Best products from r/europe

PARIS — In the 1950s, French President Charles de Gaulle understood that if France wanted to create its own space for sovereign action in a world dominated by the United states and the Soviet Union, it had to possess its own nuclear force. Today, in the emerging global order dominated by the United States and China, artificial intelligence has become the most powerful resource that will determine the fate of nations in the times ahead. The only chance for not just France but Europe as a whole to remain a player is to participate fully in the development of AI.

The robust competition between America and China is accelerating the rapid evolution of machine learning, which will transform all aspects of life from employment and the social contract to genetic engineering and warfare. The pace of change is so swift that being left behind will make it nearly impossible to catch up. If that happens, Europe will become irretrievably subordinated to the geopolitical algorithms of others.

A new book by AI technologist and entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order,” ought to serve as a loud wakeup call for Europe. Not surprisingly, Europe warrants little ink in Lee’s book. As Lee sees it, while Silicon Valley and China are driving each other forward in the advance of AI, with an entrepreneurial frenzy abetted by abundant capital and a densely connected consumer base, Europe lacks a comparable innovation ecosystem or integrated digital marketplace. Its default alternative has been simply to accept the full platforms of the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter. In essence, Europe has become a colony in the American tech empire.

Because emergent technologies arise in response to social demand, Lee does, however, see an opening for Europe. While AI development in China and the United States is driven primarily by the quest for data and analytics that can be used commercially, Europeans are focused more on protecting the privacy of the user. As Lee told us in an interview: “That will cause the American giants some amount of trouble and may give local European entrepreneurs the chance to build something that is more consumer and individual-centric and that would go further than American companies would ever contemplate in protecting privacy.”

Europe’s leaders should seize this opportunity by fostering a continent-wide collaboration to put its distinct stamp on AI. The most promising prospect for Europe would be to blaze a different path than the United States or China. It could put its resources behind the proposal of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, to “re-decentralize” the Internet, both to assure a fairer allocation of the digital dividend and hand back control of personal data from big tech to individuals.

This culture-bound constraint on data collection, in turn, would reorient the development of AI in a more social instead of consumer-marketing direction, which has been the main focus of both China and Silicon Valley. Europe could further choose to compete where it has an advantage in basic science. Just as Europe joined together to create the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, European nations could cooperate on a project to be the first to build super-intelligent machines, ones that surpass human capacities.

The potential is there. The Scandinavian countries, of course, have long been engaged in the fray with such innovations as Skype and Spotify. Germany has its own digital modernization strategy, “Industry 4.0,” aimed at upgrading its manufacturing base through machine-learning tools. And though not gaining much traction so far, Chancellor Angela Merkel has highlighted the importance of European Union investment in AI. She has even mused that Europe could present a third way for AI.

France, a core nation of Europe alongside Germany, can make a critical contribution. As the most active modernizer on the European scene today, French President Emmanuel Macron is well positioned to promote Europe’s role as a third pillar of the AI revolution. Like de Gaulle in his time, Macron has an intuitive sense of what it takes to stay in the game — and a bold political imagination to figure out how to do so. From his first days in office, he has focused on invigorating Europe’s entrepreneurial culture and bolstering state support for innovation, especially in AI.

“My goal is to recreate a European sovereignty in AI,” he said. “If you want to manage your own choice of society, your choice of civilization, you have to be able to be an acting part of this AI revolution.” Drawing on his country’s heritage as a cradle of scientific discovery and the Enlightenment, he has recruited the brainy mathematician and AI guru Cédric Villani to lay the foundation for France’s effort.

Macron is on the right track. The AI challenge may be just the summons a continent torn apart by persistent centrifugal forces — financial crisis, immigration and populism — needs to embrace unity more fully. An ambitious historic project aimed at reaping the economic benefits of AI, securing an independent presence for European values in the new world order and leading a scientific breakthrough to superintelligence would provide a binding narrative for a continent adrift. Such a moonshot vision would be far more compelling for Europeans than the tired pitch from Brussels that dourly sells a common Europe as canned spinach, something the paternal authorities say is good for you but that everyone hates.

Belatedly grasping what is at stake, E.U. regulators are now taking rearguard action against American big tech through the General Data Protection Regulation and other means. But if Europe wants to get ahead of the game, to recover the sovereign ability to chart its own course, it needs an innovation ecosystem that makes it the author of its own algorithms while at the same time building on its unique strengths in science.

> It's harder for me to learn European Portuguese

I maintain a list of resources for European Portuguese. I'll paste it below.

> Id watch the shit out of a Portuguese Game of Thrones

There are quite a few new portuguese series. One of them is called "Ministério do Tempo" (ministry of time). It involves time traveling, to protect key events in Portuguese history.

http://www.rtp.pt/play/p3036/ministerio-do-tempo

You can find this and other series here.

http://www.rtp.pt/play/ondemand/ficcao

Or if you prefer a better interface, in the RTP Play app, under "inicio -> ficção".

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.rtp.play

> Awesome podcasts that aren't very difficult to follow.

The best I know is PsyLogicDrawing. It's a pop science, psychology channel. The narration is slow enough, and the enunciation is great. Plus you have subtitles available.

http://www.youtube.com/PsyLogicDrawing

I think "Sem Truques" may work too. The interviewer has a nice paused style of speaking. A good amount of her guests are from Portuguese ex-colonies though, so you may notice the accent.

https://youtu.be/O1xEcEzwcLM

Another one that surely will be recommend is Rui Unas' Maluco Beleza. He can speak rather fast though, and has a very accentuated vowel reduction (but that's almost standard in Lisbon these days).

https://youtu.be/r5upLuYRmk4

Below is the list of European Portuguese resources I mentioned. Some of it may be useful to you.

Hope it helps!

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Audio Courses

Michel Thomas uses European Portuguese.

http://www.michelthomas.com/learn-portuguese.php

The focus is spoken language, and I really like their teaching methods. Note the very first lesson uses a beep to remind you to pause and answer questions yourself. It is annoying in my opinion, but they stop doing it after the first lesson.


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Written Courses

(Note the books below are in Portuguese! If you're a beginner then this is only good if you have a tutor. If you're intermediate level books then it should work too. There is a book in English further down below)

The orthography of Portuguese changed recently (the so called AO90 orthographic agreement). So you should make sure written material complies with the new system.

