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"Even if Trump is elected, nothing will change," said the stupid bastard.

You are really out of touch if you think that's why people are voting for the right.

"I need a quick store run, better make a short list since I'll forget something otherwise." "diet soda, yogurt, frozen veggies, almond flour" *walk away, remember something, better add it, look at list* What I actually wrote: "shadow, yoda, tundra, diamond floor" WTF brain.

It's not, they've been on the decline for a fair bit now. Mercedes had a sharp decline with the electrification movement and now with the move to the hybrid 4 cylinder, they are basically selling SUVs and even there they are not in the top 5. I think the only popular model they have atm is the G class. BMW is having an identity crisis where they have started leaning more in to luxury and comfort than performance and while that is a major contributor to their sales their enthusiasts are cooling off of the brand, thus making it less popular. Kind of like Bioware, they chase the the sales numbers and in the process lose their identity. VW is just not cheap enough or good enough anymore and Audi is basically just a bit of a more premium VW, so it's kind of being dragged down with it. Both BMW and Mercedes had a big enough following for foreign cars in the US. It's not fair to compare them with Toyota as they are not in the same class, a better comparison would be Lexus, Acura, Infinity and there they were competitive because they either offered better performance (BMW) or better luxury (Mercedes). Also from what I understand Mercedes was (is?) very popular in China. It was the biggest market they had, I think even outstripping Europe. (Similar with BMW, the whole reason they started doing those ridiculous grills was because of the Chinese) You remember correctly, they overengenired the crap out of them and hence there were a lot of parts that could break, also Americans notoriously don't service their cars. I mean you were just unfortunate in this situation in that you share a border with US.

EU car issue is that countries decided to stop subsidizing buying new cars, because it was seen as supporting rich people and when you combine it with increasing energy prices especially in Germany, it create situation where European car makers were producing expensive cars that people didn't have money to buy which was already problem them and then Chinese manufactures started to increase their imports thanks to subsidies that they receive from their government. So EU was in hard place where they had with their actions caused their car manufactures be in bad competitive situation and they can't even give subsidies because they are currently unpopular, so tariffs were only way to ensure that Chinese producers can't take much of market when European manufactures adjust, as most of them already have cheaper electric cars in their pipelines, but for most they are coming out 2026 or 2027. So in EU case tariffs were specific to answer in specific problem. In US case tariffs are general, which effect is harder to predict, but they most likely will not help US that much as their manufactures supply lines rarely are just in US and as Mexico, Canada and China are not just their biggest trading partners but main suppliers for many products that US manufactures use, tariffs will most likely cause need to increase prices of products produced in US also, not only imported products. And as US workforce is expensive and tariffs aren't universal, companies will move their manufacturing facilities in countries that aren't targeted by tariffs. Chinese companies have in past moved their production in countries like Vietnam when Chinese products are targeted with tariffs. And some companies do virtual moves to US, like Mercedes that circled US tariffs by having facility in US where they shipped cars manufactured in Germany in parts and they had single robot line that put them together in US and claimed that they were build in US.

The EU is built a bit differently from the US economically though. They've always had often quite massive tariffs and subsidies as social engineering (eg the Common Agricultural Policy which specifically targets maintaining lifestyle type things) and have the tax set up to handle that. Trump seems to think that he can tariff as a means to lower taxes and there won't be any ill effects if he does it all at once. In reality the US would probably have to go towards the EU model of subsidising stuff* and price controls at some point. It would be quite funny watching the Rs try and defend commie practices like price controls at least. The car issues are also rather more complicated than just China. It's a double whammy of China controlling most of the rare earths trade for electric vehicles while the EU wants to switch to them wholesale, certainly, and the massive increase in energy costs from the embargo against Russia. You can certainly make a moral stand that the average VW/ Fiat/ Renault worker should not be paying the price for something they cannot control and which is a consequence of a decision made by their leaders and that the failure of an entire sector would be worse economically than subsidies and worse geo/politically too. *not that the US doesn't already, but it's mostly corporate welfare and results in things like high fructose corn syrup going into every product under the sun. Which is not the case for the Euros; always amuses me that the cheapest blue cheese here in New Zealand is Danish. There's light and day between the agricultural efficiency of the two countries- in NZ's favour- but the Euro subsidy is so high that you can still buy Danublu 150g at $4 while the NZ version is $5. Same for Bulgarian Feta vs NZ Feta. Also kind of funny that the Bulgars call it Feta when the EU has that as a Greek monopoly.

