- This comes down to realism versus wishful thinking. In the real world, force is used to resolve geopolitical problems - as we’re seeing in Venezuela now and saw previously in Iraq, Serbia, Grenada and countless other countries with US. The alternative is pretending that every country can act however it wants without repercussions. Ukraine deliberately instigated conflict with hope that Russia does not react militarily instead of playing both sides like Kazakhstan, etc.
On no one was out to attack Russia - that's probably true today but Ukraine and broader Eastern Europe realignment is more of 50-100 years project and nobody knows what happens in 20-30 years. US is on a brink of invading Venezuela and blockade is already borderline act of war (that was casus belly for US declaring war on Germany in WW1) so it's not like NATO/US are some peaceful paradise.
And on “not formally planning to”: Ukraine literally wrote its intention to join NATO into its constitution. That doesn’t get more formal than that.
- Main reason normal people do not use public transport is this attitude and police giving up on enforcing basic public order on transport. Personally I am voting against any public transport funding until all homeless/druggies are kicked off public transport (even if they are willing to pay). You have to pass certain very low behavior bar to use public transport (no intoxication, no aggression to other passengers, no smell, no shouting random things).
It's not rocket science and other countries figured out how to do it.
- Scale of the country matters. If Argentina (or any other small to medium size country) require extra work, businesses can just walk away - size of market does not justify extra efforts. Bet is that US market size is big enough that no global business can afford to walk away. At 20% of global GDP, US markets is also big enough to make scaled production feasible.
- While tariffs on coffee do not incentivize coffee growing in US they do two things that are very beneficial for US economy
1) People replace coffee with hot cider, infusion tea or some other local substitute good.
2) Tariff on coffee as set up by Trump incentivize coffee producing countries to buy US goods whether it’s oil or cars to make trade balance more equal.
The only question is the scale of above but tariff on coffee is unquestionably help US producers.
- Let’s be real - nobody is moving R&D to Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. Talent is not there and good luck convincing any expats to move there in meaningful numbers.
India is real but every company is already there and very little real high end R&D is happening there - it’s all mostly basic outsourcing. I doubt H1B situation changes anything here frankly.
- US allows unlimited chain migration for parents with short waiting period. Everyone brings their parents/siblings and put them on Medicaid/Obamacare, Section 8, etc right away. Technically sponsor is supposed to cover those benefits (and signs paper about that) but practically gov never tried to recover benefits (literally never).
- European salaries are laughably low even compared to low ball offers from US startups.
Essentially options for good (but not great) sr engineers are
1. Get 120k salary in Europe (on higher end)
2. 500k at FAANG in US (salary + RSU)
3. ~200k at startup in US + lottery tickets
Both option 2 and 3 strictly beat option 1 (especially after taxes) so European should get off the high horse and recognize reality that they are poor and exploited by companies and government.
- Germans were pretty good at exploiting ethnic grievances in multiple countries - Czhech vs Slovak, Croats vs Serbs, Bulgars vs Greek and Hungarian vs everyone that have nothing to do oppression and fight for homeland.
People underestimate what a clusterfuck of ethnicities pre WW2 Eastern Europe was. Resettlement after WW2 created much cleaner ethnic maps and arguably the reason we had 80 years of mostly peace (Yugoslavia was last country with mix of ethnicities and wars in 90ies cleaned up it too).
- Even serious discussion of Chinese soldiers in Canada or Mexico is clear casus belli and surefire way for those countries to be occupied. Chinese soldiers on the border is existential to US and when dealing with existential risks countries tend to put funny concepts such as UN charter or human rights aside.
Canada is absolutely indefensible with no strategic depth or ability to get new supplies. Mexico is harder to occupy but their military is a joke and again easy to block all external supplies. Very doable.
- Unlikely. Ukraine does not have scale, manufacturing base and talent for that - right now it's mostly assembling drones from Chinese parts with very little innovation on top of that. People talked about AI swarms but very little of that materialized at the front line. Larger drones require satellite connections, advanced materials, etc - Ukraine does not have that either. I expect Ukrainian expertise in war drones will stagnate and become obsolete very quickly after the war.
- Real time content recommendation algorithm can be rebuilt from scratch relatively quickly (weeks). At the beginning it won't be as effective as current TikTok algorithm so iterations will be required but frankly treating algo like something that can only be done by Chinese engineers is silly.
When TikTok developed recommendations it was novel and on the frontier but now how it's done is much better understood and with GPUs availability can be implemented by any good ML team. Similar to Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other, the secret sauce is content and users, not algorithm.
- Most geopolitical rivals already blocked US social media - Russia, Iran, China. Brazil blocked and forced X to censor opposition Brazilian politicians. It's already happening.
EU/NATO members can't outright block US social media for obvious reasons (military protection is not free). They try to do sneaky things to control social media with DSA, etc.
India/Indonesia and a few other countries are already debating banning foreign social media companies. India was the first to ban TikTok (for the same reason that US is banning TikTok now). US and India are not really rivals and US can retaliate against India if US companies are blocked so math is that it's not worth it to block for now but it can change in future.
Most other countries are not capable/do not have economy and critical number of people to have viable clone of social media. They block social media from time to time during elections, etc.
- > It also helped that Hungarian candidate when tiktok was used by Russia to push him...
That's actually misinformation and narrative invented to support coup by Romanian security services/supreme court to cancel elections. No Russians were involved. TikTok campaign was financed by center-right party but backfired in unexpected ways.
https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...
- Good point. With that, with Starlink and soon Starlink direct to cell, this capability is becoming much less important in an emergency. Starlink already provides Internet and soon everyone will have satellite capable phone (I assume texting will be prioritized in emergency for bandwidth).
- It could be false flag operation to create pretext for NATO/EU to block shipping to Russian ports in Baltic Sea.
Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by current US administration elements to create leverage for the Ukraine before negotiations start.
- Quality of your life depends not only on your house but also on houses around you. When I go out, I want to see nice, well maintained houses with no garbage outside. What happens without HOA in low middle class and poor areas are broken cars, garbage everywhere and unkempt lawn. In wealthy neighborhoods you generally do not need HOA as people maintain their property on their own.
- US should respond symmetrically and freeze accounts of some random(with Durov arrest), EU (threatening letter to Musk) and UK (prison sentences for mildly offensive tweets) are fighting to limit free speech under very similar pretenses that freedom of the press was limited in Nazi Germany or USSR (fighting foreign influence, “misinformation”, protecting kids) Some societies are robust and can afford free press/free speech while keeping peace major Brazilian company. /s On a serious note it’s interesting to see how countries around the world from France and internal cohesion. Modern multicultural and multi-ethnic states in EU may have to become way more authoritarian to keep going.
Insulin is injectable so GLP-1 was thought to be at best marginal improvement over already existing protocol - so likely profitable product but not excessively so. Company has limited resources so decisions on cuts have to be made and some of those decisions are naturally wrong - drugs are unpredictable.
On regret - they missed on 30B+ of profits so of cause they regret it.