It means you already had the paycut, you need to have at least %4.2 rise + reimbursement to make even.
In high inflation countries you often get a revision every 2-3 months and you get a rise that is higher than the official inflation, as a result this solidifies the inflation and boosts the economy as everyone immediately buys whatever they can before it becomes more expensive. It's a vicious cycle.
Reminds me of stories from ex-Yu during high inflation periods (e.g. yearly doubling; not counting periods when there were runaway spikes of almost daily doubling) when people would go to remote areas where shops didn't yet get the updated prices from headquarters and basically walked away with a bunch of near free stuff.
Those are not different things, "willing to defend" is just the prerequisite of "actually be able to defend". Look at Ukraine, how weak they were and how good they defended themselves. Look at Iran, how resilient they are despite decades of sanctions and their shitty regime.
When things start moving people can move mountains, suddenly the unemployment goes to %0 like it happened with Russia, market forces get dominated by state forces, moats like network effect or IP go to the trash.
Ukraine is essentially acting as a human shield for the EU right now. My friends in the SBU/ National Guard are terrified, even though they haven’t even seen combat yet. They’re stationed in a city that’s essentially 50% Russian. Even a civilian could shoot them in the back.
Ukrainians don't act as a human shield for EU, if they wanted to be part of Russia they could have joined them(like Crimea and Donbas tbf, but since there wouldn't be claims on the Ukrainian territory anymore it wouldn't be a war).
EU doesn't force anyone to fight for them, it enables those countries that are not part of Russia, don't want to be part of Russia and are willing to fight Russian aggression to eventually be independent countries and member of EU.
May I ask from which country you are, you are talking of position that implies that Ukrainians don't have agency. It's a Russian talking point(that is "Ukrainians couldn't have chosen to join NATO and EU by themselves since they don't have agency, EU tricked them or NATO forced them to fight Russia, therefore Russia isn't the agressor but the defender here against the EU/NATO aggression").
What does free will have to do with it? I know a lot of Ukrainians, and many of them are disappointed in the EU’s support. Let me say it again: I have friends who are fighting, and they often blame the EU for the lack of support—there aren’t enough people, you see. It’s a meat grinder; they need more equipment and automated systems!
Just imagine how hard it must be for them right now, with Russian FPV-drones flying all over the city.
I don't think your friends are being reasonable, why would they think that EU should send manpower to fight Ukraine's war? I agree that EU should do more but EU also doesn't even have army. EU is currently doing things that it isn't even build to do, if eventually EU becomes a superstate then they can help more substantially but unfortunately EU isn't there yet.
People expect EU to do much more that EU can do by design, EU is bunch of sovereign states that coordinate and only some of those states have considerable military power but even those countries politics wouldn't allow much. AFD is pro-Russian party that is the most popular political power in Germany which means EU doesn't have the power and Germany is divided and this goes for almost all countries. Just recently in Bulgaria(which sent substential military help to Ukraine in early days of the war) the pro-Russian political power won in a landslide and today they announced that they cut all the support for Ukraine(they will keep selling though).
No one is saying that the EU should send troops, but you need to understand that your security depends directly on all the aid you provide to Ukraine. Specifically, on the people who are dying and holding Russia back with their very lives! If they stop doing so, Ukraine will lose territory, and once it loses enough of it, Estonia, for example, will be next. And by then, you and I might even be fighting against the Russians.
I agree with you, Ukraine is essential for the European security and EU should do whatever they can to make Ukraine win but unfortunately EU isn't as integrated as USA yet, countries are still nationalistic entities and EU still needs huge reforms.
The American betrayal(as it is perceived) may push EU into becoming that but it's not there. At it's current form EU does the most it can.
Oh ... well the EU is not actually giving Ukraine much money at all. They are loaning money to them. The reward for Ukrainians' services and lives will be a century of paying back loans to the EU. Still better than being part of Russia, I guess, but.
Why "free will" is critical, is because before Russia attacked, the Ukrainian government had the sense to not in a million years accept such a terrible deal from the EU. As to how free that will really is when constantly under fire with Europe refusing to help it (despite things like the Budapest memorandum) ... is not being discussed.