The wars, by and large, haven't been terrible for the US though. If they were they'd stop having so many. They cost money that goes on the fantasy pay back pile, a lot of people make a lot of money from them and, by and large, those who suffer most are people who aren't important. Problem is that those jobs aren't going to move back to the US, certainly not long term. The economy is based on buying cheap pap from overseas, not expensive guff from the US; making the overseas pap expensive isn't magically going to turn Detroit back into a thriving industrial powerhouse, it will just make everything expensive. To believe the Trump response requires the parallel belief that every other US President has been a malign actor deliberately stiffing their own country for the benefit of those overseas. Someone working 16 hour days in a Bangladeshi sweat shop making shoes or T shirts probably isn't that happy about it, but you're never going to get an american able to make T shirts to sell at 5 bucks a piece. You can only get an american to compete selling them at maybe $15 bucks a piece. Which will have an awful effect on poorer people who need those cheap shirts and will find their clothing bill and food bills going up significantly to be the last straw. Contrastingly, it's also 'bad' if too many poorer people get jobs due to all the illegal immigrants getting biffed out since that drives wage inflation which further drives prices up... Don't get me wrong, the orthodox economic model is awful, but it's the way it is for a reason. And when it comes to heavy industry type stuff coming home, well, to put it in perspective: nearing 3 years of a supposed existential crisis and with something as simple to make as artillery shells and it's still too hard to, uh, hit the targets. As always, the proper troll option is to buy French nuclear subs.

Dunno really, countries have always loved to blame their problem on the outside and it's the same with the 'rise of the right wing'. Far easier to believe it's being done to us by Bad Actors than to accept that we haven't really progressed very far from Thog hitting Thag with a club for wearing sacred forbidden cow leather instead of sacred accepted sheep leather and using our spring instead of theirs. As always, the actual data on influence operations suggests that they are disproportionately- and considerably so- pro west and pro status quo politics. Indeed, one might almost believe that there being so much talk of pro Russian influence operations comes directly from pro west ones. Current example: the number of 'independent' media and other outlets complaining about Trump freezing the money that was keeping them running. You know if they were accepting money from Russia they'd be compromised and bereft of integrity and independence, but have USAID or some CIA slush fund pay them: independence totally maintained. Or the 'Russian' pro far right campaign in Romania that turned out to be paid for by, well, Romanians attempting to manipulate who'd make the runoffs.

Don't think they have, really.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/resolution-games-announces-battlemarked-an-upcoming-vr-dungeons-and-dragons-game/ Sounds like a co-op game with no DM (or role playing) required. I suppose then that the RPG elements will be in the character builds.

So I started playing BG3 again. Stopped a few months ago, because somehow it didn't grab me too much / it felt hard and complicated. Anyways, I binged the last 2 days, because apparently now it has clicked with me. Starting to get into what's all possible and such... Like, yesterday just for lolz I picked up one of those tiny rats that came all on me and threw it onto another rat... and that was a bad day for both rats. I lol'd. Still. This game feels so huge and I can't shake off the feeling that my characters and stats aren't great and that I should rather restart... but I just don't have the time to restart. Sinking another 30 or what hours into the game just to get back to where I am right now is not something I'd be looking forward to.

US has free trade deals with Canada and Mexico, who are friendly nations - particularly Canada, including the USMCA deal Trump was so proud of regardless of how it differed from NAFTA. As is most common in life doing broad things is dumb, so raising prices for Americans, damaging allied economies for nebulous reasons. Shame Putin's hostile to us, we could appeal to him to host some Oreshnik launch sites.

I am at 146/151 types of fish caught in Dredge. It feels wrong to give up on catching those last few.