Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Nothing has changed. The Netherlands are staying on the straight and narrow even if they might blow hot air under the guise of "EU solidarity", and that gets them cushty NATO jobs, too ;)
Trump's threatening the sovreignty of two NATO members while also being skeptical of the value of keeping the US itself in NATO and suggesting the US won't defend any NATO member that gets attacked.
Maybe so but that does not change a thing to the bilateral relation between US and Netherlands... which is as tight as can be, shall we say, we've seen it as recently as October with Nexperia.
He has already done things that a reasonable outsider would expect to be mere bluffs. And also TACO'ed backwards, turning things he's done into, effectively, theatrics.
Invade The Hague, and the next you see it's the whole US bases' set kicked out from Europe and potential Russian/Chinese missiles in Cuba pointing to Silicon Valley.
And OFC Wall Street heading down faster than in 1929. Fucking up your main client would yield a disaster so huge to the US economy than no war would save them. If any, they would be fucked, because the EU might even temporally ally with Russia. Then the shit would hit the fan in Alaska.
Your army it's the best in the world? Say hello to a coallition between Europe-China-Russia. No one would dare to throw any single atomic bomb because the outcome would be MAD for everyone.
The US would attempt then to invade Mexico/Canada. But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico against an obvious corrupt US war-machine-corporate state, up to the point to getting former Mexican territory back to Mexico.
Texas and California might have declared indepent countries themselves to avoid any war. The smart move, you know.
I've seen far right regimes in Europe -Spain- siding up with the Communist Cuba because of the common backgrounds over politics.
And the Cuban regime itself under Castro mourning over Franco's death. As crazy as it sounds.
Under an US-invaded European Union Spain would team up with Cuba and Venezuela the first day no matter which party would be ruling, left or even neocon-close right. The Spaniard state's survival would be the top priority.
No state, no economy, no Ibex 35. And shit would hit the fan from Latin America too.
Oh, and expect hell with guerrillas spawning here and there from Latin America backed up from Europeans and maybe the Moccromafia and the former Italian Mafia themselves. Spain, France and Italy have contacts over all the Mediterranean and you knows what Mediterranean means. I wouldn't be there if I were an American trying to invade Europe... because once you kick the wasp nest of the Islamic regimes being generously supported from Mafias, you would have both the Jihad and the Narcoguerrillas at home with European army support.
Try to stop that. Because something the Southern Europeans know well it's learning to have friends even in Hell "just in case".
Spain has the Hispano-spehere, they know how to put a whole political spectra on its side with ease, and the French have the Francophonie.
And for sure they have contacts in the Arabic world as I said.
If they don't have a badass archive of ETA contacts with Islamic camps beforehand, and they own the triumph card of Marbella too. You would be nuts trying to invade some sickos there; they know who to call in case of emergencies. The Spanish state already did that against terrorists themselves.
You severely underestimate the level of animosity between half the EU and Russia. They would revolt if the other half tried to openly ally with Russia.
The example you gave isn't too surprising if one believes authoritarians attract authoritarians.
That what happen because, ahem, rudely said, eveyone it's grabbed from the balls from everyone's else. Economically, I mean. We are tangled and dependant of each other.
The US has the most advanced software and CPU's, the EU has sofisticated and pretty complex industrial hardware not even seen in the US. China, well, it's China, the factory of the world.
Sure. But if someone is fantasizing about Europe kicking American troops out with Russian help, they’re fantasizing about nuclear war on European soil. (Admittedly, a short one given Russia’s a paper tiger in conventional terms.)
A deer was walking through the forest when she suddenly noticed a hungry-looking bear stalking her. Quickening her pace, she ran headlong into her old friend the wolf devouring a rabbit. "How dare you!" Ms. Deer bellowed, "That poor rabbit! I'll have you put in prison for that!" The wolf growled. She continued, "You'd better be careful, Mr. Wolf; there's a bear chasing me. If you try to bite me I'll just team up with him and then you'll be fucked!"
This is cute, like a little boy charging you with a cardboard sword. Better take him seriously or you're gonna get "attacked" by his model airplane collection next!
pats head That's nice, Billy, it sure is fun to play pretend. Now you run along and play with your marbles.
Actually, I sense a mounting "AI fatigue". Angry comments under AI contents. Social media accounts that proclaim to be "AI Free". I was thinking today that the killer app for AI could be a filter that automatically exclude all AI content.
I agree. Back in the 90's there was plenty of skepticism, along with some mockery, surrounding the internet. But you never saw headlines like "Lawyer caught using the internet" or "Artist busted using the World Wide Web".
Google are experimenting with different filters that intentionally blur the lines between real and fake video in their shorts. A creator I follow who makes human-in-shot videos suddenly looked fake, like some animation filter was applied. I commented on how bad it looked, and someone said YT are doing it to people's videos as some sort of "trial". The effects were to make the human look more AI generated. The only use for this I can surmise is to make AI content even harder to detect.
Roughly 2% of the US is vegan. About 5 million people.
This would be why the meat industry “plods along” century after century. For every vegan there are 49 people who eat meat, and probably 35 people who feed their pets meat.
There is actually a huge market for animal meat and it is the vegan industry that plods along.
In fact, what even _is_ the vegan industry? Or do you mean it’s basically marketing hype for companies that combine plants in various ways to sell as food?
at least it's possible to be a vegan. imagine trying to be a smartphone vegan. I hope we're not headed there with this abominable technology. I hate using it and don't want to be forced
It is very obviously there. People are not simply accepting the AI-bro justification that one day they won't notice the difference so it's all fine.
Ordinary people are understandably either exhausted by or angry at AI content, because it is relentless and misleading, and because they know instinctively that the people who want this to succeed also want to destroy employment and concentrate profits in the hands of a few Silicon Valley sociopaths.
> You get certainty in an uncertain world. You get a community that will defend you. You get a simple heuristic for navigating complex issues.
This is what faith used to provide.
I say this as a not religious person: Maybe societies really need something like religion to channel irrationality?
We've been trying religion for as long there have been humans. Tends to suffer from the same shortcomings: very easy to subvert and abuse by adversial agents (grifters, sociopaths, etc) and increases in-group/out-group thinking.
This is the real point. Just measuring the amount of water involved makes no sense. Taking 100 liters of water from a river to cool a plant and dumping them back in a river a few degrees warmer is different from taking 100 liters from a fossil acquifer to evaporatively cool the same plant.
I think you have it backwards - light is a term used for specific bands of the EM spectrum. Nobody is calling their FM radio waves light emissions. Unless this is a naming collison with the already established x-rays.
I can relate. May ask you how your relation with AI tools is? I tend to find myself translating my mental model into natural language, to have a machine convert it into code, then reading that code back to mental model. It's unnerving. It feels much more natural writing my mental model directly into code.
I think I can relate with you. It’s unnerving for me to see how poorly written my initial natural language interpretation appears. AI reassures me it’s not also incoherent by generating code that does what I expect.
I am not using AI tools for code generation. I have only used it for 'querying' information, for example, when I started to work with Device Trees and Yocto for embedded Linux development. I am happy with IntelliSense. Yes, AI tools can very quickly generate some simple app, but I do not believe it will work for more complex problems.
> When all processes for deriving synthetic gasoline require more input energy than available energy from the output, you're not describing processes that "potentially offering a more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels."
Sorry, what? Even charging a battery "require more input energy than available energy from the output". Obviously it's not a source of energy, it's a way to store energy.
And given the notorious low efficiency of ICE motors it's likely that traditional gasoline takes more energy to refine etc. than actually drives the car forwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...