2021 thoughts (since nobody made one)

General Chat
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Weeeeell, I am fairly certain that it is not as diverse or in-depth as you imply. There is, after all, a limited amount of free time for all of us and let us not forget that I am still waiting for some of your responses on those “amazing” think-tanks you had sent me and the analysis I had written on their “articles”. :wink:

I actually enjoy it. I am not very keen on digging into such rabbit-holes, so I like the opportunity a lot.

Which is a respectable position if applied on the nihilistic scale of “all politicians are clowns”, but not really when you get to pick one clown faction over the other and pretend that only one side is clown-less :stuck_out_tongue:

Expensive? Maybe.
More risky? I do not think so. Even if a tanker fails, the damage is 1 tanker worth of oil. Which is bad, but manage-able (and rare)
Pipelines and oil-rigs on the other hand are responsible for the most massive environment damage on your shores ever recorded. Which is a fact

You are mistaken, but that is to be expected since the vast majority of people go for the standard service and it makes sense that this is the one that you could find documented. :slight_smile:
The mandatory service in Greece - back when I served - decreed that you have to serve for 12 months as a soldier. HOWEVER, you can choose to extend that service to 18 months and be trained and serve as an officer which I chose for various reasons that are irrelevant here.

This means that I have some quite the added training and practice even compared to soldiers and low-ranked officers of more active/successful armies. Getting assigned as an acting director in a command division of a whole brigade at 24 years old really makes you work hard on your leadership skills, wouldn’t you agree?

In comparison to the article author that wouldn’t even sign his name under his own article? Certainly

Go and ask them, see if your guess is correct. :innocent:
Here is the question for them:
Supposing that there is a resource which is finite and in contest. Which do we use first? The one we have on our OWN soil or do we go and occupy and use the contested resources first?

It is obvious that the second way has the most merit:
A) It keeps your own reserves untouched
B) It strikes a blow to your opponents by getting something they wanted
C) It strikes an EXTRA blow to your opponents by forcing THEM to use their stockpiles.

Your grandfathers might inform you that this is, essentially, how the war was won. Germany had to over-reach to get to Russia FAST because their own stockpiles where ending and the rest is, literally, history. :wink:

So, really, go ahead and ask them :slight_smile:

If we were talking NBA or NFL no it would not. But on this issue, it does. At least I can safely make the judgement that the article is wrong to claim that an idea as long as the mountains is “idiotic”.

OPEC is not “Taliban” though. Here is the map, see for yourself:
https://asb.opec.org/ASB_Maps.html

As if you are not already importing oil from them? (again, the map above shows this)

What if an alternative does not become available? Then you would have used up all YOUR resources and then be forced to pay premium price for a commodity that is now ever rarer than before.

Plus, you would have put them in a position of power once they know that you do not have stockpiles anymore.

The whole idea is like saying “I will try to eat my own oranges, instead of going to the grocers” … by the time you finish your own stock, the grocer has less oranges to sell and he knows that you ain’t got any. Guess how much steeper his price will be? :wink:

Reason says, you buy cheap when the goods are still flowing and keep your own assets close at hand.

If you want a very practical example, never you will find a cheaper price for real-estate than from people that have urgent need of cash. Same here, once an (eme)urgency is created, the person that has some cash stashed for a rainy day will not have to sell his house for half the price. You can ask your grand-fathers about that too :slight_smile:

Nothing sort of finally solving nuclear FUSION or having a sci-fi level of solar panel would provide a “definite solution”, so this is a rather unfair scale to judge the issue. As if the current solutions are so much better? :stuck_out_tongue:

In any case, arguing that something is “not good enough” because it is “not perfect” seems very weird to me. What solution is perfect in life, after all?

I am not very fond of Elon Musk, but I have to admit that when he sets his sight on making things work and keep the publicity rolling, he does make them work and keeps the publicity rolling.

Well, I have never in my life paid for less than 1.3 euros per litre, which is 5.2 euros per gallon or 6 dollars per gallon, so yes that has been the situation even before the 2009 crisis. The price is artificially inflated by the government that mooches off taxes from oil and gasoline.

You’d be surpised and not pleasantly.
Home Ownership Rate in Greece is 74.6 percent (which in practice is higher - houses here are either stone or concrete - they last for generations, so a lot of people have “a house in the village” where the parents/grandparents live which will eventually be theirs if they need it).
Home ownership Rate in USA? 65.3 percent (and you know what a huge crisis rent has become due to the pandemic - a wave of evictions is incoming).

Student debt in Greece? Zero. There is literally no such thing.
Student debt in USA?$1.57 trillion

Is everyone here in a “better position financially”? Hell no.
Is everyone here in a “better position in general”? It can be argued that yes, we are, just from a healthcare stand-point, free public education and differently built society. You can own money to the banks here and the worst that can happen is you get your property confiscated. In most of the States, a bounty hunter can come and kick your ass or even send you to the afterlife. :stuck_out_tongue:

@Gia

You are a troll and people who take the time to respond to you are idiots.

