honzabe

That article reads like Noah’s cognitive dissonance trying to cling to something that no longer exists (if it even existed in the first place). Like using the net migration numbers from 2024 and talking about it as if this was the present - there is no way I am going to believe the green in that chart is not going to turn red when numbers from the Trump 2.0 era are there.

The article does not mention payments. I would be especially interested in a European Stripe alternative - this is what I find really difficult to replace.

I don't think anyone is claiming that the specific famous tank man of Tiananmen got run over by the tank. However, there is plenty of evidence that people got "mowed down by tanks" at Tiananmen Square: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-why-is-the-arm...

The story of the United States is one of genocide, racism, imperialism, and oppression of the working class.

I do not think it is. The story of the US contains all those things. And just as the story of the US contains Abu Ghraib, it also contains functioning courts sending Abu Ghraib perpetrators to jail. You can call it the permanent struggle between good and evil. There is no country in the world without evil. But there is a difference between evil being present and evil dominating. When functioning courts are dismantled, the perpetrators rewarded, you are forbidden to even talk about it, and there is no recourse left, it will be different. People who have not lived through a totalitarian regime sometimes miss that distinction. I also grew up in a communist Czechoslovakia, and I did not idolize the US because I was blind to the bad parts. I idolized it because you had evil, but not evil fully controlling the game. Even now, you can still simply move out of the US. Sure, there might be some bureaucratic hurdles, but you can fly away on a plane - your only way out is not to try to crawl under barbed wire and risk getting shot.

I will be honest - when people say something like “it’s all the same, Russia, the US, all are bad”, I think to myself... óóóh, you have no idea what you are talking about. Unfortunately, the current US is going in that direction, so you might find out. Not that I wish that on anyone.

As a European, I hope Trump 2.0 will do to European Trumpist movements what Brexit did to European anti-EU movements.

What is your experience running that company? It looks great on paper, but if you don’t mind sharing, what is the practical side of things? Have you encountered any stumbling blocks?

What is the European alternative to the US military if Russia attacks Europe?

European military. Why do some people act as if European countries had no armies?

And even if we had no armies and Russia attacked and totally destroyed us, how is it related to the topic discussed here, which is whether the influx of European engineers to the US will continue or not?

This whole thing just seems like the standard hysterical overreaction of people who spend too much time on social media.

Perhaps. I don't think it is, but let's say you are right. How is that relevant? People do not want to go to a country they perceive negatively. Whether that perception is an objective fact or hysteria is, in this context, immaterial.

With Greenland, Trump just demonstrated how this works: maximum escalation (tariff threats against a NATO partner), then “backing down” in exchange for concessions (“total and permanent access”). The result is a structural shift - Europe becomes more dependent on US decisions in the Arctic, not less.

What concessions? Can you name one thing that Trump got that the US did not have before?

If these actually are attempts at some sort of “the art of the deal” manipulation, they are failing catastrophically. He is achieving nothing while destroying the soft power the US benefited from since WW2.

The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized

What? What does that even mean? Do you realize how hand-wavey this sounds? With this kind of vague ex-post rationalization totally blind to any negative consequences of the supposed “bargaining”, you could sanewash literally any action. Trump shoots the Prime Minister of Norway on live TV? He just wanted to promote better security of the Western leaders.

Someone else in this thread talks about the supposed lack of awareness of “the art of the deal” meme. No, I am aware of the “4D chess” theory to explain Trump’s behavior. I just don’t think it matches the observation. I think the “malignant narcissist with emotional maturity of an 8-year-old” works much better.

BTW, I like how Emily Maitlis talks about Trump’s “achievements” in Davos - it brings a bit of much-needed levity to the situation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/34yP2X-nZCk

I think you underestimate how dramatically the perception of the US in Europe changed for the worse. It was already in nose dive during recent months, but the recent days (Greenland crisis) will put a nail in the coffin. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I expect that influx to dry up very soon.

Striking? Why?

Appeasement of aggressors has a terrible track record, both historically (Hitler, Putin) and specifically with Trump (TACO).

Danish military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen argues, IMHO convincingly, that Europe should NOT try to appease Trump, but do the opposite - escalate to de-escalate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRsTDlqU8I

His reasoning is that Trump is a malignant narcissist, and malignant narcissists separate people into two categories: those perceived as strong, whom they admire (Putin, Xi), and weak, whom they abuse. Appeasement will only encourage further abuse. The only viable option is to show strength.

As a European myself, I will support politicians with an uncompromising approach, no matter the cost.

Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant.

Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor.

Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?

That reminds me of an article Noah Smith wrote about this: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/after-trump-the-deluge

He believes they will switch from charisma to ideology to keep the movement going.

Danish military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen argues, IMHO convincingly, that Europe should now escalate to de-escalate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRsTDlqU8I

As a European myself, I will support politicians with an uncompromising approach, no matter the cost.

