They have US military bases there

There are no US military bases in Cyprus. There are british ones(since Cyprus used to be part of the British Empire).

And there is 0% chance that Cyprus would let israeli military launch attacks from Cyprus.

Nor is there much strategic reason to do so, unless Hezbollah has some s-300/400 and Israel needs to go around them and attack from a different direction. But they dont. And even if they had, Cyprus has basically no reason to allow Israel to do that and there is 0 precedent for that either.

I think it is just Hezbollah being an attention whore.

It’s also available on hbo max.

Because not many europeans primarily identify as “european first”. This is slowly changing but for the most part, people identify by whatever european nation they inhabit. But i bet most chinese identify as “chinese first” instead of whatever region/city they are from.

In fact, China likes to brag about how “advanced” they are, that they solved this “issue” centuries ago, while the EU is currently trying to “copy them”.

TLDR : If you ask a chinese tourist “where are you from?”, they will answer “China”. If you ask a european the same, noone will say “Europe/EU”.

Normal memory isnt supposed to be 100% reliable. Thats why you have ECC memory, which is used on mission critical computers(servers). It’s more expensive and more reliable but normal memory is reliable enough for most consumer uses and cheaper, thats why it is the default.

Normal DDR5 modules have something like a “light ecc” function built in but there are actual DDR5 ECC modules that are obviously better.

PS Your motherboard needs to support ECC memory in order to use ECC memory modules.

It is chinese owned but Volvo is still a thing in Sweden. Geely bought them(Volvo Cars), gave them infinite money, so that Volvo could design and make cars like the 2nd gen xc90. In return Geely acquired the technology and know how on how to make quality cars.

Nowadays, Volvo can combine their world leading car design with Geely’s electric vehicle platforms. Thats how you get a car like upcoming volvo ex30, that is cheap and (probably) good.

When Volvo was owned by Ford, it was about to go the way of the Dodo(aka Saab). Geely saved it and made it a competitive car brand.

From what i have read, it was a freelancer dude who wrote 1 article for Al Jazeera, 5+ years ago. I dont know why there is this need to make everything so biased/black and white.

No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.

But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters “hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me”.

Basically Macron is saying “You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win”. It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).

As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.

The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.

Technically it is “democratic” because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor “politicking”.

PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.

Reminder that Mirage 2000 is the only plane to have shot down an F-16. A greek Mirage 2000 shot down a turkish F-16. The event was kept secret in both countries for almost 20 years, to avoid escalation. Greece still today denies that it shot down the F-16. From wikipedia

On the eighth of October 1996, seven months after the escalation of the Imia/Kardak crisis, a Greek Mirage 2000 reportedly fired an R.550 Magic II missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D over the Aegean Sea near Chios island. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of a RF-4E on the Syrian Coast, Turkish Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz confirmed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II in 1996 after allegedly violating Greek airspace near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and they saw one parachute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Turkish_F-16_shootdown

The turks had almost certainly shot down a greek military helicopter earlier and that was also kept a secret/both sides claim it was an accidental crash.

PS The surviving turkish F-16 pilot was immediately returned to Turkey after the rescue.

1. Lego horizon Adventures looks neat, hopefully it has more depth than other lego games but i dont expect much. At least it looks pretty. Atm it isnt on steam, but it is announced that it will be.

2. I am very hyped for Space Marine 2. This might be the best warhammer 40k game ever.

3. I am optimistic for Star Wars Outlaws by the division devs(i liked division 1 and 2). But it isnt even on steam, so it will fail.

4. Civilization 7 is definitely one of the most anticipated games ever.

5. And hopefully Battle Aces will revive the rts genre.

I would like to see a more balanced view of the Force and how the jedi’s complacency/rule has been a fertile ground for corruption and injustice. And/or how a lot of jedi concepts especially regarding human relations and emotions are unhealthy.

Basically a more modern approach to how a jedi theocracy is problematic as fuck. Kotor 2 tried to lean a little bit on that and had the option of being “neutral”.

