Not a stupid idea at all. The US oil corps are making massive profits.

It's at everyone else's expense, but so is everything else they do.

> And the problem with the current US president is he won't accept a loss.

At least he hasn't yet gone nuclear (metaphorically but also literally)

> So we have a stalemate.

It's not a stalemate. Best current estimates are that oil traffic through Hormuz is back to 80% of pre-war levels. This is not going well for the Iranian regime.

> stupid enough

Or blackmailed enough? People seem to be forgetting about that aspect of the Epstein ordeal.

>>You don't need to have access to super-secret intel to know going into this frivolous war was a very stupid idea. You just need to look at a standard map and use your brain.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte disagrees with your assessment: https://x.com/clashreport/status/2102671513337856357

> just look at the map

I have Google maps open on another tab. Could you clarify what should I be looking at?

> Remember this is a war that Iran has spent 40 years planning for.

So has the US. But as the saying goes: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

I'm not Polish, and don't know much more than what's in this thread and in the post, but the world has changed a lot since the late 60's.

I'm not discounting the value of the good things you mention, but is there anything else to add to the 'golden age' description?

Yeah, we're new rich, but we're also old poor - the majority of millennials and the entire gen x have seen what a proper 3rd world country Poland was back in the 90s - that's the bulk of the current workforce. We've navigated worse crises.

You joke, but there are practical and historic reasons for the pessimism.

No one in the West has had the Eastern European experience of queuing for bread for hours and discovering there isn't any.

In the West we have exceptionally strong normalcy bias and can't imagine a world with severe scarcity.

In countries like Poland that's still lived memory.

The "not really changing" part is what shows Russia is weak.

Also, Russia cannot keep this going indefinitely. The West can. There is some question about whether Ukraine can or can't, but from an endurance perspective, there is absolutely no question who has the upper hand. Nobody west of Ukraine is on a war footing, we're all working our day jobs, taking vacations, and growing our economies.

$350 billion of foreign aid sounds like a lot until you realize the GDP of NATO is more than $55 trillion. We could keep this going forever.

Russia is spending 7-10% of its GDP, and fully half of its federal spending, on the war. And that probably understates because Russia forces war spending onto localities and companies. This will come to an end eventually; time is not on Russia's side.

I think weak compared to people thinking of them taking over Europe. They still have a lot of military though and the result in Ukraine is up in the air still.

If russia is strong why their advance has stalled? Snail's pace for the last few years.

So advanced military - they use civil vehicles for assault operations.

So strong they lost the control of the Black sea to the country with no navy.

Weak as in “can’t roll over Europe like Nazis did”, not weak as in “lol, a couple of JADMs and they’re done”.

It absolutely is. And anything that's bad for a regime that just recently massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens is a net good.

In 2016 I spoke with an Ukrainian in Germany. He was saying the war is in the easternmost regions, he's safe because he's from Kiev area. That's how war works, uninformed civilian never believes it's coming.

Because bad and tragic news happens fast and sells well.

Tragedy in Nepal was everywhere for a week. Advances in vaccination? Diseases cure? Green energy? Not much because it's very slow news.

It's because you're always on that god damn phone

/s but kinda not

> I lived through the 1990s here in Romania, the future does not look bright in the slightest.

Why? Inflation was much higher then. There were almost no highways. Very little foreign tourism. Towns were ugly. Industry was barely functioning. Etc. Things are way better now. Just because Romania has high debt is no reason to be pessimistic. Everybody has high debt.

I would wager Iran is barely hanging on. The question is which side can hang on longer. Its like their both dangling off a cliff with their fingers on the edge - one due to politics, the other because they weren’t as strong as they projected from the start. I suspect Iran might hang on to after midterms.

Worth noting mid east is all looking for other routes now 3-5 years from now Iran will be in a weaker economic situation on reduced flow. Hopefully Theocracy has been ended.

>> and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz.

> That is just hope-believe, i.e. it ain't happening.

