Trump is an evil evil man, anybody who can’t see that is a sociopath or worse.

Weird thing to say after spending so much time and effort telling me how doing what I like is wrong and unpopular,

I have no idea what your problem is? I never claimed in any way it is wrong, I also showed that it used to be way more popular than it is today.
I just state the reasons I think it kind of fell out of fashion.

but thanks for the permission, I guess

It is not a permission, that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. On the contrary it’s an acknowledgement of you not just following the mainstream but doing what you like.

I have no idea why you would be butthurt about any of this?

I suppose you mean “minus” instead of minutes.
I suspected something of that sort. Back then using teaspoons was considered somewhat casual.
And now you find the old ways kind of neat. Yes the old cake fork has a slight advantage in that it can be used as a fork, and it typically has an edge to “cut” if it’s a proper one. But in reality those “advantages” don’t really matter, at least not for most people.
A cake can be cut with a teaspoon just as well, and for most cakes the fork function doesn’t really work, and in my experience the fork is used as a spoon anyway.

But hey, have fun. Do what you like. 😀

I must have missed that memo

Maybe you are not old enough, such things used to be way more important half a century ago.

A small fork is generally considered the “correct” cutlery for cake in Denmark.
Obviously a teaspoon serves the purpose just as well, and those are standard to have.
And we are not a pretentious people, so many don’t even have the forks. Since they are pretty useless for anything else. So the small forks are basically superfluous.

Seems to me their only purpose is etiquette, and most Danes don’t really appreciate that when it has no purpose than the etiquette itself.

And with the Russian economy collapsing, Putin is desperate for that money!
Desperate enough to sacrifice an ally (Iran).
I wouldn’t be surprised that the reason USA attacked Iran, was to help Putin.

Absolutely, Putin hates USA, and will do everything he can to undermine USA.
Trump’s friendliness towards Russia and Putin is 100% one way only.

I’m not saying it will happen, but that it can happen. And if you don’t realize that’s how far relations between USA and allies have fallen, that that is a risk. Then you haven’t been paying attention.

I knew Trump had won the day before the election. Of course I didn’t know for sure, but there were so many signs of everything being measured to favor the Democrats.
But despite I was sure Trump would win, I was still shocked that the American people were that stupid.
I wasn’t so surprised the second time, more disappointed. And now everything is falling apart, both in USA an internationally.
But I think the rest of the world will be OK, we will just have to figure out how to work with China instead of USA.

Our Western systems already gave adapted, and all of Europe are working with Ukraine now, be because Ukraine is the global leader on drones.
You sound like someone who believes American superiority is a given. Even when USA is winning every battle in Iran, but losing the war.
You clearly don’t understand what asymmetric war means.

They don’t have to turn them off, they only need to not “delay” armory and spare parts, because of “supply issues.”

Why would I read outdated stupid bullcrap? F-35 is in no way proven to last for a long term conflict.
You can’t have air superiority with planes that can’t fly because of lack of maintenance or suitable airfields.
Did you even read what I wrote?
Furthermore the skies belong to drones now. If a $5000 drone can shoot down a 300 million F-35. It’s such a huge assymetry that the F-35 will look like something as useless as if it was from ww2.
It’s delusional to invest in F-35 at this point in time. Despite it’s technologically sophisticated it is just as outdated as it is expensive.
It’s the same assymetry we are seeing in Iran, where Americans use 1 million dollar missiles to shoot down $50k drones, and some times they even use more missiles for 1 drone. Resulting in the Iran war costing $6 billion for USA in just the first 3 days!

Instead of just reading old worthless shit, you should also apply some critical thinking.

Nah I don’t believe you, Ukraine has been able to close the skies over Ukraine against Russia, so Russian planes can’t enter Ukrainian airspace.
Although the Russian planes are not as good as the American, I think that whatever Ukraine is doing could be done against F-35 too.
Saab Vigen with AWAC support will probably do well enough, even against F-35. Especially if they were designed for it.
But that’s irrelevant for now, because they are definitely good enough against Russian equipment, which is what the traditional enemy is using.

If we came at war against other F-35, who would we be fighting against? If it’s USA, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 for anything leaving us utterly defenseless.
If it’s against Russia, and Trump decides to help Russia, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 either.

F-35 is useless, because USA has become an unreliable ally even acting like an enemy. It doesn’t matter if it’s technologically superior if it’s rendered useless by USA.

