Try being Caribbean... The funny thing is that USians who have lived in Europe or my country tend to agree with how we perceive the USA, while those who haven't tend to tell us we can't possibly understand you. Try to be open to the idea that US exceptionalist brainwashing is a thing...

Seriously no offense, but "Confidently incorrect" is an entire sub-category on YT about USians... It is not uncommon for a USian to explain my own country to me.

Nah. Look at the US drone initiatives. They are already finding ways to make a toy plane with some explosives expensive. Ukraine could teach them, but learning from others isn't what USians do. Nothing personal, but it is a cultural tenet that USians assume they just know better.

What they conveniently overlook is how much we contributed in ways that aren't cool brrrm brrrm, zoom zoom or pew pew. Without the EU the USA is stuck on their continent. A crapton of logistics happens on OUR dime, then there's bases, airfields, intelligence sharing...

The assumption always was that we'd spend a bigger NATO budget in the USA... and every platform now has a better and cheaper EU alternative. More spending also != a better military, some of those Drumpf says are not pulling their weight wipe the floor with their US counterparts. Quantity/Quality.

It's too charitable.

I still get calls from pple with a brick phone who can't use 4/5G. Usually I'll tell them it's really time to upgrade and a decent enough phone can be had for tenners if needs must, but when it's the children of a dementing elder person who can't possibly learn to use touchscreens, I do feel bad.

Nou zeg je wel dat je niet links bent, maar je geeft je werk wel gratis... nou? Hm? Betrapt! :-P (Sterkte met de chemo.)

Netherlands is almost there. End of 2026.

Shutting down 2G is still nearly impossible, because car manufacturers kept using it, still do in some cases, for the EU mandated alarm system in cars.

Duh, take a picture with your phone and attach to E-mail.

You sound butthurt. Society hid away women in science for decades, giving credit to men, or keeping them in the background. Some had to publish under their husband's name. Of course this is going to correct. No man is being left out because of this. Get over it.

Books are friends, not merchandise.

Eek... well, store brand it is.

Reminded me of the time my punk/metalhead friends & I hung out with a high up NATO guy who had found himself in exactly the wrong part of Amsterdam (early nineties, before the cleanup) being a naive tourist... Cool guy, but I wonder if he ever realised we were keeping him out of deep trouble. :-P

Reminds me of how the UK are often slated for their supposed slow and weak response to the rise of pencilmoustache, when in reality they were scrambling to get up to speed militarily and needed every delaying tactic they could get. (Not a military historian, but studied Shoa denialism.)

For those who remember the nineties: if they can't leave, how are they going to flood Europe with mailorder brides, prostitutes and CP? Because that was what they did last time they were in an economic hole.

Well, with enough explosives, we can change two of those things... :-P

Almost as if it's a really stupid ideab to Alienate the rest of NATO, huh?

I'm Caribbean. "We have equipment?" :-P

What people believe stealth is:

A lot of us start contributing to Social Security as teenagers at our first jobs.

That money should be there for us when it’s time to collect if we retire, become disabled, or lose a family breadwinner.

Interesting bit of trivia about your local area, thanks.

🫂The mother of this little girl picked her up early from school.

Then the little girl suddenly saw him, her father, and for a second she froze before running into his arms, overwhelmed with joy.

Nothing else existed, just the family finally together again.

Source: iryna_vyhovska, serj.khutsanu

Working maintenance at a cemetary to pay for college, I once accidentally went through a hive with a brush cutter... Imagine one of those cartoon scenes with a bunch of bees chasing ... only with a goth college kid instead of a cartoon animal...

Guess that's what you get when you go for quantity over quality and fill the numbers with poor kids trying to get to go to college instead of committed professionals...

When US ships dock, our bars close. They 🍇, go to their ship at the US doesn't extradite. Of course USians will say I just 'hate their freedom', but reality is; Drumpf blustered as they all do that they could do it alone, then found himself begging for real militaries to save his depends clad ass.

If so, at least they didn't deploy on a Friday...