Best estimates are that 80% of the pre-war levels of oil are flowing through Hormuz right now. It's happening.

What are you hoping for?

> You need to persuade the court you can have divorce.

What makes you think no-fault divorce is desirable? Stable marriages are integral not only to the individual well-being of those who are married, but to a healthy society in general. No-fault divorce is one of the worst developments in the West, because it feeds mediocrity, selfishness, convenience, and self-indulgence. Requiring a grave reason seems utterly sensible. Do vows mean nothing? Are they just nice little lies to tell each other?

So, making civil divorce more difficult to obtain is beneficial, because individuals are weak, and indeed one of the purposes of the law in general is to teach and to help guide people toward a good life. So, here, by making divorce more difficult, it assists in getting couples to work their issues out. Speaking from experience, I know marriage forces a kind of ultimatum: either ship up as a human being—either keep chiseling away at becoming a better person by becoming a better spouse—or prepare for a miserable marriage. And let's not flatter ourselves: many people choose the latter and reach for the easy way out with divorce.

Appealing to Western hyper-individualism falls on deaf ears, because we've seen the effects of hyper-individualism. Collectivism is bad, but the extreme of hyper-individualism isn't good, either. Why would you want to replicate the tangible failures of the West in your country?

That's the unseen undercurrent pushing different things described in this essay.

Where, in Italy in 1930s? Football hooliganism and organized crime though, yes.

Russia is on equal footing with a country third of its size that is supported by a small fraction of NATO's GDP. You can barely tell the difference between a territorial control map from 2023 and 2026. Neither side is capable of achieving its goals through military action.

Ukraine us unlikely to get back most of the territory it lost in 2022, but Russia is also unlikely to even finish capturing the remaining parts of the Donetsk oblast, let alone the rest of Ukraine. It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population. Donetsk oblast still has a heavily fortified urban area with a prewar population of 500k under Ukrainian control.

Do you mean a metaphorical front? Because on the ground, it's been a stalemate for the past year or so. Ukraine is often taking back chunks of territory.

Russia is claiming to fight NATO, but NATO hasn't even shown up yet, but Russia is struggling. If NATO were to go to war with Russia, there would be very little that Russia could do. The one thing they might be able to do is the reason NATO has been holding back.

Russia is not fighting NATO, much less the entirety.

Russia is also not pushing, they actually lost occupied territory in 2026.

Russia is strong like an ant is strong: strong but insignificant. It only has any significance economically because it has oil and gas.

I am curious how Russian people feel about this propaganda line that they're fighting NATO. It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace." Russia borders NATO and there is no front there. Russia invaded a non-NATO country and immediately bogged down against an army that does not fight according to NATO doctrine. I have to believe this is something the average Russian realizes.

If Russia was fighting the entirety of NATO, they'd lose the war in a week. They're fighting the entirety of Ukraine, with NATO dribbling in supplies to help out. NATO help is absolutely tiny compared to what they could be doing.

front that it is continually pushing further west

Ukraine is taking back terrain currently:

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-has-retaken-745-sq-km-...

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/85252

Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO

It is not. The primary reason that Russia can even keep up is that it has many more citizens that can be thrown in the meat grinder and can work in arms factories and it has a larger industrial base than Ukraine. If you would tell most experts before the invasion, that it would've ended up as it did, they would have laughed their heads off. They would have told you that the Ukraine army would not be a match for the Russian army and they would have told you that the response of the West would have been divided.

Russia has ~146M citizens, Ukraine has ~29M citizens within land that it currently controls. Russia's estimated GDP is $2.66 trillion, Ukraine's GDP is $225 billion. That's 5x as many citizens and a 10x larger economy.

A real conventional war against NATO would be a completely different story. Sure, NATO countries would have to catch up with drone production and defense, but a lot of knowledge transfer and co-development is already happening. But NATO's economy and population is several times larger than Russia's. If NATO countries switched to a war economy, it would not be a fair game.