This is the section of Portuguese for Foreigners in Wook, a really nice online bookstore in Portugal.

http://m.wook.pt/home/index?restricts=8066x5839x18010x18163

This one makes it explicit that it follows the new orthographic agreement so it's a very safe bet.

http://wook.pt/ficha?id=11352870

These also follow the orthographic agreement. Learning book plus exercises. Looks quite nice.

http://wook.pt/ficha?id=196038
http://wook.pt/ficha?id=222484



The FNAC bookstore in Portugal also has quite a few. This collection seems pretty good. They comply with the new orthography. Made at the university of Lisbon.

http://www.fnac.pt/Aprender-Portugues-1-Nivel-A1-A2-Manual-do-Aluno-Varios/a620488

http://www.fnac.pt/Aprender-Portugues-1-Nivel-A1-A2-Caderno-de-Exercicios-Varios/a623474

Those are the level 1 learning and exercise books. You can find the reminder on the website. Look for the ones with similar covers:

http://pesquisa.fnac.pt/SearchResult/ResultList.aspx?SCat=0%211&Search=Aprender+portugu%C3%AAs&submitbtn=%EF%84%8B&sft=1&sa=0

Here is a European Portuguese manual in English:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0992959209/qid=1459940549

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Apps

By the Portuguese Government

The Portuguese Government just released a brand new Portuguese learning platform. May still be a bit green but give it a go. More content will be added soon.

https://pptonline.acm.gov.pt/

In the thread about this app some people didn't like that it asked for phone number, but apparently you can just fill it with zeros.


Memrise

'Memrise' has European Portuguese flashcards. Note Memrise is also available as a mobile app.

http://www.memrise.com/course/1121957/portuguese-european-1/


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.memrise.android.memrisecompanion


Learn Portuguese - 6000 words

Has flashcards and more.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.memrise.android.memrisecompanion

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Online courses - Portuguese Government

The Instituto Camões (IC), founded by the Portuguese Government, provides online courses for foreign students (amongst many other services). Here is a promo clip

The IC courses range from beginner to advanced (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1). There is also a beginner's course geared towards Spanish speakers.

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/centro-virtual/portugues-para-estrangeiros

There are also courses to meet specialised needs. Such as Portuguese for Law, Business, Journalism, or Creative Writing.

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/centro-virtual/portugues-para-fins-especificos

As well as specialised courses for advanced students, in e.g. Translation and Linguistcs Information Technology, or in History and Sociology of Portuguese.

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/centro-virtual/cursos-de-especializacao

There's also courses for teachers and others. See their full range of classes here:

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/o-que-fazemos/aprender-portugues



Online courses - Others

The 'Practise Portuguese' site teaches European Portuguese.

https://www.practiceportuguese.com/

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Online one-on-one lessons

The 'Portuguese with Carla' online lessons site seems quite professional.

http://www.portuguesewithcarla.com/

There is also of course italki.

https://www.italki.com/

and verbling

https://verbling.com (you can add keywords in your query, so you may e.g. add "Portugal" to find Portuguese teachers)

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Group Practice

Due to their nature, it's not guaranteed there will be European Portuguese speakers in group practice. But chances are there will be.

There is a skype group for practise, see the sticky on /r/Portuguese

https://www.reddit.com/r/Portuguese/comments/37ujy9/skype_group_for_portuguese/

Verbling has communities

https://verbling.com/community

There are also Telegram Communities. Check out this post by Captain-Davy. Currently the Portuguese groups are:

Beginner's portuguese: https://telegram.me/joinchat/CLreZz5qWfJ9piwjA95EXg

Advanced Portuguese: https://telegram.me/joinchat/CLreZz4Squ-j88gFg9zZ_w

Portuguese Voice Only: https://telegram.me/joinchat/CLreZz6LIHPwj-9Q6HxsqA

For info in case the links become outdated,  pm @polyglossiabot.



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Language Exchange

Hellotalk has a good reputation.

http://www.hellotalk.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hellotalk

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Reading Material

The op-ed by Lucy Pepper in the online news site Observador, always each piece in both Portuguese and English (she's originally British, living in Portugal for 25 years).

http://observador.pt/opiniao/autor/lucy/

The Portuguese version always comes first. Scroll down for the English text.

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Portuguese TV and radio

There is RTP Play. It includes all the RTP (public television) TV channels and radio. Both live and on demand.

http://www.rtp.pt/play/

There are apps available.

http://www.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/mobile/apps.php

Using the app, some of the content has subtitles in Portuguese. One such example would be the series "Bem-vindos a beirais". Go to search (pesquiar), look up "beirais", choose a recent episode, and activate CC on the player.

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Documentaries on YouTube

Here is a Portuguese Documentary about punk rock with subtitles in English

https://youtu.be/Zk7eDn6YWQs

Here is a channel with quite a few Portuguese documentaries, many with subtitles

https://youtube.com/user/personanongratapic

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Educational Podcasts

"Say it in Portuguese" is a podcast about European Portuguese expressions. Intended for students of the language but fully in Portuguese, so not for absolute beginners.

http://sayitinportuguese.pt

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Music

One way to immerse yourself in the language is listening to music. Even if you don't understand it, you get used to the sounds and pick a word here and there.

You can also read the lyrics and once you know the lyrics every time you listen to the song you're reinforcing those words. (Keeping in mind music lyrics are often poetic and don't follow the usual rules of grammar)

For Portuguese bands check out:

/r/somluso

There's also the music discovery sub for music all Portuguese speaking countries:

/r/musicanova

Also see these threads with lyric music videos in /r/Portuguese.

(Part 1) http://www.reddit.com/r/portuguese/comments/49e33p//

(Part 2) https://www.reddit.com/r/Portuguese/comments/4lkfrs/a_few_music_videos_with_lyrics_european/

(Part 3) https://www.reddit.com/r/Portuguese/comments/4vi7ay/a_few_music_videos_with_lyrics_european/

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Certification

The Instituto Camões provides live certification around the world.

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/activity/o-que-fazemos/aprender-portugues/certificacao-de-aprendizagens








,

> It may not be the profs. Student organizations are pretty popular here and many of them are very much ideological. I've seen at my uni that people joined a student org for their good marketing, network and famous parties then started to hold those views more and more themselves.

That's not the university or student organizations as much as it is people. People like to feel ideologically actualized. That's not a symptom of youth or studenthood nearly as much as it is symptomatic of humanity. I don't know how much experience you have outside of school (and I don't mean that to insult you, I just don't know you!), but my experience in the "real world" before going back to grad school is that if anything these kinds of ideological organizations are even more prevalent (insofar as them existing across spectra of activity and ideology). I lived in Washington, DC for a while before this and the amount of political clubs was just insane, but they're even in areas like rural Alaska and Florida.

> Personally I don't think that a communist society is viable in anything larger than a kibbutz (which I'd call a community, not society) because it goes against human nature and has significant technical difficulties regarding efficient and sufficient production.

