Not really. I'm from a socialist country, and on of the key aspects to our prosperity and competitiveness is enabling private entities to get to compete for and win profitable infrastructure contracts.

This is because private contractors bring significant amount of expertise and capability that government would have to build from ground up without them, as well as force costs down through competition. Problems only arise when said private contractors become big and powerful enough to corrupt those making decisions behind these projects to favour them in various ways.

It's another one of those "capitalism works really well as long as it is properly managed and doesn't get big enough to corrupt powerful entities" moments.

Google et al likely figured out that instead of public lobbying, they have to do private lobbying. I.e. less publicity, more favours exchanging hands with important figures in government bureaucracy.

One sentence: Now you actually have a chance to have a decent internet service without massively overpaying for it in US.

It's going to be interesting to see how quickly municipal internet in US can actually challenge incumbent monopolies and force them to compete on quality and price.

At least on desktop, the differential is core number. i3 is dual core, i5 is quad core, and i7 is quad core with hyperthreading (8 virtual cores). That means higher iX will crush lower iY in parallel tasks like video encoding. But at the same time single thread application that only care about maximum speed of a single core, higher clock i3 has a chance to eat lower clock i7.

I'm getting a feeling that most people here are going to say some incredibly anti-democratic things in here in a moment without even realising it.

Reality is, democratically elected parliament isn't supposed to be a bunch of elites but a cross-section of electorate. That means it needs to have a few superstitious people to be able to properly represent the population which also has such people in statistically significant amounts.

That's nice. You arrest him. And?

Which would accomplish what exactly? Assange is still stuck in embassy specifically because while diplomatic immunity protects him while inside the embassy grounds, there's no way to move him out without British police grabbing him.

The logic appears to be that our immune systems are simply built to be under far more stress than they currently are. We are not evolved to exist in hygienic environments we have today.

As a result, our immune system a huge behemoth evolved to fight a massive and continuous war of attrition, yet the hostiles arrive in far smaller numbers than what it is designed for, often hopelessly outnumbered and weakened. A a result, it begins to seek enemies to fight, reacting to smallest abnormalities
.
Which is what allergy is. Hence, allergies make perfect sense. They are a clear sign of immune systems far too powerful for hygienic environments we live in, an excellent showcase of cultural evolution far outstripping biological evolution in speed.

That would be a biological rather than a chemical weapon if weaponized.

To be fair, these people make good money going that through very specific crowd on Patreon. It's their business model.

That is why they are called "professional victims".

1. Because even with cheap electricity prices, they are still very profitable. This is really not that hard to comprehend. Lower operating costs per unit of electricity produced = more profit.

2. Except that it's not "French tax payers" but "Areva". And Areva is in fact a multinational corporation, not a French government subsidiary even though approximately 90% of ownership is in French state's hands.
Their main problems right now are German decision to phase out nuclear power, reduction of nuclear design and building contracts due to Fukushima accident as well as Olkiluoto 3 problems. This has caused French government to increase capitalisation of the company.

The obvious angle here is aggression towards one another, not aggression towards other species.

To be fair, it almost did survive it. Other reactors at Fukushima in fact did survive it.

Too many factual mistakes on which your house of cards is built make it difficult to argue on merits. Examples range from "permanent unemployed underclass in Germany" (Germany is close to full employment with exceptionally easy ways to get training and a part time job) to "homogenous cultures in Nordics" (have you ever actually looked at demographics in Sweden?)

I'll just finish off with the simple statement that when someone says "just you see, in twenty or so years it will be different because I say so", that usually means "I have no evidence to show why the outcome I suggest is the realistic outcome, so I put it far enough into the future that any outcome can be judged as possible".

Examples of these arguments were claims that world will end in nuclear conflagration in 20 years back in the 60s, that Russia would be fully integrated into West in 1990s and other similar brain farts. In real world on the other hand...

First of all, I'm not at all saying that "US should change its culture". As any advanced culture you should adapt slowly with times, and absolutely not aim to "change the culture" other than for self-betterment. All I'm saying is that you should cease pretentious bullshit about how your culture is "superior" when it's obviously superior in some areas - and drastically inferior in others. And generally unfit to most of the world because of its specific focus on selfishness, which is currently heavily taxing your society to the extreme such as general ungovernability due to pandering to special interests (see - selfishness) and inability to compromise (see - winner takes it all opposition style system over consensus).

On unemployment benefits in Europe - they are small because high taxes pay for most necessities through making them free or extremely cheap. That is, universal healthcare, free education, functional subsidised infrastructure and so on. US model is essentially "pay more and subsidise little". Nordic model is "pay less and subsidise a lot". Back when I was a student on state aid for about a year I had about 100EUR after paying for bare necessities like rent and food. But I never had to be afraid of getting sick, my education was basically free, food at university was heavily subsidised, sports activities were all but free, and so on. At the same time a US student has to take heavy loans just to pay his tuition in a high quality university, or have his family assist him. Or will have to work during his studies, unable to focus on studies alone. Same thing for unemployment benefits (which are notably low in Germany because Germany is currently a de facto full employment economy and most benefits are now in process of being moved to low income part time workers instead).

Overall, your entire argument is that of a supremacist. "We are superior, others are inferior, they should just adapt our superior system over their inferior one". You're in a good company that way. Historically, most of the worst tyrannies adopted just that particular attitude. This is a sign if inferiority complex, rather than any kind of superiority.

Now for the most ridiculous part of all. "Horrendous social, cultural and economic structures Japanese live under"? Has it ever occurred to you that to them, their lives are a norm and US social, cultural and economic structures seem horrendous? Which would be because different cultures create different expectations in people, alongside different reactions to exactly same situations. What you view as "horrendous", many of those who grew in the culture view as "great" and what you view as "great" many view as "horrendous". For example, must of current European opposition to TTIP is rooted in the fact that the deal would likely force us to relax some of the state structures related to universal healthcare and allow US style profiteering on suffering of others. Because in US the social norm is that open profiteering from suffering of those poorer is completely acceptable and even encouraged: see opposition to universal healthcare "but what if my money goes to take care of someone who I don't care about". In most of Europe it's viewed as horrendous and downright monstrous and paying taxes to help those less fortunate is viewed as a civic duty and insurance for oneself in case one ends up among those less fortunate.

Just one of many massive cultural differences that show particular inferiority of US culture's way of doing things. At the same time, one should also note the superiority in other things - such as for example being better at motivating entrepreneurship, being far more tolerant of failures (in much of Europe and Japan for example, starting a company and failing is considered a black mark on one's reputation which reduces motivation of potential entrepreneurs.) It's also notably less ethnocentric and as a result notably less inherently racist (Japan is especially bad here), tends to allow for significantly greater personal freedom in certain areas and so on.

Conclusion: one should not argue about "supremacy" of any given culture. The only thing that can judge that is history

P.S. FYI I'm a Finn (thanks for the lecture on terribleness of my culture and country in one sentence) and I'm very well travelled and knowledgeable on various cultures from my work with exchange students from six continents over the years.