As long as Twitter does business in the EU, it has to follow the law.

DSA enforcement is spicy, since the EU can create its own team to fight disinfo on Twitter, and charge it to Musk, in addition to the massive fine.

There was no buffer zone. Poland, Slovakia, the Baltics were under Russian military occupation for most of the last century.

Russian soldiers were on the NATO border even back then. Soviet troops suppressed multiple revolutions aimed at creating an actual buffer zone, in 1956, in 1968 and so on. The bullet holes are still there. Some who fought are still alive.

When the Wall fell, all these “buffer zone” countries wanted to join NATO because they knew the Russians will come back.

Ukraine was indeed a buffer zone. Ukraine wanted to be one. Everyone signed that in Budapest. And yet when Ukraine wanted to do something and go its own way separate from Russia, but not into NATO either, Russia invaded in 2014.

Russia broke that buffer zone. And sincerely, Eastern Europe has agency and can decide who its allies are. Russia has always been an enemy, and if you look at Finland, even dealing with the devil itself had better outcomes than giving an inch to Russia.

Mostly a shrug. Live and let live.

Again, look at it from Eastern Europe. What’s the good choice?

Being independent is a choice as well, and most tried that. They mostly got invaded by both sides, either being raped and pillaged in tandem or one after the other.

What’s the good choice Poland or the Baltics should take?

How does this relate to Afghanistan wanting to have NATO neighbours or not? The original debate was whether Russia was justified to be hostile to neighbours joining NATO, and you brought up Afghanistan as an example.

Yet the Afghanistan neighbours involved in the NATO invasion were not NATO members, they were in fact NATO-hostile. So the lessons seems less “don’t have NATO neighbours” but “ally with your trustworthy neighbours that won’t sell you out”.

And all that said, NATO and the US in the Middle East and Asia is not the same as NATO in Eastern Europe. I agree that the US should fuck off all the way back to where they came from, but Russia is more of a clear and present danger than the US is. At least here. There are no good guys, only the bad one near you with a rifle and the one far away with a loan.

Linkerbaan, put yourself into the shoes of any Eastern European country in 1930, and decide who to ally with. I bet however you answer that question, there will be a nice example why it was a dogshit choice. It is not that much different now, except the collective West seems less bad than the Third Reich was.

But that someone will have their own priorities that will most likely not always coindice with yours.

The US Afganistan invasion was supplied through Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, the old Russian lines that Russia used in its own invasion. Georgia was also an intermediary to a lesser degree.

None of these are NATO members.

I read the original paper a few months ago, actually manufacturers can choose between an auditory warning, vibrating the wheel, pushing back on the pedal, or outright slowing the car down.

https://road-safety-charter.ec.europa.eu/resources-knowledge/media-and-press/intelligent-speed-assistance-isa-set-become-mandatory-across

You’re right ofc, I remembered this on vaguely.

I stand corrected, original point still stands though

Apparently Mélenchon supported the annexation but not the war, supported Putin’s foreign politics but not his domestic policies.

There is more to it than left and right. Orbán is mostly neither, Fico is a far left Putin supporter.

IIRC it’s not an audio alarm, the car will push back on the pedal so that if you push past the limit it will need a bit more force.

And even if they were just speakers, they would most likely be the main speakers, so you’d be taking out your sound system.

What if permission is given? Asking for a friend

Of course, but if you put those few hundred into jail for the night to cool off, the paper will run that you are putting hundreds of Turks into jail, you racist.

Easier to just put in earplugs to ignore it, and pay for driving lessons so your wife can avoid the metro in the evening, but you ignore it for a decade, and now somehow nazis have the vote, and we are afraid of being caught in the crossfire as we already are, facing workplace discrimination and such.

I know it’s not an easy problem with a clear solution, but it’s a problem.

Because the world is occupied with the rest of the Russian shitstorm of meddling, just as Sudan is suffering from them in the form of the Wagner-armed RSF.

So here’s an immigrant perspective; as an Eastern European in Western Europe I see that the wealthy are using me as a cudgel to keep the locals down. I’m paying quite high rents in a market where a lot of the locals in different careers can’t, and there is a housing crisis. The place I’m renting could be where someone’s kid would move out to.

And it’s partly German neocolonialism that fucked up Eastern Europe, so thank Merkel I’m here, since it’s this or the VW factory.

That said, the people who kept the whole literal city awake honking their horns last midnight while waving Turkish flags, or the Moroccan teenagers accosting everyone near my place, including hurling abuse at my Asian or queer neighbours don’t scream peaceful coexistence.

Isn’t most power consumed by industry rather than residential?

Yeah, those factories have started to fire Hungarian workers as they started to unionize, and are now hiring seasonal staff from Southeast Asia.

There are outsourcing companies advertising people from the Philippines by saying they don’t know their rights and can be paid below minimum wage.

All the money from this is either going to German sharehoarders or Orbán’s overseas accounts from the taxes they pay.

On the one hand, they got the Marshall plan, on the other hand, I’m sure they got off light themselves.

Researcher dude at my uni was grading thesis defenses during the pandemic Donald Duck style on Zoom, forgot the camera, stood up and flipped a dick into someone’s life defining stressful moment.