Israel has neither universal health care, nor free education.

Also, any of the extant universal health care systems are cheaper than the current US health care system, so it’s not like saving money elsewhere would enable the funding of universal health care in the US.

They generally are, in rich countries. In poorer countries with less developed infrastructure you can still commonly find them.

If you want to go to Europe, don’t apply for asylum. This has no chance of succeeding, even for people from war-torn countries with ongoing genocides it is difficult.

The easiest way is to apply for a study visa. There are many EU countries with very good education, very low requirements for admission, and very low (or even no) tuition fees, even for non-EU students. Once you have a degree, you are anchored and can find a job and get citizenship without too much difficulty.

The alternative is to apply for a job. In this case you need some marketable skill that is difficult to find among the locals.

Median household income isn’t the same as GDP per capita. Moreover, both the value of GDP and the correction for PPP are dependent on the methodology to estimate them.

The shortest average work week globally is found in the Netherlands, where it is 30 hours per week. There are also substantial daycare subsidies, a quarterly sum paid per child, and the highest minimum income guarantee in the world. The fertility rate, while not at South Korea levels, is 1.44, well below replacement level.

Imagine going back in time to 1943 to the Auschwitz concentration camp and telling one of the Jewish prisoners that not only is there a Jewish state called Israel in the Middle East, but it is run by a fascist regime whose leader grabbed power in a self-coup and spends his time cozying up to and defending anti-Semites. What would they find harder to believe?

The most surprising about these findings is that there apparently is non-hate speech on X.

Well, you do you, but I prefer to actually get work done when I’m at work. If I don’t like my work anymore (well, it’s not my hobby, but still not that bad), I’ll go work somewhere else.

I have a 35-hour week with flexible hours so I could put it in 3 days if I wished. That seems awful to me though, I can’t really focus on my work anymore after 6 hours. All a matter of perspective I guess.

I was walking through the canteen with some classmates. One of them stole a sugar cube intended for coffee from the canteen. A teacher, apparently feeling Biblical, punished the whole group with an hour of detention.

Is there any actual evidence that Science lacks money?

That more money would actually help scientists do more interesting stuff?

Yes, there is a pretty strong correlation between R&D spending and scientific output. Even so, spending is only in the low single digit percentages of the economy everywhere. Societies could easily decide to spend less on decadent luxury and more on science.

Right now, do scientists actually have money problems making it difficult to conduct ambitious research?

So science is a high-risk, high-reward numbers game. You try more things, hire more scientists, and more science will happen. Most research doesn’t lead anywhere, but the small fraction that does leads to things you could just never get without scientific research. Yes, there are many (such as yours truly) who could have continued to be scientists but take jobs in industry because positions as scientific researchers are extremely competitive and there is not enough money to hire all suitable candidates.

Did they? European car makers together have a significantly larger market share in the global EV market than Tesla. The VW Group alone is only marginally behind Tesla, and likely to overtake them soon. The European EV market is completely dominated by European carmakers.

I’m not certain. I created a database to keep track of the number, but had to abandon the project due to the prohibitive cost of maintaining it.

By definition, everyone is opposed to illegal immigration, though they might differ in opinion about what immigration should be illegal.

Opposition to “illegal immigration” is practically always just a fig leaf for opposition to immigration. You can verify this easily by asking an opponent of “illegal immigration” whether they think legal immigration should become easier to reduce the incentives for illegal immigration. My counter for those who have answered in the affirmative is currently at zero.

English is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn.

I have never commuted by car, but I plan to get a car when I retire so I can drive around in the mornings.

My story is similar to yours, though I just got a warning, not a ban.

The first warning was for “abusing the report function” after I reported a post defending Derek Chauvin. I stopped reporting to the admins after that, and over time grew increasingly uneasy with the direction of Reddit as a more and more fascist-friendly organization, and the willing and eager contribution of Reddit’s CEO to millions of Covid deaths left a sour taste (and a nasty cough).

I got the second warning about a week ago after I joked the US government should go into the White House and Melania’s lover’s residence to arrest them since Trump pardoned a drug dealer, by the same reasoning the US government used to abduct Maduro and his wife. This was “threatening violence.” That was the last straw, I quit Reddit after that.

It’s not even that I mind them erring on the side of caution, or in this case on the side of insanity, it’s the double standard that irks me the most. An obvious joke goes too far, but in certain subreddits (you know the ones) users can advocate ethnic cleansing, war crimes, etc. with reckless abandon.

Did I just time travel to 2015?

Most European leaders mildly criticized the invasion at best. Their response can best be summarized by this conversation between Karremans and Mladić when Serbian troops overran the UN enclave prior to the Srebrenica genocide:

KARREMANS: “I am a piano player. Don’t shoot the piano player.”

MLADIC: “You are a poor piano player.”