David J. Shourabi Porcel

Russia being able to source silicon for their rockets was not enough of confirmation that sanctions are just a PR tactic along with minor inconvenience?

That Russia keeps sourcing Western chips for their rockets does not mean sanctions are “just a PR tactic along with minor inconvenience”. By forcing Russia to buy chips through intermediaries, each of which marks up prices to turn a profit, sanctions (a) drive up their cost, thus limiting what Russia can spend elsewhere, and (b) improve the negotiating power of the states harbouring those sanctions-evading intermediaries at the expense of Russia’s, which further weakens an already shaky international standing.

So what should be done to the country that blew up Germany’s oil pipes?

Thank them, whomever they were, for forcing Germany to finally move on from an economic model that was untenable not only for her international partners, but for her own population. Had the Nord Stream pipelines not been so severely damaged, the prospect of cheap industrial inputs may once more have tempted the business establishment to sell out Germany’s partners and public interest for higher private margins; now, even if the upcoming election should yield a government friendlier towards Russia, rebuilding the Nord Stream pipelines –and with them a Trojan horse that had been looming over the European project– would be impracticable.

The reason they’re cheaper is because they don’t need to charge tax on them.

I understand. Thank you for confirming it.

I’ve heard people here in Europe sometimes save on cigarettes in a similar way, by buying them across the border, where taxes are lower, or in duty-free shops at airports, but that’s possibly outdated or even made-up hearsay I’ve never checked.

That’s interesting there isn’t anything on wiki about it. It’s not a secret or anything.

There may be something I missed, or it might be such an inconsequential and uncontroversial phenomenon that no one deemed it worth documenting.

Reservation cigarettes negate those prices though.

TIL that, on at least some Indian reservations in the United States, cigarettes are sold, sold at a lower price and sold to the general public. I could not find a reference on Wikipedia; all I found was a seemingly unofficial webpage.

To my knowledge, Zelenskyy only expressed support for Israel after October the 7th, 2023, over a year and a half after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine — a year and a half during which Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority could have condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine. They didn’t, presumably, for the same reason Zelenskyy has expressed support for Israel: to avoid antagonizing their allies, morals be damned. Given their dire situation –both Ukraine and the Palestinians rely heavily on their respective allies for military and diplomatic support–, I think we ought to give them a pass. If you disagree, at least apply the same logic to both and condemn them equally.

If building them becomes difficult because of missing materials, the prices would rise, which is not happening at the moment.

Solar panels have indeed become cheaper and cheaper, and you are right to argue that the materials used to build solar panels are priced in. However, solar requires some infrastructure besides the panels themselves, such as inverters and storage, and that infrastructure needs additional materials, some of which are expensive. Copper, for instance, surged in price in 2020, and there is not enough investment to expand mining operations despite the great profits it has been yielding. This is an ongoing saga in the mining industry, with BHP attempting to take over Anglo American in part for its copper portfolio.

I am not arguing against solar; I just think it cannot be scaled to the extent necessary to cover most of our current and projected future electricity consumption. To get rid of fossil fuels and generate ever more electricity for EVs, the AI black hole and goddamn cryptocurrencies, I think we will need nuclear. I wish we would build more public transportation, break from the AI spell and ban cryptocurrencies, but I’m not hopeful. In any case, the pace solar has picked up these past years is very encouraging and we should do what we can to push it further.

I would characterize Tesla stock not as a pump & dump scheme anymore, but as a bet on Musk’s position to extract concessions from his political connections. He has got his way already with Trump planning to end EV subsidies that mostly benefited Tesla’s competitors (although Trump may have intended to do so anyway) and he might yet push against regulation that would threaten Tesla’s market position in the US, like federal charging standards. He may also get Trump to impose harsher tariffs on Chinese electrical vehicles than he otherwise would, although such tariffs enjoy bipartisan support.

Intelligent analysis I concur with and thank you for. I sometimes wonder what myths our flawed present may pass down to our uncertain future. Who knows? After two millennia, our descendants might think of Trump the way we conceive of Narcissus while they recall the new flood myths we are delivering them.

For anyone else who, like me, didn’t know: Trump once referred to Tim Cook as “Tim Apple”, as described in the Wikipedia article on Tim Cook:

In a meeting for the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board with President Donald Trump in March 2019, Trump referred to Cook as “Tim Apple”.

deleted by creator

The article you linked to is from 2015 and refers to the original Darfur genocide, unless I’m missing something.

Indeed. I don’t understand why so many people and media organizations that pay attention to Gaza don’t cover Sudan too (they may care, but they barely show it). There’s suffering on a similar scale, foreign powers causing and broadening that suffering and global repercussions through migration, disease, weapons smuggling and radicalization.

That 6% is the gross of sales, not revenues as well.

I think you mean “that’s 6% of revenue, not profit”. Revenue is gross income before expenses and other tax deductions. Sales is revenue generated by selling products and services, as opposed to interest and investment proceeds. Profit is revenue minus expenses and tax deductions and is where corporations often cheat.

The United Kingdom, along with France, ceded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, not Poland, to Hitler’s Germany; in fact, it was the Nazi regime’s invasion of Poland the following year that prompted France and the United Kingdom to declare war.

Some of it would remain and protrude and have to be sanded down to avoid injuries, then possibly painted or otherwise treated to prevent rust. The only viable solution to this problem is ensuring that the right kind of benches are installed in the first place.