Of course, Putin knows this and he also knows the real weaknesses: there is a change that not all countries will uphold Article 5 and coordination might end up in a mess if the US would bow out, because command & control has always largely been handled by the US. This is why he is constantly testing how strong Article 4 and 5 are on an escalating ladder. The other weakness are disinformation campaigns through social media, which are working really wel for them, both in the US and in various European countries.

(I don't think it's useful to talk about nuclear war, it will end up badly for everyone in a population center. There will be no winners, only losers.)

> Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO

Has anybody told NATO yet that they’re fighting the Russians?

If only we had known, right?

Every period of history is dramatic; sometimes I rewatch old episodes of a UK satirical news quiz, Have I Got News For You, and even in the best of years there was plenty of drama.

True, but other large EU members also did a better job replenishing their stores:

https://energiedashboard.admin.ch/gas/eu-gasspeicher

For instance, Italy has more storage capacity per capita despite very similar consumption (~10TWh/1mln population) and they're already at 86%+.

Meanwhile indeed Poland has much less storage (about a third of Germany per capita), but it also uses it less (half the consumption of Germany per capita).

I must ask: what the hell are the Germans waiting for?

Life is finite.

I guess that's why houses are so expensive, now

The threat of war is largely in the minds of investors.

I don't know if Putin is crazy enough to chance it, but I wouldn't put it past him to do so.

But even then, Russia would need to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops and that is not something you can pull off in a week, or even a month.

Poland barely had any oil. If you want to go "historical", Romania was the source of oil for Germany during WW2 (and Austria-Hungary also wanted to take over Romanian oil fields in WW1).

Your comment implies Germany can just somehow command Poland to please hand over their gas, which obviously makes no sense, so I think you either forgot to include some key detail or you’re just talking out of your ass.

Unless you mean nazi invasions ofc in which case you’re just a troll.

Not to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure that "Polish" is capitalized. "polish oil" is what I use on my leather shoes

> mobility is a privilege

We made it a priviledge, but for a biological being, it's the most natural thing to do when you find yourself in a place that is shitty. There is a reason so many risk truly awful things to get a chance (chance!) at a better life: going to where food and safety is, is just what living beings do.

I'm sure you can throw out statistics that prove otherwise, but I think the average living standard of Poland is already better than America. Again, anecdotally, but I'm American and I've lived in Poland for about a decade. Food, healthcare, housing, access to parks, public transport, etc. are all better quality here at the average-person level than most places the US.

Americans just end up paying for a lot of things that are either undesirable for many Poles (e.g., a huge McMansion in desolate suburbs and the car to drive there) or paid for via other means (e.g., healthcare.)

I'll bite, even though I really shouldn't.

How do you define "average living standard", so that it would take a colossal disaster to have US reduced to that of Poland?

Petrol prices mean nothing for standards of living or overall desirability of given country. If that would be true, then I have 2 random samples which have supposedly way higher standard than US - Venezuela and russia.

US folks have more money on average, but are forced to spend them in ways ie europeans don't have to - top notch education and healthcare costs are huge in US for large part of population and compose big part of expected savings of parents and older folks, while an afterthought in Europe. How do you compare that.

Plus places in Europe like Switzerland have long term way higher living standards by any measure than even good places in US. Europe is big and diverse in ways US simply never was, it would do you good to travel the world a bit and see and experience it with your own eyes.

I agree in a sense, and the writing for this has been on the wall for some time. In my circles, many learned some Mandarin at one point or another.

The difference from the past is that the US has always been a melting pot, while China is pretty much a closed society. If you’d emigrated to the US, you always had a good chance of blending into that diverse society no matter where you came from. Assimilating into the homogeneous Chinese society will take generations.

For me it’ll be either the westernmost end of Europe or one of the better parts of South America, in the hope that they will prosper modestly in the shadows of the upcoming conflicts.

