Neonlicht

Haha isn't that how Americans measure happiness? Like how in Eastern Germany the news always talked about increasing grain harvests American news always talks about how many billionaires get invited to Trump's inauguration party.

You can live in a trailer park next with your meth addicted family but Musk is getting richer.

Europe doesn't have a competitor for TikTok. America has Facebook and Instagram that stand to win billions with a ban.

I also observe that the US tech bro billionaires have been complaining about how mean Europe is to them.

In the Netherlands we have moved on from using tax payer money for live sports. Public broadcasting shouldn't piss away millions on TV rights when the free market can do it.

Sports is a multi billion industry. You want to watch your favourite football team you pay up. It seems to be pretty sustainable.

How is the Switch a competitor when it doesn't even play most games that you can find on Playstation or Steam?

I think Nintendo is- respectfully- in their own lane.

I live in the Netherlands. My insurance already doesn't cover a flood (it also doesn't cover war or a nuclear reactor blowing up).

It is the government that picks up the bill in real disasters I suggest everyone reads the fine print on their contracts.

What fire mitigations are there for these kind of disasters besides complete depopulation? There are already 15k firefighters working on this one. It's just gonna get worse with climate change.

Apparently Edo (now Tokyo) had a population of one million in the 18th century.

Always amazed me how they could pull that off. Japan was a very regulated society which must have helped with the chaos but Japanese people go to the toilet just like everyone else...

My country tried student debt. The experiment was ended after a few years. As many things American politics it should stay on that side of the Atlantic.

Turns out saddling young people up with 50k debt for a mediocre degree is rather demoralising.

Going from a Samsung to a new Samsung is easy. But if you switch between brands yeah it gets difficult.

Back in the 17th century a bunch of hardline Protestants in the Netherlands got upset that Catholics and Jews were allowed to practice their religion. The rich people who ran Amsterdam explained that after death god would sort them all out so they didn't have to. I always admired their practicality.

Let's be real here the value comes from someone winning a medal for their country. I don't think a single person in the Netherlands gives a shit about fencing or kayaking but if a Dutch boy/girl ends up on the podium it's broadcast live.

I think that the Olympics contrary to it's bullshit message of peace is in reality an arena where nation states compete against eachother.

So athletes are basically diplomats.

The water company makes sure that everyone can flush their toilet during Superbowl half-time.

It's only limited because ISPs hate investing. Yes in 2000 almost nobody was watching video on the internet but the same applies with roads- traffic increases so you have to build more capacity.

Yes this is where I split from my fellow leftists. I will not allow a parallel society to exist. The daughters of Indian parents will be granted the same rights as those of Western parents. There will be no dowries and no caste system.

Canada is more likely to be formally incorporated into the US- after the fall of the British empire there's nothing standing in Washington's way.

Back in the day when piracy was quite literally just copy and paste it was a very active scene.

But cracking Denuvo takes real skill- and there's no financial reward in it. Back in the 90s bootleg DVDs and CD-ROMs had organised crime making money from it.

Every game has rules. As kids we learn not to peep when playing hide and seek...

But this is D&D in the end it's all up to the DM.

American style tent cities or Brazillian style shanty towns are not the solution.

In my country there's a problem with providing shelters- you don't want to attract every Eastern European crackhead. On the other hand people have died and that's a bit embarrassing as well.

The solution was those crazy Christians from the Salvation army. They don't ask for ID and they are a private initiative which allows for full plausible deniability from the government.

Neither. Raise taxes and have the government build decent houses.

Obviously when Americans donate money they want a building or scholarship named after them.

You want wealth transfer raise taxes- but you really don't. I observe that Bernie Sanders didn't make it to the White House.

There has never been a time when people didn't have a political, religious or ideological slant. French historians write different articles about the invasion of 1672 than their Dutch colleagues.

All the cartels in Mexico buy their guns from America and nobody is going to jail over it.

Art was used by the rich and famous to show off their wealth. In the 19th century countries got into the game (the idea that Dutch masters were ending up in American collections was a national embarrassment).

I don't know anyone who works 5 days a week... Sure wages aren't as high as in the States but folks live comfortably enough (evidenced by the fact you can find Dutch tourists from Cambodja to Canada).

In my country just a hamburger is 5 euro. Poor people cook their own food- it's the supermarket that operates at a 2-3% margin.

There is a McDonald's drive in next to my gym. It gives me the motivation I need not to become overweight. Expensive, shitty, loud I will never understand why they are so loved.

The USSR problem was that they didn't have a diaspora who knew how capitalism worked. Russia was eaten alive by robber barons foreign and domestic.

Compare it with the CCP who had Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore tycoons to help with the transition to a free market economy.