Thread: Rants and WTF are you talking about and Coronavirus!
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05-21-22 23:32 #10160
Posts: 7321Originally Posted by Turgid [View Original Post]
Now USA going to make Russia poor and in long lasting cold war, looks like USA won by making Russia just another North Korea with oil and gas that they can only sell to India and China with low ripped off price LOL!
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05-21-22 21:18 #10159
Posts: 1302Originally Posted by MrHo [View Original Post]
TLDR version:
German cars are great cars if you own them where you have laws that forces you to put money into regular maintenance. In more freedom loving countries, where car maintenance is up to the individual owners, their dependability issues are quite exposed.
Now, I would rather have a Lexus that gives me a happy combination of performance, luxury, dependability with minimal maintenance, and the ability to repair the car using only 3 uniform and universal socket sizes.
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05-21-22 19:27 #10158
Posts: 1302Originally Posted by Turgid [View Original Post]
However, that does not matter; rather, the thoughts of Putin is what matters. Western-Russian relations took a steep downturn after an optimistic beginning to the Putin regime when the US-led invasion of Iraq planted the seeds of danger in Putin's head. Saddam Hussein was a Putin ally then executed. Several years later, the brutal way that Gaddafi was overthrown, murdered by his own people, orchestrated by Western powers, fueled the fire even more as Putin saw another ally taken down due to Western influence. Finally the 2014 Euromaiden protests in Ukraine that supplanted Yanukoovych's regime was the final straw. Putin does not believe that those protests were organic, but rather due to intentional Western meddling.
One by one, Putin saw his allies get overthrown and felt that his day would come. It's no surprise that Putin heavily ramped up military activities after that. Look at Russian involvement in Syria and then Crimea. The current war in Ukraine is the result of a man who feels threatened, not one secure in his position.
So as McA suggested, Russia may be acting out of national security interests. However, unlike him, I don't believe that the West was an active threat to Russian security prior to Ukraine. If anything, we were a passive threat to the Putin regime due to our support for opposition parties.
But I'm no homer. All powerful nations are corrupt. Western corruption, as least American corruption is fueled by empty promises to the people in the form of various social justice distractions. Why is transgender issues such a prominent agenda? Are student loans actually ever going to be forgiven? Is the federal minimum wage being raised to $15/ HR actually a good idea? The conservatives are not even better. While I agree with their ideology, their tactics are more blatantly corrupt in the form of voter suppression and gerrymandering, or in Trump's case, outright bullshitting.
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05-21-22 15:37 #10157
Posts: 5611Originally Posted by EscapeArtist [View Original Post]
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05-21-22 10:30 #10156
Posts: 7321Originally Posted by Sirioja [View Original Post]
https://www.itftennis.com/en/players...wt/s/overview/
So do not trust your eyes too much LOL!
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05-21-22 04:58 #10155
Posts: 7321Originally Posted by DrPoon [View Original Post]
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05-21-22 02:26 #10154
Posts: 1302We keep trying to steer from the original conversation
Originally Posted by McAdonis [View Original Post]
McA: Russia's actions may be explained by a Western threat to their national security.
Me: Russian doesn't have to be concerned about national security from a military standpoint because Western powers do not outright engage in military conflict with other powerful nations.
My point: Russia's security concerns and the argument that the West bears some responsibility by pushing Russia into a corner carries very marginal merit. Russia was losing the influence and economic wars and there was no legitimate concern of national security outside of Putin's concern that the West's influence in surrounding nations could garner support with the Russian general population. What keeps Putin up most at night is the threat of revolutionary mobs in the streets, not Western militaries.
To understand Putin you have to first remember that he thinks like a spy and not a general or a Parliamentarian. I suspect that prior to the war, Putin also knew that the biggest threat the West posed was to his regime and not an actual threat to Russian sovereignty.
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05-21-22 02:14 #10153
Posts: 806Originally Posted by Gino02 [View Original Post]
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05-20-22 23:45 #10152
Posts: 7321Originally Posted by TheCane [View Original Post]
Yes you want the quality as in car that do not break easily and go on forever, go for Japanese cars and some other products as well actually as Japan made got top quality.
