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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • It’s not that they now changed something with data collection and sharing within the update. They always did it, all services free of charge do it and most that cost money likely take the extra money as well.

    It’s now that they tell you in a short and informative way (1st sentence) and ask for your consent.

    What’s really infuriating, are websites and services that have an “Accept All” button but no “Reject All”. Instead you have to manage individually and sometimes I have to flip 30 separate buttons to disable data sharing, where they even call advertisers a ‘necessary 3rd party’ requiring interaction on top.



  • Tobias Ellwood, the former chairman of the Commons defence committee” is about half a year behind with his accusation. So either it’s just for show or he’s not well informed about this topic.

    Already October 2023, this was in the news for everyone to read, that France and the UK are providing the geodata for their cruise missile targets and that the UK has personnel in Ukraine.

    One example article I just picked via web search: German Tagesspiegel, dated 05.10.2023

    https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/keine-taurus-lieferung-fur-die-ukraine-erwarte-vom-kanzler-dass-er-endlich-den-weg-freimacht-10572931.html

    Quote & DeepL translation:

    The British and French can do something “we can’t”

    The UK and France have nevertheless supplied cruise missiles of the virtually identical types “Storm Shadow” and “Scalp”. According to Bild, Scholz said in a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee last week that these two countries “can do something that we are not allowed to do”, adding: “So the question does not arise.”

    What he meant was that the UK and France supplied the geodata for missile targets themselves, with the UK also having its own personnel on the ground in Ukraine. This is out of the question for the German government.



  • The motivation from the previous nationalist PiS government in Poland was mainly anything they could to do against Russia or against Germany.

    So by supporting Ukraine with military equipment, they were acting against Russia. But at the same time slowed down German support for Ukraine, by blocking maintenance and factories for Ukrainian equipment in Poland. Leading to long transports across to other countries e.g. Latvia for maintenance.

    Now, with the grain, this has no Russian involvement and their own farmers are unhappy. So there is no way to go against Russia or against Germany. Also there is a new government in Poland, so I guess we have to see how that develops now.


  • I’ve read that twist a few times on Reddit about ‘victim blaming’, but suggesting mandatory helmets for bicycles it nothing about blaming anyone for anything. There is a problem on hand and there are are various solutions to improve it. Some solutions are more complex, some are simpler, some are projects with decades runtime to maybe achieve something.

    Suggesting mandatory helmets is simply looking for the simplest and cheapest solution of them all, which has also the potential to achieve good success.

    It’s just numbers, nothing to do with blame.

    Pushing for higher diver education, better infrastructure, better technology on vehicles to avoid missing cyclists in the dead corner etc. is all good and important as well. But it’s all a lot more effort, way more costly, way longer time frame and the success is hard to judge for some ideas.



  • I read that paragraph on Wikipedia but fail to see your statements. Italy, Denmark, France aren’t even mentioned there.

    In detail it’s described that Poland stopped paying Russia, so Russia stopped pumping gas via the Yamal pipeline to Poland. That is not ‘cutting-off’. Also Poland kept receiving natural gas from Russia via Nord Stream, via Germany and over to Poland during summer 2022. Yamal was running in reverse and supplying Poland, so that they even hit over 100% storage at that time. For Finland it’s similar - they stopped paying, so Russia stopped delivering.

    Even today Russia supplies EU countries with natural gas, which is also part of the storage and supply calculation within the EU. What if Russia stops delivering tomorrow? How can these countries be supplied in such a scenario? Russia still has some leverage over a few countries, e.g. Austria via long-term contracts, where Austria stated not honouring the contracts from their side, would be more expensive that taking the natural gas.


  • I must admit I stopped reading after the first paragraph but it’s just so exaggerated or simply false, that I don’t see the value in spending more time on such an article.

    Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, forecast on Wednesday that global demand for liquefied natural gas, which has been a lifeline for Europe after Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies, will surge by around 50 percent over the next 15 years.

    • LNG is not a lifeline. A pipeline could be labelled like that, but LNG is a globally traded good supplied by dozens of countries.
    • Russia did not cut off natural gas supplies, they even supply now throughout their illegal war, towards countries that support Ukraine.
    • 50% increase over 15 years is not a ‘surge’, but more a slow and steady increase.

  • These charts are usually a day or a few days behind for individual kills. It takes time to collect statistics from the front lines, make reports and create that image overview out of it. So it’s never from events of the same day, always what recently happened.

    I often saw videos of Russian columns advancing into fields and lots of wrecks at the end of the videos. Sometimes it even takes 2 days, but then there is the spike in numbers in the published data.


  • The point is that Hamas doesn’t stop firing rockets. I’m not there, so I don’t know if they fire on southern Israel every single day, but twice a week everyone can read about rockets fired at Israel and sirens going off. It seems just Tel Aviv wasn’t targeted for a few weeks (this article). In the link below Ashkelon is mentioned as well with a short break of 2 weeks. But as I said before, the further north, the longer the range they need to build and with the claims they are running short on weapon supplies, this makes sense that further targets get hit less often.

    e.g. just a few days ago:

    “Hamas welcomes UN court ruling as it fires rockets on Israel (January 26, 2024; The Telepgraph)”

    “Hamas appears to have targeted the south of Israel, where attacks have become increasingly rare amid claims the group is running out of missiles. Rockets were sighted over the city of Ashkelon for the first time in two weeks.”

    https://news.yahoo.com/hamas-welcomes-un-court-ruling-181014383.html





  • If you believe the information on CNN is wrong, you could just use a web search for a different source to check and compare for yourself. Or just go to unrwa.org and their press releases:

    26 January 2024 AMMAN,

    “The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on 7 October.

    “To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.

    “UNRWA reiterates its condemnation in the strongest possible terms of the abhorrent attacks of 7 October and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all Israeli hostages and their safe return to their families.

    “These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the Agency has been providing since the war began. Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world”.

    Quote from here: https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip




  • Misleading title.

    Article:

    “We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day … so we have to take into account that Vladimir Putin might even attack a NATO country one day,” Pistorius said in an interview with the Berlin-based Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.

    While a Russian attack is not likely “for now,” the minister added: “Our experts expect a period of five to eight years in which this could be possible.”

    There is no warning of an attack. There is an analysis that it’s not likely for now. And earliest where something like this could become possible, would be that mentioned time frame. That is not what the word warning means. That is a statement about a vague estimate of an unlikely event - of course way less catchy title.