I emphatically agree with this. I generally find communism an interesting framework to operate under, but it's almost impossible for me to see it applicable on any way on a grand scale. I have a rather pessimistic view of humanity - not that I believe humans are inherently evil or wrong, but that doing the right thing is often difficult and that peoples' definitions of what is "right" are different and applied differently. This getting a bit into a diatribe, but I'd say my personal identification is closer to classical anarchism/libertarianism (NOT what modern American libertarianism is, which has almost nothing to do with the ideology) for the reasons you describe.

> ...classes based on economics are not the only way to stratify a society. In the USA it was also races, in Eastern Europe it was ethnicities, language and religion. Even if all workers had the same rights, a Russian was still "culturally superior" to a Lithuanian. People have other loyalties than to their class, and this is something that I think Marx was wrong about.

This is actually something Marx writes about with Engels and something he'd agree with you on. Marx did not state that economics was the only way to interpret history, but that it was one of the main forces of the "modern" era. He makes a point that stratification through race, religion, and ethnicity are all just as salient, but that economics was the one that oppressors could wield most strongly. The idea that Marx exclusively focused on economic stratification is something that's come from misinterpretation of his writings, and I've noticed that's mostly in literature coming since the 1980s - which probably coincides with the rise of neoliberalism in the West.

> Do you mean that the workers in some countries became accomplices of the capitalists, and a strong party with a strong leader is needed to keep the movement "pure"? Surely in the top 10 conspiracy theories.

Sort of. This is one of the big differences between Marxism and Leninism. Marx emphatically believed that workers fighting against the capitalists must occur organically, and that any attempt to manufacture revolution would end up being a fake revolution that would end up being more dangerous and destructive in the long run (ironic, isn't it?). This was a strong reaction against the "great man" theory of the Enlightenment, which postulated that history is moved by the actions of "great men" and personae. Marx, on the other hand, believed that history was moved by class struggles - with "class" primarily operating under the economic definition but also including issues of race, nationality, and sex. That's one of several reasons why you'll see Leninism described as "not real communism", because it violates one of Marx's central tenants that revolution must come from the people and be sustained by the people, as any revolution stemming from a figure would end up becoming by and for the figure.

Seriously it's fascinating stuff, even if you or I don't subscribe to the political/ideological aspect of it. It's legitimately interesting reading, and you can get a cheap copy of collected works here if you don't feel like reading through several hundred pages of Das Capital (and I wouldn't recommend you do so).

> I'm an economist but I don't think that everything can be explained by economics.

I was a healthcare economist before starting grad school, and I think geographical inequalities (but not inequities) do better at influencing economic behavior. Most people look at economics as being the driver of human political and social behavior in the last couple of decades, but I think it's more like a descendant of a common variable (geography) than anything else.

> I'm a huge advocate of welfare economics and sustainable finance. The first one is concerned with using human welfare instead of GPD as a measure of economic success. The second uses environmental impact in the calculation of financial feasibility of projects.

Do you have any books or authors you'd recommend? I'm taking a course on sustainability that mostly focuses on health behavior, but I'd like to learn a bit more on the sustainability of welfare and environment.

By the way, I'm enjoying this talk with you. I like having to think critically about things I've read or experienced, and I'm definitely getting that this morning! I sincerely apologize for my initial frustration.

Excerpts from A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 on foreign support:

