>The usa couldnt handle Aghanistan

Reddit level argument ignoring the fact that the US's goal there wasn't to win anything since there's nothing of value there, it was to funnel taxpayer money to the military industrial complex for 15 years.

Pretty sure the US could have glassed Afghanistan off the map if they really wanted but probably wouldn't have been very popular decision.

In fairness, the US has a pretty good record when it comes to invading continental Europe. They already have troops and nukes on the ground in the Netherlands...

And they didn't exactly struggle with the invasion parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor in the getting of high status targets in those theaters.

Arguably, the ICJ in the Hague is actually a result of one of those successful deployments of US forces on the continent.

Still not sure what can be done about the car battery ingestion challenges, though.

i think it's one of those things where how/if they will do it doesn't matter, it's a "we make the rules" thing

if the situation is such that a US -> Netherlands land invasion (with somehow independent armed forces?) is imaginable, you're past the point of the US-ICC legal relations mattering (i'd go so far as to say there's no sovereignty to speak of here :p)

Most European countries barely have a standing military to defend themselves, they're completely dependent on the USA for defense through NATO. And their leadership is so docile and complacent that I can't see them being able to muster up a strong resistance to any incursion, most likely if there was an actual invasion of The Hague they would let America do what they need to and try to return back to business as usual as quickly as possible. Again, they're not the types to think beyond the status quo.

If Universities are anything like other large public/public-adjacent organizations, the bulk of the in-house IT department was long since replaced by Microsoft resellers posing as IT. It’s insidious.

The trap of Microsoft is long contracts and setting up dependency. In many cases it was a big undertaking to get the current setup, now try convincing anyone to tear it out.

Does China actually "force" things to be done? As far as I can tell, in the realm of technology at least, the government mostly just sets direction and then lets private capital do its thing, albeit without letting power concentrate in a way that subverts government.

Well written. I hope one day the united states of europe is a real political entity, burying the stupidity that is fragmented national interests.

I knew plenty of office workers managing just fine using OpenOffice 10-15 years ago.

Today people are much more reliant on real-time collaboration, polished cloud and mobile experiences. Fractionalized open source software has a harder time competing with this than file based boxed software workflows of the past.

Coming from ex-USSR, I can assure you that shortages and shitty quality was not because of closed garden. But because of politics (and corruption) first. And lack of meritocratic natural selection.

Many factories were building crap or wrong stuff just because somebody high up in the Party found it convenient for some reason.