“Look what you’re going to make me do!”

This confirms that Russia wants to annex Moldova

If only he kept failing - see brexit.

I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.

The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).

Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)

Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).

So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.

I remember he said he has nothing against Ukraine joining the EU, so I assume he wouldn’t be mad if Moldova joins.

I mean, I still think that having an operational moon-based spaceport is something we could see in our lifetime.

And as with all things concerning global affairs, it takes time and consistent pressure to overcome the lizard-brain us-vs-them mindsets that is inherent to our human political sphere. We’ve already grown to the point that we could take care of everyone on the planet, shuffling off the shackles of a scarcity-based economy which so severely hindered global human advancement in the past. I can only imagine what the combined efforts of the American, European, and Chinese economies/governments could accomplish if they put aside their differences, and embraced a true lasting partnership.

Also the website you gave is so incredibly interesting, I need to look at it more before I can appropriately sing its praises

Being hard is the point. (That’s what she said).

In making that attempt, we have to solve a lot of problems. How do we make a self-sustaining ecosystems where humans can live indefinitely? Can humans live that long in reduced gravity without issues? Can children be raised to healthy adulthood in reduced gravity? Is human pregnancy even possible there (probably is, but we don’t know that for sure)? Are there technologies or genetic engineering that we could use to solve the issues we encounter?

How do we mine asteroids? How do we manufacture things in zero gravity? How do we build the Internet to handle latency measured in minutes or hours or days?

These are all hard problems, but if they were easy, then they wouldn’t be interesting.

And I’d say the same for ocean colonies. That’s hard, too. Not quite as hard, but hard.

I keep seeing this repeated, but it’s simply not true. Capitalism isn’t the problem, Oligarchy is. This article I linked mathematically proves that it doesn’t matter what form of governance your society uses, it inevitably falls into an oligarchy without strong recurring investments into social welfare.

So, keep voting for the people that want to expand social security, expand job protections, expand medicare/healthcare, increase the minimum wage, while decreasing cost of living, education, and housing (progressive democrats, basically).

If we can get Kamala in office, with a supermajority in the house/senate, we could finally pass some much needed shit, and stave off the inevitable turn to fascism that an oligarchal society seems to induce. It would have been better if we just elected Bernie Sanders, but can’t stall progress for perfection!

See Brexit. That was to leave but same principle.

Given how much noise exit parties, or generally anti EU sentiments can cause, I’d also prefer a higher bar. Be welcomed if you join, but please be sure about it.

The EU isn’t just economic.

And you can literally say only half the people want it, which doesn’t make sense for such big decisions. “Most” people should want it, but I wouldn’t call this “most people” in the practical sense.

If it was genuine (no interference) then I can see how having nearly half the folks opposed to joining could cause some, erm, friction in the union.

But I’m willing to make an exception in this case - when Russian disinformation gets involved, it makes sense to move the bar in the opposite direction to counter them!