> Finland's early victories fired the imagination of the outside world. The so-called "Phony War" on the western front was beginning to bore people. The first month of the Winter War, however, raised the spirits of all those who were opposed to tyranny, especially since so few shots had yet been fired in tyranny's general direction. As historian Max Jakobsen elloquently put it: "So many small nations had been bullied into humiliating surrender, the dictators had won so many cheap victories, that idealism had been left starving...The Maginot Line might have reflected a feeling of security for those living behind it, but it could not inspire them as did the image of a Finnish soldier hurling a bottle at a tank."
>
> Everybody wanted to get involved, now that it looked like Finland might have a fighting chance. Unfortunately there was a rather extensive global conflict going on, and that made it hard for well-intentioned volunteers to reach Finland. Nevertheless, spontaneous gestures of help were made from every direction. Eight thousand Swedes volunteered, and they at least were both close and acclimated. No other foreign volunteers saw as much action as the Swedes. Eight hundred Norwegians and Danes volunteered. A battalion embarked from Hungary. Italian pilots flew north at the controls of Fiat bombers. Three hundred and fifty Finnish-American volunteers sailed from New York on the Gripsholm. Among the stranger volunteers on record were a Jamaican Negro and a handful of Japanese.
>
> From London, the incurably romantic Kermit Roosevelt, son of the Rough Rider president, announced the formation of an "international brigade" optimistically entitled the "Finnish Legion." His recruiting bulletins were worded to imply that anyone who had ever donned a pair of skis was qualified to join, without further training or conditioning. Roosevelt rounded up a total of 230 men for his "Legion" and managed to get them to Finland by the end of March, too late to fight but not too late for them to become a major nuisance. The Finns who processed these warriors found them to be a motley crew indeed: 30 percent were declared unfit for active duty, due to age, outstanding criminal records, or gross physical infirmities. Several had only one eye, and one over-the-hill idealist showed up sporting a wooden leg, just the thing for ski combat.
>
> Their fates were as diverse as their personal stories: sixty of them tried tried to return to England via Norway but managed to land in Oslo, in April, at the same time the German Army did. Some were detained as prisoners, others managed tos curry back across the border to Sweden. About 100 of them just settled in Finland, doing whatever came to hand: farming, logging, teaching English. One man ended up as the resident pro at the Helsinki golf club. Another, a journalist named Evans, obtained a post at the British Embassy and eventually became Harold Macmillan's press secretary. The rest simply vanished from the historical record, blending in with their surroundings either in Finland or Sweden. It is even possible that a few of them eventually realized their desire to fight the Russians by serving in the Finnish Army during the Continuation War of 1941-44.
>
> The Finnish public was certainly flattered by all this attention, and the rumor mills worked overtime, cranking out increasingly fabulous yarns about imminent and massive foreign intervention. To the average Finnish civilian, it must have looked as though the entire Western world was flexing its muscles to help "brave little Finland."
>
> The muscle flexing, of course, was mostlly rhetorical. The sad truth was that few Western countries, no matter how sympathetic to Finland, were in any position to help out, due to overriding concerns of foreign policy. Nowhere was this more true than in neighboring Sweden, where the gulf between cold-blooded political reality and public emotion assumed the dimensions of national schizophrenia. Popular sentiment was accurately reflected in the recruiting posters of the Swedish volunteer movement:
>
> > WITH FINLAND FOR SWEDEN!
> >
> > NOW THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A FINN -- IT IS YOUR DUTY TO SHOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SWEDE!
> >
> > join the swedish volunteers!!
>
> Apart from the extreme step of actually volunteering, hundreds of "Help Finland" projects were underway by mid-December; everyone wanted to help. Everyone, that is, except the Swedish government, who found the Finnish situation acutely embarrassing. Sweden's ruling politicians did not dare offer enough help to make a real difference in the odds. To do so would have compromised Sweden's neutrality at a very precarious time. Direct intervention on behalf of Finland might have meant war with Russia, or it was feared, some sort of hostile move, eventually, from the Germans. Regarding the Germans, the Swedes were being overly sensitive. It was not, after all, in Hitler's best interests to allow a Soviet republic to be established only five minutes' flying time away from the strategically priceless ore fields in northern Sweden. At the very least, effective Swedish aid would have prolonged the conflict, and that, too, would have been in Hitler's interest, since the Finnish war kept Stalin tied down in the northland and turned away from the Balkans. Hitler would not have moved a finger to stop ten Swedish divisions from marching to the aid of Finland.
>
> Matters were not helped by the hypocritical vacillations of Sweden's leaders. The Swedish people were passionately proud of their volunteer effort, and if a plebiscite had been taken about the matter, they would probably have voted overwhelmingly to go to war for their neighbor and former province. Large segments of the Swedish population viewed their own leaders as spineless and craven. Some public officials resigned in protest and shame. When Foreign Minister Sandler spoke in the Riksdag and labeled his government's policy "neutrality carried to the point of pure idiocy," he was rewarded with a standing ovation.
>
> The Germans allowed some arms to pass through the Reich, until a Swedish newspaper broke the story and Hitler initiated a policy of stony silence toward Finland, in response to frantic diplomatic pressure from his new "ally", the USSR. Oddly enough, however, some of the strongest sympathy for Finland was manifested in Fascist Italy. Huge crowds, including hundreds of Black Shirts in uniform, demonstrated emotionally in front of the Finnish Embassy in Rome, then, carrying the Finnish ambassador on their shoulders, marched to the Russian compound and vigorously stoned it. Italy dispatched substantial shipments of military equipment, including seventeen Fiat bombers and 150 volunteers, one of whom was killed in combat. Väinö Tanner even made attempts to enlist Mussolini's diplomatic influence to bring about peace negotiations with Moscow. Il Duce, however, brushed aside those appeals. Like Hitler, he too was happy to have Stalin's attention turned from the Balkans, where he had dreams of aggrandizement equal to, if less reallistic than, those of the Führer.
>
> In America, popular sentiment was almost totally pro-Finland. To the American people, Finland was almost a "pet" nation: a tough, brave little country that always "paid its debts on time," spawned great late-romantic music, and enthralled sports fans with the exploits of its champion athletes. In New York, Mayor La Guardia sponsored a "Help Finland" rally in Madison Square Garden. The American Red Cross sent substantial humanitarian aid. Stokowski and Toscanini conducted benefit concerts --- all Sibelius, naturally.
>
> Franklin Roosevelt was caught in an awkward position by the conflict. He wanted to help Finland, but he was hemmed in by strong isolationist feelings in Congress and by the restrictive neutrality laws that were still on the books from the Spanish civil war. When the first reports of mass bombings of civilians blazed across the front pages of American newspapers, FDR actually contemplated severing relations with the Soviet Union. He was bombarded with so many political arguments against doing that, however, that he finally went too far in the other direction. The American ambassador in Moscow was instructed to deliver a gutless and generalized appeal for "both sides" to refrain from bombing civilian targets, stating that the U.S. government did not approve of bombing nonmilitary targets. The upshot of this policy statement, one historian acidly observed, was that "America was on record as being against evil." Nevertheless, Roosevelt permitted high-level American diplomats to confer with their Finnish coutnerparts for the purpose of finding ways to get around the letter of the law. The outcome of these discussions was a scheme by which, under certain conditions, certain types of arms could be purchased by nations friendly to the United States, provided that the deal was made on a cash only basis, and that any items thus contracted for were shipped from America only in vessels flying the flag of the purchaser.

> Sure? I think Mariano is europhile.... -.-

He can be as much "europhile" as he wants, especially when it's about receiving money from EU institutions. But definitely not in favor of a federal Europe.

I don’t want to sound offensive, but this is a common critic with Southern Europe countries like Spain, Italy or Greece: countries that are really pro-EU when it's about receiving money, but pure anti-EU when it's about assuming obligations/responsibilities or giving away sovereignty in favor of the EU. And this is bad for the EU project interests, specially seeing it from the Northern Europe countries perspective (net contributors to the EU) who legitimately complain about this situation: it’s fair sending money to poorer EU regions, but it’s also fair seeing those same countries at least assume the obligations and responsibilities they are entitled to.

Spain is one of the best examples about this situation; which is criticized a lot by Catalan MEPs like Ramon Tremosa, who even wrote an entire book about this subject (and populisms like Brexit or Le Pen): The Europe they wanted to make fail. State centralism against the European Union.

Right now Spain is he EU Member State which complies least with EU legislation. According to a recent European Commission report on the application of European Union law in EU Member States, Spain was the country that failed to comply with the highest number of EC laws in 2016 with a total of 46 new infringement cases opened, the highest figure across all EU Member States. Spain also tops the overall ranking for infringement cases opened by the Commission with a total of 91 cases. This is a total disrespect for the EU and the EU law, when you notice some sectors of Spain’s economy live literally against EU law.

In the European Parliament, you can also see how against a federal Europe approach Spain is; almost anything that results with Spain losing some sovereignty in favor of the EU you see them fighting against as if they were “defending Spain” (you’d be amazed with some of the expressions Spanish MEPs use, as if EU was trying to “invade Spain”). Examples? From the banking union to the recent ports administration. The 2016 EU ports regulations is a (sad) example for me… The EU Parliament approved a law (absolute majority of Spanish MEPs voting against it) defending one of the historic revindications of the Catalans MEPs against Spain. This EU law stated the mandatory autonomous administrations of ports in all Europe. In Spain all ports (same with airports) are instead administrated from Madrid in a centralized, inefficient and antieconomic way (all money from all the Spanish ports must be sended to Madrid, meaning rich ports like Barcelona or Valencia can’t make use of the earnings and develop properly). This is an obsolete system that only Italy applies a part of Spain. A system right at the antipodes of efficient systems like the Germany’s or Netherland’s one (which the Catalan institutions prefer and have demanded for decades). So well, the EU finally approved a law that made mandatory the Catalan approach: decentralization of ports, and autonomous administration (more efficient, competitive and economic). Sounds perfect right? Well, Spain and Italy complained so hard against this (mandatory) EU law, that at the end the EU had to pass an "special exception" for them; meaning this EU law is applied in all EU countries except in Spain and Italy…. >_<

Want to hear an unfortunate truth ? Assholes succeed in life precisely because they are assholes.

