All good points. Thank you.

It just would have been nice for them to not drop the thing right on top of MH370.

Back yard gasoline refineries, here we come!

... the reincarnation of ShareBlue? Because those people have shuffled money and personnel around between organizations faster than a Soviet spy changed passports trying to make it over the border.

Zampolit.

... Casper will be out of work.

A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!

Elsewhere, we are already debating the wisdom of identifying children on line for the purpose of blocking pictures of boobies. Good luck with that.

Fent. At least here in Seattle.

But the people that you associated with tended to be local and a smaller group. They were bound together by a sense of community and were more likely to intervene if they saw someone in trouble. Not so with social media, where your "buddy" could be someone half way around the globe, sitting in a warehouse, mining engagement. Or worse yet, an AI with no concept of a conscience.

We're not for sale.

REGNUM] "The welfare state in Germany is no longer financially sustainable. The welfare state as it exists today can no longer be financed by what we can afford economically," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a party conference in Lower Saxony on Saturday.

But these words sounded like a memorial prayer for the socio-economic model of the FRG, which for many years inspired universal admiration.

The German leader has called for a major overhaul of the welfare system as spending continues to rise, surpassing last year's record of â47 billion.

Predictably, the Chancellor did not mention any connection between the continued financing of Ukraine and the economic shock caused by the refusal to buy cheap Russian energy resources.

Germanyâ(TM)s economy, once the EUâ(TM)s undisputed leader in high-tech exports based on the automotive, engineering, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, has slowed sharply since 2017. Since then, Germanyâ(TM)s GDP has grown by just 1.6%, while the rest of the eurozone has grown by 9.5%. Of course, the low base effect has had a greater impact on the economic growth of other EU countries. However, the fact that Germany is among the laggards is largely due to the incompetent management of politicians who, over decades of budget surplus, have become accustomed to putting out any fire with a stream of banknotes.

Fighting global warming? Germany is ready to throw a collar on the national industries that generate the highest budget revenues for the sake of an ephemeral "green" idea.

A global refugee crisis due to war in the Middle East? Germany is ready to open its borders to millions of people with an alien socio-cultural background and, under the slogan "We can handle it!", put them on the neck of the German welfare state.

Fighting the consequences of the pandemic? The German state is generously ready to hand out several thousand euros of âoehelicopter moneyâ to all those in need, provoking rampant inflation.

War in Ukraine? Germany as the main fighter for democracy in Europe cannot remain on the sidelines.

â50 billion over three years for financial and military support for the Ukrainian regime was the moral duty of German politicians trapped in narrative thinking about the need for Ukraine to win and Russia to be defeated, which violated the dogma of a âoerules-based world order.â

And this is not to mention the voluntary and conscious rejection of Russian resources and the Russian market for high-tech products, which have long been the cornerstones of the export-oriented economy of Germany.

A CONTINUOUSLY STAGNATING ECONOMY

Germany's economy to shrink by 0.2% in 2024 after falling by 0.3% in 2023.

Industrial production fell under Olaf Scholz's "traffic light coalition" and continues to decline under the new Merz government: GDP fell by 0.3% in the second quarter of 2025.

It is almost certain that 2025 will also end in negative territory for Germany, which will be a kind of anti-record: never before in modern history has the German economy stagnated for three years in a row. And something tells me that with the current course of the red-black government, 2026 is also unlikely to be the year the negative trend is reversed for the country.

In full accordance with the well-known international joke about falling incomes and the arrangement of beds in a brothel, the change in the ruling party coalition and the Scholz-Merz reshuffle had absolutely no effect on the state of the national economy of the FRG.

Meanwhile, social security costs have risen sharply and will rise further this year as Germany's population ages and unemployment rises.

Although the majority of social assistance recipients are Germans (mostly working recipients of benefits whose salaries do not allow them to make ends meet), a significant number of them are not German citizens. Including about 1.1 million residents of Ukraine, who are equal to Germans in terms of social security.

Supporting Ukraine is too costly for Germany.

For example, from February 2022 to the end of 2024, the state budget spent â25 billion on social support for Ukrainian refugees. Another â25 billion, so necessary for the national economy, went to supply weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and financial tranches to "support the pants" of the Kyiv regime.

At the same time, Chancellor Merz, who admitted to journalists and fellow party members at the aforementioned party conference that he âoedid not think that the situation in the domestic economy was so bad,â essentially admitted his own incompetence as a statesman and exposed some of the systemic shortcomings of German-style parliamentary democracy.

How a person who does not understand the basic principles of a capitalist economy and has no relevant experience in public administration could end up as head of government of the EU's largest country remains a mystery.

ETERNAL QUESTIONS OF GERMAN DEMOCRACY Many politicians and experts have already attacked the Chancellor with harsh criticism of his statements about the inevitable abolition of the German welfare state.

The welfare state could well continue to be supported if it were organized fairly and financed on the basis of solidarity. This is where the problem lies: for decades, costs have been shifted, funding gaps have been deliberately left open, and entire professional groups have been exempted from the obligation to show solidarity.

The raw numbers seem to suggest the opposite. Yes, social spending is growing in absolute terms. But the decisive factor is its share in economic production (social payments as a percentage of GDP). For more than 30 years, this figure has remained stable at around 27%. In other words, if the welfare state grows along with the economy, it should, in theory, remain as affordable as before.

Where do the alleged âoeholesâ in the treasury come from?

For years, civil society organizations have been pointing out that billions are being wasted because the federal government is misusing mandatory social security funds to address issues that are not directly related to social issues.

In reality, these costs should be paid for from the federal budget â" that is, from taxes (for example, from export profits of national industry). Instead, they are shifted onto the shoulders of private payers.

That's what gold used to be. The defacto tender for all transactions. Then the banks stepped in and issued currency backed by gold. Moving the metal to Fort Knox. And soon therefter, golds status as backing was rescinded, making the currency prima fascia tender. The banks are just afraid that their currency will suffer the same fate. Stuffed in a vault as backing for the tender used for actual commerce.

Dehumanization is the well-documented Step 1 on the road to genocide. Compare political opponents to diseases(or disease-carrying animals, like rats)

It's what Israel did in Gaza and we all see what happened there. Trump is the stupidest man to ever own his own 747.

Because some parents can be emotionally distant, if not abusive. And kids feel that they cannot speak with them.

Right. But you have no idea what ideas "the Internet" is putting in your kids head. Either from an AI or some assholes on social media groups. Since "the Internet" has no way of knowing who is or is not a child, this is all a good argument for universal age verification. Or keeping kids off of it altogether. But such verification/restriction has serious issues for (adult) privacy/anonymity and the affects on freedom of speech. So, good luck with all of this.

We are going to be sending our armed forces into every corner of the globe. And since AI weaponry has been deemed unethical, we will be needing grunts to pull triggers.