One shared his own experience, the other is a direct attack on his kids and the parent. Quite a big difference. The "I pity your kids" is straight up vile.
How is it vile to pity children whose parents regret that they were born? Children whose father loathes spending time with them. Sorry, but maybe some people should feel shame sometimes
Because it's performative pity. The person doesn't really care about that person's kids. They just wanted to attack the poster, and decided to do that through his kids.
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
At one of my earliest jobs (I must have been 19), I had a boss who was incredulous that I didn't drink alcohol and said that I would when I was 21 because it was "part of being an adult". I was pretty sure that making my own decisions rather than letting myself get pressured by others into what they assumed was best for me was a more important part of being an adult, and over a decade later I still don't drink.
Comments like the parent one (pun semi-intended) basically sound the same to me as what my boss had said to me that day. Assuming that your own experience is universal is a flawed way to view the world, even if your experience is relatively common. If there are exceptions, it's not going to be easy to see them if you have an assumption already about it being universal, and if the people in the majority are loud enough and annoying enough about it, those who aren't will be even more incentivized not to share their experiences with you; I'd argue that people who regret having kids will potentially be reluctant to publicly say so. Most importantly, doing something because of societal pressure rather than genuine desire is going to greatly reduce the chance that someone truly finds it fulfilling, and there's an emotional cost for children who are raised by parents who basically regret having them.
It's totally reasonable to say "I never truly understood how much I'd enjoy having kids until I did, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of other parents". There's no reason to go further than that unless you're pushing an idealogy rather than actually trying to say something you know is correct.
My problem with that problem is that, well, people who have kids definitionally know (better?) about having them. Like being able to experience a book in its original version vs a translation.
It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.
But do you also go around and claim everyone that hasn't read that book in Spanish is losing out in life, or do you also recognize it's just not for everyone?
Russia's invasion ironically strengthened NATO, with more countries joining or feeling the usefulness of it. Somehow the US managed to break down all that good will in such a short amount of time.. I think it's hard to overstate how much more hostile people look at the US the last few years. So much soft power has been lost.
Covid, Russia and the axis of US+Israel has done massive damage to the European psyche.
Covid showed us how economically dependent we are to major manufacturing countries like China. Paper money != ability to manufacture.
Russia broke any notion of peace that can be funded by cheap energy. It will always be a tool used against you, and Russia will not change.
The axis of US+Israel is breaking down the international system of laws and diplomacy. It’s going to be in a state even worse than the heights of the Cold War. Nukes are now a more favored instrument of peace compared to diplomacy.
Is it worth fighting for what we had, or should we fight for something better? Who knows.
(Edit: I don’t think non-Europeans can appreciate the whiplash suffered in our populations. In the span of around two years, European leaders drew red lines on political, economical and cultural decoupling from Russia based on human rights and the rule of law, then had to explain why preventable atrocities happening to civilians in the Mideast is not against our values and laws concerning human rights.)
I could be wrong, but I've experienced the opposite. Seeing Putin and Trump openly undermine and threaten the EU forced countries to address the situation and take action. It's encouraging. I'm looking at this situation from Hungary tho, where Russian influence began 10–16 years ago. It seems Hungary has a chance to get rid of Orbán, and the rest of Europe is also taking measures finally. It's nice.
The war in Ukraine is literally at the EU's border. It could be destabilizing in many ways. It's not just about moral reasons. By the way, I see similarities between Putin and Trump as they both started wars against big countries without thinking ahead more than three days. It's one more reason to strengthen the EU.
Nordics and the Baltics are very pro Ukraine, we have a common enemy now to focus on.
Poland has stepped up too militarlity.
Sweden where I am has seen a HUGE uplift in military spend, and the companies like SAAB and Bofors (heheh)
Germany is the big loser as they had cheap Russian energy and shut down their nuclear plants.
Where in Europe are you from exactly?
EU overall is pro Ukraine except for Hungary...
In summary, what are you on about? And post your passport.
Oh, and Israel is our ally. I am sick of EU being so pro Hamas and pro Iran. Thankfully our government cut down on grants to the MENA and increased to Ukraine!
