The Suez channel is even more crucial to Israel than it is to countries like Spain or France for their link to East Asia.

I have measured a rough example in maps:

If a ship from Singapore to Marseille would go through the Suez Channel, it would be about 13,000 km without stops. Around Africa that would be around 22,000 km without stops (yeah i know that is optimistic), so a 70% increase which undoubtedly is bad.

Now a ship from Singapore to Haifa would have its route increase from about 9,500 km to about 25,000 km, (again without stops) which is about a 170% increase.

If the Houthis manage to effectively cut off that route, it will be driving prices up like crazy for Israel. If on top of it countries like Spain close the ports for ships carrying freight to Israel, it will further drive up their costs.

There can be various purposes to a ceasefire.

• The most direct one is that a ceasefire gives a space in which diplomatic options can be discussed as both sides believe that there could be an opening where they gain more than with continued fighting.
• The other direct option is that both sides believe that they can achieve a temporary ceasefire to rearm/regroup for subsequent fighting, believing that they can do so better than the enemy.
• There could be external or internal political pressure to attempt diplomatic options, which will subsequently be derailed
• There could be humanitarian reasons, albeit that seems to not be relevant these days, with humanitarian reasons being given as pretense at best
• There could be religious reasons, such as the observation of a shared holiday, albeit that also seems to not be relevant these days

For Ukraine as it stands there is little reason to believe that Ukraine will be able to retake their territory fully, unless the support from the West would come in the shape of boots on the ground and massive amounts of arms. As for Russia it seems Russia is slowly gaining territory while incurring high losses and taking very bad economic hits at home. So there could come a point of collapse of the Russian army. From Ukraines perspective however, unless that happens, if Russia gets weaker, they could always retreat to a reinforced line and take the gains they have made.

Accepting defeat probably will not be taken lightly and will be the certain end to Zelensky’s rule, so i don’t think he’s to enthusiastic about a ceasefire. But it also seems that the Western Allies, in particular the US are not willing to give Ukraine what it takes and rather see an end to the war, with the EU countries probably following the US in trying to recoup some of the military spending by buying up Ukraine at a discount.

For Putin on the other hand it is questionable, if he can sell the current state as a “victory” that justifies the losses. I guess for Russia to agree to a long term ceasefire they would demand to keep the current territories and be immediately relieved of sanctions.

Arne Christiani, the mayor of Grünheide and an unwavering Musk enthusiast, said he was confident Tesla would stay in Grünheide and would thrive. He was unmoved, he said, by what Musk said or did. “You have to distinguish between what happens in the US and here in Grünheide,” he said.

This gives me some “Yeah, what you hear from the Colonies sounds tragic, but look at all the goods we now have.” vibes.

Eigentlich möchte ich auch eher darauf hinaus, dass es problematisch ist, mittels Algorithmen Kindern unterbreiten zu können, dass es eine gute Idee ist Geschirrspültabs zu essen, Lachgas zu inhalieren o.Ä…

Darum geht es. Das sollte mit zügiger Moderation unterbunden werden, und entsprechend Strafen für die Platformen hageln, wenn sie sowas stehen lassen. Das hat mit Fragen von politischer Meinung nichts zu tun.

Wenn es um die Moderation von Inhalten geht, die unter die Meinungsfreiheit fallen, dann bin ich bei dir. Dabei unterscheidet sich Moderation erstmal grundlegend von Überwachung, weil sie auf den Inhalt ausgerichtet ist, nicht auf die Person dahinter. Wenn bestimmte Personen regelmäßig moderiert werden müssen, verschwimmt diese Linie ab einem gewissen Punkt natürlich.

I wasn’t sure if people would immediately recognize Almería to be in Spain, as it is a city with about 200k inhabitants.

Werden sie durchgesetzt?

Experts said it is unclear if the cash brokers’ activities benefit Hamas, as some Israeli analysts claim.

The war has made it more difficult to determine who is behind all sorts of economic activity in the territory, said Omar Shabaan, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza-based think tank.

“It’s a dark place now. You don’t know who is bringing cigarettes into Gaza,” he said, giving just one example. “It’s like a mafia.”

The UN has reported on Aid trucks regularly being looted by the Abu Shabab gang. A group of lowlife criminals, who are armed and supported by Israel to wreak further havoc in Gaza and exploit the population further. In one of their largest raids, they robbed and burnt almost a hundred UN trucks for Israel in November 2024. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel is funneling fresh cash to such criminal elements to further strengthen them and extract money from the people of Gaza through a middlemen allowing them plausible deniability. Note that the Abu Shabab criminals also have ties to ISIS. As Israel had consistently accused Hamas of “being ISIS” this shows once again that every Israeli accusation is a projection.