China's population is dropping, so to the extent they had housing for their peak population, they will have increasing capacity to accept migrants. Their fertility rate has dropped to 1, one of the lowest in the world, despite having now lifted all restrictions on number of children and actively encouraging larger families, so it will become a precarious problem for them soon.

China's migration policies have been extremely strict, so to what extent they will be able to loosen that up without political upheaval is still an open question. So far they've only loosened up the restrictions on internal migration.

China is facing many of the same problems that the rest of the world is, with demographic decline, slowing growth, etc.

I assumed there would be plenty of land in China, is just completely remote or do I just have a completely incorrect perspective on China (generally speaking I’m sure I do, I’ve live my life on the other side of the planet)

There's no land in China?

OOps, I meant to type death of a quarter of the population of Cambodia, not the world!

Too late to edit now.

The world bought only 20% as many treasury bonds in the past year as in the year before that. This is what a slow decoupling from the US reserve currency looks like.

The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.

The US has canceled all military guarantees and aligned with two different fascist states, so military cooperation is unwinding.

It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.

What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?

The US isn't just a land. It isn't even just an economy or a currency. Most fundamentally, it's a set of rules that limit the power of government, and thereby allow more freedom for people. Everything flows from that, even the reserve currency. (Why put your foreign currency holdings in a currency where the government can arbitrarily decide to change the value? This is why the renminbi isn't catching on, despite China's power.)

That limited government is looking shaky right now. It's mostly Trump, but it's not just Trump - Congress has been increasingly worthless over the last couple of decades, and so the President has to rule more and more by executive decree. But Trump is pushing the boundaries of what the Constitution allows the government to do far harder than any President that I remember, even Nixon.

And if we lose the limited government, then within a generation or two, we're going to lose the rest. It won't be immediate (unless you fall afoul of the government), but it will come.

Monkeys do not know about China or toys. They wouldn't know about blueberries either unless the fruit is local.

We have more wars right now than before.

>> Modern society would collapse if change to a state of the world that you describe would quickly come.

That means the modern society is not sustainable and cannot adapt to long-term changes. It's like those cities, where all traffic and power supply would be affected for every rain. That's not adaptation. That's just living precariously on greed and assumptions.

The drastic changes, if any, themselves would be purely man-made, not like asteroids that killed dinosaurs. A proper evolution or adaptation would not have drastic changes. Changes would be gradual in synch with the pace of biological evolution.

Designed by businesses and for businesses. If there is no business profit, 99% of the connectedness wouldn't be there. 99% of tech wouldn't be there.

True. Certain things changed and improved but many remained the same. Having corrupt politicians doesn't help at all. We're caught in-between bigger players and we're just following along. As the OP stated, many countries are suffering from consequences of the actions by some "great powers".

It's true, but things are not as bad as 2015. Just not as good as 2007. In general things seem to be going in the right direction, cost of living excluded.

Just FYI, not all Greeks support Isreal ;-)

Yeah, was it really 1 cent per kg? That seems hard to believe.

I stopped reading after I saw "Hormuz moves what grows it"

> AI disruption (both by the technology itself and by the financial upheaval it causes)

If it wasn't for the AI we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the linked vibe coded site wouldn't even be built

Also learn to choose your battle. If you focus on everything that's going wrong in the world and spend all your energy on that, you're gonna have mental problems.

No, this is 100% written by Claude. It reads exactly like it, with all of the same phrasing, awkward sentence construction and other annoyances I have to deal with all day long.

Maybe you don't interact enough with Claude? "Underneath it, three slower clocks are running, and they set the terms on which we meet the next shock.", "A gauge reading is a level against a reference mark, not the depth of the river.", "Two official statements frame everything below.", "where a number rests on a vendor, an advocacy group or an industry estimate, the text says so" were not written by a human.

The Polish version is also 100% AI on Pangram. https://www.pangram.com/history/e7fbea77-4556-4dd2-a60f-d6c5...

