I don't think they know for sure where it will end up but no matter what it will be, it will be brilliant, it will be the greatest, and it will have been the plan all along.

Rich people like to keep their money. So the only objective right now is to dismantle the oversight within government. It's not government efficiency they're after but removal of impediments to big business interests. That's the Melon side of the plan. It's his ROI. It's also is MO. Tabula Rasa everything and then build anew. It didn't work for Twitter. I don't think it will work for a federal government. We've already seen lots of unintended side effects. Oops, we fired the guys who look after the nukes. Lives will be lost here and there but, cynically, not enough to mobilize the masses.

It is of course worrying that Trump said as much as wanting to enlarge the US again. I'm not sure yet if that's just a dead cat he's thrown on table to distract us from Melon or if that's really the plan. It worried the US NATO ally Denmark enough to massively increase their defense budget over Greenland. Trump likes to be contrarian. He feeds off the stir he causes. He never built the wall, Mexico never paid for it. But he reveled in the reactions. Greenland could be a similar thing but I'm not sure yet.

It's worrying me the amount of sh!t the lgbtq+ community is getting, especially the T. There is danger there. I don't think Trump cares an awful lot about this issue, he just likes it as a way to unite the sleepy, the anti-woke behind him. But there are people behind him and with power now that do care, that do want to please their leader. And that creates a maelstrom of zealous a-holes trying to one-up each other with cruelty to score browny points with the boss. When I think this through, I fear citizen liberty is most under threat here.

I don't believe a world war with nukes is what they're after. You cannot really prosper as a corporation if the planet is barely habitable due to the radiation and the nuclear winter. It would be bad for Wall Street. But they wouldn't mind a few conflicts comparable to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. While nukes have been threatened, they haven't been used. So it's a conventional war and that's good for arms manufacturers.

In simple terms, Trump's cozying up to Vlad actually decreases the threat of a world war III, at least in the short term. It reduces the number of trouble hotspots. There were big ones between the US and Russia (until January 25) and between the US and China. Trump parroting Kremlin talking points and showing the rest of NATO the middle finger reduces hotspots with Russia. Russia is on relatively friendly terms with China and could probably meditate issues between China and the US. At least in the short term, that's not a bad thing. But it isn't stable. It remains to be seen if Europe plus Canada plus X can fill the vacuum and that would reignite hotspots with Russia again.

I do agree that climate change poses a threat. I don't think the billionaires worry so much about it beyond buying New Zealand and blanketing it with villas with bunkers. But it is a threat to maintaining order when the people get hit with more severe tornados, droughts, etc. Best way to maintain order is an authoritarian government.

All those wrinkles tell the story of his recalcitrant first officers who refused to go to a four-shift rotation.

Lovely artwork, big fan.

Can the other developed nations mount a credible pandemic response without the resources of the USA?

Yes. Just to show you an example from the other end of the developmental spectrum: even North Korea made it through COVID virtually without any resources.

You speak English. There is an at least partially English speaking country to your North. There are more English speaking ones scattered around the world. Most cutting edge research in anything will eventually end up in an English version if it was from somewhere-elsistan originally. The US is/was not the only country with something like the CDC. If you google their counterparts I would not be surprised if you found a warning about a measles outbreak in Texas. The research will be done elsewhere; the US may only lose its leadership position in the field.

BTW I would call the US response to COVID-19 just as shambolic as any other country's. The only difference was maybe they could throw more money at the problem. And that they could do again.

No country will be fully prepared. Ever. We don't know what the next pandemic will be, we don't know when it will happen. The lab coats will have an idea but it's too vague to build policy around that in a world, where there continues to be no glory in prevention. Stockpiles will perish, emergency plans will gather dust, and we will all be shocked and surprised again.

Humanity was sort of lucky that two Turkish scientists were quick to realize they could use a DNA something something method, that was not held in the highest regard in scientific circles before COVID hit, to make a vaccine in record time. They did that in Europe.

If we take "old allies" not so much as old friends but more as "previously allied with:" Japan was on the side of the allies in WW1 but was axis in round 2. Nazi-Germany invaded the USSR in spite of their peace pact. Napoleon and tsar Alexander of Russia were on somewhat friendly terms before Alex clandestinely rejoined the coalition against the French.

My crystal ball tells me she will not be part of the next government. I think very few of the current SPD ministers will be. Possibly none of them. The stink of the past, failed coalition "Ampel" government will keep them out.

As I said before, it's too early to despair, there is potential for surprises, and we should keep an eye on it.

For my answer I'm going to assume - because it wasn't all that clear to me - that you are also female and you'll be teaching somewhere in the United States of America. If I'm mistaken, stop reading here.

Kids don't care. If you tell them this person loves that person and that's why they're together, that generally settles that. The problem here is their parents or other influential grownups in their lives ... if they're a-holes or just always have something negative to say about LGBT+, or worse. If news filters through to them and they're fond of the MAGA hat, I would not be surprised if at the very least you'd be heavily discussed in a text thread of like minded parents.

I would like to say "eff it, it's 2025, you do you! Shout it from the rooftops. You have nothing to fear in reprisals." But I'm thinking "sh!t, it's 2025 in America, there is a chance that you will have to deal with a ton of it if you're unlucky." So the question becomes one of your inner fortitude: do you think you can do this job while facing sh!t every day? This ranges from hushed chatter to outright questioning and condemning you for your identity, from kids to parents and possibly to the faculty? Do you want to risk putting quite a heavy load on your shoulders on top of what teachers carry in general? If you say yes, or you can find other work when it gets too much, go for it. If not, I'd be cautious to make it about you. You can talk in general about how relationships are described in Spanish without casually mentioning where you stand.

Personally, I want all of us to live in a world where any of these considerations seem laughable. My gut feeling tells me that we have been closer to that ideal in the past decade than we are today.

True. But the social democrats are the only feasible way to a majority for Merz right now without the help of Nazis. There is at least potential strength in that. Plus the SPD know about their past. They'll have to find a way to strengthen their party's position in government somehow. They may surprise us with the spontaneous growth of a backbone in this area, under new leadership. All I'm saying is the die is not cast yet.

You can consider yourself anything you like. Time is relative. I'm older than you and would say 24 is young. A nineteen year old might look at you as an antique. The trick is to know your audience. Don't openly call yourself young if you're among the elders in the room.

I think the simplest answer is that we humans can hold two contradictory opinions at the same time. There are people who can support free speech and then censor books willy nilly. There are people who believe strongly in a religion but brazenly violate its rules of conduct on the regular. There are people who know homophobia is wrong but still are homophobic. And if this man has the hots for you at the same time this may be his way of squaring that circle.

I don't know you. I don't know him. Insert heaps of salt here. This doesn't sound like a good friendship to pursue.

Party manifestos are dreamy wishlists for a parliament, in which they have the absolute majority. Merz's CDU tories did not win one. He'll need to form a coalition. Most likely outcome is one with the SPD social democrats. Coalition talks have a way of grinding these wishlists down. And they take time. So keep a watchful eye but it's too early to despair.