They have US military bases there

There are no US military bases in Cyprus. There are british ones(since Cyprus used to be part of the British Empire).

And there is 0% chance that Cyprus would let israeli military launch attacks from Cyprus.

Nor is there much strategic reason to do so, unless Hezbollah has some s-300/400 and Israel needs to go around them and attack from a different direction. But they dont. And even if they had, Cyprus has basically no reason to allow Israel to do that and there is 0 precedent for that either.

I think it is just Hezbollah being an attention removed.

It’s also available on hbo max.

Because not many europeans primarily identify as “european first”. This is slowly changing but for the most part, people identify by whatever european nation they inhabit. But i bet most chinese identify as “chinese first” instead of whatever region/city they are from.

In fact, China likes to brag about how “advanced” they are, that they solved this “issue” centuries ago, while the EU is currently trying to “copy them”.

TLDR : If you ask a chinese tourist “where are you from?”, they will answer “China”. If you ask a european the same, noone will say “Europe/EU”.

Cyrillic is literally greek+glagolitic and it was partly a diplomatic creation of the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire), in order to bring the slavs culturally closer to them.

Russians have nothing to do with it, other than them claiming they are the continuation of Eastern Roman Empire, something which is kinda laughable but whatever dont let your dreams be dreams.

It is chinese owned but Volvo is still a thing in Sweden. Geely bought them(Volvo Cars), gave them infinite money, so that Volvo could design and make cars like the 2nd gen xc90. In return Geely acquired the technology and know how on how to make quality cars.

Nowadays, Volvo can combine their world leading car design with Geely’s electric vehicle platforms. Thats how you get a car like upcoming volvo ex30, that is cheap and (probably) good.

When Volvo was owned by Ford, it was about to go the way of the Dodo(aka Saab). Geely saved it and made it a competitive car brand.

From what i have read, it was a freelancer dude who wrote 1 article for Al Jazeera, 5+ years ago. I dont know why there is this need to make everything so biased/black and white.

No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.

But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters “hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me”.

Basically Macron is saying “You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win”. It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).

As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.

The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.

Technically it is “democratic” because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor “politicking”.

PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.

Reminder that Mirage 2000 is the only plane to have shot down an F-16. A greek Mirage 2000 shot down a turkish F-16. The event was kept secret in both countries for almost 20 years, to avoid escalation. Greece still today denies that it shot down the F-16. From wikipedia

On the eighth of October 1996, seven months after the escalation of the Imia/Kardak crisis, a Greek Mirage 2000 reportedly fired an R.550 Magic II missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D over the Aegean Sea near Chios island. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of a RF-4E on the Syrian Coast, Turkish Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz confirmed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II in 1996 after allegedly violating Greek airspace near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and they saw one parachute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Turkish_F-16_shootdown

The turks had almost certainly shot down a greek military helicopter earlier and that was also kept a secret/both sides claim it was an accidental crash.

PS The surviving turkish F-16 pilot was immediately returned to Turkey after the rescue.

1. Lego horizon Adventures looks neat, hopefully it has more depth than other lego games but i dont expect much. At least it looks pretty. Atm it isnt on steam, but it is announced that it will be.

2. I am very hyped for Space Marine 2. This might be the best warhammer 40k game ever.

3. I am optimistic for Star Wars Outlaws by the division devs(i liked division 1 and 2). But it isnt even on steam, so it will fail.

4. Civilization 7 is definitely one of the most anticipated games ever.

5. And hopefully Battle Aces will revive the rts genre.

Trump is charismatic and funny, thats why he was on tv. If only people didnt take him seriously or give him actual power. Let me remind you that /r/the_donald was a joke subreddit.

Hillary has no charisma. Also her campaign literally promoted Trump, because she thought he would have been an easier opponent. She is smart and capable(or was, she is kinda getting older nowadays) but her political positions are abhorrent. She could have been the perfect “reasonable republican” candidate.

This looks awful. The rifle keeps going up and down while it is walking, no stabilization and they didnt show any accuracy data. You might as well ducktape a rifle to a roomba.

Aiming at targets far away is very hard. Even if it has to stop to shoot, how does it aim? By moving the body of a giant robot dog? That doesnt seem it has the sensitivity it needs. If the rifle is moving that much during walking, how can you accurately aim at anything, since you dont know where the rifle will be aiming when you stop? The camera seems to be on the robot and not on the rifle and everything is jiggling.

Also why even use a full goddamn rifle? You wont have a human holding it, you can just use a modified barrel basically. Are they not embarrassed by how bad this looks? Are they so clueless?

Because they dont have first hand statements, they are just using different israeli sources that independently verified it. Hence the quotes and the “allegedly”.

Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” Cohen did not respond to a request for comment. Bensouda declined to comment.

