What an odd thing to say

Look into survivorship bias. The only 90 year old smokers you see are of course the ones that survived.

The statistic is an average. The 30 year old non-smoker being killed in an accident is an outlier exactly the same as the 90 year old that still smokes on the way to their grave. You might not lose anything because you die before you get lung cancer or you lose much more because you develop it at 40 years old, but on average a smoker loses 20 min per cigarette.

That’s how these statistics usually work:

(life expectancy of non-smokers - life expectancy of smokers) / # cigarettes an average smoker smokes in their lifetime

Obviously, it’s not literally like “that one cigarette ends your life 20 minutes earlier”.

That’s roughly a billion / a, nothing other countries couldn’t compensate if necessary. I’d rather have my country foot the bill than RFK Jr. having any influence on the WHO.

AfD will not govern on national level in the next four years. I expect that CDU in some eastern state will eventually form a coalition with the AfD, but that has to happen first before they try on a national level. Then it will depend on the fall-out of that state coalition what will happen next.

But Germany doesn’t actually have a problem with illegal immigration. Almost all immigrants in Germany are here legally.

There are roughly 50.000 “Ausreisepflichtige” (Persons required to leave the country) out of a population of 84 Million. That number is roughly constant over the last 10 years. Doesn’t seem to be an issue worth discussing.

They are already in parliament and will gain votes but they will not govern, that’s pretty much guaranteed. We will get a conservative-led government though, a little to the right of Merkel. Most probably a conservative/social democratic coalition (think Mitt Romney Republicans with Biden Democrats) or a less likely less stable conservative/green coalition (think Mitt Romney Republicans with AOC Democrats).

The new government will be pro Ukraine (with the conservatives and greens extremely so, with the social-democrats a little hesitant but mainly, too) but also pro-Israel (with the greens more hesitant). All parties involved are pro European integration.

To be honest, foreign policies will not change much except for the European Chat Control legislation. While the current German government is strongly against it, Social Democrats are somewhere between indifferent and in favor, conservatives are strongly in favor and while Greens are against it, I can see them agreeing to a bad compromise with the conservatives.

Ha, good one!

Getting the UK back is beneficial to all EU member states both as the second biggest economy and biggest military power of the continent. No other potential member state has anywhere near these benefits

I would assume some of the concessions would come back, but definitely not to the same extent as before, e.g. Schengen yes, Euro no.

70% instead of 5% is so far away that it’s pretty clear their system isn’t working. I would understand your criticism if we were talking about 10% vs. 5% but not with these numbers it’s clear this system never worked, even in a testing environment

Like with all things you post, maybe you should check your sources better. I’m not the one who posted the 10% statement

It’s an 8.16% increase, not 10% but still awful

It’s Germany’s biggest union

No, a lot worse

It looks like shit though

That thing looks AI generated. Better than what we got but still ridiculous. I mean, it’s huge but still somehow doesn’t really seem to have much space for passengers or cargo at the same time

Also, why is the cabin aerodynamic while the hood is not? The whole thing is nonsensical

There are many more examples than just Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan comes to mind but also many other Muslim countries use Islam and Shari’a law to control the population or use religious laws as an excuse for their authoritarianism. No religion is free of that.

The Chinese approach is far more effective I fear. The Soviet way worked only with mixed results and was more ideology driven than logical. In Poland, the Catholic Church became a huge factor in the opposition because of that. If religion is deeply rooted in society, controlling and steering religion makes for a powerful tool to control the masses while fighting it automatically makes it a strong opposition force.

I mean, I like Elon

Honest question, why?