Ben Matthews

Interesting concept, but the efficiency compared to standing turbines needs to be calculated based on the expected lifetime. What’s the leakage rate of the helium? What’s the resistance of the fabric (or whatever it’s made of) and cables to UV light ?

I guess you are right about building railways in Romania, for example I remember a train crossing the (then) shiny new EU-funded rail bridge across the Danube from Vidin, then continuing at a walking pace towards Craiova. However, where i lived near Ottignies in Belgium it was no better - they demolished houses, build tunnels and bridges, then postponed laying the rail track for over a decade. As for projects getting delayed and costs inflated by archaeological digs - check out tunnels in London… And don’t get lemmings (?) started on DB infrastructure… Maybe the emergency situation in Ukraine, oddly helps them to get some things moving faster ?

I remember in 1990s the talk about “Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok”, also having crossed the land border from Russia to China several times during that period, I felt the relative european culture on ‘our’ side. So, yes, there was a lost opportunity, and we could have been more welcoming, but it was not a conspiracy, nor were any specific political groups to blame (as article hints) - rather just the slow muddled consensus-processes of EU and NATO could not cope with any faster expansion, meanwhile russians got impatient and let Putin (KGB) take over, so it went bad.
If we were to redesign the whole structure, I’d say we should abolish NATO and replace it with a mutual defence organisation for democracies anywhere in the world - including Brazil, Japan, India, etc. if they like, but with no permanent membership. There should be clearly specified democratic criteria including freedom for political opposition, media, NGOs, etc., and when these are no-longer fulfilled, a procedure for suspension of rights that requires a large majority but no vetos. So, currently Hungary might be suspended, and even USA if it continues its current track, while democrats in Russia (or in exile from R) might be encouraged to see a long-term pathway open.
Such redesign of NATO - conversion from a tribal members club to a defence of democracy - might even be an face-saving way to end the war.

Ah yes, I see it on openrailwaymap, which also indicates mixed gauge all the way along the Tisza valley to Vinohradiv, also a ukranian gauge line from Uzhhorod to Kosice - are these still operating ?

Another trans-european link I should have mentioned for longer term planning - considering that Lukashenka won’t be in the way forever, is a ukrainian-gauge line from Riga to Odesa - reviving already existing connections (and to balance that - a polish gauge line Bialystok - Grodno - Vilnius , complementing rail baltica).

Seems to me a win-win scenario. Remember that Ukraine is actually remarkably good at railways - especially at manufacturing large numbers of comfortable and good-value sleeper wagons, which the rest of europe lacks, and also at maintaining their system in such adverse circumstances - their punctuality today is still much better than DB. On the other hand the track routes in Ukraine are anything but direct, dating from 19th century when capital cities were Petersburg and Vienna (so they align better N-S than E-W), so there’s a lot of potential to make them straighter. The obstacles maybe rather regional mistrust - whether politicians in Suceava accept the status of Chernivtsi - a similar question as whether hungarians / slovakians accept Uzhhorod, polish Lutsk or Kovel,…? Better passenger transport links could help to build trust.

Good, this means passengers can change in Uzhgorod - a nice town, instead of Chop which is just an isolated station with big gauge-changing sheds.
But it’s only 22km. So next step, plan a more ambitious standard gauge connection, from Suceava (Romania) via Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Lutsk to Chelm (Poland) - this could be a really useful european N-S link, skirting around the Carpathian mountains. In parallel, for balance, plan a ukranian-gauge track to Gdansk on the Baltic, to facilitate freight exports, also maybe extend the existing ukranian-gauge track which already reaches from Hrubieszow to Katowice.

I built personal webpages in the 1990s, and still do it now, I included javascript then, and still do now - to make calculations, show interactive graphics, quantitative stuff about climate change - see for example this model.
I get your concept, that more websites should be written and hosted by individuals not big tech - but javascript is not the essence of the problem - js is just calculating stuff client-side for efficiency. In theory big tech could still serve up personalised algorithm-driven feeds and targeted advertising, just with server-side page generation (like php) and a few cookies, would waste more bandwidth but no stress to them. Whereas disabling client side calculations would kill what i do, as I can’t as an individual afford to host big calculations on cloud servers (which is also technically harder).