Ah yeah, Greece totally fought against communism /s

During WW2, the defacto resistance group was the communists, so most people joined them(even if they werent really communist). There was a right wing resistance group but it was much smaller and less relevant. After WW2, the communist resistance group had literally millions of members and obviously wanted to be part of the government.

That was not desirable by the british(and the americans) for obvious reasons. They demanded the disarmament of the communist group in exchange for some minor role in the new government. Eventually the deal broke down and the communist group protested. Then things turned to violence, leading to the greek civil war.

The greek civil war was the bloodiest conflict in Europe after WW2, till the war in Ukraine, with over 150k dead, most of them civilians. And because the right wing was outnumbered, they freed and armed the nazi collaborators. If you are wondering why a literal neonazi party was polling 15% at some point in Greece, was because the nazi collaborators were not only never punished but actually rewarded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekemvriana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Battalions

From the Security Battalions wikipedia article

After the liberation, the groups were only temporarily disbanded, and were recruited into the Gendarmerie to fight alongside the British and government forces against the EAM/ELAS in the battle of Dekemvriana in Athens. The Security Battalions always surrendered to the British, who usually let them keep the weapons the Germans had supplied them with.[24] General Ronald Scobie, who commanded the British forces in Greece, in contrast to his attitude towards EAM, whom he dismissed as mere “bandits”, treated the Security Battalions as a legitimate military force.[25] The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a very favorable view of the Security Battalions, saying, “It seems to me that the collaborators in Greece in many cases did the best they could to shelter the Greek population from German oppression”

The greek civil war still remains a taboo subject in Greece and it isnt taught in schools(because how do you teach that “the bad guys won” to kids). Remember, throughout history, the good guys always win eventually. Winners write the history and they are always the good guys.

PS Stalin didnt help the greek communists because he had agreed with Churchil that Greece would be part of the “West”.

Thats literally what China is doing atm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_Sand

What he is saying is that Gotland is extremely strategically important to Russia(and Sweden/NATO). It is also an island with 50k population, basically deserted, which can be used as an excuse(would countries be willing to go to WW3 over such an island?). An island that Sweden demilitarised in the past.

If Russia wants to fuck with the Baltic States(high probability, especially if things go well for them in Ukraine), Gotland will be part of that plan. Russia wants to deploy anti-air missile systems there that would enable them to air blockade the Baltic States.

This messaging is essential in order to signal to the world that a threat exists so if shit goes down, the world(NATO allies) will be mentally prepared to be involved.

It is “very easy” for Russia(or many countries who dont care about diplomatic fallout) to create a fait accompli and conquer small stuff. And then it is up to the morale of your country and your allies, to see if they have the will to fight back, like Ukraine did for example.

Intel was ahead of AMD ever since core 2 duo, in 2006. Amd was behind for almost 10 years and it wasnt until ryzen and especially zen 2 that AMD pulled ahead. And then with zen 3 and zen 4, AMD wiped the floor with intel.

7800x3d is the best cpu ever made for gaming and it succeeded the 5800x3d which was already a legendary cpu. Intel has been getting wrecked so hard that they are literally using tsmc to manufacture their cpus, an obvious admission that their manufacturing is behind the competition(amd is fabless and is also using tsmc).

Intel has the ability to come back on top, at least as far as x86 cpus are concerned. The question is whether x86 is even relevant anymore, considering the insane efficiency gains shown by apple’s m series and even qualcomm’s upcoming snapdragon x series.

Why did you link a swedish tv broadcast of the song, a 500views video and not the official one, on the official eurovision channel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nidDtyS0Wo

In Europe, some cars have a plastic clip on the windshield, where you can put stuff in it(parking permits, etc).

Actually Halo Infinite might come out on ps5. Microsoft is publishing a lot of their games to Playstation atm. Sea of Thieves, Hi-fi rush, Grounded, Pentiment are all out on ps5.

Sea of Thieves was one of the big xbox exclusive games, developed by Rare, which is owned by Microsoft since 2002 and all the games they have made in the last 15+ years have been xbox exclusive.

My entire postscript was just an attempt to make veganism more appealing. That extra little push might enable more people to become vegan. Which is why you see a lot more emphasis to the health benefits of veganism or the positive environmental impact of veganism.

These are things that might enable people to become vegan(or reduce their animal product consumption), because they dont make people feel attacked when you discuss these aspects of veganism. Ultimately, the animal doesnt care if it doesnt get killed(or created), because a human stopped eating animal products for the gains or because the human became a “woke” animal rights advocate. The end result is the same.

And while becoming “woke” is a more sustainable long term position, it can also be harder to sell to current mainstream because of social norms. And a lot of people might become vegan for the gains and then transition to be an animal rights advocate, because it is easier.