Cheap ass people who buy stuff on special at end of life expecting miracles ie believing the lies they are told because they want to believe what favours them. That distorts the measure because of course by then many people believe the product is a failure. Now if they were early adopter failure selectors, hmm, now isn't that what early adopters who pick the right product are, people who have figured out what the losing products are and picked the winner.

Slovenia was not the center of a province called "Rome" for hundreds of years. Northern Mexico was not part of a province called "America" for hundreds of years. The appropriate analogy would be if the US later collapsed, and the southewestern border states were overrun by Mexicans (and then later other peoples), and then much later said people insisted on being called Americans, even though they had interbred with their conquerors.

Note that the people in Greek Macedonia are no more "direct descendants" of the ancient Macedonians than the people of modern Macedonia. Probably less, due to the huge refugee influx that was settled there.

As described here:

Due to the fragmentary attestation of this language or dialect, various interpretations are possible.[8] Suggested phylogenetic classifications of Macedonian include:[9]

An Indo-European language that is a close cousin to Greek and also related to Thracian and Phrygian languages, suggested by A. Meillet (1913) and I. I. Russu (1938),[10] or part of a Sprachbund encompassing Thracian, Illyrian and Greek (Kretschmer 1896, E. Schwyzer 1959).
An Illyrian dialect mixed with Greek, suggested by K. O. Müller (1825) and by G. Bonfante (1987).
A Greek dialect, part of the North-Western (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote) variants of Doric Greek, suggested amongst others by N.G.L. Hammond (1989) Olivier Masson (1996), Michael Meier-Brügger (2003) and Johannes Engels (2010).[11][12][13][14]
A northern Greek dialect, related to Aeolic Greek and Thessalian, suggested among others by A.Fick (1874) and O.Hoffmann (1906).[11][15]
A Greek dialect with a non-Indo-European substratal influence, suggested by M. Sakellariou (1983).
A sibling language of Greek within Indo-European, Macedonian and Greek forming two subbranches of a Greco-Macedonian subgroup within Indo-European (sometimes called "Hellenic"),[8] suggested by Joseph (2001), Georgiev (1966),[16] Hamp & Adams (2013),[17]

There's no question that ancient Macedonian was related to Greek (most likely to a northern dialect such as Aetolian) - the question is how and to what degree vs. that of the Illyrians and Thracians. As mentioned, by the 3rd century BC it had become nearly fully absorbed, but not without first contributing words and grammar of its own. An example of the Greek view toward the Macedonians was that Macedonians were initially banned from competing in the Olympic Games (which was only for Greek Men); the first Macedonian to be allowed to compete was Alexander 1, who was made to first prove that he was of sufficient Greek ancestry (note: if that incident ever even happened - there's some suggestion that Alexander's competition in the Olympics may have been a later addition to try to prove their Greek credentials). But even if we take the story at face value, the fact that they demanded proof that he was sufficiently Greek (something not asked of any other competitors) should be a more than sufficient indicator of their views of Macedonians at the time.

Question, why did France and Germany want Greece in? (I don't know the answer).

There's little to be done if a nation of people wind up with a bad government (and bad government departments full of people who screw things up).

Hopefully the future will bring in more "team of teams" connected organisations, so that the people can see the crap that's going on and can have a chance to fix it.
Democracy, on its own—elect some people—doesn't protect anyone from those people making royal cockups. People still need to be able to see what is going on and hear the alarm bells when they happen, not 20 years later when the stuff the governments were doing finally has consequences big enough for all to see.

As it is, "the people" only get to find out about the small leak when the ship sinks.

So I think there must be some lessons for the people, in books like General McChrystal's Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.

Oh no, I know it doesn't work that way. But I also know it doesn't work without citizen involvement. Obviously you have more of that where you live, if you only have 20% corruption.

Even if the money was printed and then given to the IMF, the moment the money was printed, the value it has came from devaluing all of the other money in circulation.

This is only true in an economy that's already working at 100% capacity. That hasn't been the case for a long time now. In the current situation of idling economy some actor getting more money will likely simply activate idle production capacity, which will actually increase the size of the market and the value of existing money.

Of course, the whole idea that supply exceeding demand can cause a crisis speaks for the absurdity of the entire economic system. It might be best to focus efforts on coming up with its replacement.

But if he keeps asking for more I'll get pissed and stop giving.

I guess this explains why we still have beggars, even in countries that struggle to get rid of all their excess food: making people's survival depend on your goodwill gives you a way to keep them in their place.

And that about sums up EU as well.

The eurocrats are of course thugs, but limiting how much they'll shake down the rest of their subject citizens to subsidize Greece is not a great example of their thuggishness.

However, putting fiscal policy based on ideology and dreams of building a new gold standard over the wellbeing of people is. And will likely be the death of the entire EU at this rate.

