RobertoG

I think that, as an outsider, you can access by car.

Is just that, if you have to drive slowly, you can't park and you have to exit in the same place you entered, what's the point?

I assume you are talking about L'Eixample. That's the original design of that specific neighborhood and have nothing to do with the superblocks thing.

Crime increase and rents increase? That's some surprising finding. What are those superblocks where that happened exactly? And where is the 9 month construction job?

The point is totally wrong.

Most people that live on those areas are pretty happy with the changes, and people that is just passing around those areas are pretty happy too.

By the way, you don't need a car if you live and work in Barcelona. In fact, most people that own a car don't use it if they are moving inside the city.

The idea that you can drive your car to my street, generating noise and contamination and park it there using space, where the kids could be playing, just because you can't be bothered to take a bus is kind of tyrannical too, in my opinion. And it has nothing of utopian.

Public transport in Barcelona sucks? Man, you have high standards.

The description in the article about what "superblocks" are, is, I think, wrong.

It's not a binary thing "cars" vs. "not cars at all". Inside the "superblocks" is possible to use the car. Is just that you can't go anywhere except around the super-block and you have to drive in a slow pace.

Parking is also restricted to neighbors and short times for loading and unloading goods or people.

All that, disincentive cars going there except for specific needs. Also a lot of space is take away from cars for common pedestrian spaces and cycling.

Not worse that before and, anyway, who cares? This is about making people lives better not improving car traffic. Two goals that, in my opinion, are in opposition.

Great comment. I suspect that we all are vulnerable to Stockholm syndrome and doing the calculation of what price we will pay for changing our mind. After all, surviving is more important than being right.

Sounds like a Fermi paradox related fact. Specially in the center of the galaxy, I suppose.

>>"He also rotted Russia from the inside, putting only incompetent but loyal acolytes everywhere."

Not really. I recommend talking to Russians of certain age. What they say is something like "sure, Putin is far from perfect, but he saved us from the 90's"

I don't think most people understand how bad things were there after the wall fall. The usual human reaction is turn to a strong man that put some order in the chaos.

If not private planes, at least private jets.

You can stop being interested in physics, but physics never stop being interested in you! ;-)

That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an argument about thermodynamics.

The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first.

That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more efficient but not indefinitely, at some point, in order to extract oil, it will be necessary to spend the same energy than burning it creates.

I suppose we could say that it's kind of an inversion of what's going on with fusion research.

Some commenters say that we already pass that point and that's the reason oil companies CaPex have fall in the last years.

I don't know if that's the case, but I can't avoid to ask myself about solar.

Is the energy that a solar panel generate in its life enough for its normal use, plus extracting the minerals that it's made of, plus push the panel, through the ocean all the way from China? or are we fooling ourselves using oil for all that?

I would like to see some numbers and expert discussion about that.

So, you think that the original intention was to say "civilian governments".

You are very generous with your interpretations, I admire your optimism in how civilized comments in Internet are.

"civilized governments"? how that works?

I don't know about the images, but what about the watermark itself? Can I just take any photo and add a proprietary watermark?

Do you mean warm up?

Stretching before strength exercise sounds like a bad idea to me (but an excellent idea after).

But drawing from imagination is just copying from an abstraction existing in your brain. And that abstraction comes from inputs from the outside that you saw in the past, where would it come from if not that?

In the Obama example it comes from copyrighted inputs. Without the photos in the magazines and newspapers I would not have idea how Obama looks. Any draw I do, it's going to be derivative of those copyrighted photos and, maybe, other inputs more generics that I saw in the past (that could be copyrighted too).

How is that different from what that software is doing? It's not, it's just that it's done in an industrial scale.

This is just the same problem an artisan had when factories started to appear.

I think the problem is with the definition of copyright. It doesn't apply to the current environment. It could even be the case, that it never made sense in the first place, and only now, we are realizing.

I have never seen Obama in real life. If I can draw him because I know him from copyrighted works, is my draw copyright infringement?

>>People on Twitter are either wilfully dumb or simply ignorant.

I don't know but there are some comments asking for an distribute alternative to GitHub. That was pretty funny.

Give a chance to Godot before committing to a close platform!

https://godotengine.org/

More like 8 billion (next year).

I don't know about USA or China, but in Europe you can't access some Russian media, and it's still not clear to me what is the legal framework that legitimate that.

The European commission have that legal capacity? If somebody know why they can do that, I would like to know.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/03/03/by-banning-russian-me...

There are many things that Spain have done wrong, but the most important one is that it gave away power over its currency to people that have not its best interest in mind.

https://marketmonetarist.com/2015/07/14/the-euro-a-monetary-...

All debt is somebody asset.

Public debt is a private asset.

https://realprogressives.org/back-to-mmt-basics/

That's an interesting point.

After the reunification, Germany, as a country, is the poster child of economic success. The balance of trade of Germany, has been just ridiculous. Still, the conditions of the average German have not improve, if something, they are worst.

So, where are all that wealth going? I suppose if you ask the politicians they will tell you that to those lazy guys in the south. Well, that's not it. The Germans should take a good look at what's going on there.

Is that the model others should copy?

It's not about boogie men, it's about economic realities.

Very different countries can't be in a functional monetary and banking union without a common fiscal capacity. In terms of the USA it would be like there was a Fed without a treasure. Or another way to see it, it's like the countries in the Euro use a foreign currency that they don't control. If you are interested I recommend this prescient article by Wynne Godley (1).

So, if the design of the Euro is bad, why don't change it? Because for some countries is very advantageous. Germany being the best example, they are an export powerhouse that now have unrestricted access to the common market and, because is a common currency, it will no appreciate or devaluate following the commercial balance. Of course, this is sell like they don't want to finance the lazy pigs in the south.

(1) - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastri...

>>"is there now is unbounded spending across Euro countries with no end in sight"

That's simply not true. Just look to the data. If it was true, you would see grow in those countries. And also look to the difference in economic indicators between the countries that are in the € and those that are not. Being in the Euro is not so good deal like they try to sell us.

The "whatever it takes" didn't saved Italy or the PIGS, it saved the €. And it was a direct monetization of public debt that it's against the treaties (at least in spirit).

Think about it, in order to save the €, the ECB had to go against the treaties that define the Euro. If that don't tell you that the problem is the treaties and not in specific countries, nothing will do.

That's your proposed solution? I shouldn't drive a BMW?

I think I will aim for a political solution if you don't mind. There are two possibilities, a functional monetary union and a really democratic union or every country goes its way. Both work for me.