Unlike America where you get to choose between: genocide in Gaza and uhm… also genocide in Gaza.

The way Chinese elite keep themselves in power is different from the way American elites keep them selves in power, but in the end what does it matter to you. Or do you want America to bring democracy to China at the end of a riffle, or be racist against Chinese people and Culture because you don’t agree with their government?

Edit: for the people (purposely?) misreading my comment, nowhere do I excuse the actions of China. I just want to point out that this rhetoric of condemning the human rights abuses of geo-strategic rivals is a known strategy that has a body count counted in millions. And pointing at Gaza is not a whataboutism, it is to show that Americas deep care for the Uyghurs or Taiwan independence is purely about cynical power.

The only substantive aid it delivered, was aid Israel in the massacre of Palestinians. Team America at it again.

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I was more stating what I think will happen rather than wat we should be doing.

In terms of pure physics it is ofc easier to turn off the metaphorical tap, but in terms of power and politics we seem unable to transition to renewables. And I’m afraid once we switch on the geo-engineering button we still won’t transition. Only once oil is priced out of the market completely, be it fusion or abundant solar and wind (with energy storage), will we make the transition. But again I might be too pessimistic.

Fusion would solve a lot, but even if we invent room-temperature superconductors today, it would still take so much time to roll fusion out on a big scale and replace oil infrastructure with electric infrastructure.

I tend to be very pessimistic about climate change, but I hope I’m wrong.

If it was possible I would put quite some money on that geo engineering (like stratospheric aerosol injection) will be seriously discussed on a UN level within ten years. Climate change seems only to speed up and co2 emissions are still rising. At one point there is simply no alternative.

To defeat the Tories, you must first become the Tories.

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But they are not gonna leave, and we can’t make them without risking worse (for Ukraine and the world at large).

And of course we can’t force Ukraine to stop resisting (nor should we, it is their right), but I have the impression the west does not want this to end (regardless of the cost of Ukrainian lives), and sees this as an opportunity to weaken Russia.

The world of geopolitics is a world without police, so I agree that the invasion is a war crime, but in practice there is not much we can do that doesn’t make the situation worse.

In my opinion the best we can hope for is peace by means of a balance of power.

The lack of credible enforcement of international law is made very clear by the Iraq war, a war of aggression where the perpetrators were never held to account because the US was powerful enough to prevent that.

I don’t think it’s morally bad to be pragmatic in that sense, if trying to punish Russia leads to nuclear annihilation.

I’m not saying Ukraine doesn’t have the right to defend itself, but the west is not Ukraine and has a broader responsibility (and seems currently mostly concerned with destabilizing Russia regardless of the cost of Ukrainian lives).

Russia made clear that it had the intent and means to stop Ukraine from joining NATO, and yet the US kept promising. This was dangerous and escalatory, the West knew this (this is also the reason why France and Germany were originally against it when the US proposed this) and yet they kept promising. Even after Russia annexed Crimea and started fighting Ukraine in the east the US kept promising NATO, de facto forcing Russia to keep fighting. Even when Russia made it 100% explicit and clear, they would not take NATO of the table.

This war was preventable, and further conflict is still preventable. But the US has shown that apparently Ukrainian lives are not worth a lot compared to their geo-strategic plans.

And of course Russia doesn’t and didn’t have the right to invade Ukraine, but if the US are truly ‘the good guys’ then it’s time to act that way and find a peaceful solution (given the situation at hand).

And finally, while it’s up to Ukrainians to decide in what kind of country they want to live, I can imagine they would rather live in a neutral country than a destroyed one.

Making emotional appeals on how evil the enemy is, is not a great way to deescalate a situation. And if you want to keep more hospitals standing, peace is your best hope. We can not control what Russia does, nor can you defeat a nuclear power, we can only negotiate and hope to get back to a point where both Russia and Europe had their security concerns met and there was no war in Ukraine.

If the West keeps escalating, at some point Russia has to respond to not loose credibility. The fact that western politicians are convinced they are morally right seems to blind them to this. Russia is capable of doing real damage and has thus far threatened but also shown restraint, clearly they do not want to escalate this beyond Ukraine. Nobody, not the West, not Ukraine, and not Russia, has an interest in WW3 but every day we seem to blindly walk closer and closer. Making it all the more astonishing that not more mainstream voices confront the harsh realpolitik of the current situation.

Having lived in Utrecht, yes all those stores in the picture, completely empty, also all the people on bikes are happy to finally have the chance to sit after spending their day in a house without furniture.

To quote Not Just Bikes: “the USA wasn’t built for cars, it was destroyed for cars”

Most cities in the US were walkable and public transport oriented, but in the fifties all livable neighborhoods and city centers were bulldozed to make place for parking lots and arterial roads.

Core memory resurfaced from the playground near my late grandma’s house.

kanker groot jonge

Germany hast lost the plot.

This type of architecture is the literal definition of green washing. It’s just a concrete tower with incredibly difficult to maintain trees. (Probably next to a 6 lane arterial road.)