Jeffrey Pfeffer is ranked as one of the best business school professors in the United States. He has studied political parties, large corporations and powerful politicians for decades. He is an expert on power. He is a professor at Stanford University.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/jeffrey-pfeffer

According to Pfeffer, all the talks about corporate social responsabilities are lies. All the talks about nice guys are lies. Complete assholes suceed all the time with women and in the business world. However, anybody proclaiming that reality in public will get attacked by society because society hates to hear it. He wrote an entire book on that :

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Some-People-Have-Others/dp/0061789089

This is how he described Donald Trump :

>For the most part, real-world success comes from behaviors that are precisely the opposite of typical leadership prescriptions. Trump actually embodies many of the leadership qualities that cause people to succeed—albeit they are pretty much the opposite of what leadership experts tout. Trump takes liberties with the facts. No, he did not write the best-selling business book of all time, as he claimed. And some aspects of his business acumen and success are clearly exaggerated—after all, Trump-named casinos went into bankruptcy. No matter. Telling the truth is an overrated quality for leaders.

>Leaders lie with more frequency and skill than others. Some of the most revered and wealthiest people mastered the skill of presenting a less than veridical version of reality. Larry Ellison, like many people working in software, exaggerated the availability and features of products. And then there’s Steve Jobs. The phrase “reality distortion field” says a lot about Jobs’ fabulous ability to make things that weren’t true become true through his assertions of their truthfulness, a widely known process called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

>Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s recent call for servant leaders is well intentioned. But at a time when CEO salaries have soared to more than 300 times that of their companies’ average employees, there’s not too much servant leadership going on.

>Another piece of the puzzle: most leadership talks, books, and blogs describe aspirational qualities we wish our leaders possessed. So we tell stories about unique, heroic, unusual people and situations—not quite realizing that the very uniqueness probably makes such tales, even if they are true (and they are often not), a poor guide for coping with the world as it exists.

>My recommendation? First, understand the social science that speaks to the qualities that make people successful, at least by some definitions: the economic penalties, particularly for men, from being too nice; research that shows that lying in everyday life is both common and mostly not sanctioned; and the evidence that narcissistic leaders in Silicon Valley earn more money and remain longer in their CEO roles. The only way to change the world is first understanding how it really works.

http://fortune.com/2015/08/07/donald-trump-leadership-lessons/

>So is subjugating females, waging wars, genocide, inventing blatantly fictive deities to explain shit, slavery, and what-not.

What I meant to say is that traditions and rituals are universal in human behaviour and are found within all human cultures. With the exception of war and deities, none of the things that you listed above are universal in human behaviour or culture. And even then, the amount and focus of those two things varies greatly across cultures.

>We would've been better.

Define "better". Our emergence of intelligence and sentience is what inevitably gave rise to the things that you're trying to tell everyone is bad for some ungodly reason. Without these things we would have still been wild animals roaming around and struggling to survive. Sure, one could make the argument that humans would be better off stupid and not damaging the planet, but would it really be better? What if another animal became intelligent enough to form sentience and form traditions and cultures? Would they be better or worse than humans? Who knows really.

>It's to argue against one of the many human flaws; humans aren't the embodiment of perfection and have much to improve upon you know?

This is getting into a deeper argument of whether or not humans are inherently good or not. Although I do agree that humans do have flaws, as do all other species on the planet, I do not believe that traditions are one of them. Let's look at how traditions have affected humans throughout the years shall we?

First off, the things that I keep repeating over again (traditions and culture) most likely arrived millions of years ago with the emergence of the first stone tools found 2.5-3 mya, most likely made by Australopithecus, commonly referred to as the Oldowan stone tool culture. Even though these stone tools were extremely simplistic, they spread rather quickly throughout the groups, the knowledge being passed down through generations via parents teaching their children what these are for and how to use them. This doubles as a survival tactic as well as a tradition. Australopithecines most likely lived in small, band-like groups and this knowledge, and tradition, was passed down with the enforcement from members of that band. Already in the Oldowan culture, one can see regional variants beginning to emerge. The reason that this happens is most often to form a sense of community and belonging to the group (referred to as "communitas"), which strengthens social bonds and positive feelings within the group. This trend of making stone tools because other people make them, having regional variants of stone tools because other people do them, continued for millions of years. These traditions then extended into clothing, art, buildings, food, etc. Then with the spread of worship and humans looking to a higher power to explain the world, things like holidays and celebrations came around. These also had the positive effect of bringing a sense of community and closeness with the people around you. Hell, I'm willing to bet that you celebrate things like your birthday, Christmas/Hanukkah, New Years Eve, or any other holidays. True, traditions do occasionally lead to conflict and clashes in opinion, but please tell me what doesn't. It is an accepted risk that hominins took when they decided to live in groups. It has its positives and negatives, just like the opposite situation (living alone and without traditions).

Looking at the evidence found throughout millions of years, the benefits of traditions FAR outweigh any negative repercussions, so I have no idea what you mean when you say that it's a flaw. In that logic everything is a flaw. If that were the case, it wouldn't be a thing today. These things exist for a reason. They help us to survive and thrive. Even with this giant wall of text, you might still think that traditions are useless and have no benefit, for some reason. In that case, fucking practice what you preach. Take all your clothes off, don't celebrate any holidays, go live in a cave, forget English, use no tools, and see how far you get.

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049103/

Some of my textbooks for my Anthropology major:

https://www.amazon.ca/Anthropology-What-Does-Human-Canadian/dp/0199012865

https://www.amazon.ca/Human-Voyage-Exploring-Biological-Anthropology/dp/0176531912

https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Humanity-Introduction-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/125981842X

> I would argue that both genetics and the environment have an effect on intellect

Of course. Nobody with any sense who has looked at the research denies that, everybody on the herediterian side of the argument acknowledges that. Don't set up a strawman.

Anyway, I pretty much agree with what you write: yes, IQ can be seen as a ceiling, and you still need a nurturing environment to actually reach that ceiling.

We most likely just differ where I believe the plot of IQ-vs-nurturing-factor on the Y vs X axis is very steep, i.e. one runs into diminishing returns very quickly, while you seem to believe it is a much more gradual slope.

