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Muscle Tracer posted:
Actually, this got me thinking, how important is Usan foreign aid to the economy of Israel? I know they wouldn't collapse without it, but it's gotta be a major part of the budget?
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Feb 11, 2021 20:52
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BonHair posted:Actually, this got me thinking, how important is Usan foreign aid to the economy of Israel? I know they wouldn't collapse without it, but it's gotta be a major part of the budget? Most US military aid is in the form of "if you buy $x worth of military equipment from y American defense contractor, we'll foot the bill" If we assume all of the aid to Israel is in that form (I don't know if it is), then it makes up a pretty decent chunk of their military budget (google says $20.5 billion, I don't know if that number includes US military aid). Ultimately it probably means Israel gets to employ more soldiers, but most/all the money from the military aid goes to American defense contractors.
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Feb 11, 2021 21:33
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Pakled posted:Most US military aid is in the form of "if you buy $x worth of military equipment from y American defense contractor, we'll foot the bill"
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Feb 11, 2021 21:50
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I have to assume taking into account the defense contractors countries are buying from would skew the whole "Europe doesn't pay for its defense bit" quite a bit in favor of the US compared to just looking at defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Yeah but then this is implicitly the tribute system the US empire imposes on its vassal states.
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Feb 12, 2021 08:41
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https://twitter.com/eparillon/status/1360028740290449409 I guess it's a USPS thing
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Feb 12, 2021 10:32
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What's up with the weird Sierra Coastal panhandle just jutting out into what seems to be the middle of nowhere?
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Feb 12, 2021 11:13
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System Metternich posted:What's up with the weird Sierra Coastal panhandle just jutting out into what seems to be the middle of nowhere? Those are Inyo and Mono counties. They’re separated from the province of SACRAMENTO by the highest mountain range in the contiguous United States, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to associate them with that. Associating them with NEVADA SIERRA wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s not clearly better than putting them as a panhandle on SIERRA COASTAL. e: This current snow depth map kind of illustrates the geographic situation. US-395 is the main artery. Up toward Reno, it gets snow. Down toward Southern California, it is snow-free. 
Platystemon fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Feb 12, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 11:30
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Orange Devil posted:Yeah but then this is implicitly the tribute system the US empire imposes on its vassal states.
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Feb 12, 2021 11:40
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:https://twitter.com/eparillon/status/1360028740290449409 Why is Greater South Carolina just a part of South Carolina
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Feb 12, 2021 15:18
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Feb 12, 2021 15:41
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I'm sure the EU member states will be absolutely stoked for a WASP country with a population of +- 56 million to dominate the parliament and council...
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Feb 12, 2021 16:02
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To replace the one that left?
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Feb 12, 2021 16:04
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At least the UK kept shooting itself in the foot by refusing to engage with the EU and then complaining the EU didn't act in their best interest
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Feb 12, 2021 16:10
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Golbez posted:Why is Greater South Carolina just a part of South Carolina Because the smaller it is, the better we like it?
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Feb 12, 2021 16:25
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Muscle Tracer posted:
What does a country like Uganda do with a whopping $200,000 of military aid? That's enough to employ like one military attache and give him enough to hand out business cards and fly home twice a year. Like literally only one assuming a salary and benefits of around $100k but you have to include payroll tax and random business arrangement fees and etc. etc. etc. I'm surprised Tunisia is only $20m too, since they have a US military drone base. And where is Niger? They have US military bases too. I guess that doesn't explicitly count as "military aid" since Germany is also not on the map. What year is that data though? All the numbers I can find for places like e.g. Lebanon are much higher / much more different. Like Lebanon was $218 million in FY2019: https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-...n%20for%20IMET. and it has totalled $1.7 billion to Lebanon between 2006-2019 ( https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-...n%20for%20IMET. ) , so that's a lot more than $75m/yr on average.
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Feb 12, 2021 18:09
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Deltasquid posted:At least the UK kept shooting itself in the foot by refusing to engage with the EU and then complaining the EU didn't act in their best interest Seeing how hopeless the E.U has been at getting Europe to work together, I wonder how the hell the US managed to get 13 essentially independent countries to give up far more sovereignty than the EU has ever asked of it's members.
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Feb 12, 2021 18:56
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galagazombie posted:Seeing how hopeless the E.U has been at getting Europe to work together, I wonder how the hell the US managed to get 13 essentially independent countries to give up far more sovereignty than the EU has ever asked of it's members. - A lack of political representation - Common cultural and religious background for the parts of the population the leadership cared about, and the leadership itself - The expulsion of the least ideologically aligned parts of the population - The threat of a greater power subjugating them again - Having a very clear other as a neighbor, possessing land everyone wanted to take - Revolts against the interests of the wealthy, caused by a weak central authority - The states having much less state power to surrender, and a weaker conception of the state to surrender it to The fact that it was in the clear material interest of the wealthy is probably the biggest thing though. Not just as a general rule, but for the individuals deciding the fate of the nation.
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Feb 12, 2021 19:25
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I think it's also a bit of an exaggeration to call the 13 colonies totally independent. Even though the British crown didn't want them to trade between eachother, the colonies were pretty interlinked, one of the colonies was even formed from people leaving another colony. They were too small to really keep apart, even if there were things like Blackbeard playing the Carolinas against eachother. It definitely was a far cry from Spain's colonies that were more genuinely independent, had very little direct communication or cooperation between eachother, and often couldn't even really get from one to another by land.
