What really do Americans know about Ukraine or Taiwan? E.g. can even 1% of US population show Ukraine on the world map (without using Google Maps)? Could they do it before 2022? Before 2014? Do they know anything about Ukraine or Taiwan history? How many Americans know a single foreign language?

If tomorrow there would be a war or protests in, say, Burundi. Will Americans stay with Burundi or against it? Or with the country the media will tell them is "good" because their interests align with US interests?

I think answers to all these questions are obvious.

To be fair, lack of knowledge of other countries is hardly uniquely American. As an Irish person travelling around the non western world, there's a lot of people who don't know that Ireland is a country separate to the UK, or even that it exists.

In 2023 there was record harvest of potatoes in Russia. Prices dropped, so farmers stopped planting potatoes in 2024 and 2025. Wouldn't be surprised if they plant more this year due to high price.

shell_plus is still superior because it also imports other useful stuff and allows adding custom list of additional imports.

Also, shell_plus has --print-sql option for easy construction and debugging of ORM queries.

EU is a colony of USA. If it would be necessary, US can simply force EU to buy US technology.

If you check the EU politics, they never do or say anything that can be interpreted negatively by US or damage US interests.

In 2025, EU and US signed an agreement that obliges EU to buy energy resources from US at ridiculously high prices, despite that EU is already struggling with the high price of energy.

In the tech sector, EU has been a colony of pretty much every other country which it used to colonize. IMO, the fines that the EU used to collect regularly from US big tech companies were bribes to keep suppressing the EU tech sector.

Had the same problem with my moto (key not turning the lock). Fortunately, there was a car nearby and owner had a spare jug of oil. I put some oil on the key, put it in the ignition lock, waited for 5 minutes, and it started to turn again.

Although I must admin WD-40 helped me in the past opening an old door lock.

I suspect the difference is whether (as with the old door lock) there is no lubricant at all and anything is better than nothing, or whether (as with the ignition key) there is a lubricant there which was designed for the purpose but for some other reason isn't working as intended, and which the WD-40 will displace and replace with something worse. "Fails in hot weather" sounds either like some sort of thermal expansion problem or the intended grease gets too thin to properly lubricate a high-pressure contact area. Or there just isn't enough of it.

You're not supposed to use lube on locks because the film strength of the oil will be enough to make tight pins that have tiny clearances not move.

Not really applicable in an automotive lock which start out as hotdog down hallway when new and only expand from there.

In both cases, the real issue is when the oil (eventually all do) oxidizes and ‘gums’. Tight tolerances make it cause worse problems sooner of course, but it’s the same problem eventually.

Putting new fresh oil in it often temporarily fixes it because it dissolves some (or a lot) of the old varnish. Acetone can often do the same thing too, but can also wash the varnish deeper into the mechanism where it turns into really solid ‘plastic’ when the acetone dissolves.

I was 2000 km from home (1242 miles) and I was in panic because it was pretty uninhabited place. My bike is 12 years old but I used it in very harsh conditions (dirt, mountains).

Probably should replace the lock but it is so expensive.

I've used Redpanda for local development and testing stands. It is super easy to setup in docker, starts really fast and consumes less resources than Java version. Haven't really compared it to anything, but I remember using Java version of Kafka before and it was a resource hog. It is important when you develop on laptop with constrained resources.

to be fair, Kafka now has a GraalVM docker image[0][1] which was made for local dev/testing, and it has caught up fairly well to these alternatives re: memory and startup time

[0] - https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-974%3A... [1] - https://hub.docker.com/r/apache/kafka-native

What I meant was how Tensu compares to Redpanda

What Russia and China has in common? Why would somebody work for both countries?

Do you know, for example, that China willingly sells huge amounts of drones to Ukraine?

GP didn't claim that Snowden worked for both countries. Snowden certainly did offer details of compromised Chinese networks to SCMP, which is now a propaganda rag for the PRC, in a failed attempt to gain asylum in Hong Kong. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1266821/us-hacks-chi...

Snowden gave the full set of documents to Greenwald, Poitras, and The Intercept. Greenwald's opsec in particular is highly questionable, and I would be shocked if Russia and China didn't get a full copy from him. China had no need to barter with Snowden.

Here in 2026 China is supplying Russia with weapons in exchange for oil under global sanctions.

Russia is in no position to reject China for selling to both sides. They may not be allies but each is the enemy of their enemies.

Which exactly weapons are supplied by China? Even ever lying news sources like Bloomberg and CNN never made such unfounded accusations.

Also, how and why some "spy" would work both for China and Russia? Two very different countries from every point of view: culturally, economically, and in every other way also.

The only thing in common is that USA wants to destroy both Russia and China and that because of that reason US controlled media (like 90% of media in the world) publish scary fakes about both countries.

> sold the country to the West for nothing

> Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed.

And yet somehow, mysteriously, the exact same shock therapy that Russia couldn't handle produced a thriving and prosperous Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.

> for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept

Russia has an economy roughly the size of Benelux, and it is treated exactly as such. The problem is that the Russians have a perpetual and hilarious delusion that they're an equal to the United States. Russia can barely compete with individual US states, let alone the US itself. California alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation. Texas alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation.

In fact, Russia has a roughly comparable economy to Canada, which no one thinks is even remotely a power equal to the US.

Russia is treated fairly. The problem is that Russia has delusions of grandeur, so 'fairly' is not good enough. They feel slighted by being a 'mere' Canada. And instead of doing what the Chinese did, building up so their power matches their aspirations, they just awkwardly gnaw at their neighbours instead. And then they act all surprised when everyone correctly describes them as a bully and bands together for collective security.

(But of course none of Russia's behaviour is actually aimed at getting other countries to respect them, that's just a regime narrative intended to distract the Russian people from their falling living standards as Putin and his cronies rob Russia blind. The more internationally isolated Russia gets, the more indispensable Putin can pretend to be.)

Russia sold itself to its oligarchs and still does.

Who does Karelia belong to?

The only crime regarding Crimea at around that time was Tatar genocide performed by yet another non-elected leader so much beloved and supported by russians.