I bless your computer, my child.

no end in sight

Can it actually go below zero? I’m new at this.

Thanks for the good thoughts and it’s interesting (I guess not that surprisng) to hear that Trump and MAGA are, for now, even worse than the AfD if I understand what you’re saying. I’m pessimistic about local activism here being good for anything at the moment. Changes have to made at the federal level, which for me mostly means kicking out the Democrat establishment. The idea of AOC running against Chuck Schumer in a primary would be an example of that, though I don’t know if she would have a good chance of beating him. I’d say she has no serious chance of being elected president in 2028. Of course I’m open to being surprised.

It buys us time to elect a party capable of making good changes.

That’s a nice thought and obviously you know more about the AfD and German politics than I do, but on the US side I can say that the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing. Even after two terms of G.W. Bush (2000-2008), one of Trump (2016-2020), one lucky escape* (Biden 2020), and Trump now in a 2nd term, the Democrats make the same mistakes that they always have. It’s a safe bet that 2028 in the US won’t be any better.

It would be great to hear what kinds of remedies are under way in Europe to fix the status quo as you describe. If anything like that is happening, it doesn’t make the news over here. I can say that nothing seems to be happening in the US beyond some meaningless posturing.

What does it mean if a democracy bans a party that the voters want to elect? Better to ask what failure of the system made that party popular in the first place. We have a similar situation in the US fwiw.

Is there a simple explanation for the increased AfD support? I’m in the US and have almost no clue about EU politics.

Well the small reactors still have to be cost competitive.

It’s a research reactor, it will be relatively small because it’s not intended to provide a production power source.

I get that and a research reactor is a fine thing, but I’d like to have gotten some info about the scaling potential. Like are there obstacles to large scale utility power being generated with thorium?

He’s confirmed alive

Unless Van Hollen brought back fingerprints or a DNA sample, or the family got to talk to the guy on the phone and confirm it was him, I have to keep open the possibility that Bukele put in an imposter.

Well again, in the linked article, I thought that the concern was with mass migration, not with long-established residents.

Yes that’s another approach, if you have ancestors from that country. A friend of mine got Irish citizenship that way. But I’m talking about randos, like from the Middle East, or worse, the US.

I had thought easy immigration to EU countries was only if you were coming from another EU country. I had been interested in Hungary for a while since I spent some time there and loved it and have friends there. But that was pre-Orbán and it wasn’t part of EU then either. Dunno about now.

Had no idea even 5 year citizenship for rando immigrants in Germany existed. Maybe I should look into it, hmm. The US is looking bleak right now.

“Study war no more” was supposed to mean something entirely different.

“And that b*tch Anne Murray…” (Blame Canada)

There was once a literal war with guns between the US and Canada (War of 1812} and Canada won.

I’ve always liked 7-11 and now I understand its relative lack of enshittification compared to some alternatives. I guess someone is trying to change that.

Thomas Jefferson was before my time but was supposed to also be pretty good.

This sounds kind of bogus and there has already been some work on this topic. See for example the entropy distillation phase of Fortuna:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortuna_(PRNG)

His web site is https://cr.yp.to which is a cool name ;).