Israel is Europe's shame, not ally. The UK, France and the US share full responsibility for the creation of the state of Israel, and every day that Europe refuses to denounce Israel, its culpability for Israel's actions grows.
Funny that you should mention that mandate. A "mandate territory" is simply a transfer of colonial rule from a loser of World War I to a victor of the war. In no way should the term "mandate" here be construed as an agreement that was supported by broad consensus.
A little context: The League of Nations was established by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW I. That treaty was fully drafted by Britain, France, the United States, and Italy; the first members of the League included all allied victors of the war, their (former) colonies, and the colonies of the losers of the war, which became the mandates you refer to. Many countries that were neutral in the WW I were extended an invite to join the League, but they were not present during negotiations in Versailles.
So, contrary to what you suggest, the League of Nations never voted on the establishment of these "mandates", as they were simply the result of the World War I victors divvying up the spoils of war -- and for Palestine specifically, the so-called "Principal Allied Powers" explicitly reserved those powers for themselves without any input from the rest of the League [0]:
> The San Remo Resolution passed on 25 April 1920 determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for the administration of three then-undefined Ottoman territories in the Middle East: "Palestine", "Syria" and "Mesopotamia". The boundaries of the three territories were "to be determined [at a later date] by the Principal Allied Powers"
So no, "most of the planet" did not weigh in on the establishment of the Palestinian territory; that burden of responsibility squarely falls back on Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the US.
Also, your claim that Israel was created by the League Of Nations is an anachronism. The League of Nations was disbanded on 18 April 1946 (subsumed into the United Nations), and Israel did not become a nation state until 14 May 1948. Before that date, the territory was known as the Mandate of Palestine.
I'm of pretty mixed feelings about this. It certainly strengthened Europe's collective defense priorities and awareness. That response happens to include NATO but primarily because Europe is too weak without NATO. Europe used to be full of world powers and now they collectively can't manage collective defense without the US? There's something very learned-helplessness about that.
And yes, it certainly has served America's interests to have a weak Europe that's dependent on it. But seeing that as "good will" seems like a distortion.
Europe's weakness is mostly in their heads. The US is the most powerful military in the world, but the second most powerful military is NATO without the US. If the rest of NATO pulls together and reorganises into an effective military that doesn't depend on the US, it would be a force to be reckoned with.
Europe could easily defeat Russia without outside help (look at how well Ukraine is doing with far less!), but we still fear Russia because that's what we're used to. That's what we were told to do and what we have embraced. We need to grow out of that and stand on our own feet again.
> Europe could easily defeat Russia without outside help (look at how well Ukraine is doing with far less!)
Ukraine has received unbelieviable levels of aid from NATO, esp. the US.
10000+ Javelin missiles, WW3 levels of cluster munitions that were slated to be decommissioned in the US, multiple factories in the EU making shells that go straight to the AFU (e.g. Bulgarian 152mm), etc.
there is no way they'd have made it 6+ months let alone 4 years without the US' heavy backing.
Much of their support has also come from the EU, and the EU has a lot more than that. The EU has more fighters and ships, more tanks, more soldiers. It is true that the EU didn't and still doesn't have deep ammo reserves, though. But it has far more capacity to ramp up production of these than Russia has; the Russian economy is about the size of that of the Benelux.
Reporting is messy and due to the EU's fragmented linguistic nature harder to come by than it probably should be.
The balancing act is to increase stockpiles whilst supplying Ukraine which is consuming almost as fast as we're producing. Precision weapons you are right about, those are dwindling, but at the same time this is the one area where Ukraine internal production is beginning to outnumber imports (and their motivations are not so much quantity as 'no strings attached', which is very understandable).
Artillery shell production is up, 2.2 million shells/year or thereabouts, but here too the Ukraine war is consuming them very fast, either way, it is sixfold or so of what it was prior to 2022. Many new factories have been built and opened and are since a few months adding their output to the stream.
I think what held things back for a bit is that the EU was - wrongly - under the impression that Putin would back off but now that it is clear that that is not the case the longer term investments make sense. But it took a while for that to get underway.