Well, I do not really consider myself as smart, but is this time wasted?
I’d argue not.

A) Even when we have some facts and well-based opinions, it is a very good thing to have them habitually challenged and re-examined … we cannot really claim to be 100% correct, after all, so through this process we can refine and improve our views.
B) I firmly believe that a discussion by definition requires two opposing views. As long as there are no insults involved, I think that most discussions are useful to us that take part in them and any potential readers ( if any :stuck_out_tongue: )
C) Even if someone is a troll (which I do not agree with the assessment in this case), I think that if my opinion is correct/factual, then it should be able to rise to the occassion. I think that dismissing people out of hand just because we think that their opinions are invalid and based on misinformation is not a good thing in the long term.

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There’s not a diamond hidden everywhere. Sometimes garbage is just garbage.
Some conversations are just worthless and having them in spite of their worthlessness can’t force others to imagine some worth there, just by sheer power of insistence.

It’s a useful skill to gauge appropriately.

And you mistake “let’s have every discussion possible because fomo” for dialectics.

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Well, maybe it is hard for me to explain, but I’ve been doing this online since 2002 and off-line for even longer. My post count in various fora (almost all of them now deleted and existing only the web archiver ) is easily above 25000 posts, with an average post size larger than the one in this forum. I have spent thousands of hours reading, learning, researching, writing, drafting and re-drafting my knowledge and my opinions just because someone ELSE said something that I found illogical. Even to the detriment of my grades, my daily schedule or my sleep. I consider this that important.

In all cases - no exceptions - I either reaffirmed that my original idea was correct or, even better, I learned new data, new ideas and improved upon my own reasoning.

Did I convince anyone that I was correct? I don’t know. That was never the point :stuck_out_tongue: … that is not imho the point in any discussion. I cannot gauge if any gains were made by other people, but I can tell you that I have been incalculably improved by the time other people spent to argue with me and present their point of view. Because that meant that I had to pour in time to either reflect or improve myself. And since they poured in the time, I hope that they had similar benefits as I did. :slight_smile:

I can scoff at someone’s opinion, but I believe that I need to respect the time and effort someone puts in expressing it, however wrong I might find the contents of what was expressed (as long as the discussion remains civil, of course - if insults are starting to fly, the whole “deal” is off).

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This needs a poll and I’m voting for classic chicken tenders.

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Well, anyone can create a poll here… Don’t make me drop that Gandhi…

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I thought you’d prefer it in the same post, but sure:

  • Classic
  • Buffalo
  • Pineapple

0 voters

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We’ve been wrong in the past many times, and we do try to be self aware and humble enough to admit when this happens. We do not want to set ourselves up as unchallengable, as long as challenges are made respectfully :slightly_smiling_face:

You can make that decision for yourself and choose not to engage, you can not make that decision for every person on this forum.

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It’s not my fault if you can’t gauge appropriately. :woman_shrugging:

And since you want to dig it up:
I was replying to Jeth’s insistence that absolutely every single one discussion needs to happen. And, in line with that argument, obviously some need their eyes opened to that possibility, that some discussions are worthless. Who knows, maybe my efforts paid off even if one person realizes that. So, there you have it, I engaged, you won, I guess.

The decision for the forum should be made by you, the moderators, to have stopped that obvious troll long ago, from coming in regularly, and blatantly, to stir up US Fox News-level discussions. Probably harmless, still you should have spotted it.

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After reevaluation of the post, maybe I was too sensitive.

Too many times I’ve heard people from the US claim that they’re more or less the main reason that Europe is nazi free, which just feels very insensitive to the huge efforts from actual Europeans (including Soviets) trying to liberate Europe (or to the Canadians; my country was liberated with their help, for example). It’s typical how most American war movies have all the European characters die, and the American heroes somehow dodging all the bullets and saving the day.

While rereading the above quoted part, I don’t believe that you were actually claiming this, although it hints towards this sentiment, and I probably was triggered by “one of the greatest militaries in the world” being followed by “defend your entire continent to take out the Nazis”.

I have therefore restored the original post, also since it seems that @JethOrensin has already quoted plenty of excerpts of the parts that I originally removed.

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So I talked with @Vsotvep and we agreed that both of us were not perfect human beings today. He apologized to me and I in turn would like to apologize to all of you for contributing to some heat today.

I want to give a specific apology to @JethOrensin for being at least somewhat out of lines with my belittlement of the Greek Military. That was uncalled for sir, and I am sorry. As I meant with that post, I was not trying to go after you as a person, but it was disrespectful for me to to minimize your significance in your service to your country. :greece: I hope you can forgive me.

In the meantime, as tempted as I am to comment on some points made by a few people, I feel that it is not appropriate right now because some people, notably myself, just need to calm down and relax.

So I have a different topic I want to get into (in a hopefully less argumentative way) about…

Communism!