My guess would be that the OP subscribes to the MAGA worldview, because in their alternative reality, the US-Europe security arrangement was not a mutually beneficial relationship between allies, but a parasitic relationship where the US pays, and Europe reaps the benefits.

Obviously, this worldview is strategically myopic, based on ignoring many things the US was getting out of this arrangement, like US military bases in Europe (also used for power projection to the Middle East), Europeans buying US weapons (big part of why those weapons are so advanced), doing America's bidding in the UN, supporting US military adventures (however misguided) in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

It could be argued that the US role of being the security provider to Europe and others was the main source of their wealth and power. The US had the proverbial goose laying golden eggs, but Trump got angry that they had to shelter that goose, so he kicked her out... no goose would abuse the US like that!

Here is one example: Trump saying that the EU was formed to screw the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kq28VSlvUw

Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?

A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.

There is no doubt in my mind that your intent was good.

A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply it to create the Torment Nexus

What connection between bioengineering and Torment Nexus do you have in mind? The advances of bioengineering that pop up in my mind are mRNA vaccines and new cancer treatments, which I consider awesome and not at all Torment Nexus-y. When you say Torment Nexus, that makes me think of Thiel’s Palantir, but this is not something we do collectively as a society - is it? To me, that is exactly the anti-democratic stuff pushed by a few specific people that we as a society need to rein in.

No, I understood well.

In my country, there is a barrage of Russian propaganda trying to relativize our shitty experience with the communist regime. They keep flooding the zone with claims about democracy being flawed, weak, bureaucratic, meaningless, and decadent. And it is working. People appreciate democracy a lot less than ten or twenty years ago.

Sure, there is a time for the self-criticism of the flaws of the West. I just think now is not the time. Democracy and freedom are under serious threat worldwide. Now is the time to keep reminding ourselves how great it is what we have built. Now is the time to be absolutely clear that the flaws of democracies are not in the same category as the flaws of authoritarian regimes.

I still remember what it was like living in a totalitarian regime - and I was living in a soft totalitarianism nearing its collapse. I am not old enough to remember the hardcore Stalinist era. And still, it was so bad that whatever you believe is bad about capitalism is like 1% of how bad it was. Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even remotely comparable.

Look, I am a pessimist. I think there is a very real chance that the US is turning into a Russia-like state. I hope not, but if that happens, very bad things are likely to happen in Europe too. We will all live it once again. If you still don’t understand what I mean, I suggest this: let’s bookmark this discussion and get back in 5 years, if we are still alive. Then, you will tell me what you think about optimizing conversion and engagement metrics. If you still think it is a problem worth mentioning by then, I will be very happy.

Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't "romanticize", they just remember being better.

Where did you get those numbers? I remember reading about one survey where the number of people with previous regime ‘nostalgia’ was around 50%. That survey had flawed methodology, and the results were probably mostly about nostalgia related to the times when we were young, and our backs did not hurt (obviously, Russian bots in my country keep blabbering about it ad nauseam as if it were actually about the quality of the old regime).

Let’s focus on the numbers that matter - the election numbers: in the 2025 elections in my country (Czechia), communists did not even get over the 5% necessary to get to the parliament. So, I guess what people actually remember here is communism not being better.

Meanwhile we put experts to work optimizing conversion and engagement metrics. A truly enlightened way of life we've built for ourselves.

I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, and claims like this really bother me. As if it is somehow comparable to being forced to serve in the army of a dictatorship. What is wrong with working on optimizing conversion and engagement metrics? It can be interesting and useful. People are not forced to do it. It is just one of many jobs that one can do in a free society.

I believe that one of the reasons why authoritarianism seems to be on the rise in the US and around the world in general is that it has somehow become fashionable to belittle and disparage what we have in the West... and how good it is, despite its imperfections. I fear that we will only realize this once we have lost it.

I recently read a book of interviews with people who escaped from North Korea, and what shocked me was the discovery that the relatives of those who escaped are often executed (publicly) and that even children are executed in North Korea. We live in a terrible world. I mean... you expect a book from North Korea to contain terrible things, but somehow it was even worse than I expected.

"…it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

I read this recently on Hacker News, in a discussion about "They Thought They Were Free" (1955) [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663

I'm not sure it's all that new. During the Bush Jr. years America was not highly thought of.

From my Eastern European perspective, this is something fundamentally different. Sure, many people were critical of Bush Jr., but still, you could, with a bit of effort, construct some semi-reasonable narrative even around Iraq and Afghanistan. But Trump? That feels like an entirely different league.

I grew up in Czechoslovakia, still occupied by Russians at the time. Seeing Trump clap at Putin's landing, seeing US soldiers on their knees rolling red carpet for Putin... this broke something in me. I honestly almost threw up. And that meeting with Zelenskyj in the White House, that will stay with me until I die.

I spent some time in the US when I was at college, and I will always cherish those memories - these were the best seven months of my life. Coincidentally, I was in the US during the Bush Jr. presidency. And despite my dislike for him, I was always defending the US. Somewhat irrationally, I was always trying to justify even the questionable things. But now, that's gone and buried. As far as I am concerned, the US I loved no longer exists. Now it is another Russia-like hostile country that we need to protect ourselves from.