This has caused a number of EU countries, like Poland and Finland, to decide that a nuclear program to get working ICBMs is a lot cheaper than counting on EU and US goodwill when they're attacked.
Ukraine is also doing a "Chinese-style" nuclear program. The idea is to get every component of ICBMs working. Ukraine, for historical reasons, needs uranium enrichment (it's either that or rebuilding two dozen nuclear reactors). So Ukraine is getting into China's/Japan's position right before they got nukes. Ukraine also has engineers that have actually designed working nuclear bombs. Meaning they're getting to the point that they "don't have nukes, BUT ..."
With the unspoken part being that they're getting to the point where they can have 100 working ICBMs ready to launch by next month.
So we'll have the Ukrainian government, armed with nukes, and a huge involuntary and very unfair war debt to the EU.
Should be interesting negotiations.
But the free will part is critical because without the "free will under pressure" Ukraine would never make itself so incredibly indebted to the EU. And we'll get to see nuclear interest-rate negotations!
I think we need you to provide the numbers about what you consider "very unfair war debt" to the EU.
The 90B€ loan is just the latest mechanism for financial aid, there have been a lot of equipment transfers/donations from member-states, direct financial support for purchase of equipment, countries like Germany and Sweden even changed national laws to allow direct financial support (donations) to Ukraine.
The vast majority of the financial support for Ukraine has been donations, I'm not sure why you think otherwise so sharing the hard data you have could be a good start.
> EU is not actually giving Ukraine much money at all
You are confusing the latest 90B loan with all the other help. Also EU found a way to go around the vetoes by individual countries sending Ukraine help under EU coordination. The grants vs loans is more like 65 to 35 as a ratio.
Also lots of other half truths and unfair commentary, whatever...
> Look at Ukraine, how weak they were and how good they defended themselves.
How can you type such nonsense? Look at 2014 Crimean annexation - thats "how good they defended themselves" without western training and billions in weapon aid. After four years they have million plus dead but "this is fine" for the west.
There was no fight in Crimea, Russians rented a base there and one day decided not to extend the rental agreement and that they own Crimea now. Most of the Ukrainian soldiers switched sides and joined Russia and it was over without a bullet fired.
So US may decide that they now own Germany because they have the Ramstein Air base but I don't think it will go as smoothly.
There are old videos from the time on Youtube, check it out.
[citation needed] - if I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain..., the only source that says that there are more than 1 million killed and wounded (!) Ukrainian soldiers is the Russian Ministry of Defense, which I wouldn't consider very trustworthy...
In Bulgaria the ID requirement was introduced in recent years as it has been abused to run scam networks. It was big problem in Turkey, as Bulgarian scam networks were pulling the bride scam to such an extent that the scammers started scamming classes for wannabe scammers.
It is entirely possible that Apple soon may loose EU market entirely once the Trump gets a relief in Iran and once again tries to invade Greenland.
Apple's services revenue is showing a strong growth and it is entirely dependent on keeping the ecosystem closed so that it can take its commission and sell its services.
Once things get moving they would prefer still having control on the on the US market rather than making slightly more money(if any. No one wants this AI stuff as you can tell by the strong sales Apple keeps having despite or thanks to not having AI integrated) when the EU market is still open to them.
They are in a position of having no seas and only EU on every side, which means things are getting more bureaucratic the more EU-Swiss relationship sours. Think border checks on the ground and flight restrictions in the air and the less than 10M rich people in the mountains can now trade only among themselves.
Swiss can have their policy, who said they can't have it? It's just that they can't make EU have the Swiss policy. If Switzerland wants to be a 3rd party country, they can do that and negotiate visa regime, import/export controls etc with EU like everyone else who is not part of EU or don't have a deal. They can be like UK or Turkey for example, or be have entirely different relationship.
It’s up to the Swiss to decide regardless, if population limit is more important than being integrated into Europe they can do that. What they can’t do is to have equal access to the single market like the other EU countries without the obligation that other countries have.
There’s not going to be negotiations to drop the core principles, I don’t know why bunch of people keep imagining this. UK was let go, Switzerland will be let go too.