Seems pretty mid and derivative.

Trump is charismatic and funny, thats why he was on tv. If only people didnt take him seriously or give him actual power. Let me remind you that /r/the_donald was a joke subreddit.

Hillary has no charisma. Also her campaign literally promoted Trump, because she thought he would have been an easier opponent. She is smart and capable(or was, she is kinda getting older nowadays) but her political positions are abhorrent. She could have been the perfect “reasonable republican” candidate.

This looks awful. The rifle keeps going up and down while it is walking, no stabilization and they didnt show any accuracy data. You might as well ducktape a rifle to a roomba.

Aiming at targets far away is very hard. Even if it has to stop to shoot, how does it aim? By moving the body of a giant robot dog? That doesnt seem it has the sensitivity it needs. If the rifle is moving that much during walking, how can you accurately aim at anything, since you dont know where the rifle will be aiming when you stop? The camera seems to be on the robot and not on the rifle and everything is jiggling.

Also why even use a full goddamn rifle? You wont have a human holding it, you can just use a modified barrel basically. Are they not embarrassed by how bad this looks? Are they so clueless?

Ah yeah, Greece totally fought against communism /s

During WW2, the defacto resistance group was the communists, so most people joined them(even if they werent really communist). There was a right wing resistance group but it was much smaller and less relevant. After WW2, the communist resistance group had literally millions of members and obviously wanted to be part of the government.

That was not desirable by the british(and the americans) for obvious reasons. They demanded the disarmament of the communist group in exchange for some minor role in the new government. Eventually the deal broke down and the communist group protested. Then things turned to violence, leading to the greek civil war.

The greek civil war was the bloodiest conflict in Europe after WW2, till the war in Ukraine, with over 150k dead, most of them civilians. And because the right wing was outnumbered, they freed and armed the nazi collaborators. If you are wondering why a literal neonazi party was polling 15% at some point in Greece, was because the nazi collaborators were not only never punished but actually rewarded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekemvriana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Battalions

From the Security Battalions wikipedia article

After the liberation, the groups were only temporarily disbanded, and were recruited into the Gendarmerie to fight alongside the British and government forces against the EAM/ELAS in the battle of Dekemvriana in Athens. The Security Battalions always surrendered to the British, who usually let them keep the weapons the Germans had supplied them with.[24] General Ronald Scobie, who commanded the British forces in Greece, in contrast to his attitude towards EAM, whom he dismissed as mere “bandits”, treated the Security Battalions as a legitimate military force.[25] The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a very favorable view of the Security Battalions, saying, “It seems to me that the collaborators in Greece in many cases did the best they could to shelter the Greek population from German oppression”

The greek civil war still remains a taboo subject in Greece and it isnt taught in schools(because how do you teach that “the bad guys won” to kids). Remember, throughout history, the good guys always win eventually. Winners write the history and they are always the good guys.

PS Stalin didnt help the greek communists because he had agreed with Churchil that Greece would be part of the “West”.

Other than the ending dialogue, which i wasnt a big fan of probably because of the writing, her acting is superb. She is almost always silent so that makes it even more challenging. Her eyes do the talking.

1. I was talking about Europe in case you missed it.

2. Half your examples are older than 30 years old. The other half are literally fighting Al Qaeda and ISIS, on behalf and request of the local governments and population. In fact, in many west african countries, the West was “kicked out” and now Russia is literally doing the same(or promised to). Is Russia going after jihadists in Africa imperialism?

Regarding the Red Sea, Is your argument that the West should allow people/nations/groups to attack commercial vessels? Is that morally ok with you? Is trying to stop them, imperialism? Should the West start hitting iranian vessels? Iran absolutely needs ships to be safe to travel in order to sell their oil. In fact, the Houthis hit a ship that was going to Iran.

https://www.reuters.com/world/ambrey-says-bulker-was-targeted-by-missiles-bab-al-mandab-2024-02-12/

Even China has publicly opposed this shit.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-calls-red-sea-attacks-civilian-ships-end-2024-05-28/

As is perfectly obvious to anyone that can read, France and Germany together easily matched China’s military spending and outspent Russia by a wide, wide margin in 2009.

