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.

Late edit (after a few people upvoted this post) - given the disgraceful way the EU treated the UK during brexit negotiations this sharing of nuclear weapons should come at significant economic cost to EU countries that might want it. I mean, the alternative, a UK aligned to the US and Russia, military bases and nuclear weapons ready, full of US bases, puts the shitty way EU countries were happy to deal with the UK into a bit of perspective.

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.

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

Exactly. I responded to somebody who said twitter was bought not to make money but as a propaganda tool.

Then a sequence of morons ‘attacked’ me. (I put attacked in quotation marks as it hardly counts as any kind of ‘attack’.)

lol

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.

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. The bbc is a defacto nation state information operation, it primarily serves the interests of the British establishment, of which the very wealthy are a significant part. They prefer the alternative to the red/blue Tories to come from the right, rather than the left.

Young people have and are witnessing their quality of life and future prospects diminish on an ongoing basis. Climate change is the biggest crisis multiplier humankind will ever experience. It isn’t just being ignored by Tories red and blue, protests against government inaction on it are now criminalised, and the surveillance state built to ‘protect’ society has reached a point of extreme data-totalitarianism that will breed extremists. Not to mention what happens when Tommy Robinson, or whoever is Farage’s Musk takes control of that surveillance state apparatus?

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’ system many of these potential Reform voting young people are reliant upon. Its 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.

Another 50% claim to have read a book.

10% have read a book

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.

His name is Trump. Russia completed sidelined America’s military.

This might sound daft but I’ve traveled for years and literally found that mime, the more extravagant the better, works fine.

What was Trump’s record with negotiating peace last time?

I recall him capitulating in Afghanistan. Was he successful anywhere else? He appears to like to rant and rave, and wants to throw his weight around, but he is clearly an exploitable, weak leader.

Here are the four points the bbc is reporting, which are completely different to yours. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn5220x56pqt

• To keep military aid flowing into Ukraine while the war is ongoing, and increase economic pressure on Russia

• Any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty and security, and Ukraine must be at the table for any peace talks

• In the event of a peace deal, European leaders will aim to deter any future invasion by Russia into Ukraine

• There would be a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine and guarantee peace in the country