No just kidding. Actually this is more specific and I am curious to hear particularly from you Europeans because I am not sure if this is an issue just in America. Jeth made a very good point about the student debt crisis in American which is on its way to 2 trillion, and it applies to something interesting that I have been studying for a few years now:

This is embarrassingly true but I would like to give a little historical background on why we got where we did with that and how it ties in to another problem today in the US.

Basically, back in the 1960’s and 70’s, college in the US needed a little bit of a push to get more students and a higher desire for upper education. Basically, almost every student was told that at least a four year degree of some kind would be needed for their success in life, and that the alternative, such as a dirty trade job that did not require college, was to be looked down upon. It worked absurdly well. Enrollment rates skyrocketed, and everyone got that magic ticket into the higher points of society. But as a consequence? Tuition skyrocketed and every kid started saying "great, I will spend $50,000 to get my four year English degree (I am using that as an example because there is frequently a limited career path with that field of study). Thus kids started borrowing money they would never be able to pay off, being promised that there dreams would be satisfied. So here we are.

But would about those dirty trade jobs I told you about? Well, now all the old guys that loved doing that work are retiring, and thus America will have a very serious shortage in plumbers, electricians, welders, and even car mechanics and carpenters. Kids were taught to frown down on these uneducated, smelly people who had to labor extremely hard every day of their lives. These were the career paths failures were supposed to go down. The problem? Nobody thought to realize that these people were the backbones of the workforce in so many ways. They are important members of society even though they were not portrayed that way. People now only want the safest, most comfortable work with the least labor involved. But one can enter these fields with no college, thus no debt, and frequently make more money then college grads (though statistics still show at least a slight upper edge for college grads on average).

We have gotten to the point where that piece of paper that shows you have credentials is more important than a lot of work itself. Plus, with the amount of free content online and less relevant degrees are becoming to employers, it is making more sense to look at other alternatives that cost much less. And kids still want to go for something that makes less and less sense. Here is a documentary below (though it is long), on the issue from Mike Rowe, an activist for this issue and where I have learned a lot of what I know from.

My question is, what do you folks think about this? Is it a problem in your country as well or is it just in America?

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Let me just come in here as this is blatantly wrong in my own provided western news(i mean news from western medias) China has to manage its energetic problems too, and has quite a deal with closing coal powerplants because of being not rentable because of fixed energy prices. Chinese have to suffer from electric poweroff. Besides a number of political decisions were already made, like not building anymore coal power outside China.

I come in because we are in some tense time in which It’s too easy to put the responsability on the other one and that was a very good example.

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Well I said I would not reply further to this conversations but I will put a couple cents in here:

Maybe this is true, but China still accounts for about a third of all emissions (US is 11 percent). That is significant.

I am not trying to brush responsibility off of the US, but rather my argument was to say that actually working with other countries can be extremely difficult at times.

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Well how you present China and your knowledge of it is not really helping in this.
I don’t think China is loughing at you.

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True, we are both fierce competitors in trade and global power, and the competition is tough, but China continues to rival us in many ways. Whether or not Xi Jinping is actually truly laughing at us I don’t know, but I do know he likes the economic power (just like we do). It is just a matter of checks and balances on international governments.

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Well i’m bit out here unless, the missunderstandings bring pain and wars and i really don’t like the evolution. I still keep hope.

About the energy problem whatever the level of use of coal here and the efforts to lower it, i live here and i want to ensure you that from my own eyes rivers are covered with dams, hills with forests of windmills so China is not just a huge coal powerplant.
I’m concerned to give future generations something else as a trashbin, that’s the most i have to say.
And i don’t see any point to go further in the discussion.
I’m still a bit shocked by your presentation and besides by the way it was put aside in the various answers from others.

Be the peace be with all of us.

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Well there is nothing better than eyewitness testimony, and I don’t look at your country as a huge coal powerplant; you guys probably have more windmills then we do now. There is a lot of excitement and color in China that is for sure. Some true beauty.

But soon enough either you will see why windmills as we have them now are a joke, or you will figure out what we have been doing wrong with them this whole time and get the job done well.

Likewise. :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Groin Also, don’t worry about looking bad by using a ton of coal right now, like I said America is still responsible for all this too. This is the exact bad boy that powers my city on coal:

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« WeWard »

(I couldn’t find an equally long article in english, sorry)

WeWard is a mobile app which, supposedly, gives people points for every step they take. These points can be translated to real money and the whole thing works as an incentive to become more physically active.

However, it’s not the app I wanted to talk about. It’s the need to have an app, in 2021, to make us walk.

One would think that, with all the worship of perfect bodies and all the health bio-food gurus that go around, people wouldn’t need so much persuasion to do sports.

I know we’re supposed to lead a sedentary life nowadays, but do we really need to be coerced into physical activity? Is it true that we don’t want to be active and we prefer to binge watch series on our computers? Or it’s a necessity, caused by various different reasons, like lack of money and off-work time?

The floor is yours.

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I have something like that on WeChat. Can’t blame it to exist but there are some bias like to always carry your phone. But i don’t put that much attention on it.

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