Skua

The US military is currently directly involved in fighting in Yemen and Somalia. It’s relatively small-scale, but it is happening

I’m pretty sure they are only talking about windfarms that would otherwise actually be built

Honestly I don’t think that is necessary to explain this. China is seeing the same issue as western countries with birth rates way below replacement, but it hardly has any of the immigration that mitigates it for (most of) Europe and North America. It’s not easy for an economy to support an ever-increasing proportion of its population being retirees

If it was just that, surely there’d be a rebound visible on the chart after 2016 (8-year-olds and younger)? Instead it falls off even harder

Assuming 0.125%, it’s very roughly 10% of the original total every three months for the first year

Moldova just voted for European integration despite what seems to have been extensive Russian efforts to push it the other way

You quoted me doing exactly that, why are you acting like I didn’t?

Super layman’s explanation ahead, there is a high chance of me getting something wrong here:

Very broadly, inflation can be caused by there being more money to spend than there are goods to buy with it.

If there’s €10 in the system that is available to be spent and an amount of goods that was worth €5 yesterday, the goods are probably going to be worth €10 now.

When a bank gives a loan to someone, it effectively creates new money. This doesn’t need to involve actually making new money in the sense of a mint or even a central bank. If I possess €100 of actual physical cash and I give €50 loans to five people, that’s totally fine so long as I can rely on no more than two of them actually requiring hard cash at a time before they pay me back. So now I have essentially “created” €150 more than there was before. And so long as everyone trusts that I can actually show up with €50 on demand, they can act as if they have the €50.

The central bank’s interest rate is what the central bank will pay me if I keep my €100 deposited with them. If that’s 5%, I’ll have €105 next year. As such, I will only offer loans if I expect to make more than €5 off of them once they are all repaid.

So if the interest rate is 21%, you are gonna need a hell of a business plan to be able to beat what I’d get by just leaving my money with the central bank. I am now unlikely to lend any money unless someone can persuade me that they’ll beat 21%. As such, I’m no longer loaning money out to all of those five people. Only two of them have plans that are that good. Now, there is way less money available to spend than there was in the other scenario, because two people have €50 each instead of five. If the amount of goods to buy stays constant, then by the principal from the very start of this mess there is less inflation. Buyers don’t have more money to spend, and prices remain lower.

Strictly speaking there aren’t term limits for the UN Secretary General. By convention it’s five years per term, two terms max. Guterres is currently three years into his second term.

Honestly though I’m not sure that him attending the BRICS thing is a bad move. Surely his job is to try to foster discussion across hostile lines? I don’t know what his actual conduct at the conference was, but I can definitely imagine that an attempt to push for peace is within plausibility

We elected Boris Johnson to PMship. We aren’t better.

even I know the “royal family” brings in way more money than the architecture any fucking day

Based on what? France is literally right next door and it’s the biggest tourist destination in the entire world, bar none. Nobody is going to Versailles and complaining that it’s just not the same without the state waifu living there anymore.

Finland isn’t a big country in population terms, but it’s still over five million people. Looking at a population pyramid it looks like there are about 300,000-400,000 children in the stated age range in the country. I’m pretty sure you could find six people to support damn near anything if you get to choose from 300,000

Also, though, they all already spoke Russian. That doesn’t mean they’re somehow genetically predisposed to imperialism or some shit, but it does suggest that they’re more likely than most to have some pre-existing cultural connection to Russia

The aeticle should have said, but it’s OPHI’s Multidimensional Poverty Index. It checks the following:

• Nutrition
• Child mortality
• Years of schooling
• School attendance
• Cooking fuel
• Sanitation
• Drinking water
• Electricity
• Housing
• Assets

These are grouped into three categories (health, education, and standard of living) and each category is a third of the total score. Each indicator is an equal portion of the score for its category. If a household lacks access to at least a one third of the total after that weighting, it is deemed to be in poverty

So, as an example, if Household A has the health aspects covered (nutrition and child mortality), has access to education but their children don’t actually attend, and does okay on the standard of living indicators (the last six) except for a lack of electricity, they would not count as being in poverty. If, however, their neighbours in Household B also lacked reliable access to cooking fuel and sanitation, Household B would count.

Well he had at least one

I don’t know how it works in Ukraine today, but historically yes. You often don’t need to be underhanded about it either. In Britain during both world wars, as an example, conscientious objectors were actually organised into a non-combat corps that would take on important roles exactly like the ones you suggested.

These three are the biggest European contributors of soldiers to UNIFIL and 8th, 2nd, and 7th biggest contributors overall. It’s their troops that are in danger

Can/will the peacekeepers actually shoot back? I can’t imagine the orders that they were deployed under accounted for an Israeli ground invasion

You’re not paying for it instead of healthcare. The US federal government already spends twice what comparable countries do per person on healthcare. The problem is not Ukraine.

And overwhelmingly so. There was a referendum in 2013 with 92% turnout and 99.8% were in favour of staying British

Given the fact that they’re pretty much producing everything for western economies and is recently industrialised China is actually doing fine. They emit a lot less per person than the average European while producing goods for 2x their population.

From your own source, the EU emitted 5.6 tonnes per person in 2022. It doesn’t show per capita numbers for China, but it does show a total value of 10,613,171,000 tonnes for 2022. Divide that by 1.412 billion for China’s population and you get 7.5 tonnes per person

Consumption-based emissions, to account for the balance of imports and exports in China and the EU, do put Europe’s per-capita emission above China’s. But it’s by 10% in 2021, and the trend shows the gap narrowing year on year as China’s net emissions increase and Europe’s decrease.

The investment they’re making into clean power is great. It just doesn’t cancel out the simultaneous expansion of fossil fuel usage.