Hoping different outcome by negotiation over this is like hoping for negotiating your way out of your gym membership payment when still attending. Not going to happen unless you become a charity case or insignificant, being significant is not a strength its a weakness when you are looking for charity or special treatment. Switzerland can imagine being too important to loose just as UK thought and they will be let go as UK.
I guess leaving EU can be useful to those who want to do things to Switzerland just like they did things to UK.
Ah, I overcame this by not using easily recognizable for the theme words but descriptions. It forces people to actually process the input.
I like how karpathy defined book reading as actually being prompting, so IMHO overcoming the defaults with people is very similar to prompt engineering as people actually always are prompting - we don’t do bit perfect data transfers over voice when speaking to each other but prompt.
> more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children
Close but it’s not about fun, it’s about exploring the new possibilities. There’s simply no time for having kids when you just transition to a new way of life and you don’t know what to do. You maybe want to travel the world or build a house etc so you work more and spend more towards these. The next gen is having more kids.
Bulgaria used to be a prime example of population collapse but today has the highest birth rates in Europe(not just EU). The population will still shrink but as the dust settles people have certainty, know what to expect from life and can make a choice of having kids. Traveling the world can be just a phase in the early 20s, don’t have to grind as much for the basics, the definition of success isn’t getting rich through hard work so a simple and balanced life with kids becomes a feasible and desirable option.
The cuts that don't make much economical sense are ideological, its because they need to give something to that part of the coalition. Somewhere someone is having an erection when hears about these cuts and say something like despite everything supporting Trump was worth it after all.
It’s the protocol of the brave new world, you and the recipient need a single sentence to communicate but the culture dictates using certain language and politeness + personal flavor so your AI helps you write culturally appropriate fluff and the person who receives it is using their AI to get rid if the fluff so you are both optimized for productivity through stripping the culture away making your interactions faceless and yourself fungible.
You can imagine this spread into dating as well, so you just have sex efficiently to optimize the breeding and hedonism.
At some point the protocol of expanding and then compacting with AI will also be removed to optimize the unneeded inference and people will again talk to each other but using the caveman language, stripped away from centuries of culture.
My ADHD rejects modernity. I shall type novels when engaged in discussions about feature design decisions and if your question has an easy answer I will give it to you shortly.
I absolutely agree with your opinion and I loathe it.
I (mostly) welcome _people_ writing medium to long form emails, slack posts, and pull request comment (and the like).
What really grinds my gears is when the clearly desired response is a few words or a single sentence, and what I get is a link to an obviously llm generated 3 page pdf full of em-dashes and emoji bullet pointed lists with very little relevance or context about the question.
If I wanted Claude or ChatGPT's response, I would have asked them. If I'm going to bother a cow orker with a question, it's because I want domain specific knowledge or workplace experience that might be important.
I'm more and more often internally reacting with "if you didn't bother writing it, I don't need to bother reading it".
I would welcome your 30 min or half day turnaround with a well written and thought response, over lazy/disrespectful colleges who are just doing the instant 2026 version of "just fucking google it".
Hey, speaking of gear grinding - have you run into LLM generated comments? I have always loathed JavaDoc and friends as I think it encourages vapid space filling comments that are inherently knowable from the code - when it's connected to a renderer (as was the original JavaDoc) so that the comments can be exposed without the code that is fine-ish - it serves a purpose and I can comprehend the rational but in most cases I've seen those comments committed without any intent to ever render them separately.
In the modern world we've got comments written by LLMs because "You've got to write a comment, of course, it's required!" but now the actually significant comments (the Why comments - as opposed to the What ones) are lost in a sea of LLM slop so no one will read them. Considering it'd be just as easy for the reader to point a conversational LLM at the codefile if they want the LLM interpretation of what's happening why are we bothering committing it at all?
Gosh that really grinds my gears. It's definitely a tangent but that being encouraged is a huge red flag for me.
In high inflation countries you often get a revision every 2-3 months and you get a rise that is higher than the official inflation, as a result this solidifies the inflation and boosts the economy as everyone immediately buys whatever they can before it becomes more expensive. It's a vicious cycle.
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