Another undersea cable damaged in Baltic Sea

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/four-rheinmetall-plants-set-... for example.

I think all the statements that the EU "is freeloading" on the US are not factual. The US spends more than the EU because it has a nuclear arsenal (forbidden for many EU countries) and regularly engages in hegemonic wars like in the second Iraq war or in Afghanistan.

If the US withdraws its forces from the EU, Poland alone could stop a Russian invasion, not to mention a two front war with Finland involved.

I blame the EU politicians for not responding with more confidence and concrete examples like the above to Trump's recent statements. Trump has no cards to play. If he leaves, good riddance. If he threatens 50% tariffs, block Google, Meta, Amazon, X and Tesla. This is the language he understands.

All of the countries formerly occupied by Russia are seeking protection from Russia. There's no scenario where they'd turn toward it for protection, no matter whether US withdraws from European obligations.

Coal usage is levelling off and might even start going backwards over the next decade: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-coal-c...

You can't farm in soil that's filled with landmines, unexploded ordinance, and various shrapnel metals. Just ask how productive the fields of Verdun are.

Ukraine wasn't exactly a manufacturing powerhouse before the war, and Russia nearly levelled a big chunk of it, such as the Azovstal steel plant.

> Russian army is currently stronger than before the war.

Have you not watched /r/combatfootage recently? They're doing suicide-runs with golf buggies. They've completely run out of entire categories of armoured vehicles. They might have more meat left for the grinder, but they're forced to buy shells from North Korea!

> It will be wrong to dismiss it.

Oh sure, they retain a lot of strength on paper, but we've all seen what that paper is worth over the last three days... err... years.

> very stable now and there’s no path leading to such destabilization.

“How did you go bankrupt?” The other responds, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

> They are scared now

"Everything is fine" != "They are scared".

> incentive to return will be high

What incentive? The Ruble is going to lose a lot of its value when the Russian government can no longer afford to artificially prop it up. People don't like being paid in turnips and promises.

> South Korea is cultural proximity, shared language and established travel routes.

Sure, maybe, but would you rather work in an air-conditioned robotics factory that looks like a clean-room and getting paid in hard currency or cutting lumber in Siberia and getting paid in Rubles?

https://youtu.be/lNZ56C-f4a8?t=362

re "the West does not actually care about Ukraine", I think they care about the principle that you should be able to go about your business without getting invaded more than about Ukraine specifically. It's like if someone gets mugged in your town - you may not care that much about the specific victim but you care about the principle that the muggers don't get away with it.

You can't breathe pure oxygen under water, as it becomes very toxic very quickly as pressure goes up. So you have to dilute it with something. Nitrogen is easy to get hold of (actually you just compress atmospheric air). I'm also not sure cutting nitrogen out helps much with decompression sickness, you get it with other gases too - maybe more slowly, I'm not sure.

You can, and do, replace nitrogen with other gases, mostly helium (and in rare circumstances, hydrogen), but for other reasons. Nitrogen too becomes toxic under pressure, around the 30-40m mark, with symptoms similar to drunkenness - not good under water.

Funnily enough, helium does the same deeper down, except the symptoms there are the opposite - nervousness, tension etc. So to some extent perhaps these two balance out. Hydrogen has very low toxicity, but for some reason people feel queasy about mixing pure hydrogen and oxygen.

Crucially, too, a lot of deep diving is commercial in nature, and cost-sensitive. Anything that isn't just compressed and bottled air is getting very expensive very quickly.

It all gets incredibly complicated. Deep enough, you need to breathe gas that contains so little oxygen that you would suffocate on it at surface pressure. At pressure, it's fine - the partial pressure of oxygen is sufficient, and having less of it makes it less toxic. But you have to be careful to only use this gas deep enough, else you'll run out of oxygen. Or at other times, when decompressing, you might use an oxygen-rich mix, which while more toxic, helps you purge some of the other gases from your bloodstream, cutting decompression times.

It's a fascinating topic to read about from the comfort of my sofa.

Also, you would need to have pure oxygen available and breathe that for maybe an hour before each dive, which would be expensive and annoying. For touristic dives, especially along the shore, it's easier to just plan the dive so you can still see something interesting while waiting for decompression.