure that is required for legitimate international businesses, particularly modern businesses that sell things that don’t cost much/anything to produce (doesn’t have a fixed profit margin), such as subscriptions, streaming or intellectual property (e.g. music or games downloads).
Not long ago the circulation of this dirty money was a staple of many parts of the established financial system (see the Wachovia cartel scandal as an example). Today’s rules and crackdowns after the 2008 financial crisis has changed that somewhat.
You know how you can only withdraw a certain amount of money from an ATM even if you have more in your account and need it in cash?
That’s because of laws against money laundering and terror financing. The gist of it is that criminals and terrorists will finance/get cash out of their activities through using a bunch of middle men/fronts, cash and other ways to obfuscate the origin/destination of the money.
If you’re rich, you look good
That’s not news
It’s a time honored tradition to treat foreign legions as disposable, even if Russia takes that to another level with the country’s general lack of regard for human life.
Tl;dr surveillance equipment working perfectly, used for dystopian surveillance. Major shocker.
In the context of parenting there are certainly better things you can do to prevent “shennanigans” other than subjecting them to surveillance. Like you know… raising them?
Terrifying with a generation of peole grown up under total control and expected to be perfectly obedient. They will be shitty adults. But hey, at least they won’t have memories of that time they snuck out at night to watch the stars.
Rutte is Trump’s most loyal ally and friend.
It’s probably right that Trump is overstating his win, but frankly any form of yielding to Trump is infuriating. If there is a deal that covers “the entire Arctic region” the details will be important. Countries in that region include Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. One should not assume it’s a win for the Nato countries with more Trump regime forces in the region after the US has threatened invasion or annexation of two of them.
An average day in 2024, 54 people in the EU died in road accidents, per Eurostat.
Edit:
Somewhere around 40 people a day die in road accidents in the EU. (Eurostat seems to only have numbers with the actual number of dead for 2023 so far and that year I think it was something like 47 per day on average, but other sources show road deaths decreased somewhat in 2024.
Subscriptions are thieves of intentionality
It’s included, but good lord if that’s not a very high price for temporary access to a collection of bargain bin games. You could buy a full price game every other month for that money.
I think we should also focus on using less energy overall – e.g. replace short to medium persinal car trips with walking, bicycles and public transport, medium to long travel with trains, eliminating unnecessary travel that can’t be accommodated by those modes of transport. Environmental solutions like replacing fossil fuel powered cars with emissions free, but equally dangerous and still inefficient EVs for personal use will keep us burning oil even longer by tying up investments in highways and hostile, car based infrastructure.
Things like rethinking infrastructure, labor, economy and housing would have been more achievable and, for most, felt more like progressing towards a better future than straighup sci-fi level efforts to continue the status quo without as much oil. But it’s the latter we get, they’re putting carbon capture machines on Norwegian oil rigs as we speak.
He wants to own Greenland, but moreso he wants to “own the libs”.
But to be clear, that’s still just your “normal” bad day that hits the markets with some regularity (e.g. Jensen Huang has a bad hair day).
Consider that Russia has been failing to take over a neighboring country for several years now, for incomprehensible reasons, displaying immense incompetence on every level along the way. It is inherently very unlikely that Russia simultaneously has masterminded the entire fabric of the US and effectively taken over the country through sheer genius.
No doubt that Trump is playing right into Putin’s hands, but Putin is also an idiot: not omnipotent.
I think it’s more worth considering that the MAGA doomsday cult has a lot of interests that align with Russia, e.g. shifting U.S focus to the Western Hemisphere for resource dominance, as suggested by Aslı Bâli in the latest episode of The Dig (https://thedigradio.com/podcast/maga-empire-w-asli-bali-and-greg-grandin/).
As far as I’m aware peak oil production has not been recognized to have happened yet.
Over the last century, many predictions of peak oil timing have been made, often later proven incorrect due to increased extraction rates.[9] M. King Hubbert introduced comprehensive modeling of peak oil in a 1956 paper, predicting U.S. production would peak between 1965 and 1971; his global peak oil predictions were predictive through the 1990s and 2000s but eventually were deemed premature due to improved drilling technology.[10] Current forecasts for the year of peak oil range from 2028 to 2050.[11] These estimates depend on future economic trends, technological advances, and efforts to mitigate climate change.[8][12][13] Peak oil, Wikipedia
It is still assumed that global oil consumption scales with economic growth and under 2025 consumption increased.
Global liquid fuels consumption increased by an estimated 1.2 million b/d in 2025 and is forecast to increase by 1.1 million b/d in 2026 and 1.3 million b/d in 2027. Consumption growth rises next year as global economic activity picks up pace. Based on forecasts from Oxford Economics, our forecast assumes global GDP will grow by 3.1% this year and 3.3% in 2027. Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA (U.S. government)
Thanks, corrected!
When you have plug-in hybrid tanks or nuclear powered strategic bombers oil will see a diminish in it’s strategic relevance as a resource.
Fusion is nowhere near being in industrial use or being profitable. In the future, maybe, pending more breakthroughs.
Whether nuclear is a good idea to cling to going forward or not, it takes time to deploy. Those small reactors don’t just come off a shelf, ready to be turned on. Oil, however, can generate power TODAY, anywhere you can ship it.
The question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to keep burning oil – it definitely isn’t – the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes. Notably, the article mentions that China’s oil use hasn’t even peaked yet. China does not use a small amount of oil.
Ok, NVM Trump is great, super reliableand Nato is not at all in a state of disrepair. Got it.