You need to understand what ppp is. And you need to break down the cost to see what each country is paying for. France and Germany have limited but highly paid military personnel. Countries like China have an huge military+paramilitary, that work for low wages while they are spending a lot of money on new equipment(at higher ppp, thus cheaper per identical thing).

Remember when Trump was complaining about Nato allies not spending 2% of their gdp on defense? Literally every country in Europe has almost doubled their defense spending after the invasion of Ukraine. Why is that?

Russia is spending 7.1% of their gdp on defense, 35% of total government spending. Are they doing it because they are imperialistic or because they are afraid the West will invade them? And if you say “obviously they are doing it in self defense”, let me remind you that

1. They started it by invading a sovereign country.

2. They have nukes, noone is invading them.

The fact that the west was, and still is, the most prolific war mongerers of the post-Enlightenment era blows your hypothesis out of the water as soon as it tries to float.

How about we talk about the last 30 years then. What wars have europeans participated recently? Yugoslav wars? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Yugoslav wars were about ethnic cleansing between different ethnic groups who wanted to go their own ways. Afghanistan was because of 9/11, the taliban refusing to offer Bin Laden and the american thirst for revenge. Iraq was extremely controversial in Europe, pretty much every state opposed it, even if some european governments supported it, the majority of their people opposed it(huge protests).

Even the US, the imperium, which is usually doing imperial things, havent been doing much imperialism recently, after Afghanistan. And because of Afghanistan and Iraq, meaningless and immoral wars for most people, the US has trouble recruiting military personnel nowadays. Thats how democracies work, eventually the truth rises to the top.

The Ukraine war is one of the most clear cut wars since the Iraq invasion. And the West has the opportunity to be on the right side for once. Let me remind you that historically neutral countries like Sweden, joined NATO and countries like Germany are quickly re-arming for the first time in almost 100 years.

Because till recently, Europe was “let’s all hold hands together”, living in their own dream bubble about how war is not only bad but also insane. Putin reminded them that “sanity” is not a requirement for governance.

If the West is so war mongering, why did the West not spend more on military in the last 20 years? Why did the West wait till the Ukraine invasion to start pumping untoled trillions into the military industrial complex?

The only event with bigger impact on military spending was the collapse of USSR. For decades, Europe(and even the US) was taking advantage of the peace dividend. That doesnt sound too war mongery to me. And suddently, with just 1 Ukraine invasion, the West doubled and trippled its military budget.

So is the West war mongering or is Russia that caused an insane re-armament because of the Ukraine invasion?

And in before “nato expansion”, blah blah. Sovereign countries have the right to join any alliance they want. Nato didnt invade those countries and force them to join, those countries literally “blackmailed” to join. Poland threatened to get nukes if they werent allowed into NATO.

If Mexico joins an alliance with China, would you approve an invasion of Mexico by the US? I wouldnt.

Freedoms like to travel, what is it to you?

People dont have as much agency as he thinks. And game theory(a relatively new concept for his era) dictates that the one who convinces/forces more of their people to fight, is the one who wins.

Let’s say that your entire country, every single person, refuses to go to war. And the country next door has a mere 100 people who are willing(or otherwise) to go to war. Now your country is part of their country and those 100 people are in charge.

In a world where noone wants to fight, those who are willing(or forced) to fight, rule everyone else.

And to bring this concept into the modern era, it is near impossible to post antiwar posts in Russia, because of state control of the internet and the cultivated perception that everyone who is antiwar, is antirussian and a traitor. This is literally the law there.

Yet in the liberal western states, you are free to do that. So what is the result of this difference? People in the West are less willing to go to war. Now you might think that is a good thing but ultimately this benefits Russia, who is then free to take over their smaller neighbours. This is just interference, marketing for Russia’s war machine, even if it doesnt feel like that.

Thats literally what China is doing atm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_Sand