This is absolute fantasy. Stockpiles are only depleting, production hasn't and won't come close to meeting demand, and until there's a shooting war inside the bloc, it won't.
Unless you are privy to secrets at a level that they contradict the EU official figures + the figures from the defense contractors that I am tracking this is as accurate as I can make it.
I do not have access to information from the military other than what gets published but that's good enough for me as long as I don't see contradictions.
They were aiming for a 100% supply to Ukraine + stockpile increase for 2026 and I see no reason to disbelieve that other than your comment, if you want me to re-calibrate my position on that you're going to have to supply some sources.
The ~2M figure was a 2025 EOY nameplate capacity target, not actual output for the year. Even those capacity numbers are widely overstated - it’s well known in defence circles (where you claim to be) that real capacity is running at about 40% of official claims, with some shortfalls being made up by international procurement, but the majority remaining unfulfilled.
As for EU motivations, Orbán is the visible blocker, but the Western states are even more constraining than Hungary. It’s Spain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc. that have no appetite for war or economic upheaval, which would immediately topple governments across the bloc. EU defence policy requires unanimity across states, and it doesn’t exist.
Rhetoric is strong but thin, and almost everybody apart from yourself sees it. Let’s come back to this in a year, when production figures and defence spending for 2025 become public and see.
Absolutely. The EU is now finally but rapidly adapting to these geopolitical changes. Defense budgets are now far higher than the 2% that used to be the goal that nobody met.
In the 1990s everybody was eager to believe that war was finally and forever over. Some held on to that delusion for a bit too long, but not anymore.
That was the 2024 figure. In 2025 it rose to 2.1% and this year it is expected to rise further.
And that's just the direct allocation, not the under water part including venture funding of some of the defense industry (obvious overlap: anything including AI & drones, it's pure VC bait).
Eastern European countries warned us, but western Europe, Germany in particular, but other western European countries too, assumed Russia was now a normal country we could just trade with. Under Yeltsin we might have been heading in that direction, but Chechnya should have been a warning. Putin's comment about "countries that don't matter" was a warning. Russia taking chunks out of Georgia should have been the alarm. We continued trading even after he took Crimea and Donbas. We have been way too naive.
>"but the second most powerful military is NATO without the US"
I am curious how much of NATO's hardware originate from the / depends on the US and and what will suddenly stop working if the US decides to break military alliance.
It's not like they will suddenly stop working completely, but some do depend on US data, which could be cut off. No idea if they have a fall back solution for that, but I'm sure they're working on that.
BAE Systems Inc, a US-based subsidiary that operates entirely in the US and whose leadership operates under an SAA which means they report to the US Government and the parent in the UK.
> Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other
The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/
A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.
So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)
Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.
The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.
The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..
I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.
The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.
I am equally dismayed at recent US behavior; but this is a short sighted view.
1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.
2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.
3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
I do agree with some of your points and I believe some aspects of it might be right but there is a big difference between the past and present because this time, its America attacking EU sovereignity/other countries and so many things all at once literally within less than a year.
Just count all the things that america did in the last year and try to imagine as a foreigner or foreign nation once as an exercise. All of the things that America has done in the past year is just quite so much to list here even.
No amount of charm within a president might fix or make the people of denmark/EU/even the world, forget the greenland crisis and many others.
This is fundamentally different, in my opinion.
> 3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
Yea, we do but we can only tolerate so much at a certain point too. This goes to my point again but we are forgetting that US is still voted by its people. Yes the two party system corners the people and we are sympathetic of that, but the world/foreigners (atleast me) sympathesize with the american citizens but at the same time, can't trust them.
This isn't something even foreigner related issue but the people of America themselves don't trust their fellow neighbours now as I read the comments of this post and many others.
We sympathize with the people of America but sadly, the world doesn't trust America anymore, Trust is quite brittle and delicate thing so its quite an miracle we still saw trust bounce so many times but right now the glass of trust has shattered (as evident by Denmark preparing for almost war against America)
I can be wrong, I usually am but that's just my understanding.
I mean I definitely agree that a lot of trust has been lost, and that a lot of work will be needed to patch things up.
