And then the rest of society has to pay for the healthcare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to subsidize or completely pay for the healthcare of those less fortunate than me via taxation, but that necessarily has to be combined with a protectionist attitude towards food standards to keep costs manageable.

If you’re interested, the short version is that instances (A.K.A servers) are run by different people in different places. A reason to move instances might be:

1. My admin, the owner of the instance, has been doing things I heavily disagree with (bans, blocks, etc)

2. I don’t agree with the rules on my instance.

3. The instance is run in a country which criminalizes something that I care about, and so has to ban discussion of that thing (piracy, porn, etc).

4. I want to run a community on a specific instance for whatever reason, and so need an account there

It applies to instances outside Romania if the user is Romanian in Romania. There are no major social media companies based in Romania, and yet the law still applies on TikTok, Facebook, X, etc.

The fact that the law is selectively applied against one side but not the other is a different issue.

This post is technically illegal, btw. You can try and convince people publicly to vote, but not who to vote for 24h before polls open.

Took time off work and have been campaigning hard for 2 weeks (you can guess for who xD) and am completely physically exhausted. Slept for 14 hours today now that the campaign is over. All that’s left is to vote tomorrow and see the result.

It’s an important weekeND.

Kill switches are almost entirely a misconception, as far as I understand it. What’s far more dangerous with US defence products is reliance on them for spare parts, repairs and upgrades. Piss off the US in some way, your very very expensive aircraft no longer gets spare parts, plane can’t fly safely, it’s functionally useless.

Customs union and single market aren’t the same thing. Customs union means no tariffs, and a unified tariff policy on those outside the union. Nothing more, nothing less. There are active discussions about doing this.

Single market is joining the EU, with regulatory alignment and free movement, as you quite rightly say.

Not only did he support the neonazi, the neonazi returned the favour by endorsing him.

Joining the EU right now doesn’t make sense politically. Far more useful and effective to work on getting a customs union in place. Most of the benefits without most of the headaches.

They could simultaneously work on regulation alignment, and then they’re off to the races.

My dad grew up in a communist country, and I know exactly what you mean.

I’m incredibly lucky that we have a kind of mutual intellectual respect, where we fact-check each other a lot and are both willing to change our minds about stuff. Consequently, I’ve managed to explain the differences between totalitarianism, communism, and fascism (had to explain why horseshoe theory isn’t a thing).

He thought I was being hyperbolic about the US’ slow descent into fascism in 2017, as I ran through the fascist identification checklist. As a victim of communism, he naturally tried to make excuses for Trump. That ended the first week of his second term, and we’re having some close calls with a similar candidate here.

Was at the one in Bucharest. Was a little disappointing tbh. Was just a photo op with extra steps. Organizers maneuvered the crowd into the formation they wanted for the photo, took the photo, then wished everyone a good night and wandered off.

I know someone who got had by a spearfishing call. They knew all the details about his phone contract, sounded 100% legit. The scammer got thousands of dollars in prepaid SIM cards from his account.

After the police investigation, turned out that the scammer was actually a former employee of the phone company who downloaded a copy of the customer list when he got fired.

The EU has multiple “second class” membership options. Multiple non-EU countries are in Schengen, even more have no visa requirements.

Multiple countries have trade deals with the EU, including Canada (as soon as CETA gets fully completed).

I enjoy the “Canada can into EU?” memes, they’re fun. It’s also really nice that in this period of insanity we can help each other.

That said, yeah. A trade agreement that drops basically all friction, bilateral visa agreements that make travel and business easier & cooperation on military purchases would be the ideal scenario. There’s a ton of things the EU and Canada can help each other with without Canada becoming a member.

What is also obvious to anybody with a minimally functional brain is that Russia would invade if they thought they could. Therefore ramping up defence is a good idea to dissuade Russia from thinking it’s a good idea. Even with that deterrence, those not covered by this (Moldova, Georgia, as mentioned) are still vulnerable.

It is a reasonable point that there needs to be a balance, as throwing the entire economy into the military by pulling societal investment will fan anti-EU pro-Russian sentiment, so a balance needs to be struck. From the tone, I doubt you’re the right person to discuss the nuance though.

Yes, total fantasy. They would never do such a thing.

I wonder what the mental gymnastics will be if/when Russia invades non-NATO countries like Moldova and Georgia.

I don’t like referring to people fighting for their culture, society, family and future as a “crumple zone”.

In this brave new world, we are all Gaullists.

Make all the “France surrendered” jokes you want

It’s so weird to me that France has been a military force that has oscillated between a force to be reckoned with and the most powerful land force in the world since the 17th century, but you lose one war to a blitzkrieg with an overconfident military leadership…

Has there been any progress on dropping tarrifs between provinces?