I am not the slightest bit interested in the majority of your post, it is irrelevant. However I will say that I sense you might assume political affiliations I do not have.

what’s the alternative to nuke sharing? Germany builds its own arsenal and you have no stake or say in it whatsoever. Does that sound more appealing to you?

If Germany are allowed under international law to build nuclear weapons then it is their choice whether they do so or not. I don’t mind either way.

Not only were health warnings self‐identified as an important source of health information about smoking, but also an effective means of communicating health information. The results provide evidence at both the individual and country‐level that health warnings on cigarette packages are strongly associated with health knowledge.

…

his pattern is best illustrated in the case of smokers’ knowledge of impotence. Canada was the only country where packages carry warnings about impotence, and accordingly, Canadian smokers were almost three times more likely than smokers from the other three countries to believe that smoking causes impotence.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2593056/#sec14

Honestly, blah blah blah I don’t think it would change much of anything blah blah blah is just really silly. The information is out there, why not look at it?

Musk’s various ponzi schemes, up to the Artemis-killing SpaceX fiasco, were coming due. Trump provided the opportunity for him to pivot into government, by replacing it with his AI, gps with starlink, air traffic control with whatever he comes up with, etc etc etc, making himself even more too big to fail. The US government the latest offering on the ponzi|pyramid. Trump’s ideology aligning with Musk’s own true beliefs is a bonus.

It will severely weaken the US in direct measurable short and long-term ways, to the point it is a real disaster for the US. Those to blame are all those that never called him out throughout his rise. Not to mention those governments (Republican and Democrat) who fed him public money throughout the entire period.

Edit - Bezos’s The Washington Post is apparently supporting him now. No surprise, they want an oligarchy. The Democrats are moving rightward, they are more or less happy with it too.

I guess it is some version of the land of the free home of the brave, but maybe it is the freedom to do what you want if you’re rich, and have been brave enough to brazenly take everything and exploit everyone.

Well clearly we did hold cards. The very post you replied to has pointed out exactly the cards we held, and still hold.

What I will say is remainers (including the UK government charged with managing the negotiations) weakened the UK’s bargaining position just like your attitude would weaken the UK’s position going forward.

But his isn’t a brexit argument, that is a long-resolved issue.

This is about the UK’s relationship with the EU. And notice I say EU, not Europe. I read media reports conflating the EU with Europe every week. Even this week talking of EU countries creating a ‘European Army’: well if they are going to define Europe as ‘EU countries’ (a corporatist takeover of the continent, if you like lol and most certainly something that I have read done week in and week out for years) so be it. Why wouldn’t we maintain our special relationship with the US, and lean towards Russia, while maintaining our friendly relationship with China?

You reap what you sow.

Now if the EU wants the protection of our nuclear weapons they demonstrate how the have significantly changed their attitude towards the UK on an ongoing basis and the EU’s role in Europe, and they pay economically.

They did everything they could to weaken the UK. To punish the UK for deciding to leave the EU.

No quarter given.

But the reason people voted to leave the EU was the importation of cheap Eastern European labour that was used to undermine pay and conditions for British workers of every origin. Saying brexit was the result of ‘Russian interference’ is as reductionist as saying ‘Hilary’s emails’ was why people voted Trump in first time around. The bbc and others framed the debate as EU ‘liberalism’ (is that social or economic liberalism?casue political liberalism is the soft and fuzzy one covering the hard and ruthless other) v. something xenophobic. The reality on the ground was far more complex. Like in the US, the stories of poor people harmed by liberalism were ignored. They still are being. As long as they are the Reform party will continue a rise to power and you will see a UK split from EU countries further anyway.

But ok. If it was reasonable for the EU to treat the UK badly over brexit, then it is more than reasonable for the UK to give no quarter back now that the Germans are asking for the protection of our nuclear weapons.

Now, to some degree the UK is going to remain aligned with the US. Our military and intelligence capabilities seem to be very much intertwined. The alternative for the EU, a UK completely aligned with the US, Russia, and a friend of China, is the alternative to the EU winding back the harm they have intentionally caused the UK.

Perhaps they should have been reasonable when the UK decided to leave the EU.

I doesn’t look like us Brits can completely break with the US in military or intelligence terms, at least for the time being (if not foreseeable future). But closer military co-operation with the rest of Europe clearly has to happen, assuming maintenance of our nuclear capability isn’t completely reliant upon, or tied up with the US.

The Chinese are going to build their biggest embassy in Europe in London about half a mile or so from the US embassy. I’d guess the UK will continue trying to play a mediating role.

I am English.

Most likely you meant to reply to somebody else, but it’s possible you picked up and ran with a response to my question. If that’s the case then thanks for the effort!

What does this mean? People putting on a ‘work voice’ or something?

This is what Canadian and European rivals of the US should have been doing for some time, and should be doing now.

lol

OK, I have read some evidence that shows how when a level of impoverishment is reached, people are too preoccupied with day to day and week to week survival to bother with voting or much of any other civil disengagement.

I won’t waste more time on this, I’m not interested in arguing over the definition of ‘disengaged’.

The fact that they voted means they are not disengaged.

Yours might have just been an offhand comment, but as it might be a genuine question I provided a brief answer.

Dunno, I think Musk was forced to buy it, then he suggested it was going to be all sorts of things while massively cutting costs, before pivoting to giving Trump a quarter of a billion in order to get access to government.

I don’t think there was any intention to buy twitter for propaganda, and I haven’t seen any evidence that shows to what degree (if at all) it helped Trump get elected.

And what is an ai trained on reddit going to help with? Misinforming people on specialised topics, or misinforming people on current affairs?

Edit - I suppose you might be able to train an ai not to reply as per replies on reddit, dunno.

It doubt it will be noticeable overnight, but at least some of his supporters will be pushed into a degree of impoverishment that inhibits political engagement.

Reddit is pretty useless for getting any kind of advanced information on any topic. The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality, so in that case it couldn’t be trusted as an accurate source of information on current affairs.

People are addicted to it, but you’d have to be pretty sad to pay for it.

Blocking ads on it is a trivial matter. It never made any money.

The question is why did anyone think it would ever be worth much at all.

Unfortunately I think there is a good chance that history will come to view brexit as a warning shot that was ignored.

Farage was given a decade or more of regular airtime on the bbc despite not having one MP. This is a top-down driven rise to political power.

Young people have and are witnessing their quality of life and future prospects diminish on an ongoing basis. The spectre of climate change is a crisis multiplier that is not just being ignored by both the red and blue Tories. Protests against government inaction are severely criminalised, and the surveillance state built to ‘protect’ society is pushing the UK into an extreme, data-totalitarian society, that will inevitably breed extremists.

All of this has rendered mainstream parties non-credible. It is just more of the same austerity. More economic inequality.

With the best will in the world, the scale of immigration (not far off a London a decade) is not sustainable. It is impacting the unskilled labour markets and ‘benefits’: many of these potential Reform voting young people are directly harmed by, so it’s use is the easiest of wedges for any politician to use. This immigration is nothing compared to the coming climate change refugee crisis. We haven’t seen anything yet.

The home-owning-electorate’s response: “These people are racist. We should rejoin the EU” (thus completely disenfranchising former brexit, now potential Reform voters) can only make this situation worse, if anything driving those young voters into the hands of worse extremists.

Yeah it is other countries fault, lol.

Do you really want to carry your lifetime supply of honey around with you every time you move apartment?

What other foodstuffs are you going to buy your lifetime supply of? Dried goods? Tins? You could get yourself a winnebago and fill it with all your lifetime’s worth of food or something, which would make lugging it all around with you forever easier. Just hope nobody nicks it.