You want speed and luxury, go for Italian cars, but mostly owned by german now so it does not break as before, but it still does and need maintenancing! Poor electronic!
And German cars are good targeting mid to upper market, but they had to merger to compete with toyota as VW consist of many car companies combined, but toyota is only toyota and as for lexus toyota founded and made ground up!
I had some french blonde pussies in Geneve as it is only 30 min drive to France and so many french stunner students. Their pussies were good as their food LOL! But when it comes to blonde beauties, I prefer german from north Germany and also from Denmark! Sweden! Some russian are blonde stunners too, but depend on which ones!
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05-20-22 23:33 #10151
Posts: 7321Originally Posted by Sirioja [View Original Post]
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05-20-22 22:58 #10150
Posts: 2073Legacy automakers may not be able to reinvent themselves
Both German and Japanese auto manufacturers are starting to realise that EVs are the future. The Ukraine conflict and resulting price surges for nickel and other metals will probably just prove to be a speed bump in EV adoption.
Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler are pushing hard to electrify their offerings, but Germany's $94 billion car-parts industry is struggling with the once-in-a-generation shift.
More than half the country’s auto suppliers are overwhelmed by the pace of the transformation to battery-powered vehicles, according to a study released this week by consultancy Roland Berger.
After spending decades perfecting the production of crankshafts, diesel injectors and other components not needed for electric motors, the industry is now scrambling to adapt as its traditional products become obsolete sooner than expected.
From global players like Robert Bosch and Continental to the hundreds of small- and medium-size companies, parts makers are key to Europe’s biggest economy. Roughly 75% of the value-add of a car made in Germany comes from this supply network, which employs more than 300,000 people. Many of those jobs are dependent on how swiftly the sector can change.
Germany’s auto suppliers are known to be great at solving problems. They’ll develop new products, raise efficiencies and carve out new niches. Still, the industry’s glory days are probably over: While a combustion drivetrain contains roughly 1,500 individual parts, an electric one has only 250. That’s a lot fewer slices of pie from which to feast.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/electric-cars-take-two-thirds-norway-car-market-led-by-tesla-2022-01-03/Just as Blackberry dismissed the iPhone, Toyota dismissed Tesla and EVs. Blackberry thought the world would need physical keyboards for many more years. Toyota thought the world would need gasoline for several more decades. Both were wrong.
In a bid to protect its investments, Toyota has been strenuously lobbying against battery-electric vehicles. But is it already too late?
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs-so-now-its-lobbying-to-slow-the-transition/..
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05-20-22 22:54 #10149
Posts: 2073Originally Posted by Gino02 [View Original Post]
Most Americans have higher IQs than their great-grandparents did in 1900. Back then 90 percent of the population worked on a farm or in a factory doping repetitive work. In 1900, only 3 percent of Americans had jobs that were cognitively demanding. In 2013, that figure was 35 percent.
American GIs fathered many women in Germany post WW2. They found no difference in IQ, between children with White-American fathers and children with Black-American fathers. Common denominator was the German mother.
https://youtu.be/9vpqilhW9uI
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...e-of-the-above
https://www.businessinsider.com/gene...ligence-2011-8
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05-20-22 22:48 #10148
Posts: 2073Originally Posted by BobNSuzy [View Original Post]
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-a...-says-rcna3741
I do not recall any viral clips depicting a white perpetrator, other than the guy who shot up the massage parlors in Atlanta. It could be that just Blacks pushing down senior citizens evokes more fear and anger and thus more clicks.
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05-20-22 22:35 #10147
Posts: 2073Originally Posted by EscapeArtist [View Original Post]
There is a precedent for Western nations invading a sovereign country without UN backing: In 2003, the US, UK, and Spain proposed a resolution to the UN Security Council to authorize the use military force to disarm Iraq. Bulgaria later threw in their support. This resolution never went beyond the draft stage. One, it fell short of the nine votes needed, and two even if they had received the nine votes, the French side made it publicly known that they would exercise their veto.
On September 16,2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...d_the_Iraq_War
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05-20-22 21:44 #10146
Posts: 1302Originally Posted by Sirioja [View Original Post]