Just put it in context: Today Russia struck the Pechenihy Reservoir dam in Kharkiv.
Russia launched the war because they thought it would be a quick and easy win, a step towards reestablishing a Russian empire and sphere of influence, because Putin thinks in 19th century terms. Russia is continuing the war, not because it's good for Russia. I'd argue that winning and then having to rebuild and pacify Ukraine would be a catastrophe. Russia is continuing the war because *losing* the war would be catastrophic for the *regime*. It's not that they want to win a smoldering ruin, it's that winning a smoldering ruin is more favorable to them and losing an intact country.

Jesus Christ man, does anything in your day not somehow involve thinking about Trump?

Checks are a last vestige of a higher trust society.

I work for a European firm and they (their auditors) despise checks and can't comprehend how America can be so backward as to still use them.

Ironically we just had a customer involved in seven-digit fraud payments ...which couldn't have happened without electronic payments. Had they been "allowed" to pay us in checks like they used to, it simply couldn't have happened.

I'm not sure listing another random rule that allows the German state to arrest people is a "win".

In a way this is good news.
Seriously.

If Russia expected to win this conflict, it's unlikely even they are dumb enough to cause major nuclear leaks in territory they expect to hold.

It's possible this is a clue that they DON'T expect to do so, and we've advanced to the "well if I can't have it nobody can" scorched earth stage, which is very Russian.

Trump says thanks for letting him live free in there.

They did ragebait on purpose. It worked on you. You engaged with it and got angry enough to leave a comment. That boosts posts.

It's literally what ragebait is meant to do.

Someone smarter than me can tell us if this is true literary irony or not. I never got the concept very well.

... For our elected officials, that is.

A school bus, with the red lights flashing, may NOT be passed on either side. This is to prevent children from being run over. Texas cops are quick to fine anyone who does, and it's hammered into your head in Drivers Ed.

In some states it's not a big deal, and so many of those people moved to Texas to get away from their states, only to turn Texas into what they hated. They don't learn.

"There are serious effects now"
Really?

As far as I can tell, the "current serious effects" are always handwavy either wrong or framing-dependent bullshit like:
1) "there's a drought in California" (entirely disregarding that we happen to have settled it in an extremely wet phase, while for the last 1000+ years the US SW has been much drier for *centuries* at a time), or
2) every time it rains in Charleston "global warming is making hurricanes worse" or "...more frequent" or both (both of which have been repeatedly debunked as an artifact of our North-Atlantic-Data focus, in regards to both 'severe' storms and total hurricane energy, EITHER in the NAtl or globally), or
3) the 'look at all the people that die from heat!' (invariably after a hot week in summer; again routinely and repeatedly debunked by statistics that show 6-10x more people die from cold than heat whether we're talking regionally or global scales).

So please, elaborate these 'serious effects NOW'? What did I miss? The 'sinking islands' that aren't actually sinking?

You're clearly not talking about American cars. What's a 1-tonne Ford Escort? I did have a 1983 Dodge Ram D150 half-ton pickup truck with a Slant-6 and an A-833 manual transmission; that thing would get 25MPG and hold 75MPH all the way westbound across Michigan... of course, it took it a while to get to 75MPH, merging was just like driving a Peterbilt with a 53' trailer full of anvils. That exact same engine and a comparable transmission were available for the Dodge Trucks line from 1960 to 1987 and was renowned for durability and reliability.

The key point is that Americans typically don't want them. To this day, in Canada, gasoline is cheaper than water. I'm not sure if that's a statement about gas prices or a slam against the sort of fool who feels the need to buy their tapwater in PET bottles, but I digress. So people buy horsepower. People buy large vehicles based on truck platforms.

As CAFE forces vehicles to become more fuel efficient - without addressing the underlying consumer demand problem! - manufacturers are being forced to use smaller and smaller engines. This means adding turbochargers to cute little aluminum blocks, narrower cam lobes and variable displacement oil pumps and smaller oil control rings all to reduce the internal drag, and thinner oils which offer zero cushion on connecting rod bearings. All of this gets stuffed into a full-size pickup truck with a trailer hitch. They're intolerant of real-world conditions and use, and because of their complexity they're expensive to repair. These vehicles will not have a long lifespan - sure, you might get a good fleet average mileage, but if 50% of the vehicles don't make it to the 100,000 mile mark, they're getting replaced faster with all the environmental damage of producing and disposing of the vehicle.

Maximizing vehicle life is an important part of reducing the vehicle's overall environmental impact.

There's a great YouTube channel where the owner of a full-service used auto parts business takes apart modern engines and shows you what failed. No prior knowledge of engines is required to understand this. Some engines are spectacularly broken. And Eric talks about what will last, and what won't, with an entertaining sarcasm.

Recycling? The lead-acid primary battery gets removed, then the car gets crushed and shredded. Only the steel and the aluminum get recycled. Anyone who thinks that any other material in a car gets recycled in any quantity has never seen a car shredder in operation. ASR (Auto Shredder Residue) is a special waste stream now consisting mostly of mixed plastics, smashed safety glass, and the crap people leave in their cars when they junk them. All that plastic gets landfilled.

Not everyone lives in a fantastically rich petrostate.

"Trump must win"?

Do you people even listen to yourselves?

The man is literally ADOLF HITLER.

"Here"

Here's an idea, pajeet! Why don't you fuck ALL THE WAY off and get off our AmeriKKKan social media?

Nobody wants to listen to you stinky foreigners who whower once a week and don't tip.

Leave. Go. Get on your own country's social media and post all the "AmeriKKKa sucks" comments you want there.

AUSLANDER RAUS!

Would this be the Starlink system Musk rushed to Ukraine and afaik continues to allow UKR to use free if charge? (I believe that some donor nations do pay sub fees for the systems they've purchased for Ukr, to be clear.)

Musk repeatedly said that he won't allow Starlink to be used to support offensive operations. Yes, sometimes free gifts come with strings attached.

Your insistence that because Musk doesn't do everything Ukraine wants without question, "we know where his sympathies lie" is childish.

Yes, I can see the argument that an offensive to retake Ukr territory should be allowed, but I can also see the argument that it is an offensive. Musk, a rather pacifistic person who routinely gets collywobbles when confirmed with violence as pacifists often do, probably sees it that way (and your own linked article mentioned that Biden military & intel people at the time thought Putin 's retaliatory threats were increasingly credible). My guess is that he was confronted with Russian threats to himself or his companies globally.

Would it be better if Starlink just entirely shut down all service to the region? Would that be better for Ukraine?
If that's not what you want, then maybe shut the fuck up?

What is happening to Ukraine is terrible. Ukraine's defense against a sociopathic neighbor has been heroic. That doesn't mean everyone, everywhere, 24/7 makes "what's best for Ukraine" their priority.