Also, I believe the evidence so far points in the direction of there being population group differences, which you probably don't. I wish there wasn't, but that's what it looks like, although the question has certainly not been settled.

Other than that, let me just add that there are solid critiques out there of both the interpretation of the Flynn effect as a real increase of fluid intelligence (i.e. Spearman's g-factor), and that Eyferth study. I would advice you to look them up and make your mind up from what the data says, and not just your prior beliefs and wishes for how the world ideally should be.

(On a side note, that one Eyferth study is not only the strongest study on the side of nurture being the most important, but pretty much the only such study. And it has significant weaknesses. The number of studies -- mostly with better methodology than the Eyferth study -- coming down on the side of "IQ is mostly heritable" is at least in the hundreds.)

As for more information about the herediterian arguments, I've heard that "Intelligence: All That Matters" by Stuart Ritchie is a great primer, and it's recent.

In case of paywall:

​

An Independence Day parade might sound uncontroversial, but in Poland it has proven anything but. The parade in question is a nationalist march in Warsaw organized by far-right groups that was scheduled to take place on Sunday to mark 100 years of Polish independence. That was before it became a political football surrounded by confusion and uncertainty—and a useful window deep into the Polish psyche.

On Wednesday, Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz of the center-right Civic Platform party announced she would be canceling the march, citing as justification a history of previousIndependence Day marches marred by xenophobia and violence. “This is not how the celebrations should look on the 100th anniversary of regaining our independence,” she said. “Warsaw has suffered enough because of aggressive nationalism.”

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, a member of the ruling Law and Justice party, quickly declared he would now be organizing a state-sanctioned march along the same route the far-right groups had planned to take. “Everyone is invited, come only with red-and-white flags,” he wrote on Twitter, an allusion to the Polish national flag, and an indirect reference to the white-supremacist banners and slogans from last year’s Independence Day march.

But that was before a court overturned Gronkiewicz-Waltz’s ban. Sunday’s centennial events, which should ordinarily herald a day of national celebration, are now being awaited with dread—not least because many Poles believe their country’s president and prime minister, have done little or nothing in the past to discourage marchers calling for a “white Europe” and spouting anti-Semitic chants. In his announcement this week, Duda did not mention the reasons that Poles might doubt his sincerity—above all, Law and Justice’s long-running flirtation with Polish far-right groups.

The question is why, in Europe’s most economically successful post-communist country, has a ruling party ended up struggling to separate itself from openly extremist nationalists? In answering that question, and deciding what to do about it, it’s not enough to examine Law and Justice’s rise to power—one must also understand the peculiar culture of Polish nationalism that the party appeals to. In Poland, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, there is no necessary contradiction between a commitment to democracy and to the most extreme forms of nationalism.

123 years of subjugation  

After enjoying the status of major European power in the 16th and 17th centuries, poor leadership and internal strife led to Poland being partitioned by the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian empires in 1795. The country that had produced Europe’s first written constitution and at its height spanned a territory three times the size of today’s Germany disappeared from the map for 123 years.

During this period, the Polish nation, bereft a sovereign state, immersed itself in the arts. The cultural soon became political as poets and writers strove not just to preserve Polish culture, but also to propagate the dream of an independent Poland, ultimately inspiring several unsuccessful insurrections in the 19th century. The Catholic Church also played a key role in preserving Polish culture and the dream of an independent state during this period. This marriage between culture, politics, and religion eventually birthed a new interpretation of “Polishness,” one that constitutes the core of that propagated by Poland’s present-day nationalists.

This new identity was summed up by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s foremost poet, who described Poland as the “Christ of nations.” The parareligious Messianic assertion of Polish exceptionalism portrayed Poles as a morally superior collective suffering iniquity at the hands of immoral others yet destined to ultimately triumph and save Europe from its sinful self.

By the time Poland finally regained independence in 1918, this interpretation of Polishness had firmly entrenched itself in wider societal consciousness, symbolized by a slogan always present at the Independence Day marches organized by Poland’s far-right groups: “God, Honor, Fatherland.”

​

The much fought-for independence of 1918, however, was to prove cruelly brief, cut short by Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. That was followed by Soviet occupation and the post-World War II transformation of the country into a Soviet satellite state. While Poles will officially mark their 100-year independence anniversary this Sunday, few consider Poland to have been genuinely independent during the communist era of 1945 to 1989. The communist era is important to understanding contemporary events in Poland, as that period familiarized Poles with the idea that a country could be formally independent without being truly autonomous.

But even totalitarian communism failed to reorient Poles toward an understanding of Polishness different from that popularized in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Brian Porter-Szucs, a history professor at the University of Michigan, has observed, faced with the stubborn refusal of Poles to forgo the ideals of “God, Honor, Fatherland” in favor of an atheist internationalist communist identity, by 1956, Poland’s communist party had given up “any serious ambition to fundamentally transform Polish culture and society.”

Wladyslaw Gomulka, the communist party leader from 1956 to 1970, thus promised communism would be implemented the “Polish way.” In practice, this entailed blending nationalism with communism, the former aimed at reassuring Poles the national identity forged in the 19th century would be preserved in the new order. From the late 1950s, the red-and-white Polish flag thus “became much more prominent than the red communist flag,” while “state propaganda intensified the use of the adjective ‘Polish’ before standard communist slogans,” Porter-Szucs wrote.

The fact that Poland’s communists concluded that to sell communism to Poles, they needed to incorporate the vocabulary of Polish nationalism developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries shows how deeply it had permeated popular consciousness. It is also no coincidence that the Solidarity trade-union movement of the 1980s, which eventually triggered the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, was led by a figure like Lech Walesa. Walesa’s defiant victory salutes, ever-present Virgin Mary lapel pin, and repeated declarations of love for Poland captured the essence of Polish patriotism understood as loyalty to God, honor, and the Fatherland. When Solidarity eventually prevailed and communism collapsed in 1989, Poles roundly heralded their regaining of independence, just like in 1918.

> its pretty universally acknowledged that free trade is a good thing.

Funny how no one ever asks "good for who and good for what?". Good for prices and good for international corporations bottom line sure. Easy to make that economic model. Unfortunately we don't live in mathematical economic models, we live in the real world.

Most would consider it better to have:

• Domestic employment, not third world pollute all you want, barely above slave labor.
  
  
• Domestic successful companies, not international corporations who only take money out of the local economy.
  
  > I would argue that protectionism in that time didn't help economic conditions at all.
  
  If you actually care about this topic I suggest: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/0141047976
  
  

Prices for LED lights dropped quite a lot over the past 10-ish years and it seems to still continue that trend.

