If Trump may abandon NATO, sounds like it wouldn’t be a good deal for Switzerland to join…

Every major infrastructure project will come with a long list of nimby complaints. Thing is, developing countries actually need these projects to improve people’s livelihoods in the long run.

South Korea’s conservative ruling party, the People Power Party (PPP), is pushing for legislation that would give the semiconductor industry subsidies and an exemption from a national cap on working hours.

Yes, that’s what South Korea needs… longer working hours…

Ukraine drank the kool-aid, and fooled themselves into thinking that if you slap a “freedom and democracy” sticker on and cozy up to the West, they’ll always back you no matter what.

In reality, countries behave as paranoid amoral assholes for a good reason.

Russia already has vastly more resources than Ukraine, it’s not going to make any difference.

An important point that isn’t mentioned in this article is that when the US targets third countries in their efforts to kneecap Chinese companies, it is hurting its own geostrategic interests. The US has been working hard to draw countries like Vietnam and Indonesia into its orbit as part of its containment strategy against China, but when it slaps tariffs on exports from these countries, years of diplomatic goodwill get instantly cancelled out. Especially since the US nowadays has no economic carrots to offer suitors, thanks to its bipartisan anti-trade turn. It’s all sticks.

US cares so much about the region that Biden didn’t even show up. Sent Blinken to lecture all the region’s heads of state. I’m sure that will go down well.

Whelp… Biden was insistent on running, now the Monkey’s Paw has answered. All the other plausible Dems who could have stepped in to replace Biden will be running for the hills, and being the Democratic nominee is gonna be the worst job in politics for the next four months. And at the end of the campaign he gets to be remembered by history as the loser in the worst landslide election since Reagan-Carter.

Also:

• Sonia Sotomayor’s decision not to retire during Biden’s term is looking like yet another D own goal. Very real prospects for a 7-2 Supreme Court.

• We’re going to be seeing an orgy of foreign governments jockeying to cultivate relations with Trump. Official US foreign policy is going to be dead in the water, and NATO and G7 will be leaderless, until next year.

• Trump is going to have an iron grip on the Republican party now, to an even greater extent than before. On various issues where other Republicans held positions contrary to Trump’s, they’re going to be brushed aside.

• For the above two reasons, Ukraine is pretty well fucked.

The Biden admin’s main selling point on climate is bragging about how much funding they’ve gotten from Congress. That’s a legislative achievement, but the execution part – which is the point of their branch of government – has been incredibly rocky. You got $7.5B in funding for EV charging yielding 8 EV chargers nationwide. And Biden has slapped big tariffs on Chinese solar panels and EVs, so that renewables will get more expensive and American carmakers who are skeptical about the EV transition will get to drag their feet even more.

Obviously, there’s a more disturbing background at play here, but churches shouldn’t be untaxed in the first instance. The dude literally said to render unto Caesar, etc. etc.

It was too long and had too much content.

Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).

He’s not wrong. But it’s worth remembering that when China faced a far smaller provocation from their own restive Muslims, in Xinjiang, they responded by locking up a large fraction of the population in vast reeducation camps…