Oh, sorry, I remember now that Trump had a prior four-year stint.
I was just reading this article saying Orbán, Erdogan and Modi took 10 years to do what took Trump 3 months and that was my first thought: he also started about a decade ago.
An important detail in the breakdown of the rule of law, the professor emphasizes, is Trump's attack on the law firms that assisted his political opponents. "That's of enormous importance, because the courts can't act against the government until someone files a case. And to do that successfully, in the American system, you need those big law firms. If those no longer dare take cases from people whose rights are being violated, there are no limits to what the government can do."
Lindberg's conclusion: the U.S. is changing before our eyes from a democracy to an "electoral autocracy. “In this, multi-party elections are still held, and on paper there is media freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of association, but in practice all of that has been undermined to the point where you can no longer speak of democracy.”
It's the familiar process from Orbán's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, and Modi's India. But the big difference is that in the U.S. it happens much faster. Lindberg: “What they did in 10 years, Trump does in three months.”
For starters, there’s little obvious connection between the U.S. trade balance and economic output (gross domestic product). As shown in the chart below from a recent Cato essay on the trade balance, the relationship between higher trade surpluses (or smaller deficits) and higher GDP growth is practically nonexistent. Economist Don Boudreaux and former Sen. Phil Gramm dug through additional periods in a recent Wall Street Journal column and concluded that “etween 1890 and 2024, it is impossible to find a statistically significant correlation between America’s trade balance and its economic growth.”
The grid concept looks interesting and makes sense to me if you have an allergy to your hands ever leaving the keyboard. I'm inclined to think some variation is likely to be better for you. It may be worth pointing out that move mouse to center (of focused window) and move mouse to focus(ed button) are standard functionality that perform a task somewhat similar to the grid concept. And of course that a pointing device needn't be anything like a mouse.
Many or perhaps most materials still aren't digitized. But some random edition from 1901 holds no interest unless you're specifically researching editions of Vondel's works. I already have a random edition from 1937 right here in the house if I just want to read the text. To be able to perform a quick breakfast or before sleep investigation into what such editions may have looked like through the years is a marvel. It may have taken weeks even just a couple of decades ago, and was thus effectively impossible for pretty much anyone not a professional scholar[1] or in the leisure class.
1 Their main purpose of travel would almost certainly be something more important, but they might do something like that as a side project while they're there.↵
The only thing we ever begged (read: lobbied) for was to please let us help Ukraine more. It took a very long time to get America to allow us to do so. All of those F16 fighter jets could have been there a lot earlier.
I went to elementary/primary school in the '90s and high/secondary school in the 2000s. They made a not half bad attempt to teach us how to interact critically with primary sources. I'm not sure if or to what extent they did that in decades prior. Though the national half-myth stuff is really more elementary school.
Either it became common knowledge later or they forgot their school curriculum.
Liever dood dan slaaf[1] is one of those phrases a bit like schild en vriend or alea iacta est, if decidedly less famous than either one of those. For us it's one of the more famous military defeats that are probably a bit less impressive if you think about it too hard,[2] for them it's a source of pride.
It was definitely common knowledge in the '50s and '60s. I checked with my parents.
2 Also compare the pride we feel for the Battle of Vlaardingen, probably little more than effectively luring the emperor's army into a swamp — not that there's anything wrong with that. Next you'll tell me your correspondents don't know about Holland's founding battle. ↵
I disagree with the people you talked to, unless we are talking extremely specifically about detailed facts relating to "the Dithmarschen Republic (1227-1559)" as opposed to Frisia consisting of a swath of republics, longer in the east than in the west.
For most of its history, Frisian self-governance was maintained in East Frisia, between the Weser and Lauwers rivers.[1] Meanwhile, parts of West Frisia periodically fell under the feudal occupation of the County of Holland.[10] During the Friso-Hollandic Wars, the concept of Frisian freedom was used to mobilise armed resistance to feudalisation attempts by the counts of Holland.[11]
Eutelsat is ready to take over from Starlink if need be, but as everybody knows it has both higher latency (25 ms vs 70 ms) and lower overall throughput. But the biggest issue is that Ukraine has 42k Starlink antennas and only a few thousand OneWeb ones.
“We don't make our own antennas but there are a number of suppliers. We are in talks with them about increasing the production. We also have a few thousand terminals ourselves in stock and are now looking at how we can get them into Ukraine as soon as possible get them there.” According to Berneke, replenishing up to tens of thousands of antennas would take months, “but tripling them can be done in as little as weeks.”
Models cannot be used as a prediction machine. Models are simplified by definition, meaning that they always exclude certain data and relationships, even when they may be relevant in reality. Also, the results of a model depend on what you put into it. In addition, models are generally less reliable in crisis situations and major policy changes. Most models are calibrated to data from the past and thus are mainly suitable for normal cyclical fluctuations and limited adjustments to current policies.
It's easy to tell that you did not. Here's the headline from Fox News of all things, Ukraine ambassador's reaction to fiery Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office clash goes viral.
It's worth noting that Fox News the website is a half decent newspaper.[1] It has fairly little in common with Fox News the TV channel.
Even ignoring all that which happened prior to Zelensky taking office, what Zelensky clearly stated is that he himself already did so in 2019, and that didn't avoid the attempted blitzkrieg invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It's not Zelensky's fault that such an agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.
1 Or whatever you want to call it. My point is it operates like print media, which means it has certain journalistic standards.↵
The way in which the United States has diminished its power over the past month is something I didn't think was even possible, at least not without severely losing a war or simply gradually over the course of many years.
That makes more sense as an objection, although I think it's phrased in a strange manner.[1] From what I've seen he emphasizes pro-Ukrainian sources and he mostly draws pro-Ukrainian conclusions.