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Just name the telescope Star Citizen and declare the Kickstarter project complete.

I have it on good authority Beforeigners is more accurate. Time travel is a huge social issue in Norway.

The inflection point was actually the economic crisis. It, with a little help from the refugee crisis, basically allowed right wingers everywhere to lean on foreigner scaremongering. "your life is in the crapper and it's their fault, vote for us"

There's a clear case to be made regarding Hungary, I'd say. While it is not fascist in the strictest sense of the word, Orbán seems to be making an active and successful effort in making Hungary less democratic. I've seen his government called "soft fascism."

While India is not a fascist country, Modi's actions since elected are worrying for the state of democracy in India. It wouldn't be out of line to call him India's Orbán.

I'm Portuguese and I have always started counting with my index finger.

My impression is that Americans (and I assume Canadians) have larger houses than Europeans but not necessarily more rooms, so the hiding possibilities are the same. I mean the individual rooms are large, but not so large that one can hide behind the horizon. Looking for houses in, say totally randomly, Irvine, CA on Zillow there are hundreds of houses for sale that seem to have more than 2400 sq ft. For us normal SI units people that's 220 m2. Some houses are like 800 m2. This is pretty damned huge by European standards. For reference, in my local area of residence, there are 4 houses for sale that are more than 200 m2. That's out of 85 current listings. The largest is 300 m2. I assume American families don't have 11 children on average or something, nor do I assume that most American households have a bowling alley next to the kitchen. I understand that bountiful land has always been a characteristic of the US, so you guys can unironically say that, I dunno, 10m2 feels too small for a full bathroom.

I was thinking more of the square footage involved than anything else. Americans like their houses huge. Here in Sweden, only rarely do normal houses go for above 1 million.

What does "modest house" mean in your context?

Santa Clarita Diet is one best shows I have ever watched.

That's a lot of electricity. Last month I used 3132 KWh. I guess your house's insulation truly is godawful. My house isn't as ancient as yours but it is still 60 years old and the walls haven't been fully renovated since, so my house isn't exactly well insulated. It does have a new roof and good windows, though.

It doesn't include transfer. That was the first shock when I bought a house here in Sweden, but oh well. still beats paying rent around these parts.

My contract is 5 euro cents. Here it varies depending on your contract. There are also some heavy taxes on top of that, especially if you own the building for which you have your contract.

Ok, all this talk of utilities cost can't be right. Are you sure you are not talking about SEK instead of euros? I'm paying 349 SEK monthly, so more or less 35 euros for my 250Mb fiber internet, although that's with a discount. Without the discount the same service would cost 50 euros. As for my electricity bill, which includes heating, the last monthly bill was for 2500 SEK(250 euros)which is a lot by my standards, but keep in mind that I keep the at temp around 23 degrees during the day, and the central heating is powered by a decades old electric heater. Also, this has been the coldest weather(-16C today) I've had since I live in this house.

In the US specifically raising minimum wage on its own is a limited measure, because of extreme deregulation and general government opposition to unions, especially from the GOP. Still, raising wages stimulates spending, and hence the economy. It's not like inflation and high interest rates are problem these days. Wage growth in the US has been decoupled from productivity, and this is mostly a result of deregulation and the economic policies espoused by the two center right and right parties in the US. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ The moderate left wing that formed in the center right party in the past 20 years has failed to make any headway with this, mostly due to disinformation and lack of support in their own party, plus an archaic government system that is beginning to require some real amendments for it to even moderately function in any way. The slow turning of the constitution into infallible dogma, has made any such change very unlikely.

Thanks for the heads up, but not quite that cold here, yet. Temperatures really go down as one goes further inland. Supposedly we'll get -12 at night in the next few days, but today wasn't that bad. Additionally, the car port helps a lot with the car. Just parking the car with the front towards the house makes a definite difference to how cold the car gets.

While you guys are far behind the rest of the developed world, due to self inflicted idiocy, the sources of electricity generation are slowly and inexorably changing: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Electricity_production_by_source,_EU-27,_2019_(%).png

It would have been weird if Truman had gone "screw this war, I always thought it had been a mistake, anyway" right when the US was about to win it. And of course, no Truman doctrine. Also, saving atomic bombs for a rainy day, or something.

Alternatively there's an entire Hollywood movie about the 09 crisis that explains what a short is and is called The Big Short. Go watch it. It's really good, educational, and quite funny.

Oh, well. Thanks, anyway.

Austrian Economics follows praxeology, which means it rejects empiricism, which means it's not scientific, so it's not actually economics. https://mises.org/wire/do-austrians-really-reject-empirical-evidence

I thought it was well established that the Austrian school of economics is a bunch of nutters following an agenda, with little basis in actual science.

At least as far as Europe is concerned the further north you go the worse the food gets.