> Making batteries viable for home use is a very different story to make them viable for a grid.
True. But both are stories from the same book. Meaning: If more homes install batteries and some become fully off-grid you will stabilize the whole grid without needing to install more power generation. This is exactly what happened in Pakistan (src: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/pakistan-energy-affo...) and I expect will happen all over the world as:
1. PV+battery prices continue falling
2. Climate change resulting in more sunny days (one of the very few upsides)
3. The need to become more self-sufficient due to energy price volatility due to shitty govt/shitty grid/shitty neighbors attacking your neighbors
Would be nice to see some subsidy from the govt (is EU listening?) like: "here's low interest loan to take your home off grid payable over 20+ years (expected lifetime of the whole PV+bat system) during which you promise you won't connect to grid".
Slovak here living in Czechia. Adopting euro would give you a seat at the ECB granting influence over monetary policy in the whole Eurozone. You'd also get cheaper money (think mortgage rates going from ~7% (current rates in Poland) to less than 4% (current rates in Slovakia)). Do you have to exchange money when traveling abroad? Now imagine buying/selling stuff abroad as a company and multiply that by a lot. You get the picture. For countries that deal mostly with Eurozone based countries (which are most countries in Europe) you get massive savings that'll make the country more attractive to outside investors. Any potential price increase would be dwarfed by the rise in wages. All of this happened in Slovakia (and would be great to happen in Czechia if not for previous eurosceptic governments that massaged public opinion heavily). Sadly, the successive corrupt governments of Robert Fico ate many of the benefits to ordinary folks and Russian propaganda machine left some people questioning the value of euro and EU membership. But even 15+ years after adopting € the approval rating in Slovakia is very strong. All of this would be much worse without the euro. Personally, I'm all for everything that gets Europe closer to federalization and strengthens it.
>Slovak here living in Czechia. Adopting euro would give you a seat at the ECB granting influence over monetary policy in the whole Eurozone.
This is my argument exactly. A seat gives a certain small amount if influence, the resulting policy will be an approximation of what is best for everyone. This may be pretty far from what is best for a developing country with fast growth if the majority is well developed countries with low growth.
Imagine you and your neighbour decide to pool your money and invest together. He is 65 years old and has 50k EUR, you are 21 years old and you have 1k. He prefers to put his money in a bank savings acct that will allow him to withdraw anytime (he's retiring soon) and he doesn't want any risk. You on the other hand don't mind risk at all, but you need a high rate of return (stocks would be good for you, maybe of the more "adventurous" kind).
If you pool your money he will have much more to say so you end up maybe with a 6 months term savings deposit to get a little more gain. You're both unhappy because that is not enough profit to you and it still locks up his money preventing him from choosing an early retirement. Compromises sometimes work for both sides, sometimes they don't work for anyone...
>You'd also get cheaper money (think mortgage rates going from ~7% (current rates in Poland) to less than 4% (current rates in Slovakia)).
You can get Euro denominated mortgages in Poland as well. As well as Swiss Frank, Dollar etc. A country does not have to get rid of its currency for people to enjoy lower interest rates in other currencies.
You can make an argument if you earn in PLN and take a mortgage in EUR it exposes you to the currency risk and it does. It is your personal choice. But there are plenty of jobs (usually higher paying) that pay a set amount of EUR or USD and it's often these kinds of people for whom these mortgages make sense.
We even have a long running scandal involving almost a million of people that got Swiss Frank mortgages over a decade ago that had interest rates below 1% and the banks structured these deals in such a way they made a killing on exchange commission. Basically people didn't realise they had to pay in PLN and the mortgage provider would convert to CHF applying their exorbitant conversion rates. There was no way to just pay in CHF. But this story is over a decade old and people have learned the lesson.
> This is my argument exactly. A seat gives a certain small amount if influence, the resulting policy will be an approximation of what is best for everyone. This may be pretty far from what is best for a developing country with fast growth if the majority is well developed countries with low growth.
The point is that all of the countries in the EU are well developed countries with similar growth and closely tied economies. The example you have given would be more accurate if you'd compare a 65yr old with 50k savings and a 55yr old with 40k savings. What would be the (ideal) alternative? Having custom currency with policy tailored for each region? Each industry? Each person? Sometimes there's more value in unity.
> You can get Euro denominated mortgages in Poland as well.
Have you tried getting one? I did. The bank deduces 10-15% from your income due to currency risk when calculating interest rate and max loan amount. There are plenty of folks working abroad and earning EUR instead of local currency. Ask them about their opinion on this.
The same way as having the seat in the UN's Security Council gives you the influence, but in the end France has little to say when compared with US or China.
Germany even without any representation in ECB will have much more to say than other countries. Because in the end it is a real political power that allows anyone to make decisions.
The point is that all of the countries in the EU are well developed countries with similar growth and closely tied economies. I can't imagine a monetary policy that would benefit one state while at the same time damaging the other one so much it would negate all the benefits of joining Eurozone.
> And then there’s the reality that Kursk has only played into the Russian’s hands in many different ways, including, that it split already inferior forces in an attrition war and on the geopolitical level where it caused Chinese caution and reluctance about the whole Russian operation to essentially immediately fall away due to the insanity and recklessness if the Kursk operation, which only has gotten more solidified due to the atrocities against civilians committed by the Ukrainians.
Some sources please (ideally not Russian propaganda, but I would be asking for too much, would I?). I haven't noticed any change in Chinese stance after Kursk incursion. The operation has been a gambit by the Ukraine to divide the attention of weary Russian occupants.
> atrocities against civilians committed by the Ukrainians.
War is hell and everything, but Ukrainians seem to be much more precise when trying to achieve their goals. Did you not notice Russian army targeting schools and hospitals? Bucha massacre?
> You appear to see things in a very narrow scope that is predominated by propagandistic perspectives
As you do.
> If land invasion were some kind of cause for launching nukes, then the wholesale invasion and infiltration by Mexico and its cartels that have killed around 1M Americans would have been cause to, e.g., nuke southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Are you really comparing military operation to US opioid epidemic?
> Russia is intentionally going it slow
Sources? Russia planned a 2 day special operation. It seems that Ukrainians have been doing most of the grinding, not the other way around.
> … and life on earth ends because of recklessness of narcissistic psychopaths with god-complexes.
Like Putin, Trump and their supporters (yeah, looking at you).
Lemme reuse the same response I give to my antivaxxer and climate change denier friend: If only you would have spent the time watching those videos doing something useful world would be a nicer place.
> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Before uranium enrichment comes conversion to Uranium Hexafluoride. For instance the German uranium enrichment facility (biggest one in Europe) gets Uranium Hexafluoride from Russia.
Also a list of countries operating enrichment facilities does not say anything about capacity (Russia 50%) or market share (Russia 44%).
The reality is that both the US and Europe are dependent on Russian uranium services, with the biggest dependency in Eastern Europe for fuel rods for Soviet-style Reactors. It's slowly changing, but will probably take decades.
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