It’s the second-hand perception of someone who works as a civilian worker in the Bundeswehr. It’s slowly getting better but the damage from two decades of pointless austerity politics (and a lack of enthusiasm beforehand) is definitely felt.

Basically, they’re trying their best but the equipment stockpile isn’t up to scratch yet and it’s currently so hard to find good recruits that the government is considering bringing back the draft. It’s not that the Bundeswehr is bad but there’s a lot to do before it’s fully functional again.

I fully switched to Linux in 2024, my last desktop Linux experience before that being at least five years prior.

• Windows behaves a bit more gracefully then Linux when the VRAM is being exhausted. On Linux I can get graphics artifacts and sometimes Steam crashing. That mainly becomes relevant when doing GPGPU stuff, though; gaming works fine.
• Some apps use GTK4. Since GTK3, GNOME has been moving away from a “regular” desktop experience and towards this weird pseudo-mobile thing that goes against all established conventions. That might be nice if you really like their style and use nothing but GNOME, but it’s really annoying if you don’t. I long for the good old days where action buttons weren’t crammed into title bars.
• Occasionally having to manually fix package updates. Only an issue because my distro is Arch-based and that kind of stuff is to be expected there.
• I haven’t managed to get three-finger swipe mapped to PgUp/PgDn so far but I use the trackpad rarely enough that I haven’t bothered investing time into it yet.
• Occasionally the system just shits itself when rapidly switching between different users’ desktop sessions. Again, that happens so rarely that I haven’t bothered trying to deal with it yet.

On the other hand, I’m happier than expected with Wayland and PipeWire. They just work with little fuss. Sure, I’m a KDE user and Wayland is reportedly less fun outside the big DEs, but for me it just works.

Oh, and those small EU countries combined already have a bigger army than Russia, massive reserves obviously not counted because … again … they are not at war. And yes, we are also speaking about actually well trained and equiped soldiers, not Russian standards.

And we also have the German army, for comic relief!

(I’d love it if our army was equipped and trained for more than that…)

We just signed an FTA with Mercosur. That’s a major trade bloc. I think we’re doing good on that front and it demonstrates that we have the capacity to just pivot trade home away from the States.

Still, I do agree that counter-tariffs don’t feel too great as a response, even with the new FTaa in place. It might really be time to bring out the anti-coercion instrument.

The main difference is that the additional software you need to install doesn’t always come from the manufacturer on Linux. Other than that it’s actually pretty similar.

Heck, there are even devices that work better under Linux, such as the Logitech F710 gamepad. That one has been subtly incompatible with the USB stack of every Windows after 7 while it works with Linux just fine.

The Descendants series. The setting is basically as I described, except of course that the ghetto is heavily romanticized and the squalor mostly amounts to people having a vaguely punk aesthetic (as opposed to the preppy good guy kingdom). They’re Disney movies for kids, after all, but they do acknowledge that their own setting is fucked up.

The premise of the story is that someone realizes that the villains had kids in there and that punishing the kids for their parents’ misdeeds might possibly be kind of cruel so a few of them are selected to attend school in the good guy kingdom as an experiment. This results in a lot of choreographed song and dance routines, a romance plot, and some semi-self aware criticism of the “villains get punished harshly, heroes live happily ever after” trope.

The first one was pretty decent, the sequels were okay even if they effectively sidelined three of the four protagonists. They also made an animated series, which was a complete dumpster fire.

The link is “Disney movie that recycles old characters in ways that have very little to do with their original story or characterization”.

They explore an alternate story. Sometimes they do that and explore fun scenarios like “what if Cruella DeVil was a somewhat decent person” or “what if all the heroes lived together and operated a magical ghetto and also brought their enemies back from the dead specifically so they could force them to live in squalor in the ghetto forever”. Fun little alternate stories.

It’s possible that this isn’t enabled by default in Europe. I know that Microsoft has some things disabled in Europe in order to comply with local law and moving stuff to OneDrive without asking sounds like it might conflict with the GDPR.

On the upside, they’d be an amazing fighter. On the downside, I’d give them about five minutes before they go completely nuts and do something very, very stupid. In any case, I’d prefer to be as far from whichever planet we’re doing this on as possible.

Either that or a Goliath Scorpion on way too much necrosia.

