Regdok

It's filled me with such joy (schadenfreude?) watching their stock drop the past couple months.

What does China stand to gain by attacking Russia?

@[email protected] already mentioned rare-earth's, but Siberia is also extremely rich in non-rare minerals and metals. China would also stand to gain oil, gas, and coal deposits. However one probably overlooked resource is fresh water.

Water is already a massive issue in the northern half of China (not just the arid west, but even around Beijing). Eastern Russia has a lot of fresh water, like for instance Lake Baikal which contains 20% of the planet's unfrozen freshwater. I saw some talk (5+ years ago) about China wanting to buy water-rights to this lake and pipeline it through Mongolia, but I've not heard of there being any concrete plans in the works yet.

Another possible gain would be easier access to the pacific and the arctic. In the extreme scenario where the Russian Federation splinters, and the eastern states of that federation find themselves without a way to make ends meet, China might make some very favorable deals in the region. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if several of them ended up federalizing with China (or something very similar; some form of vassalage).

And with global warming comes two huge boons:

• Siberia's tundra thawing, making it easier to access untapped resources.

• North pole remains largely ice-free for at least parts of the year, making shipping between eastern Asia and Europe cheaper and faster.

Maybe. There's no guarantee that every European nation would be on board with sanctioning the US in this scenario.

The Netherlands (where I believe they have the only manufacturing base of the machines that make advanced chips) might decide that it's not in their best interest to cut the US off.

Anyways I hope this Greenland shenanigans dies on the vine and my silly scenario never comes to pass.

europe will not go to war over THAT.

Yep. Here's a fun possible timeline:

• US takes over greenland. Europe won't respond militarily, but will cut off most ties to 'murika, and the US government will be like "why would europe be so mean to us, we were only trying to keep them safe from Russia and China?!".

• Europe won't pivot too hard to China/India, but they'll become preferred trading-partners. EU will become the bastion of actual Democracy.

• China will take that whole debacle as a green light to take Taiwan, or just re-taking manchuria (and keep taking bites out of Russia until they have reached the arctic). I honestly don't think they'll waste energy on Taiwan. Their military build-up and posturing towards Taiwan is probably just a ruse to lull Russia into a false sense of security.

• Russia will throw a hissyfit (threaten nukes, fail to deliver, and get fucked on the ground/air/sea). The US will try to come to their aid under the guise of stopping the "yellow threat" or whatever. That'll eventually fizzle out as the US devolves into a civil war (that will hopefully be over quickly, but will probably make the US truly isolationist for at least 50 years). Europeans might lament the aggression of China in public, but will privately go "fuck yeah get 'em".

• The Russian federation will collapse and splinter, and the rest of the 21st century will be a mess of global instability and the odd rogue van-borne nuke going off here and there, because swamp-troglodytes infested with a mongol khanate mindset (muscovy) should never have had nukes in the first place.

“magic box does things when I perform this ritual”

Sounds like humanity's understanding of tech in Warhammer 40k.

Sadly scrubbed for today. Not surprising as it has been really windy here in Vesterålen the past few days (I live in a neighbouring town, and it's been a little uncomfortable even just driving over bridges in cars).

Wouldn't be surprised if they start (or have started) hiding comments mentioning lemmy. I've recommended it a few times over there and never gotten any responses to those comments.

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

His comedic genius knows no bounds...

Same here! I've been dabbling with various linux distros a week here and a week there over the past decade. Now that I've finally given up on the few games that need kernel-level anticheats (like LoL and Battlefield), I'm staying permanently as all my other games work great. I probably wouldn't have jumped ship yet if steam (proton) wasn't where it's at now, though.

Since windows is on my smallest and slowest SSD I figured I'll just keep the dual-boot option indefinitely, mainly for helping friends and family troubleshoot windows-bullshit, or for the (now very) rare moments I need an app that doesn't exist or have an equivalent on linux.

We have the support of NATO if it comes to that.

Sadly it's unlikely you'd get any military support. The ranges involved prohibit anything but an armada of aircraft carriers from doing anything significant in a north-american theater of war. So the few NATO aircraft carriers that aren't US owned (UK 2, Italy 2, France 1 (3 helicopter carriers)) won't be able to help you guys out. They (and any troop transports) would be destroyed before they come anywhere close to the US.

It would take many decades for the European half of NATO to develop a military strong enough to take on the US on your side of the atlantic. At that point Canada might be so integrated into the US that the people who'd like us to come help you won't be enough for us to actually risk it.

The only thing we Europeans could realistically do is completely sanction the US. This of course would likely be the excuse the US eventually uses to lash out physically, which could lead to a world war (possibly the last world war). Europe's safest move is to just wait it out until the US snaps out of the insanity, or gets more unhinged and starts attacking itself (civil war. Hopefully a non-nuclear one). Then when the US lies in ruins (or the right people win quickly), Canada might be a country again.

All that said, I think an invasion is very unlikely at the moment. If the order to invade Canada went out tomorrow, much of the military would most likely revolt and depose the government. Of course this might change over time as more loyal generals are installed.

The current administration is filled with morons, but I think even they are smart enough to realize they are not yet in a position to do anything but be economically annoying. So if Trump goes full retard and says he's going to order an invasion, the people around him will stuff him away in an old folks home and let JD take over.