It's diplomacy though. Some things are better said behind closed doors as it were.
Going back to Cold War brinksmanship, the point of NATO was to loudly say that you were ride-or-die, go-to-the-wall with all your NATO homies. It made the risk of messing with NATO countries too high, likewise with the Warsaw Pact.
Now would all NATO allies go all in? 100%, all the way? Who can say with certainty. Still, so far there's only been one US president who has said… it depends. For the record, Trump walked that back, but it certainly got a lot of NATO countries closer to Russia to quickly point out that they were over the NATO 2% GDP commitment.
Still, Article 5 has been invoked once in NATO's history, and it was by the US. It's why Canada was in Kandahar, Netherlands in Helmand, etc. Too my recollection, every single NATO country participated in Afghanistan at the US's request.
Also, every NATO country on the frontier (as it were) is well over the NATO 2% GDP minimum. The three Baltic countries, Poland, the UK and the US have been over the 2% GDP minimum for a while. Finland is already well past that before joining, and I believe several more countries will hit the goal in 2023.
Trump just wanted everyone to spend more on the military. He wasn’t a threat to nato.
Not US-ian, so I'm going to have to disagree hard. Back in 2016 and 2017 he called NATO "obsolete", although he later changed his mind and said it was "no longer obsolete", as well as taking a while to affirm US support for Article 5, and even saying “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” when asked if the US would defend the Baltic NATO countries.
Now you could argue that he was using this to push the NATO defence spending requirements, which is a fair critique, but it sent a pretty clear message that under his presidency, the US honouring article 5 was conditional. This wasn't just a message to the other NATO members; it was a message to Putin as well whether intentional or not.
I believe that the silver lining of Trump's presidency is now being felt as Europe is seriously taking it's ability to autonomously defend itself seriously. This is probably why Petr Pavl is musing that it may be necessary to go beyond NATO's 2% spending targets, because Trump could get elected again, or someone like Trump, and there could always be more conditions added to US NATO commitments.
I mostly agree with you, but Google seems to be doing it's classic Google thing, and Chrome is being enshittified now. Still, Chromebooks showed how little most people really need a computer.
Currently, the computer I use most is... my Steam Deck. With desktop mode, it's 95% of the full Linux experience, and I bet if I got my parents set up with a docked Steam Deck, they'd be fine. Granted, that's not the point of the Steam Deck, but it does show how the Chromebook example could be generalized.
Heck, even on my laptop and desktop, I've been stuck on Ubuntu LTS releases for about ten years, simply because I can't be bothered to distro-hop anymore, and it's solid. I guess ironically, I've ended up sticking with Linux because it's less bother than even Windows. Honestly, my wife's laptop on Windows gives the most headaches in the household now.
I bought 3 x 1 oz. gold wafers from Scotiabank back in 1994 for around $400 IIRC and forgot about them in my safety deposit box. I sold them in 2010 for over $1200 each at one of those "We buy gold!" guys when I was moving for work.
Technically you can invest in gold without having physical lumps of metal, but it seemed like a thing to do when I was young, didn't have any expenses, and gold was at a historic low. Of course now that I'm curious, it seems gold is $2500/Oz, so not sure if now is the time to invest. I guess it's kind of like how crypto-bros said crypto was a hedge against inflation. The cost for actual physical gold wafers included some extra fees even back in the nineties, so Costco's price above the spot price isn't too out of line.
I also experience audio dropouts. Not very common, but they do happen.
There is inherently more "fiddling" with the Deck overall compared to the Switch, which I believe is unavoidable. You aren't playing games designed only to run on one locked down device. You are running games designed to run on PCs of just about any era. Upside, you could be running emulators, games or programs from sources other than Steam, even a Word Processor. Downside, it differs require a little more knowledge and fiddling.
Having said that, if you stick to game mode and games rated as great on the Steam Deck through Steam, your experience will come very close to the Switch for ease of use, with an arguably larger library.
I'm picturing a future now where Hans Island is a major travel hub because it's the one land border between Canada and an EU country, and for some technical reason there's a circumstance where you want to walk across the border.
Housing? Give tax breaks to real estate developers so we can have more landlords! Not that I'm adverse to supply side solutions, any port in a storm and all that, but how's that greenbelt deal going for Ford? Likewise, it seems to be classic neo-con, with lots of inaction on climate.
The biggest thing seems to be trying to avoid ending up like O'Toole, and just not make any solid statements towards any issue and instead just point at Trudeau and whine.
He's certainly leaving into the whole "vibes" thing. I guess it's kind of working.
That's the modern Conservative Party of Canada. There's a fundamental split you get to see played out every time a new leader is elected. I'm reminded of the vote for the ban on conversion therapy (the Conservatives were the only party that was divided), O'Toole's attempt to address climate change in the CPC policy convention, and of course Joe Clark's admonitions back at the merger of the PCs and the Reform Party.
I'd say a coin toss between a troll just trying for "shock", vs. some lone weirdo who really did a lot of online research on the Great Replacement and wants to use posters to get the word out.
I mean Her Majesty Queen Roman Dildo Romana Didulo I still rolls across the land, so I wouldn't discount the legitimacy of the poster outright. Still, it is pretty rage-baity, so decent chance it's just some trolling.
It's diplomacy though. Some things are better said behind closed doors as it were.
Going back to Cold War brinksmanship, the point of NATO was to loudly say that you were ride-or-die, go-to-the-wall with all your NATO homies. It made the risk of messing with NATO countries too high, likewise with the Warsaw Pact.
Now would all NATO allies go all in? 100%, all the way? Who can say with certainty. Still, so far there's only been one US president who has said… it depends. For the record, Trump walked that back, but it certainly got a lot of NATO countries closer to Russia to quickly point out that they were over the NATO 2% GDP commitment.
Still, Article 5 has been invoked once in NATO's history, and it was by the US. It's why Canada was in Kandahar, Netherlands in Helmand, etc. Too my recollection, every single NATO country participated in Afghanistan at the US's request.
Also, every NATO country on the frontier (as it were) is well over the NATO 2% GDP minimum. The three Baltic countries, Poland, the UK and the US have been over the 2% GDP minimum for a while. Finland is already well past that before joining, and I believe several more countries will hit the goal in 2023.