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[Muser @osanas100]

@bunburyoudoujp In Japan, Christmas isn't even a holiday!

[Muser @osanas100]

@FrenlyOfficer In Japan most restaurants have both a last order time and a closing time, usually the last order is 30 minutes before closing

[Muser @osanas100]

@YokohamaRides @Colin_P_A_Jones I raise you the monument for the third oldest bowling alley in Japan (claimed to be the first Japanese bowling club), in Kobe

[Jo @junker_jo]

They’re using the guy beheading your brother in the street to distract you from your real enemy: Jeff Bezos delivering medicine to your front door overnight

[Muser @osanas100]

@sprawebydlo @LRH_Superfan That's Sakura

[Muser @osanas100]

@DrakeGatsby All of Japan is like this

[Muser @osanas100]

@mmjukic Call of Duty is actually the first install-type game https://t.co/8kzHiZoqkg

[Muser @osanas100]

@simonsarris

[Muser @osanas100]

@phl43 Sorry to hear, hope you make it out 🙏

[Muser @osanas100]

@modellingReason @woke8yearold Reading is active, watching is passive

[Muser @osanas100]

@aimeeterese 820000 foreigners, not Nigerians. Most of them will be Asian. https://t.co/kFkmSmRj8h

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

The debate about Europe's military and strategic dependence on the US and how to get rid of it is so ridiculous on so many levels that it makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

First, we don't need the US to protect us, because realistically there is nothing to protect us from that requires the US. Russia is the only real threat we face and it's obviously not capable of invading Europe.

The truth is that we haven't needed the US since the end of the Cold War, but have stayed dependent on the US out of habit and not because there was any real need for it.

Not only have we not been "free riding" on the US, but if anything it's the opposite, since the US has benefited far more than the other way around from the political influence on Europe that NATO has given it for very little cost during that period.

Basically, in return for being defended against imaginary threats, we have allowed the US to use European political and economic might as a power multiplier, for instance by agreeing to US requests on export controls against China that go against our own interests.

Indeed, that's something that past US administrations, starting with the first Bush administration, understood very well, which is why they have systematically undermined European efforts to create a common security and defense policy that wouldn't be linked to NATO.

But while achieving strategic and military independence from the US is perfectly doable in principle, there is essentially zero chance it's going to happen in practice.

The reason is that everyone in Europe would need to be on board, but it's very unlikely that Poland and the Baltics would ever agree to risk losing the US security guarantee for psychological reasons and they sure as hell won't do it without a massive increase in the military capabilities of Western European states.

But this in turn would require a massive increase in military spending by Western European states that has essentially no chance of happening, because at the end of the day, unlike Poland and the Baltics, we don't really feel threatened by Russia and we also face a chronic fiscal crisis.

If Western European states want to get anywhere near to the level of defense spending that would have a chance of making Eastern Europeans comfortable, but probably wouldn't, you'd need to wind down the welfare state and in particular spending on pensioners and that's just not going to happen because West European voters don't really feel threatened.

So all the tough talk by European leaders about how they are going to make Europe strategically independent from the US is totally empty and the truth is that, a few years from now, NATO will still be there and we'll still be politically and militarily dependent on the US.

As Boone Pickens famously said, the higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more people can see its ass. We are that monkey right now and soon everyone will see our ass.

[Muser @osanas100]

@MTabarrok 0) They don't have zero economic growth

[Muser @osanas100]

@MorlockP 0) They don't have zero economic growth

[Muser @osanas100]

@neuralink Neuralink patient playing guitar telepathically with a robot arm 🤯 https://t.co/99Xmjz3OcG

[Muser @osanas100]

@SemiAnalysis_ You're a fraud

[Muser @osanas100]

@MedGold_ @DavidSacks No you're just a fucking retard

[Muser @osanas100]

@phl43 I hate his foreign policy so far, but this is genuinely a convincing argument. If he can solve the Taiwan problem bloodlessly that would offset pretty much anything else.

[Muser @osanas100]

@signulll @HellenicVibes You're wrong.