Everything about bit coin is scammy from the get go. From the psychopath term mining bit coin, you are not mining, you are simply insanely burning energy for nothing wasting computing cycles on a complete illusion. Secret transaction seem to be the goal, especially for the originators who computer cycled huge numbers of bit coins for little effort, the top of the pyramid scheme. Who backs bit coin, no one, don't compare it to a countries currency, a whole country and it government backs that and they still fail, so what chance does an imaginary currency whose only benefit is the facilitation of crime and tax evasion have, considering that countries can effectively zero it's value by legally making it illegal at any time and you know it is just a matter of time.

A shark does not play with it food, that stupid meme is a stupid meme. Consider the learning exercise, you are born into a sea with no help or guidance, just genetic guidance about likely edible and inedible flavours in the sea you swim in as well as specific trial and error testing method for food sources. So safe trial and error method, be wary, approach target carefully see what it does, hmm, not much. So swing around again and bite, not a too small bite, else target will escape, not a too big because there could be a negative reaction, counter attack or toxic response. The just right bite, which will cripple the target reducing the chance of escape but minimise ingestion of possibly toxic substances or risk of counter attack. Now hang back for a bit and wait to see if minimal blood consumed toxic, takes a few minutes, cant not wait too long else other predators will turn up but need to wait long enough to make sure. Of course that's only the first time that particular target is met, from there on in, easy prey eat at first sight. What makes human difficult initial prey is of course once bitten they seek to immediately get out of the water and they are a vengeful species and do not tolerate eaters of people in any form. Keep in mind, 'missing, presumed drowned', can and often does mean successful shark attack, we only ever really see the failed shark attacks, shark learning about a new potential prey. A successful shark attack you will hear nothing about except a missing person report.

A shark does not play with it food, that stupid meme is a stupid meme. Consider the learning exercise, you are born into a sea with no help or guidance, just genetic guidance about likely edible and inedible flavours in the sea you swim in as well as specific trial and error testing method for food sources. So safe trial and error method, be wary, approach target carefully see what it does, hmm, not much. So swing around again and bite, not a too small bite, else target will escape, not a too big because there could be a negative reaction, counter attack or toxic response. The just right bite, which will cripple the target reducing the chance of escape but minimise ingestion of possibly toxic substances or risk of counter attack. Now hang back for a bit and wait to see if minimal blood consumed toxic, takes a few minutes, cant not wait too long else other predators will turn up but need to wait long enough to make sure. Of course that's only the first time that particular target is met, from there on in, easy prey eat at first sight. What makes human difficult initial prey is of course once bitten they seek to immediately get out of the water and they are a vengeful species and do not tolerate eaters of people in any form, including and especially other people. Keep in mind, 'missing, presumed drowned', can and often does mean successful shark attack, we only ever really see the failed shark attacks. A successful shark attack you will hear nothing about except a missing person report.

If you can shoot at them, they can shoot at you. The longer you take to aim, the longer you are exposed and someone else can aim at you or as is more often the case, take a snap shot at someone a few metres away and hit you by accident as they spray out bullets. Somehow a exo-skeleton that makes me stick my gun up with my head exposed behind it while it demands I take aim, kind of seems wildly offensive. Reality if the people you are training are too incompetent to learn to shoot relatively accurately with minimal training, you should not be giving them a gun because in the field they will revert to pray and spray and that is worse for your side rather than the other side. Many armies make recruits run/march for fifteen kilometres, then immediately get you on the firing range to shoot off twenty shoots and if you miss with too many shoots you fail and you are out. Of course it depends whether you want professional soldiers or just cannon fodder you can chew up and spit out, dumping them on the streets with crippling injuries.

More the reality is that human society as a whole has to relearn the lesson of the difference between the allocation or resources and services versus the allocation of imaginary capital. Entirely too much emphasis is being placed upon the fantasy of imaginary money making more imaginary money and somehow that imaginary resource equating to real actual resources like food, water, energy, accommodation and clothing.

The future of capital has to change and it needs a realistic basis, that logical basis will likely be energy generation capacity. You can do lots and lots of stuff with energy, it's generation and use can make or break our world. More clean energy means making far better use of resources. With oodles of energy you could desalinate sufficient water to turn the worlds deserts in farms and turn current farms located in more fertile high rainfall regions back into rich bio diverse national parks, you could more effectively manage the world resources.

Tying capital to energy generation capacity, would create energy generation growth and create a focus on making energy cheaper, to generate more capital. Part of that energy equation is of course paying to clean up the pollution created by generating energy, a real cost, so logically cleaner energy generates higher returns.

Greece: "Hey Russia, I'm broke. Can you help me out with some money? I'll be your best friend!"
Russia: "Um, okay." (beat) "Hey, China, I'm broke. Can you help me out with some money? I'll be your best friend!"
China: "Um, okay." (beat) "Wait, uh oh......"