I would rather read Polglish or text machine-translated from Polish than Claudese.

Also in countries where rent control is a thing. About 20 years ago the government decided it was "good enough" and stopped nationally planned housing projects (which resulted in decentralized planning and mostly expensive, high profit, housing being build), 'motivated' the market by providing tax breaks (giving higher profit and less investment in non-controlled renting) and as a bonus taxed the subsidized housing market a flat rate on top (result: hardly any new construction or investment in subsidized housing).

Almost all measures since have been detrimental to new housing, great for real estate owners, extremely poor for renters and allowed house prices to skyrocket. None of these things are on their own and it's a more-or-less global thing but they've done a great job making it worse.

And as a bonus: this was projected to happen by the governmental planning agency and rejected as fearmongering.

https://www.pangram.com/history/9afcbb61-303b-4be2-8240-87f9...

> Literally how did you come to the conclusion this was written by ChatGPT?

You tell me:

> Scroll to follow one closed strait into fuel pumps, harvests, bond markets and my own country’s winter heating

Or:

> France: a run on the pumps. [...] drivers fleeing record prices elsewhere emptied its tanks faster than trucks could refill them. [...] A price cap meant as a cushion, in a system with no slack, turned a price shock into empty pumps.

A cursory check on Pangram returns 100% AI written just from the first 4 paragraphs.

Every writer has a style and if their style is strong enough you can identify the writer by reading enough of their works. AI style is very easy to spot.

There may have been some human involvement with this website but they certainly didn’t edit it for style. Unfortunately if you don’t edit for style then people will default to the assumption that it’s entirely vibecoded.

"Europe’s potato belt tells the story in a single season." -- sure, no LLM at all. And why a single season, isn't it a story over two seasons?

There are plenty of signs if you look for them.

- "But the same closure that empties a granary fills somebody’s brokerage account." Claude is obsessed with comparisons linked by "the same". There are several instances, like "Poland made the same swap, with oil" (but that one is odd because "the same" isn't referring to anything).

- "Europe’s potato belt tells the story in a single season": Claude also loves this "noun verbs the noun in a single noun" phrasing.

- "A country that loses its regular supplier does not only pay more. It ends up dealing with people it does not know." Claude's classic "it's not X, it's Y" constructions.

- "Strategists do not describe a stampede home. They describe Japan quietly ceasing to be the buyer everyone could count on, and long-term borrowing costs rising everywhere as a result." A variant following the pattern "it's not X, it's Y, and Z as a result." This is an interesting pattern, one that I don't think I've ever seen a human write. A human would likely write "...leading to rising long-term borrowing costs" or similar.

- The use of a verb (rising) there in the third part is typical Claude, as it really likes to verb when a noun would read better. Other examples: "markets price another rise"; "volume freezes, prices stay put and sellers wait"; "after five years the rate floats".

- "The test Tusk describes is a test of belief, and it arrives just as the Pentagon decides how many Americans stay." The juxtaposition here (a test that arrives) is very odd and typical of Claude.

- What's also generally striking is the proliferation of "X becomes Y" phrasings, which is something Claude loves to do. Price shock turned into empty pumps. A story is told in a single season.

I'll stop there.

What's fascinating to me is that I personally find this kind of text exhausting to read, but apparently other people don't notice it at all.

If we ignore the AI stuff, I will still say this is not good writing. What's so grating and noticeable for me is the monotonous style. The short, clipped sentences like little stabs of information. It never varies; the tempo is just fact, fact, fact. It's absolutely exhausting to read pages and pages of this.

Good non-fiction writing is enjoyable to read for a myriad reasons; authors use metaphor, juxtaposition, tempo, humor, irony, allusion, and all sorts of techniques to make an article enjoyable to read. Just throwing down facts one after another with this kind of breathless, staccato noir voice is not that, in my personal opinion.

I don't know how much AI is to blame, maybe the Polish version is different or if this is a deliberate style.

You can literally just paste it to pangram.