The most common bulb types are down to a few Euro per piece, which they should save in energy costs within a couple of months.

To be fair, iirc the old incandescent light bulbs were even cheaper, roughly around 1€ a piece, so technically LED bulbs are still more expensive to purchase.

But on the other hand I'd regard bulbs for 2-4€ a piece as clearly within the negligible price region.


e.g. 60w-equivalent e27 at 2700K are about 1.50€ each


e.g. 60w-equivalent e27 at 4000K are about 2.50€ each






Less common bulb types as well as more fancy bulbs are more expensive but back in the day that was the case with similar incandescant light bulbs as well.






Anyway, those discussions aside: What I really like on LED bulbs is that even the very bright ones won't get to hot. I still remember those bloody little halogen lamps embedded in kitchen units which got to hot to touch within a minute, and the 100w-bulbs with the same behaviour. I'm not sad about these being practically gone nowadays. LED elements allow for a lot of new form factors which weren't viable with classic bulbs, and they make various existing forms more safe, like fairy light chains on a christmas tree.



They also got way better at creating various "good" light temperatures with LEDs, which was one of the main weaknesses the tech had a decade ago.

2000$?

You're like an American living in Silicon Valley saying Detroit and everywhere else in the USA is perfect. You've experienced the best Romania has to offer. Do notice that the minimum wage in Romania is 240$ and you said your colleagues were making 2000 EUROS (after taxes??), meaning $2500. Simple math says that your colleagues were making more than 10 times what a minimum wage worker makes in one month, meaning your friends worked only one month to get an amount of money a poor Romanian would have to work their ass of for an entire year. That's an attractive salary everywhere in the world, but in Romania it's HUGE. How can you consider yourself worthy of speaking for an entire country if you only lived near to people who were making thousands of euro a month? About 40% of Romania is rural. I'd love to see a peasant make 2000 a month shoveling manure, now that would be funny. Also, what a coincidence. Our president apparently makes 6700 lei a month which is about 2000$. Obama makes $33333 a month but I guess that's appropriate for "the most powerful man in the world".

> See here's the thing: I lived in Bucharest for a while as an expat. Utilities only set me back about 600 lei and I was living it large in a 3 bedroom apartment so I don't see how you can hit $300 in utilities. I'm paying almost 600 euros in utilities now in Belgium.

Note that I said "small family". Also, minimum wage is 800 lei in Romania and you just said that while being on your own you spent 600 lei on the bills alone and the government thinks that you can afford food, clothes and luxuries with those 200 lei that remain. A traditional family made of a working father and a stay-at-home mother is difficult to sustain given those conditions. The average wage in Romania is about 1600 lei. After you pay the utilities you're left with 1000 lei which is 300$ for non-Romanians. With 300$ you have to afford new clothes, food, going out, watching movies, buy furniture and electronics like a TV (a 40 inch TV is about 500$) or a smartphone (a nexus 5, considered a midrange phone is 350 euro in Romania). Most families also have only one person who works (the father) and has to sustain a few other family members or friends.

>Cars? They're like 20% cheaper than the prices in western europe and you have dacias cheaper than anywhere else and they are great cars. I remember someone in my office bought a VW Gold for 15000 euros while another friend of mine that was living in Scandinavia bought almost the same model for 45000 euros.

Romania is full of cars that have Bulgarian license plates. I'll leave you to think about why that happens.

A car is 20% cheaper but are salaries here only 20% smaller than in the rest of Europe? Minimum wage in Poland is almost double than it is in Romania, about 400 euros. Minimum wage in Poland is higher than the average wage in Romania. Yes, that's true, look it up. Do you think a Romanian cares about 20% cheaper cars when he struggles to make what in Poland is considered the absolute minimum wage? And that's Poland, I won't even talk about Germany, UK, France or goddamn Scandinavia. You're being silly here.

>Electronics? Are you fucking shitting me? I stocked up on electronics like crazy when I was living there. I was buying the newest graphics cards and shipping them off to friends in europe where they couldn't even get them nevermind the price! After I moved to Belgium I had someone buy me the laptop in Romania and send it to me because it cost HALF what it cost here!

you mean second hand? An online shop that sells electronics even made an article saying that buying from other countries, especially from the UK isn't cheaper than buying from them. http://blog.pcgarage.ro/magazin-pc-garage/componente-pc-mai-ieftine-%E2%80%9Cafara%E2%80%9D-mit-sau-realitate/

Here's a gtx780 Ti as an example:

http://www.pcgarage.ro/placi-video/asus/geforce-gtx-780-ti-directcu-ii-oc-3gb-ddr5-384-bit/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GeForce-DirectCU-Graphics-Express-DisplayPort/dp/B00HFMPMX6

3277 lei vs 2665 lei (from UK, link below, same model) . Even without the price cut Amazon sells that GPU at 2750 lei. My gpu, a 7850, was about 1150 lei in Romania. In the UK it was always much cheaper. In the USA my HD7850 was 180$ at that time. The popular entry level smartphone is Moto G and it's $130 in the USA, in Romania it's about $300.



>And don't get me started on your internet. Gigabit internet for like what... $15 US? Mobile internet costs like $3 and it works everywhere.

Gigabit isn't available everywhere though. That's the only good thing about living here, that and piracy laws that aren't enforced at all, and very rarely someone gets busted for cybernetic crimes. And no, mobile internet is a bit more expensive than that. The 3$/month internet you're talking about is probably slow mobile internet that's capped at about 100 or 200MB a month.

>Beeeeer! Oh my freaking god I could buy a beer in a bar for one euro and it wasn't a bargain bin brand. It was only lagers but I can live with that.

Since when is food a worry? even someone from the rural parts of the country can afford beer and almost anything he wants to eat. Why do you think villages are full of drunken hobos who pick fights with people all the time? Alcohol is something everyone can afford and if they're too poor to afford a beer chances are they're living in a rural area where they have the means to make their own stuff like Palinca, Tuica, wine or whatever.

>I will give you that the salaries are sometimes low (though my romanian coworkers were taking home almost 2k euros after taxes) but you pay next to nothing in income taxes. What's you income tax? Flat 16%? Call me when you're paying 45%. Your VAT is high but you have basically no property taxes. Back home in Canada I am paying through the nose for not selling my apartment after moving out of it.

Did you seriously compare CANADA to Romania? Canada is one of the best countries you can live in. Every wealthy Romanian person moves to another country when they require medical aid, they know that money can buy better things than what Romania's free "healthcare" can provide.

