I used this when I took a sightseeing trip to the Soo Locks, so that I could plan the best time to see the ships. Pretty cool zooming in from a global view to a single ship sitting right in front of me.
As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.
If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.
As if the US influence was built on charity for poor Europe... It's been all Red Scare and geopolitical power play. The US influence was nothing but intrinsically motivated. The only reason Germany was allowed to be rebuilt was its function as east bloc barrier.
The current US government is throwing away a world power status of unimaginable costs, which literally took almost a century to build. For better or worse, but let's not spin fairy tales about the why and when.
US has historically taken the lead in policy regarding Russia to avoid nuclear proliferation in Europe. If the US umbrella is perceived as being unreliable then I think that is what will see.
this is already happening. France has already stated it will extend its nuclear umbrella to the rest of the EU.
the discussion about either an EU integrated army compared to nato is also back on the table after being basically politically dead for nearly 60 years.
Unfortunately it looks as if lots of people have not learned the lessons from that war. This is a pity because that means lots of people died for absolutely nothing.
I'll bet that half the right wing voters of today at a minimum would get their asses spanked by their grandparents if they were still alive.
I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.
I think GP means that Europe didn't intervene when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and, more generally, has done its best to limit rearmament until now. And we're going to pay for it by having a war against Russia that we might have avoided had we projected more strength.
The precedent being France and UK that were so disgusted by war after WWI (and recall that France was the historical biggest warmonger among Western nations at least since the second half of the Hundred Years War) that they didn't react to Nazi Germany annexing Austria, then invading Sudetenland, and in fact not even when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Had they reacted earlier, WWII might have been avoided.
Actually, it is not quite the case: the most warmongering country in Europe was the UK since the 1600s (between 16 and 18 times depending on the criterias you use, a war declaration is way less a clear cut decision than you might think). They most often declared war to France, whereas during the same time, France declared war about 13 times (mostly to Spain, Prussia and Austria). There is no single source for those numbers, because some count invasions as war declarations, and some others don't, and some count wars against coalitions as 1 and some detail the exact number of countries involved. If you want to compare that with Germany/Prussia, they declared war about 10 times during the same time. And if you want to know which country was the most declared war upon, it was France (about 20 times), whereas England/UK was declared war to only 10 times. So it would not be far fetched to argue that it was mostly England/UK that was the biggest warmonger of the past.
Britain never tried to conquer all of Europe, but France did.
Also, when the Brits have a revolution (e.g., English Civil War, American Revolution) deaths never get as arbitrary and difficult-to-predict as in the French Revoution.
Right now, Russia's hands are conveniently tied by their incompetently fought war in Ukraine.
In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.
In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.
This is all correct, as is parent's parent. There is(was) this sense of war being failures of others, fought elsewhere now and we got better and employed more diplomacy (ignoring Yugoslavia which was a civil war to begin with).
It made us look weak internationally compared what could have been, and it made us weak. All that military money went into social programs and heavy lean to the left. It sort of works if you have other's umbrella shielding you, which now is questionable (but is it really, I think its more a projection how further can things go in future).
For Russia Europe never ceased to be a battlefield - eastern part of battlefield itself, western part as prize to win or conquer. Past 2+ decades of quite overt subversion, sowing chaos and discord via both radical left and right (which is hilarious, seeing 'patriots' parroting russian propaganda against their own country or ethnicity), sometimes outright attacks and assassinations.
Secret services kept reporting all this even publicly but were mostly ignored by politicians. Weak long term politicians like Merkel allowed this with open arms, hoping in vain that pure business is enough to keep psychopathic wolves happy. Well what a failure that was (yes I hate her as does most of eastern EU, leftist populist and nothing more which grinded strongest European economy to a halt).
Correction is being done, it will take decades but course is set regardless of what next elections in US brings.
As for geography - its only relevant doe to the fact we are connected by land to russia. Of course any country which has huge ocean between them and russians is much safer from them. The rest can either defend themselves or are an easy prey.
I’m Romanian, write this comment from Bucharest, a lot closer to Donbass than both France and UK. If those guys are “disgusted” about Russia then it’s their choice, but they shouldn’t re-create the Crimean War and battle the Russians on our (Romania’s) soil, with the destruction that would accompany such a war. If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West, at least Russia is the devil we know. I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
> If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West
Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
> at least Russia is the devil we know
Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe, but it is this mentality that stops that from happening. Russia is a terrible country towards its citizens and you wouldn't even be a citizen of Russia, you'd be a citizen of a resource for Russia, someone to be exploited or to be sent to fight Russia's wars for it. Note that this is exactly what is happening and if Ukraine should become occupied you can expect that the next wave would be Ukrainians against Eastern Europe. That is what you are hoping for here.
> I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
Yes, look at that case, and think about it a bit longer: you've been actively recruited as a fifth column member in the army of a hostile nation. If war does break out (which by trying to avoid the destruction you are actually increasing the chances of it!) you might be found to be aiding the enemy, think long and hard about the consequences of such choices.
> Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
I'm talking physically, for better or for worse that is still not the case. I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
> Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe,
Yes, I do know, and yes, and I am completely and utterly annoyed by Westerners lecturing us on our geo-strategic future.
I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
How have the men from the parts of Ukraine that surrendered with minimal resistance to Russia in 2014 fared so far? Do you prefer to leave your bones somewhere in Poland?
This surprises me. Is that how you see it, that countries like UK and France may choose to battle Russia on your soil? What would forego that in your scenario?
What's to be amazed about it? If I remember right you're from somewhere in the Low Countries, correct? Which means your country hasn't been part of a big land-war since the mid-1600s, give or take.
As I mentioned in another comment, I don't want to see us, Romanians, fight the West's wars anymore (like we fought Germany's war in the 1940s), I don't want for my grand-kids to tell their kids how their grandad barely managed to stay alive thanks to some Russian peasants close to Krasnodar who brought him (me) in their home in the middle of the Russian winter, i.e. the same story that has been actually directly experienced by a person close to me (now dead, of course, as are most of the WW2 veterans) on his way back from just outside Stalingrad.
Again, I don't want for my country, Romania, to be the West's sacrificial lamb for West's interests anymore, once was enough. And you should keep your pontificating for yourself, because you Dutch colonialists didn't fight sh*t on the steppes of Southern Russia / Southern Ukraine so you don't know s*it when it comes to fighting Russia in a great land-war, you were too busy, first, getting your asses kicked by the Japanese, and second, cutting the hands off of the Indonesian freedom fighters.
I've lived in Poland and in Romania as well, you know absolutely nothing about me but at least it's clear where you're coming from.
Major cities in 'my little country' have been bombed to little pieces during WWII, my family lived right next door to a particular bridge, maybe you've seen the movie.
All you will achieve is exactly the thing you are trying to avoid.
You're in Putin's pocket and you don't even know it. Guess who will end up fighting his wars for them? You, your grand children and so on. It's the proximity to Russia that is your problem, not the distance to the western part of Europe.
And I have never and will never make any excuses for what the Dutch have done in the past in their colonies and elsewhere, it is atrocious.
Assuming that these claims are unsubstantiated, as the article indicates[1], what is the motivation for the Trump administration to put forward this bogus assertion?
[1]From the article:
A Kenvue spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that "over a decade of rigorous research, endorsed by leading medical professionals and global health regulators," shows there’s no credible evidence linking acetaminophen to autism.
RFKJ promised to reveal a cause of autism in September. He's trying to hit his mark. As far as motivating a bogus assertion, I think that the point is to blame people for having autistic children. Oh, your boy is on the spectrum? It's your fault for taking Tylenol. Hide that hideous monster away, you moral weaklings!
Also insurance will be able to quibble over paying for any treatments. Parents will avoid a diagnosis by any means possible, and work hard in secret to make sure children don't display any telltale signs. Schools won't have to do anything to accommodate the mutant Spawn of immoral failures. It's a win all around!
Wake Forest University is a fairly prestigious private research university in Winston-Salem, NC. The costs of attendance (without financial aid) are normally almost 100k / year.
Within this ADA-esque world, packages, procedures, and functions may initiate DML.
Assuming these objects are in the default "definer rights" context, the DML runs with the full privilege of the owner of the code (this can be adjusted to "invoker rights" with a pragma).
Perhaps this is why Microsoft ignores it (as Sybase did before it).
I am not an expert on SQL/PSM, but I have worked in an Oracle shop before, and used PL/SQL extensively. In SQL Server, the equivalent is T-SQL. T-SQL procedures can do pretty much anything (assuming it is executed by a user with sufficient privileges), including creating and altering tables, creating and executing other procedures, running dynamic sql, as well as ordinary CRUD style operations. The "no side effect" limitation applies specifically to SQL functions.
In Postgres, the main difference between functions and procedures is that procedures can do transaction management (begin/rollback/commit), whereas functions can't. Other than that, functions are not limited in any way, and can be written in SQL, Postgres's PL/SQL knockoff PL/PgSQL, any plugin language such as Java, or even be called via the C ABI. Obviously, Postgres can do nothing about side effects here, and doesn't attempt to.
(PS: Postgres does have a concept of "safe" languages. Safe languages are expected to run programs only with the database permissions of the calling context, and prevent all other IO. However, Postgres does nothing to ensure that they do, that's the language plugin's job. Also, those functions can still perform DML and DDL as long as the calling context has the permissions to do so.)
By the way, you can do the same in SQL Server via what Microsoft ambiguously calls an Assembly. Via Assemblies, SQL Server can load procedures, aggregates and, yes, functions, from a .NET DLL file.
To be fair, if you imagine a system that successfully reproduced human intelligence, then 'changing datasets' would probably be a fair summary of what it would take to have different models. After all, our own memories, training, education, background, etc are a very large component of our own problem solving abilities.