And the personal experience you mention - sure, most people can separate citizens from their state. I can have a civil discussion with a Russian. I was always friendly to my Russian colleagues, immigrants who now live here. But that does not mean I am not hoping with all my heart that their state goes to hell.

I am not the OP, but if I might, I would recommend Perun, who recently dedicated a video to this topic, which is IMO pretty well sourced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG7sVKNP-yo

Simple question: in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and there was peaceful “annexation” of GDR into FRG, in which West Germany effectively took over, with its constitution taking into effect in new federal states, the GDR assets being taken over by western economic structures etc. Was it imperial by its nature?

From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. [...]

This is a truly bizarre piece of mental gymnastics. You list superficial similarities and casually gloss over the only thing that is substantial as if it were some inconsequential detail. By your "logic", rape is indistinguishable from making love. The same organs involved, the same movements (except the consent part, of course).

so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?

I think I need to clarify what I mean by "responsibility". Many people confuse "you are responsible" with "you did this" or "it is your fault", but this is not exactly true. Let's say I am an alcoholic. I believe alcoholism is an affliction (some people might not agree with that, but that's another discussion - let's ignore that for now and assume it is an affliction). Therefore, I believe it is not my fault that I am an alcoholic - It was just bad luck that I was born that way. Yet, it is my responsibility to control my alcoholism. If I hurt someone while under the influence, I have to bear the consequences. Some might argue it is not entirely fair, and I would agree. But in my view, it is the closest we can get to fair. I have a better chance of controlling my alcoholism than some random person whose kids I might have killed while driving under the influence.

Alcoholism is an extreme example, but if you think about it for a while, being responsible for something that is not your fault is common. I see Russians responsible in the same way. Citizens of a state share collective responsibility for what their state is doing. And the fact that an individual might not be able to do anything about it does not change that.

Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".

Why? This is not a court of law, where you have to prove guilt to inflict punishment. Sanctions are not a punishment (which is also why I do not like arguments about collective punishment used in this discussion and elsewhere). They are an attempt to pressure a state to stop causing harm. And if that attempt is based on somewhat reasonable assumptions (which, in the case of Russia and Iran, I think it is), I am fine with it.

And let's not forget it is a relatively peaceful attempt. Nazi Germany was "persuaded" by literally destroying them to the point of unconditional capitulation. And many people who had nothing to do with Hitler died. In an ideal world, they would not have, because it was not their fault and they could not do anything, but the problem is that we only have very crude ways of dissuading states from causing harm.

Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.

I have. It was Russia. They are indeed blocked and I am not surprised.

Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.

No, I won't block myself because my little country has not invaded anyone. If you are assuming I am an American, I am not.

This discussion leans against sanctions, and I feel a bit uneasy about this. There are some good arguments, but still... can I try to offer a different point of view?

I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as he shields them from getting really hurt by that war. They can continue living pretty comfortably, as long as they go along with it. To me, this just feels wrong. Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience. But I believe that ultimately, citizens have the responsibility for what their country is doing. And if what their country is doing is destroying another country, I am OK with making them feel a bit of heat.

I don't know that much about Iran, but the part I know is that they indeed make drones that pound Ukrainians, including their schools and hospitals. Do I feel certain sympathy for Iranian commoners, who might not make those drones voluntarily? Sure. If I were in their place, I would probably not dare to resist, and I would make those drones. But I feel more sympathy with Ukrainians. And if anything could be done to make it harder for Iranians to make those drones, we should try it. Even if it's unlikely to succeed. Even if it makes the lives of innocent ordinary citizens harder. I hope that if I were an Iranian, I would at least understand that.

Thermal paper used for receipts is coated with endocrine disruptors. Touching them every day multiple times can decrease your testosterone levels. At least Rhonda Patrick says so: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/isteK4uQhQA

In that context, everything starts to make sense.

In that context, a lot of it does not make sense. Why the threats about annexing Canada or Greenland? Why the tariffs and extremely hostile rhetoric towards all allies? If you are preparing for a war, the stupidest thing you could do is to alienate your allies and push them toward your adversary. China is already approaching the EU, and I am sure they are negotiating with other key players too. China even agreed on a joint response to the tariffs with Japan and South Korea. Let that sink in - China, together with Japan and South Korea!

This is what despair looks like. I am not judging - I am from Eastern Europe, and I grew up in a country still occupied by Russians. Knowing that no matter what good I do, my life might be destroyed by Russia makes me feel all kinds of feelings too. It's hard to find solace, but one thing that helps me is that there is always a choice. They can destroy my life, but it is up to me whether I choose not to be like them. We all die sooner or later, but if I spend my life on the right side of the eternal fight between good and evil, I still win. I know I am not original, and I am probably not explaining it well, but it gives me a bit of tranquility. I hope it will help you too.