Where I don't agree is that 1) this is somehow irreversible 2) that it really affects American citizens on the personal level – from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger.
So while this is definitely a big, huge, giant problem, it's also a problem that I think the Europeans and Japanese want America to solve, and would basically rather America solve it than do anything else. Especially when there aren't really other geopolitical options at the table, the EU can't have a coherent singular opinion on Russia or Ukraine, etc.
> from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger
Imagining that America attacked Greenland Thus Denmark/EU and the fact that Denmark was genuinely preparing for this, Just imaginging America attack Greenland and I do feel like that the sentiments might change. (This is what had happened to Muslim people not even people of specific country but negative interactions against whole religions after 9/11)
I would agree with you if this was the last day of Trump administration, but far from it. We have to handle so much more of this current administration. It's literally only been a year to see so much shift. I hope you realize it that for the most part, America is busy with the Iran war but any assurances about the sovereignity of EU or any country in the world for that matter isn't made by America and everything is off the table and anything might happen. I am sure that both of us wasn't predicting an Iran war or a greenland invastion but here we are.
It just feels natural to me that if a single year can have this much impact and you have four years for something like this and the most important fact which I want to highlight again, people technically voted for this and can still technically vote for it again , there are no safeguards and the most important part was a belief that if shit hits the fan, then American Judiciary or checks and balances or congress would stop something like this from happening but we all saw how nothing really happened.
My point is, 3 more years, let that sink in, into this level of turbulent times when an war is currently active and gas prices are rising all across the world solely because America and Israel started the Iran war :/
I can only have so much patience but if gas prices are double the price because of America/this war, Sadly I might lose my patience.
I lost my patience somedays ago when I heard that the local fast food shop was talking about the gas price increases and how it hurted them. I had true resentment to this war and America/Israel for starting it and having this poor guy suffer so much from the gas prices. I know that America and American people are different but till how long/how much especially if some people are still supportive of such war. It sort of left me speechless when he was talking about how hard it is to stay in this business.
To think that the world will forgive America so easily might not be accurate, that's all I am saying.
My point is, Even if party changes next time from red to blue, It's just really really hard to undo all this harm that it has done to its soft power.
On a more fundamental level, I think something is wrong with the American education system and results in so many low information voters who believe any words from their "hero". And fixing education takes decades to even see the result.
They definitely can vote for another Trump-like guy and they have proven it by voting Trump back the second time. Honestly this is crazy to me this can even happen after Jan 6. The Brazilian Trump-like President went to jail, yet Trump returns to the White House. My take is this trust issue takes at least 10 years to recover, most likely more.
I think your argument falls apart here. The US built a coalition of on side allies before invading Iraq. They went to the UN too. There was significant opposition to the war, and I was a student at the time in the UK so was surrounded and involved in that. However, European countries were not politically blindsided. Some were going in with the US, including Denmark I believe.
I don't think so. Colin Powell sold it and he had a stellar reputation. A lot of people found it very hard to believe that he would stake his reputation on this if it wasn't true. It wasn't, and he rightly never recovered from that. His UNSC presentation will go into the history books as the thing he is remembered for.
> Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on
Anyone who has studied American history knows the US has been unreliable. Just look at how they made and then broke treaties with Native Americans. It's part of the foundation of the country.
Within Geopolitical commentaries that I used to watch, A famous quote by Henry Kissinger is often repeated.
"to be an enemy of america can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal"
So yeah, America has never been trustworthy in a way but it still had its upsides and it still had some laws and checks and people still believed in some aspects of the American dream somewhat, Not anymore.
But now?,it has never been this less trustworthy either in a way to the whole world.
Geopolitical moves like illegally invading a country aren’t necessarily planned to be the one grand thing that weakens the opponent. In particular it strengthening Nato is not necessarily ironic, and it seems like an oversimplification to even suggest it.
This is very reductive. European countries pay a lot into their defense, especially the last few years. It's not as black&white as a certain person likes to claim.
While at it, let's finally remove American Dollar as the de-facto currency all around the world because part of the agreement between EU and America was that American dollars would become the global currency and EU would get defense security in return which was mutually benefitial to both.