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Feb 12, 2021 21:28
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I mean, the US had a lot going for it: Also - A lack of centuries of fighting, oppressing and pillaging each others' lands - None of the 13 colonies were former major empires with massive post-empire complexes - The "nation state" as such was a very novel thing
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Feb 12, 2021 22:03
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The 13 colonies were all just off shoots of Britain, basically like different franchises of Subway except with a bit more genocide, and hadn't spent a thousand years trying to murder each other like Europe had.
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Feb 12, 2021 22:14
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Yeah, it's easy to forget that something like 15 percent of the British Loyalists wound up fleeing the colonies after the Revolution, or were otherwise displaced during the war itself. It's like when the United States suddenly started passing some pretty progressive legislation after the Confederacy was formed and a bunch of conservatives abandoned their seats. Of course the Colonists had a ton of friction between Northern and Southern factions and the Union had to manage Radical Republicans, Conservative Republicans and War Democrats, but either of those is a lot easier when your most recalcitrant opposition up and leaves. A more modern example might be all the anti-Castro Cubans leaving for the US, rendering opposition within Cuba with no power base to draw on. I think I remember a few think pieces saying that Britain leaving the EU might make the EU more effective, but I guess that's not panning out.
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Feb 12, 2021 22:55
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All these points are true, but it's still funny because the EU is still trying to do way less. Like no one seriously trying to make the EU a centralized state like America. It's more or less for the loosening of trade barriers. They couldn't even get everyone to use the Euro.
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Feb 12, 2021 23:13
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Grammarchist posted:Yeah, it's easy to forget that something like 15 percent of the British Loyalists wound up fleeing the colonies after the Revolution, or were otherwise displaced during the war itself. It's like when the United States suddenly started passing some pretty progressive legislation after the Confederacy was formed and a bunch of conservatives abandoned their seats. galagazombie posted:All these points are true, but it's still funny because the EU is still trying to do way less. Like no one seriously trying to make the EU a centralized state like America. It's more or less for the loosening of trade barriers. They couldn't even get everyone to use the Euro.
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Feb 12, 2021 23:28
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For the EU to centralise in the way the US did it would have to invade Russia takeover it's Western half partition in to new countries while keeping a lot of the land its own maybe preceding it by buying north Africa as well
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Feb 12, 2021 23:47
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Rumda posted:For the EU to centralise in the way the US did it would have to invade Russia takeover it's Western half partition in to new countries while keeping a lot of the land its own maybe preceding it by buying north Africa as well Yeah and man door hand hook car door.
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Feb 13, 2021 07:32
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galagazombie posted:They couldn't even get everyone to use the Euro. It turns out that there are some downside to letting France and Germany set your monetary policy.
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Feb 13, 2021 07:56
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Yeah and man door hand hook car door. If it wasn't for manifest destiny the us wouldn't be even as centralised as it was, the Louisiana purchase and especially the Mexican American war were big parts of when made the US the US rather than these US
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Feb 13, 2021 15:48
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https://twitter.com/derJamesJackson/status/1360582040932990977?s=19
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Feb 13, 2021 17:02
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also proof that la sarre c'est la france
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Feb 13, 2021 17:36
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People in certain former socialist countries tend to be really horny in my experience. I heard someone say something like after communism the Russians replaced it with alcohol, the Poles with God and the Czechs with extramarital sex.
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Feb 13, 2021 17:40
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the rare map where east germany is the right one
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Feb 13, 2021 19:14
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Tei posted:the rare map where east germany is the right one East Germany is on the right in any map where north is at the top. 
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Feb 13, 2021 19:32
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ultrafilter posted:East Germany is on the right in any map where north is at the top. 
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Feb 13, 2021 20:11
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Grevling posted:People in certain former socialist countries tend to be really horny in my experience. I heard someone say something like after communism the Russians replaced it with alcohol, the Poles with God and the Czechs with extramarital sex. They all did plenty of that under communism, too.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:19
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When I do the same in google trends it says that "bdsm" is the more popular query in every single state by like eight times Also Germans would search for "Die Bibel" and not "the bible"  (but that changes the results only marginally)e: I did a couple of my own searches for Germany "catholic" - "protestant"  "learning french" -"learning russian"  "beer" - "wine"  "alps" - "north sea"  "berlin" - "munich" - "hamburg" - "cologne" (i.e. Germany's four largest cities)  "northern germany" - "southern germany"  
System Metternich fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 20:39
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System Metternich posted:When I do the same in google trends it says that "bdsm" is the more popular query in every single state by like eight times I was wondering the same but I got the above map when I compared "bibel" with "bdsm", the guy seems to have just edited the pic to replace it with "The Bible"
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Feb 13, 2021 21:04
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Repression breeds horniness. It’s like Queen Victoria being scandalised by naked table legs while her husband had genital piercings.
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Feb 13, 2021 21:44
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TinTower posted:Repression breeds horniness. It’s like Queen Victoria being scandalised by naked table legs while her husband had genital piercings. Gonna need a source on that last one, preferably with pictures (I know what a prince Albert is, as that is also my first name. It comes up.). The Bible isn't exactly without horniness if you know your way around medieval euphemisms. Finally, in Danish we have the word "klunker", a vulgar term for testicles, which originated from cloth balls hanging from furniture to hide sexy couch legs.
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Feb 13, 2021 22:13
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I think most stereotypes of victorian prudishness are vastly exaggerated. The queen had 9 kids. I think she was okay with sex.
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Feb 13, 2021 23:09
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Naked table legs being scandalous was a Victorian joke about how those religious nut Americans were a bunch of puritan prudes who were afraid of phallic table legs Or so I've heard.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:02
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