Plenty of different reasons.

Historically, Greece was a poor country in Europe because it was the periphery of the Ottoman empire and therefore barely received investment.

Through the 20th century, the country went through pretty corrupt governments (one of them being a dictatorship).

When they joined the European market, it was already a very unproductive country in relative terms, which tends to force you into remaining in the periphery under normal market conditions; and their most educated citizens saw a very easy and profitable opportunity in just migrating out.

On top of that, the only sector of the Greek economy that had any sort of strength was tourism, which very rarely provides good wages.

By the 2007 crisis, they already had a dangerously high debt. Because they were, again, a tourism-focused economy, when the countries that had the most tourists going to Greece entered into recession, Greece’s income plumetted as well, and the debt just soared.

A little bit later, Greeks elected Syriza, which had simply accepted that they were in a debt spiral that would ultimately crush the country. Syriza’s leaders told the other European governments that their debt had to be renegotiated (annoying for Greece’s creditors, but at least it would be possible for them to pay in some capacity), or they’d leave the Euro-zone and just declare bankruptcy (thus they wouldn’t pay back anything) (terrible for Greece, but perhaps not as terrible as the alternative).

The rest of Europe told them to fuck off for a variety of reasons (plenty of German newspapers had chosen Greece as their sacrificial lamb, often calling the people of Southern European countries lazy, the Spanish president back then wanted to crush Syriza because they had been associated with a growing Spanish opposition party, generally a lot of them were into fanatical fiscal conservatism).

Then Syriza chose not to leave the Euro-zone anyway (which provoked Varoufakis to leave the government, out of principle), and just stick to managing the country’s misery. It has only been shit year after shit year for Greece since then, as any possibility of steering into a different direction was shot dead. It’s just a country without hope at this point.

This is what colonial rhetoric in the 21st century looks like.

It is also what you get when people vote left, and the reaction of the rest of the EU is to punish the whole country by imposing upon them even worse creditor conditions, lest people in other countries get funny ideas and a Conservative government gets put in check. Greeks have turned into this direction because the alternative got shot dead, and the people who had hope for it no longer have any.

Increasing working hours means reducing the efficiency of the economy.

Hmm, I wonder what do the crowd that’s constantly preaching about the sanctity of life ever since conception think about this. Wait, what? They don’t like condoms either? Well, ok…

The Youtube comments sections of documentaries of rent poverty in Spain usually get filled with landlords complaining about how the government is taxing them to death, and how relieving them of such taxes would be the solution. Somehow they consistently get plenty of upvotes.

Bitch, if you were being taxed to death you would rush to try and sell those homes, and THAT’S what I want to see happen.

The general laws of physics, sure, I have no solid reason to think they’ll be forever out of reach (only doubt), but in order to determine if there was intelligent life (even moreso civilizations) in galaxies that have already stranded away from our field of vision, we would need to have immense luck for physics to allow us to cheat the limits we know about today.

Man, NGT gets so much bullshit thrown his way. Sure, he’s an annoying shitposter on Twitter, but the vast majority of the time he makes a public discussion with someone he’s either one of or the voice of reason, and that sentence does definitely throw all nuance he has out of the window.

Even if we were beings of implacable logic, there would also be the issue that we aren’t omniscient. We are never going to reach the full truth of everything because we aren’t going to be able to gather all the data.

Not “an”. Plural.

Seeking criminal charges for a democratically elected representative voting in favor of their alleged agenda sounds more fascist than conservative to me. Must be the evolution of language.

But a last-minute change of heart by Austria’s Green climate minister, whose vote is credited with saving the proposal, led to fury in Vienna, with the party of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, announcing it would seek criminal charges against her for alleged abuse of power.

The fuck?

Ah, yes, I had forgotten I should have invested when my rent was 100€ higher than my income.

Like, I mean, it is good advice for some people at the individual level. Specifically, those who can afford it. But an issue of this magnitude requires political, collective solutions.

I would have agreed some time ago, but they’ve shot the prices through the roof lately.

Right click -> open on new tab for proper resolution

Spain does actually have a growing issue with water scarcity, so this should absolutely be on the table.

Apparently, France has historically dragged their feet when it comes to letting the Iberian peninsula connect their grid to the rest of Europe.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/06/07/is-france-an-obstacle-to-the-iberian-peninsula-s-goal-of-becoming-an-energy-supplier

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ribera-spain-has-enormous-difficulties-with-france-on-cross-border-energy-links/

Which is an absolute shame, because the region should be a gigantic asset to Europe’s renewable energy supply.

Map of solar power productivity depending on hours of sunlight: https://www.hotspotenergy.com/DC-air-conditioner/Solar-Map-Europe.png

I’ll have you know, I have pretty high standards to consider someone an expert.

I’ve been there on tour once, and I just looked at an online map to make sure I didn’t misremember. I also follow a guy on YouTube that talks about geology and has been focused on Iceland lately, so I think that makes me a complete expert.

Oh, no! You’re meeting all of them!

By “crossing the red lines” do you mean ex-Eastern block countries joining NATO? Those countries joined out of their own free will BECAUSE they feared Russia might want to attack them. And, oh surprise, Russia did attack the one country not sucking up to them that didn’t join NATO. Why should Russia’s security be sacred above that of all its neighbours?

If by red lines you don’t mean that, then they’ve clearly not been crossed. Russia and US or EU troops have not directly fought each other, and no country has used nuclear weapons so far.

I took a good look at Skyrim’s Creation Club content after getting the latest release on Steam. I will, in an extremely polite manner, just say that it was underwhelming. I could accept paid mods if it was passion projects of people making DLC-sized content, such as Beyond Reach or Enderal. But that’s obviously not what this is all about. It’s just about further privatizing and exploiting whatever spaces of free community efforts do exist in an increasingly commodified world.