His name is “Octo Tentakel” in Dutch

NATO’s troop presence peaked in 2011, with more than 130,000 foreign troops from 51 allied and partner countries in Afghanistan. Since 2003, NATO has trained hundreds of thousands of Afghan troops and police officers, including establishing an Afghan air force.

The international military coalition has suffered over 3,500 fatalities since 2001, among them around 2,400 Americans, according to U.S. Congress data. More than 20,000 U.S. troops were wounded in action. The website www.icasulaties.org, puts the total number of fatalities at 3,577. Tens of thousands of Afghan police and soldiers were killed.

From your own source…

Stop pretending America’s allies did not do anything in Afghanistan. It is disrespectful to the veterans and those that lost their lives there.

It is true that Afghanistan was a direct consequence of the US triggering Article 5 following 9/11, so it makes sense that that would be considered a NATO mission.

Iraq is not a NATO mission on paper, but NATO allies backing up the US in Iraq is still an example of NATO allies backing up the US militarily as part of the unspoken agreement of NATO.

The US provides security guarantees for Europe, and in exchange Europe backs up the US in their escapades.

Sorry, but that is simply not true. Nearly every European ally sent troops to Afghanistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participants_in_Operation_Enduring_Freedom

I know the American president likes to pretend we were not there, and didn’t do anything noteworthy. But that is simply a lie, aimed to break trust in NATO.

Trump’s war in Iran diverted weapons away from Ukraine (which were already bought and paid for by Europe), to be used in Iran. It also increased the global price of oil and gas, which benefits Russia because they can now sell their oil at that higher price.

I don’t think that matters all that much. It didn’t matter back when NATO members backed up the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The difference between then and now is that America wants Europe to back them up militarily, but in turn does not want to provide the security guarantees that are fundamental to the alliance.

NATO being used offensively is part of the unspoken agreement. America would guarantee European defence, and in exchange Europe would back America up in their many escapades around the world.

Trump has repeatedly threatened not to come to Europe’s defence in case of a Russian invasion, and has even threatened to invade a fellow NATO member himself. He also does not treat his European allies as allies, but rather as vassals who have to do exactly as he says. The US and Israel unilaterally invading Iran without discussing this with NATO is another example of that.

This kind of behaviour erodes the trust and goodwill that the NATO alliance is based on. It breaks the unspoken agreement.
So why would Europe come and rescue the US out of the mess they made?

Trump gets to slowly figure out what it means for America to lose its soft power.

Prices of HDDs have increased in recent months due to the AI bubble

Here in the NL we have a website called Tweakers for comparing hardware prices. They only really list webstores that sell to the Netherlands, but it could help give you a decent indication of normal prices at the moment.

If I sort by price / TB, this refurbished 6TB Seagate SAS-drive for €122 seems to be one of the best deals I can find:
https://www.redshell.nl/seagate-enterprise-capacity-35-hdd-interne-harde-schijf-6-tb-7200-rpm-128-mb-35-sas/

Given that price, €134 for a refurbished 6TB Toshiba seems like a pretty decent deal. Though I would like to add that my experience with Toshibas is that they are quite loud compared to Seagate and Western Digital. So if noise is a concern it might be worth looking for those instead.

There is also a discussion on whether to (temporarily) lower the fuel tax to lower the cost of petrol here in the Netherlands.

Basically all experts and institutions point out that blanket lowering the fuel tax will cost the government a lot of money (through lost tax revenue), while disproportionally helping the middle and upper classes. These people can eat the higher cost of petrol without getting into financial trouble.

It also doesn’t really incentivise people to drive less or travel with alternative modes of transport (public transport, bikes, alternative vehicles with better fuel mileage), even though in the face of fuel shortages that would be good policy.

A more effective solution that gets proposed would be a energy subsidy to people with low income, who would otherwise get into trouble paying the bills. Everyone else would basically just have to ride it out and pay the higher prices until things normalize again.

I’m not sure that if I were Jewish, I would want to meet a guy who said he’d go “death con 3” on Jews.
The guy has mental issues, and I hope for his sake that he has started taking his meds again. But that doesn’t take back his earlier actions and statements.

Big talk from a guy who made 32 sequels to the original Expedition from 1994 /s

Ranked choice voting is more relevant for elections where one winner must take all (for instance presidential elections or voting districts with only one representative) which will always suffer from not being able to represent everyone

Direct proportional representation gets around that problem by avoiding situations where one person has to “win” an election

As for the president problem, you can get around that by simply not having a president with any meaningful power. The prime minister can be appointed by the cabinet, and the head of state (be it king or president) can be a purely ceremonial role.

Direct proportional representation, like we have in the Netherlands, preferably with minimal seat threshold for a party to get into parliament.

It doesn’t have regional representation or voting districts, but I don’t think that that really matters much on the national level. Instead you get an as close to accurate as possible representation of which parties the people voted for.

The low seat threshold also allows people to vote for small parties that may be closer to their political views. And it allows people to feel confident punishing a big party by voting for a close alternative, if they fail to listen to their voters.

They’ve already been pushing for Chat Control 2.0 for the past year, but thusfar it hasn’t really gotten far yet
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Thanks for the reminder, it is time that I tossed some money their way again

So his argument is that Biden tapped into the oil reserves during his term, and that that is why they are not completely full?

They had over a year to fill them since taking office, but they neglected to do that. You’d think you want to at least have full oil reserves when you decide to go to war with a country that is in a strategic position for choking the world’s oil supplies.

Dutch cities are an example of best practices, Paris is an example of how with some quick changes you can your city on the ladder to the reach the best practices.

I sadly didn’t really have a good opportunity to look around last time I was in Paris (we were visiting with people who had never been to Paris and we only had a few hours), but I did notice how many more cyclists there were compared to the car-sewer of a city I remember

In theory that is the case, but in practice it is up to the webshop whether they actually want to ship their packages across the continent. For example, to my knowledge, Bol.com only ships to the Netherlands and Belgium at this time.

Last year I made a list for a comment on another post

Amazon alternatives for the NL:

General:

• Bol.com
• Coolblue

Computers:

• Megekko
• Alternate
• Azerty
• Max ICT
• Paradigit
• Informatique
• Price comparison website: Tweakers

Electronics:

• Mediamarkt
• AlleKabels - They sell all kinds of cables

Clothes:

• C&A
• H&M
• Zalando

Groceries:

• Albert Heijn
• Jumbo
• Lidl
• Flink
• Crisp

Drugs and cosmetics:

• Kruidvat
• Etos

Bikes:

• Mantel
• Fiets Voordeelshop

Do It Yourself:

• Praxis
• Gamma
• Hornbach

Office:

• 123inkt

Furniture:

• IKEA

Second hand marketplace:

• Marktplaats
• Vinted

This isn’t an exhaustive list. There is probably many I have not mentioned.

Europe does have alternative webshops, but they are generally not Europe-wide. So I can’t tell you what webshops to use without knowing where in Europe you live.

The Netherlands has Bol.com, for instance, and Germany has Otto from what I understand.