It also is less energy efficient as running the juice directly through a cable of course is more efficient than creating a magnetic field that then induces juice on the other side to flow again.

It should be said that this is the principle of transformers, but they are built in an efficient way for it.

Der Token ist für den Staat spätestens ab da deanonymisiert, wo du dich damit in einem Onlineshop identifizierst.

Note that countries like Israel, Turkiye, Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia try to undermine unity in Syria and exacerbate ethnic tensions. In particular Israels tries to instrumentalize Druze and YPG/PKK Kurds to restart the civil war and prevent the emergence of a stable and peaceful Syria.

Wir leben in einem Land, wo Polizisten Morddrohungen gegen Opferanwälte von Terrorismusopfern schicken können und der Abruf der Daten aus der Meldedatei kann nicht zurückgeführt werden weil “Klebezettel mit Passwort am Bildschirm hing”.

Ich denke schon, dass sie ein großes Interesse daran haben, dass mit einem Ausweis zu verknüpfen, weil damit “rechtssicher” wird, wen sie belangen können. Außer natürlich es sind Polizisten oder andere Nazis.

Das könnte man auch durch Moderationspflichten für große Plattformen lösen, die dann zügig eine Strafe erhalten, wenn sie sowas nicht zügig aus dem Verkehr ziehen.

God forbid we get decent politicians that arent deep diving in corruption and brought to power in shady backroom deals…

For how easy kicking is in DRG i found it to be used extremely rarely. One of the most chill game communities imo.

Australia can learn from Finland’s comprehensive security policy, says [Australian National University] ANU’s Medcalf: “Public-private sector co-operation is key.” Indeed, Hakamies of the Confederation of Finnish Industries says the system “is not based on law, it’s based on co-operation – companies talk to each other, they rehearse what they will do in a crisis, they train in all the sectors that are crucial when the borders are closed”.

Interestingly, Australia has committed to a similar concept of “whole of nation” security, involving society and business, as recommended by the Albanese government’s defence strategic review, but that’s where it remains – in the review, on paper only.

Far right corporate security dystopia is a terrible idea. Like Australia isn’t already running prison camps for the people who somehow managed to flee there by boat, where people often commit suicide, sexual abuse and torture by the guards is widespread and people are denied access to legal representation. Piling on top of it private profit interests is going to spiral things even further.

Talking about “value based alliances” in that context seems extraordinarily cynical.

Someone with the flick of a piece of wood can just murder you outright, with you having no way of defending against it. Before they learn to control it, the magic of the children just “flows” in uncontrollable ways. Maybe doing something silly like coloring hair, but maybe also destroying things and hurting people. For a non magical person in an entirely unpredictable way, without any possibility to intervene or repair the damage as easily.

Keep in mind that there is no mention of the Dursley’s ever receiving any sort of guidance on how to deal with a magical child. They are just expected to figure it out by themselves. Imagine you would have to deal with a special needs child, just that nobody is giving you any information, you can not reach out to anyone about it, you must keep it a secret as otherwise you get booked in the closed psychiatry and on top of it all the child at any point may burn down your house.

I mean whatever “rule of law” by the West, especially the US always was situational if it served the rule by force. Especially with the support of Israels genocide that point is really hammered home, which i believe will be a huge detriment to the EU countries down the historical line.

I would also not speak of an age of “enlightenment”. The supposed “enlightenment” was joined at the hip by genocidal imperialism and subsequently lead to the ultra nationalism that brought on WW1 and reached its peak in the Fascism that brought WW2 and the Holocaust.

What we see here imo. is another case of western arrogance and overt and subtle beliefs of supremacy standing in the way of securing a stable world order that could have been built on rule of law.

The article in the Guardian also refers to this comment on Bidens strategic blunder in regards to Ukraine and its fallout, where the double standard is also discussed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/26/ukraine-russia-war-nato-biden-putin

To be fair his aunt was really shitty to him. But that makes me remember the whole thing how from their perspective Harry ruined the once in a lifetime business deal of Vernon when he tossed the cake onto the business partner over dinner. They couldn’t know about the whole Dobby business. And even if they did. Some strange run down creature just popping into your house to cause havoc, so your nephew gets kicked out of school, what the heck is that madness?

Because of that he develops anger issues and kind of locks the child in, which of course isn’t okay, but he doesn’t know what else to do. There is no government resources to help him. He doesn’t know how to reach the people who dropped the child off, however they seem to keep tabs on him and his family. Again from all he understands they are involved in some paramilitary actions.

Germany tosse out the Gepard systems, of which some also got a revival in Ukraine with great effect.

Turns out explosive autocannons are still very much the way to go against close by targets you can track from the ground. They are cheap, they can’t be countered with the typical decoy mechanisms against missiles and in an emergency they can be used in direct fire.