Molotov Cocktail?

We are really seeing how some countries are transforming into electrostates now. Honestly it is more good governing and is also happening in poorer countries. The long term impacts will be massive though, as cars are a huge oil consumer and being less dependent on it, makes you less dependent on a bunch of really shitty countries(US, Iran, Russia, the Gulf States and so on)

I am pretty sure this is the Saudis making sure they can still export oil, even if the Americans invade Iran after the midterms. Like ground invasion invade and not the current bombing. A lot of oil somehow also seems to flow through the Strait of Hormuz right now, so other countries in the region think so as well. I would not be surprised, if they pay the Iranians for that transit.

That is the sort of logic that selling weapons to Israel is not a problem, because what Israel does with them is only Israels responsibility.

It is just crazy to think that Ukraine used to have a population slightly lower than France or Italy and today it is below Poland and shrinking faster. Obviously the refugees might return, but many soldiers will not. In Russia this will probably end up in a similar fashion.

Is defending your country not a “traditional value”? Just asking…

Sorry, but no:

Temporary until new energy comes online.

That is my point. The new energy does not need to be fossil fuels. We had similar oil prices in the early 2010s for years. That was without any major supply disruption. Since then inflation has been pretty high, so in real terms the oil prices back then were actually worse. We therefore very clearly have demand destruction not due to the oil price being too high, but demand destruction. That is without a major financial crisis or virus.

No it can and it likely does to an extend right now. So far we had three events, which actually lowered oil consumption. One was the 2008 financial crisis and one was Covid. The third was the last time the Strait of Hormuz had serious issues, namely the Iran-Iraq War. That actually lowered oil consumption by enough to lower global primary energy consumption. That obviously picked up after that again, but today we actually have EVs, wind, solar, heat pumps and so forth. We also see attacks against Russia fossil fuel infrastructure. Also the global population grew a lot faster after 1979 then it does today.

Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.

The best way to deal with high prices of fossil fuels is to transition away from them. For that having high prices is a good incentive.

If California High Speed Rail ever connects SD to SF then that trip should take only 4hours. That is the beauty of proper high speed rail.

Refugee status and it also just weakens Russia, when well educated young Russians leave the country. The EU is an obvious destination and obviously they need visas to enter. Also Russia has had a mobilization, which did end up with Russians being forced to fight in Ukraine. Somebody fleeing from that can be considered a refugee.

There are a lot of cheaper EVs available and right now the EV market is growing fast.

Lake Epstein and be done with it.

When you include airport security the train is faster than flying.

Hell no. The Israelis do not want a nuclear armed Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis currently build the Jeddah Tower. It is supposed to be the tallest skyscraper in the world once it is finished. The main contractor is the Saudi Binladin Group. That is the very contstruction company founded by the father of Osama bin Laden. The e i thing is just one of those things with Arab English translation.

implement proportional representation.

Actually not the case. France, Italy, Greece, Hungary and Lithuania do not have it either.

This is a different sort of counting then the Ukrainian numbers posted here sometimes. Meduza only counts Russian losses(so no North Korean or other non Russians) and more importantly verifies all of them individually from public sources. This takes a long time so some deaths are not recorded for months and also probably means they miss quite a few deaths. As such these figures are the lowest reasonable floor for any realistic guess. The Ukrainian figures are probably the upper bound. At least historically enemy losses were overestimate in past conflicts.

That being said this also shows a lot of other interesting things. So well worth a read.