They will. Autocrats love public applause, and what public applause is greater than a 90+ % vote? Or do you know of any autocracy that does not have a ritual of approval called elections?

Well, granted, military dictatorships usually don’t do this election thing. With all this ICE buildup, Department of War renaming, declaring war on gangs while redifining the Venuzuelan government as gang, and this Chipocalypse stuff Trump is cosplaying more and more as an unhinged warlord. I’m afraid you might be right.

Next US presidential elections.

There will be elections. All autocrats love elections. Being reelected with 90+ % just feels too good to not have them.

This image is far older than generative AI.

Below the dark blue waters of the Bay of Aarhus in northern Denmark, archaeologists search for coastal settlements swallowed by rising sea levels more than 8,500 years ago.

Here, we actually have an old coastline. We have a settlement that was positioned directly at the coastline,” he said. “What we actually try to find out here is how was life at a coastal settlement.”

Not Doggerland –that is in the middle of the North Sea.

Thank you for the Pfizergate link. Her handling of COVID was pretty bad, that’s true.

Regarding the sorry state of the German army – the Bundeswehr was neglected by every single government since the reunification, and von der Leyen was one of the few, if not the only defense minister in 30 years who addressed the issue and tried to improve the state of the army. It’s more complicated than competent/incompetent.

Where does this claim of incompetence come from? I remember her as Family Minister, Labour Minister and Defense Minister under Merkel, and she was definetely one of the most competent and progressive ministers in these cabinets, which lead to her being not backed by the conservative wing of the CDU and sent off to Brussels. Not because of incompetency, but because of being too competent and too progressive. After she became President of the European commission I cannot recall reports or claims of incompetency either until a couple of years ago everybody just began to agree that she’s incompetent without providing any example. So where’s her current incompetence? What did I miss?