Yeah, it’s similar for a BattleMech with a torso-mounted cockpit; it can barely keep fighting when decapitated because one of three sensors is in the torso with the rest remaining in the head. If the third sensor also gets hit, however, they’re so blind that they can barely stumble off the battlefield. You can kinda tell that both Mobile Suit Gundam and BattleTech try to make their tech somewhat sensible.

We even see some of the same tropes. For instance, both mobile suits and BattleMechs tend to fight at close ranges, Gundam justifying it with fusion reactors emitting Minovsky particles and BattleTech with mechs emitting a horrible amount of ECM and RF interference. Both franchises have neurointegrative technologies that tend to be unhealthy for the pilot, although Gundam’s is a lot more powerful on the battlefield.

A major difference would be that mobile suits are much more, well, mobile than BattleMechs (especially since they can often fly) while many BattleMechs can tank hits that would blow a mobile suit to pieces. (Okay, BT does have flying mechs, but they’re horribly impractical mech-airplane hybrids straight out of Macross.) I suppose that makes sense; one franchise focuses on cinematic battles while the other focuses on big stompy robots blowing each other to pieces.

Heck, I’ve seen a battle turn because someone took a step backwards down a hill (using the optional rule that allows that with a PSR), failed their piloting skill roll, tripped over their own feet, and managed to fall on the cockpit, instantly crushing the pilot. In an otherwise pristine Supernova.

Y’know, superior Clan MechWarriors and such.

BattleTech explores this to a degree. While obviously mechs in the game have heads in order to look cool (and because headshots are a game mechanic), they do have in-world reasons for them as well.

Basically, since internal space and heat are major issues for BT mechs, providing a comfortably roomy environment at a human-survivable temperature is much easier in a part that juts out of the body than crammed in right next to the reactor. As a result, torso-mounted cockpits tend to be cramped and subject to heat issues. To make matters worse, nobody could get ejector seats to work with them so they’re less survivable in case the mech gets blown to pieces.

All of which is really unfortunate as everyone in the setting is aware that any major hit to the least-armored part of the unit is likely to result in a mission kill. The trade-offs of torso-mounted cockpits make them uncommon, however.

(Note: Visually, there are mechs with no apparent head in BT. Mechanically, a head is always present even if the cockpit is in the torso. That head might just be a section of the torso with a window in it but mechanically it’s there.)

Yeah, but cults of personality tend not to inherit very well. There’s a chance that MAGA will fracture after he’s gone, which would at least render them less effective. Right now a solid third of the country would happily hand the country over to Russia if he asked them.

It pretty much depends on timing.

If the USA decided to launch surprise strikes from their more important bases, they could inflict serious damage that the EU couldn’t how to inflict on the USA. Even a swift counterstrike wouldn’t bring back the crippled infrastructure.

On the other hand, if the USA keep alienating the EU, they might get asked to leave before they could even properly prepare for such strikes. That’d be a major strategic blunder but the current administration isn’t exactly known for its masterful planning.

Either way, I just hope that Trump leaves office in one way or another before we get a real test of whether the doctrine of mutually assured destruction stands up to a senile psychopath with a cult following.

It very much depends on the base.

For instance, Ramstein AFB is a whole different story from the nearby Germersheim DLA distribution center. The former is a formidable threat to central and western Europe. The latter could be taken over by a particularly enthusiastic riot police unit (but probably won’t because there’s nothing of interest there).

There’s a bunch of bases that would pose a real threat and would be prime targets for immediate missile strikes. There’s a bunch that can be dealt with by having traffic cops close off the entrance. There’s a bunch in between. It’s very much a mixed bag.

It typically doesn’t. Most countries don’t care about where your ancestors came from. Being fluent in the local language and culture will generally give you a leg up if you already qualify for immigration so I hope your family kept those alive (and not Americanized versions like Irish-Americans wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day). But your ancestry is usually completely irrelevant.

Those genetic test results absolutely don’t mean anything. If you’re culturally American with an American passport, you’re American and that’s it.

Steam tends to have massive issues with permissions for games on NTFS partitions. You might’ve run into that.

Even ignoring the police officers, aren’t there clear rules for what to do when traffic lights are turned off?

In Germany, an inactive traffic light means that traffic control reverts to any present traffic signs (stop/yield/priority road). If none are present, the default rules for entering an intersection apply (which in Germany are to yield to any traffic coming from your right).

All of those rules already must be implemented for autonomous driving so why the hell couldn’t they implement a hierarchy?