I doesn’t look like us Brits can completely break with the US in military or intelligence terms, at least for the time being (if not foreseeable future). But closer military co-operation with the rest of Europe clearly has to happen, assuming maintenance of our nuclear capability isn’t completely reliant upon, or tied up with the US.

Late edit (after a few people upvoted this post) - given the disgraceful way the EU treated the UK during brexit negotiations this sharing of nuclear weapons should come at significant economic cost to EU countries that might want it. I mean, the alternative, a UK aligned to the US and Russia, military bases and nuclear weapons ready, full of US bases, puts the shitty way EU countries were happy to deal with the UK into a bit of perspective.

The Chinese are going to build their biggest embassy in Europe in London about half a mile or so from the US embassy. I’d guess the UK will continue trying to play a mediating role.

https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/eutelsat-in-talks-to-increase-satellite-terminals-in-ukraine-amid-starlink-service-concern/ar-AA1ArMhG

Exactly. I responded to somebody who said twitter was bought not to make money but as a propaganda tool.

Then a sequence of morons ‘attacked’ me. (I put attacked in quotation marks as it hardly counts as any kind of ‘attack’.)

lol

OK, I have read some evidence that shows how when a level of impoverishment is reached, people are too preoccupied with day to day and week to week survival to bother with voting or much of any other civil engagement.

I won’t waste more time on this, I’m not interested in arguing over the definition of ‘disengaged’.

The fact that they voted means they are not disengaged.

Yours might have just been an offhand comment, but as it might be a genuine question I provided a brief answer.

Dunno, I think Musk was forced to buy it, then he suggested it was going to be all sorts of things while massively cutting costs, before pivoting to giving Trump a quarter of a billion in order to get access to government.

I don’t think there was any intention to buy twitter for propaganda, and I haven’t seen any evidence that shows to what degree (if at all) it helped Trump get elected.

And what is an ai trained on reddit going to help with? Misinforming people on specialised topics, or misinforming people on current affairs?

Edit - I suppose you might be able to train an ai not to reply as per replies on reddit, dunno.

I doubt it will be noticeable overnight, but at least some of his supporters will be pushed into a degree of impoverishment that inhibits political engagement.

Reddit is pretty useless for getting any kind of advanced information on any topic. The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality, so in that case it couldn’t be trusted as an accurate source of information on current affairs.

People are addicted to it, but you’d have to be pretty sad to pay for it.

Blocking ads on it is a trivial matter. It never made any money.

The question is why did anyone think it would ever be worth much at all.

Another 50% claim to have read a book.

10% have read a book

Do you really want to carry your lifetime supply of honey around with you every time you move apartment?

What other foodstuffs are you going to buy your lifetime supply of? Dried goods? Tins? You could get yourself a winnebago and fill it with all your lifetime’s worth of food or something, which would make lugging it all around with you forever easier. Just hope nobody nicks it.

MAGA by bringing back US manufacturing, which means creating developing world conditions, thus enabling it to become a sweatshop.

And I guess these four supreme justices think the world should continue to buy US debt lol. You reap what you sow.

pretty on track

lol. SpaceX are destroying Artemis as we type - and America’s prestige as a space-faring nation - and are not going to Mars on any timeline, as Musk well knows. Musk doesn’t care at all, it is helping him get to trillionaire status.

And what’s that? I haven’t looked into it but who wants to bet it is starlink?

And if it is, does America really want to rely on that lol?

The Taliban humiliated him. He has one entirely exploitable strategy: try and be a bully and back down when he gets called out.

The result is widespread boycott of American manufacturing, Europe pulling away from a reliance on the US including manufacturing their own arms, a pivot towards BRICS and China, and a hastened end to the dollar as global reserve currency followed by an America that has to pay its debts.

What a fool. America’s second vote for Trump has shown the world it is an unreliable partner.

Yeah I said in another post that the Americans I have known irl have been great. I love America’s contribution to stuff like music and literature, and the arts generally. And I take your point it is a minority.

But this oligarchy has taken a while to build but it wasn’t stopped. And I do think this is a watershed moment for the US and Europe, BRICS and the dollar. I think we are entering a global economy that reflects the multi-polar world we actually have.

As a Brit, whose economy is 50 - 100 years past being the global reserve currency, I think the people most likely to suffer over the long term are Americans, after everyone suffers the coming short-term instability.

This total breakdown in cooperation happening just as we roll straight past climate change’s last chance saloon (to butcher a couple of metaphors) is an even bigger disaster. Some of us ‘doomers’ are being proven right. I’d rather not be.

I know that eminent computer scientists wrote to I think Harris a couple of years back voicing their concerns over the security of voting machines.

I think the Democrats are as done as a credible political force as the Republicans are.

America you have switched sides. Expect a European pivot towards China, provided China maintains some degree of pragmatic neutrality.