Is that even a thing anymore or did that also get demolished by DOGE? It seems like anything that benefits companies but screws consumers and citizens is being dismantled

Was Ukraine actually added to NATO? No

Do Ukrainians want to be Russians? No

In fact after the NATO summit of 2008 where Bush said Ukraine should be a NATO member, Putin who was at that NATO summit said he didn’t want that (same for Georgia).

After that NATO didn’t push membership further and Putin attacked and claimed parts of Georgia anyway.

About a month after Putin said he had no plan to attack Ukraine he took Crimea.

I know people from both Ukraine and Georgia and they always tell me that Russia has been an agressive neighbor forever and they really don’t want to be Russians.

I’m not saying the west it perfect and we definitely did things wrong. But the invasion of Ukraine is 100% Putin, he did this, there was no war, nobody was threatening Russia. In fact the EU was slowly getting a better economic relationship with Russia.

But in the end all of this doesn’t matter, it’s not about NATO, or the west. If you listen to what Putin is actually saying, he thinks Ukraine and Georgia both are not counties. In his view they have always been part of Russia, so he would have invaded them at some point anyway.

This is like saying Germany losing WW2 is what allowed Israel to attack Iran.

The 5% is probably too much, but its realistically 3.5% the othet 1.5% can be spend on infrastructure (like make bridges strong enough so tanks can drive over them), on cyber defense and other things that are not weapons.

Also it’s about deterrence, when we spend enough Russia can’t attack unless they match the spending, this is part why the Soviet Union collapsed.

The thing is the EU is mostly concerned about Europe, while the US wants to play world police. So if China would invade Taiwan and NATO is without the US, I’m not sure they are going to get involved, it would open the gate for Russia. If the US is still part of NATO I’m not sure what will happen as it’s not an article 5 event. So the other NATO countries are not automatically involved even if the US is.

You can buy bags with fake mold, but people will probably see it and throw your food in the trash, so I don’t think it really helps.

Look dude you are talking about actively resisting, so thats why I asked how are you doing that. And if you think I’m an fbi agent or something just say what someone theoretically can do, how can I actively resist?

Yeah sure I bet except from complaining here you don’t do shit

About the “hardcore” and msm, I do check msm, and try to use multiple sources and more balanced media sources. News on lemmy definitely isn’t neutral.

Mostly the same, but when I need to search for something and reddit is in the top search results, I do look at it.

Ok, so how are you actively resisting yourself?

You do know what to do and you are doing it! It’s not going to magically solve everything but you are doing more than most people.

I don’t know maybe you’ll end up with Trump again after this if people don’t change the way they vote.

I don’t have ADHD (I think), but when I dont browse all the, aisles I will come with that one thing we needed. Only to find out the next morning during my shower, I have been trying to squeeze out toothpaste of a tube that was basically empty 3 days ago. I browse all the aisles because I don’t want to come back and remember I forgot something.

Wow China really dropped the ball on this one.

In Europe when you book ahead of time and are not too specific about the dates you can fly much cheaper. If I want to go from Amsterdam to Barcelona I can get a much much cheaper flight. Why would I go for the option that is slower and more expensive?

I wish trains where cheaper I’d take them more often.

I once heard someone make the argument flying is cheaper because a plane can fly from one airport to almost any other airport. So when you own a plane you can use it in a much more flexible way. A train can only go over a fixed track, yes you can use switches etc. But when you build an airport basically any plane can go there immediately. For trains it doesn’t work like that. Make matters even worse in Europe usually train operators are national and most trains don’t cross borders beyond a few stations.

Thanks I’ll look up the song, now that you say it it’s pretty obvious.

Maybe you can explain what this opp actually is??

As someone that doesn’t know anything about drugtests, how long are these things still testable?

Until a week ago I was like this, coffee, some water and in the evening 1 or 2 beers.

But about a week ago my big toes started to hurt while walking. Googled my symptoms and I’m fairly sure I’m developing gout. So now I’m trying to get at least 2 liters of water in.

My problem is mostly that I just don’t get thirsty during the day. Like some days I might only drink one litre in total and I don’t feel thirsty at all.