To be honest, EU will invest in its own defense in coming years. The cat is out of the box, US proved to be an unstable partner/even an enemy for a country like denmark that you had to prepare to fight full scare war against.
When I started it was a big security theater. Had to develop on thin clients with no external internet access, for instance. Then they got some great people in charge that modernized everything.
Only drawback is when you quit, you have to make sure to unsubscribe from everything, hehe. When quitting a private company I was just removed from the github org. Here I was as well, but I was still subscribed to lots of repos, issues, PRs,heh.
Very cool! Do they accept external contributions, e.g. from Norwegian citizens? Also, was there any thought given to "digital souvereignty" (wondering because the repos are hosted on a US service)?
I'm also surprised that you were able to (or expected to?) use your private GitHub account for your work.
Not sure how it is now, but when I worked there ~8 years ago we weren't really equipped to accept contributions. Both from a licensing perspective (CLA), but also that we had our own timelines, projects and prioritizations in the team. So most applications were open source more in the sense of source available. Some utils (like generators for Norwegian mock data, or libraries handling Norwegian addresses or whatever) that were actively used by other companies could get some proper contributions once in a while, though.
It's an Apple-user thing. It's not "my phone", it's "my iPhone". It's not my laptop, it's my MacBook. It's not my headphones, it's my AirPods. It's not my smart watch, it's my Apple Watch Ultra 3 Sapphire Gold Plated. It's not my terminal, it's the Terminal, the one to rule them all. Only plebs use non-branded terminals!
Is video that cpu/gpu bound that streaming it over the interwebs isn't the issue?
Maybe my use cases for ffmpeg are quite narrow, but I always get a speedup from moving the files off my external hard-drive, suggesting that is my current bottleneck.
Ah, yeah, so this is probably for more professional workflows where you have a workhorse somewhere. Perhaps even in the cloud as long as the files are close by as well? My use case would be more "my computer sucks, so would be nice to do it on a beefy cloud computer", but of course no time is saved when just reading my files is slow, heh.
The person that got the top spot for "flashlight" in the app store back in the days made about $600k on it before apple made it a built in function. Just copied existing apps and got lucky. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/92ybl/erik-ble-app-millionaer-de...
For big things the current way works fine. Having a separate container/deployment for celery, the web server, etc is nice so you can deploy and scale separately. Mostly it works fine, but there are of course some drawbacks. Like prometheus scraping of things then not able to run a web server in parallel etc is clunky to work around.
And for smaller projects it's such an annoyance. Having a simple project running, and having to muck around to get cron jobs, background/async tasks etc. to work in a nice way is one of the reasons I never reach for python in these instances. I hope removing the GIL makes it better, but also afraid it will expose a whole can of worms where lots of apps, tools and frameworks aren't written with this possibility in mind.
Your analogy is a bit weird to me. Snowmobile is exciting for a short while, but I'm much more fond of cross country skiing. The connection with nature, the silence.
Or maybe your analogy is correct. AI is a bit as if everyone in the mountains drove around in a snowmobile, noisy and a smell of gasoline.
The analogy makes sense. Some people love riding snowmobiles, some people love cross country skiing, and some people love both. It makes sense that some of the people who love snowmobiling think cross country skiing is boring and tedious, and some people who love cross country skiing think snow mobiles are loud and obnoxious.
I don't think people are confused why there are the different types of people who like different winter sports, but people seem shocked that opinions differ on the enjoyment of using an LLM
My knee jerk is that there are quite a few people who can't or won't snowmobile when needed and ski when needed.
That's where the analogy starts to break a bit. You can't mode switch between skis and snowmobile, but you sure can ai assist/not pretty quickly.
One more quick one - imagine skiers showing up to the snowmobile club hating on snowmobiles and vice versa.
I, for one, have still not properly got a grip on how tech enables this sort of a analogy-breaking reality.
Effing go ski then; there's even a club for that! (rhetorical, not directed at anyone in particular) And shame on me cause I show up to the ski club on a snowmobile with skis on my back.
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