I also seriously doubt F-35 is very good in a prolonged war, because it requires insane amounts of maintenance, a plane standing on the ground because it requires fixing isn’t worth anything. And that’s a clear danger with F-35, because it requires about 5 times as much maintenance as Vigen AFAIK. F-35 is also extremely demanding in other way, like the quality of airbases. So a bombed airbase can easily ground F-35 too. Where with the Vigen you can take off and land on a decent road.

F-35 is only superior when you disregard all the downsides. Pressure the enemy to have their F-35 constantly in the air, and the F-35 air defense will quickly collapse.

Have these indicators been trending downward for 20 years,

They have trended down at least since Bush. Obama restored a lot, more than I thought possible. But 2 times electing Trump has resulted in people not trusting USA anymore, even if there’s a better administration next time.
So I think that for sure these numbers have generally trended down for about 25 years now. But the 2nd time with Trump is clearly the worst. This is not “trending down” anymore, this is the numbers falling off a cliff. Again because the distrust is in the USA population too. We can’t trust a new administration either, because the next could be another Trump. Trump is a symptom not the cause.

Trump has done more to destroy USA in a year than Bush did in 8, and Trump himself did in his first 4 year term.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that China will have clearly surpassed USA as the global leader in 10 years.
USA has abandoned all its allies, and USA alone is no match for China. Obviously EU alone isn’t either. Only USA together with allies had a chance, but US leadership sucked anyway, for instance in failing completely on environmental issues.

So here we are, we can only hope China will be a better world leader than USA. Or at least not too much worse.

EU citizen here:
One major issue where USA has failed completely since the 70’s, is sustainable green energy.
Europe has worked on that consistently since the 70’s, and we now use about half per capita of USA for similar productivity!

China takes this issue seriously, and does way more than USA, despite USA is the worlds biggest economy, they are among the countries that have done the least.

This is even more important than democracy, where USA is absolutely failing too, and not even supporting Ukraine against Russia. An innocent democracy attacked by an authoritarian aggressor that has decided to be the enemy of the west that wants to rebuild a former empire, when there was a strong opportunity for cooperation and economic growth.

USA is also threatening allies militarily, and is waging a trade war against partners and allies.

There is nothing left to cooperate with USA on. USA has placed itself morally below China on all major global issues. And has shown complete disrespect for national sovereignty and international law in every way possible. Something China respects, and has promised to keep respecting.

But Republicans have dramatically increased in their American arrogance and disrespect of other nations and even their own democracy since Bush, So USA isn’t even an allied country in the western goal to protect democracy anymore.
On the contrary they are working to undermine Ukraine, something USA also did under Biden at the same time as Biden helped Ukraine economically and with military equipment, Biden tied Ukraine’s hands on their back, forbidding any kind of attack into Russia! And for 4 years USA has given Russia unhindered access to Starlink, and recent data shows that Russia had 3 times as much traffic using Starlink as Ukraine had!

USA is not a friend to anyone anymore not even their own population or their own rule of law or their own democracy. USA is looking a lot like Russia did in the early 90’s. So no surprise that people are beginning to see China as a lesser evil than USA.
At least China respects sovereignty and international law, and isn’t warmongering like USA.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr589k5yleo

That article is only 5 month old, if that deal is so new, I cannot fathom why anybody would make a deal with USA at that point?

What does Australia get out of it?

That should have been: HOW does Australia get out of it?

Even though the deal we made on F35 was under Obama, it was such a bad deal, and 100% based on corruption and to help Obama against criticism in congress.
The numbers were unrealistically tweaked to make it look good, as if we could maintain the planes for a third what Norway were supposed to, and then have them fly twice as much!!
Imagine the fleet we could have, even including AWACs from Sweden and it would still be cheaper both to buy and maintain, and the planes from Sweden are more versatile in many ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if F-35 is part of the problem USA has in Iran. All the planes we hear of are older planes, why aren’t we hearing about how amazing their new super plane F-35 is? Seems it’s completely useless for the conflict?

Go for it UK! 👍
Meanwhile Denmark continues to buy F-35. I’ve been screaming and shouting about how bad that deal was from the start. And that was before USA threatened the Kingdom of Denmark. It is so stupid that the deal hasn’t been cancelled yet. Now we need to get rid of the F-35 planes we already bought!

not for the benefit of the citizens of the United States.

Of course it wasn’t, it was so the US government could control the propaganda instead of China.

What is this? Book advertisement?