There is more commercial proximity between China and the EU than China and the US.

The current taxation run is to curtail the online markets like AliExpress, Shein and Temu to flood the market with garbage. Shein got hit with their dumping practices very hard.

Taxing the import of vehicles, when an industry already exists just makes sense. European automakers were sleeping on their job, granted, but the other option is to let them fail and surrender another industry to non-EU territories.

The irony of this is unavoidable. The experts have reached the conclusion the rest of the mortals have been warning on for months.

Why? It is obviously made to cruise at a leisurely pace. Why try to make it into a improvised bottle rocket?

I’m screwed, then. I was never able to memorize those weird “cool” handshakes as a kid. My chances today are even lower.

You solve the problems you have at home before you start making yourself concerned with what your neighbor is doing at theirs.

Space exploration, as it was sold to the general public, was an arms race. The public demonstration of which nation could build faster the engine and carcass capable of delivering a nuclear payload on the other. The money spent on that would have been better spent towards achieving true and long lasting civilizational goal, like disease and poverty erradication, environmental preservation, clean energy and so forth.

It’s the broken window falacy.

This is going to force a resurgence of honour based behaviour. If anything is false(ifiable) then the only way to demonstrate something as true is by personally commiting face to it.

Hydrogen can make some degree of sense if we take as an energy reserve, stockpileable, for an event where it is necessary to suplement energy needs.

So many countries with solar farms being turned off to prevent grid collapse could consider building hydrogen plants or, those with sea acess, dessalination stations, to stockpile fresh water underground and extract minerals directly from the water.

Who cares about fusion? There was a study in the late 90’s stating that if only 10% of the capital put towards oil research, exploration, extraction, etc, annually, was put towards renewable energies it would catapult the research output by a factor of 30, by year.

We could have, by now, moved completely towards renewables for everyday life needs and start towards producing more energy we could ever need and put that excess towards greater achievements.

Hence my statement: it’s a matter of imagination

There is a paradox which I can’t name now that states that every time there are advancements capable of solving scarcity problems instead of ending the issue new uses for the solution are come up with and what became plentiful gets stressed again.

That much excess heat is energy. An immense amount of it. Maybe use it to smelt scrap or process artificial diamonds.

The matter at hand is, for a change, excess when it is usually the opposite.

First coming to mind would be using to store heat in sand batteries. Heat water for swimming pools makes sense as well. Perhaps use it to dehydrate sludges from waste waters.

It’s just a matter of imagination.

Push back…I’d suffer but I’d gladly endure it just to have the collection of vases in Brussels calmly state to the USofA a rotund “Go away.”

Have these geniuses considered burying these massive structures and build the cooling stack on top to use that heat for some other use?

Or better yet: not even building these monstrosities?

This one is from Portugal.

I’ve been organinizing my music files and this band albums in particular and I’ve heard this song many, many times while doing it.

The accoustic version I’m sharing is better known than the original rendition of the song and is almost an unoficial hymn to the country. It speaks of solitude, of courage and abandonment, of refusing to be small.

Enjoy.

Xutos & Pontapés - O Homem do Leme

It could. But I don’t use Chrome.

Give it back. It will be fine. And since we’re asking, make Stumble Upon return from the dead.

Considering the speed at which society and entertainment is changing and being produced, at some point it ceases to be “unlawful” to become legitimate preservation.

I’ve noticed an uptick on reruns of old series and films, especially late seventies, eighties and nineties. On films, I’m seeing even earlier production, going back to the sixties, and even of minor cinema like italian, spanish and french.

I have no illusions that these older productions are probably cheaper to license than current day productions, but recent production gets aired once, maybe twice, and is just gone.

Some will argue this is due solely to most not having rewatching value, others that it is predicated on the shorter attention span audiences have nowadays. Other arguments exist.

Regardless of those, not seeing current series being re-run, for me, is a sign that there is no interest keeping those works around.

It would be extremely satisfying if somewhere in the future some of those productions had to be rescued from private copies, as it has happened before with others.

That is actually interesting to know. Makes a person wonder what is the demographic watching the videos and why.

That would have been entertaining.

Stop for a moment, remember the most instant reaction you get from someone when the notion of organizing or supporting an organizatio is mentioned.

I’m going to risk with a fair degree of confidence that most people instantly distrust the notion.

There has been a worldwide campaign to smother colective movements, people’s organizations and similar group iniciatives for decades.

By default, no group is seen as trusworthy. There is always a notion of a hidden agenda. While when you get a head figure - a leader, to use your word of choice - you can see support.

I call this the messianic complex. People want to be saved, not save themselves, because they’ve been forced into a mentality of distrust and isolation.