I’m honestly surprised that the fat man cust conceded. I was convinced there would be some type of shenanigangs or at least an attempt at crying about foul play or “outside interference” by the evil EU/Ukraine/Soros…

I’m certainly not cheering for a regime like the current Iranian one. I deliberately put “good guys” in quotation marks and suggested they might be the more reasonable party, as in the party that is more likely to keep its word.

It’s really difficult to look like the “good guys” in a conflict, when you’re the Islamic Regime of Iran. Somehow the current United States are making the Iranians look more and more reasonable.

It would seem like different nations are trying to find a sort of modus operandi to somewhat use the shipping lane again. Let’s see how long it takes for the US Navy to be used to keep it closed for everyone.

This is good news. I’m honestly surprised at how positive the last few pieces of news from Moldova usually are. It’s obviously up to the people of Moldova and the people of Romania, but I would welcome Moldova into the EU via reunification with Romania at some point in the future.

As someone who was born outside of Germany but now lives here (with no immediate plans for going anywhere else) I regularly ask myself this question. Obviously many Germans seek economic opportunity in Switzerland, but the Swiss seem to really have about enough of all these immigrants. Then there might be other destinations that some people also bring up like Denmark, Sweden or Norway, but these fail to even break the top 20 destinations statistically.

In 2024 most emigrations seem to be in the context of people returning to their other European home countries. Out of the statistical top 20 only Spain/Italy (climate, retirement) Switzerland (economic opportunity) and the United States (again, economic opportunity, but recently with more people moving from the United States to Germany than the other way around) sound like plausible targets for German emigration at scale.

In all likelihood this could just be part of the general “mopiness” that seems to be prevalent in German culture.

I believe the specific law is from 1977, but I agree with your point in general, that service shouldn’t discriminate based on gender.

From my knowledge this rule was supposedly active for decades before Germany discontinued conscription and nobody really followed it then. Why there is a need to reactivate a law that will not be followed by the vast majority and that has no enforcement mechanisms associated with it really beats me. It’s probably a mix of incompetence and “we’ve always been doing things like this”.

It’s worth considering setting up payment for various commodities in other currencies as well. Obviously the buyer and the seller have to agree, but it’s not a far stretch from accepting payment in Renminbi to also having parts of the trades done in more reliable and importantly freely traded currencies like the Swiss Franc, to name just one example.

This is a beautiful map!

The United States are rapidly becoming unreliable even as an arms supplier. Once they start stealing payments from clients without supplying the agreed upon goods, countries will start looking elsewhere, even if that means delays and perhaps different capabilities. I see great times ahead for defense products made in Europe.

This is just one example of the trend that has started and that will continue over the next years and decades. With the United States stepping away from the role of guarantor for free trade, various economies will find ways to deal bilaterally without using the US Dollar. We’ve already seen a shift towards precious metals as a form of reserve currency instead of the Dollar. Now the monetary trade volume of the Dollar is also at risk. When the Dollar no longer is the undisputed world reserve (and trade) currency, it will become incredibly difficult for the US to sustain its current level of deficit.

All that needs to happen now is for the countries of Europe to unify and St. Lucia loses this incredibly important title!

TIL there is a Eurovision for trees.

That being said, I am an elm enjoyer. I have an elm in my garden (Ulmus × hollandica), which is the most beautiful tree in the entire neighbourhood.

The only country to ever invoke Article 5 was the United States. As things stand there is no scenario whatsoever in which Europeans will once again agree to fight and die in a futile American war in the Middle East. Let the Americans sort out their own mess. Perhaps we should even consider trying to find a solution to resuscitate the world economy together with China, India, Iran and other involved parties in the region.

If everyone was as positively weird as this gentleman the world would likely be a better place.

We all know that temporary relief is going to become permanent economic reintigration is going to become economic support is going to become military support.

Isn’t there some type of shitposting community for these posts? I believed this place to be for interesting, informative or pretty maps.

I know. It still feels odd to me as a Dutchman though to know that there’s dozens of gun related crimes going on all the time.

That’s true. I used to travel to Saint Louis quite regularly for work about ten years ago. It always seemed fine, at least on the surface.

Still, even the safest US states would rank among the most dangerous EU countries in terms of gun violence and gun related homicides.