And also, taxes are much higher. You end up paying around 50% of what you make after you take into account income tax (16%), health tax, insurance and the other taxes that you have to pay. I don't know where you lived or where you worked but taxes here are so high that working illegally is extremely popular, even though it obviously has severe consequences. People would rather sacrifice their pension than to starve to death working like a slave for minimum wage.

>Worst? You're complaining your kids learn C++ and Python? All the countries on this planet are desperate to introduce programming to the school curriculum and you are dissatisfied that your includes it? Why? What possible reason could you have to complain about something like this?

We're talking about kids here. Children who are going through difficult times and don't have time for all that. C++ is considered a fairly low level language, it's a bad choice for a first language. It's too complicated. It's not for everyone. Something more simple like Java would've been a better choice. Slamming a hundred books on a kids desk and telling him "memorize all that or else!" isn't education. You can't force feed education and expect it to work. Paid tutors have become a trend here, you can't survive without one because there are specific rules you have to follow even when solving math problems. You have to write in a specific, robotic way or else you lose points. Same goes for language tests and others. Everyone cheats during their tests here, teachers getting bribed and offering extra, paid classes to students (in exchange for better grades of course) is a huge problem here. It's such a big problem that instead of buying furniture or equipment for schools they're put cameras everywhere. And guess what, the moment cameras are installed, the average grades in that place drop significantly.

>Your highschool graduates can stand toe to toe with the STEM universtiy graduates of other countries and you think this is a bad thing? What is this bizzaro world?

You mean hypothetically or in practice? It's a bit optimistic to hope such a thing. Because every year about 60-80% students fail the Bacalaureat exam that they need to pass in order to graduate university. That's how much old literature, derivatives, integrals and C++ matters to 80% of the Romanian population. If you're a country full of poverty and corruption you can't hope to achieve what the USA, England, Japan and other more advanced countries couldn't. It's been proven that poverty and education greatly affect someone's IQ. That's why Romania has a fairly low average IQ. The 3rd or 2nd lowest in EU from what I saw here: http://www.photius.com/rankings/national_iq_scores_country_ranks.html

Sorry for the long reply and the many types of currencies used. But I'm sure that you'll either write tl;dr or insult me. Well it's too late to delete this now that I've wasted so much time so here I go.

Read the whole OP article:

• Microsoft’s failure to obey a 2004 antitrust order and charge reasonable fees for software licenses saw it fined €899 million four years later.
  
  
• Intel’s lawyer said in 2009 that he was “mystified” on what regulators wanted the company to do to comply with an order to halt anti-competitive rebates for chip sales to computer makers. Intel may finally receive clarity when the EU’s top court rules on its legal challenge to a 1.06 billion euro fine on Sept. 6.
  
  
• Regulators are also expected to levy fines in separate investigations into Google’s Android mobile-phone software -- possibly later this year -- and the AdSense advertising service.
  
  So these great companies that do something new and innovative gets fined. All thanks to some law created by the bureaucrats.
  
  Were customers hurt by the Intel's rebates? I doubt it. Who was really hurt by them? Some company that was unable to charge customers a higher price, and thanks to EU's "antitrust laws", they are now able to do that.
  
  The press release that you sent:
  
  > It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."
  
  How does it deny? How European customers do not have a choice? I know that there are amazon.de, alternate.de, cyberport.de, mindfactory.de and other big European stores and guess where did I find them? In Google. Somehow "evil" Google shopping did not prevent me.
  
  Using this "antitrust law", could we apply the same logic to EU? On the EU membership application, does it advertise other unions, such as CIS, NAFTA, etc? Does Eurozone application advertise Chinese yuan? It does not, because it would be absurd. Just like the Google's case is absurd.
  
  Let's compare American Amazon and German Amazon and see how it works, lets take for example a very new and innovative Intel Core i7-7800X processor.
  
  On American Amazon it costs $375.90 = 315.55 euro.
  
  On German Amazon it costs 355.99 euro.
  
  By some reason, in EU it costs 12% more expensive. So much for a customer benefit?

More to tell? Um...In my experience, British people won't automatically be dicks to Americans (or anyone, really). But there's definitely a period I've had with my British acquaintances where they were clearly reserving judgement until they've determined whether or not I was a walking stereotype. At one point I won someone's respect but picking up on sarcasm and responding in kind.

Watching the English was something I read not long after getting serious with my partner. It helped put many cultural differences in context, especially class-related stuff. It's not that Americans don't have a class system, but rules signalling class is primarily based on income, where in the UK it has much more to do with education and social mores.

Romanians are generally pretty cool with Americans and Brits, in my year of experience. However, there are some class differences - people who are reasonably well educated and young have zero problems with Brits/Americans, where as older, working class people tend to be harder to win over (but they're rarely openly antagonistic or resentful). Not being a dick (e.g. not treating taxi drivers or store clerks like robots) and learning some Romanian goes a long way.

I just found a good condition second hand of the 50cm x 33cm 2005 edition for 50 pounds but the next cheapest on amazon was 95. The 50 quid one is still showing as available, so they might have multiple copies (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/3822831255/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1504358596&sr=8-7) but I can't guarantee it's not an error. If you're willing to pay full price there is a new one for about 150 euros here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/3822831255/ref=tmm_hrd_collectible_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=collectible&qid=1504358596&sr=8-7

I've got to say, the 2016 English edition still looks amazing and actually has an extra hundred pages or so, as well as the really nice slip case which doubles as a bookstand. It's not that much smaller either.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blaeu-Atlas-Maior-Va-Joan/dp/3836538032/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504358596&sr=8-2&keywords=taschen+atlas+maior

You take a permanent text marker and use your hand to "Write on the PC". You get bonus points if you also write on your Monitor.

As i'm from Germany i would recommend the Staedler Lumocolor Fine Point Permanent marker: https://www.amazon.com/Staedtler-Lumocolor-Point-Permanent-Marker/dp/B005ENFQ48/

In my years of experience with this pen none ever went empty before i lost them somewhere somehow.

^(Editors notice: This article may have been sponsored by Staedler, who hopefully will send me a few free pens for the blatant advertisement for their products.)

> I think things like financial technology and so forth are the future of the UK economy.

Things like that do not increase the productivity. Financial sector is already too big in comparison to real economy. I think that is especially true in UK.

> I just do not think industry is really our strong point, compared to Germans and Dutchies etc. I do not see us being able to compete well on this.

Nokia's electronics branch was generating losses for 17 years (was subsidized by Finnish government). Korea's LG even longer (40 years?). Lack of free trade, protectionist tariffs, etc. have often led to increase of competitiveness of domestic industry. At, least that's what some books say.

The 'For Dummies' series has a good book for European Spanish. Should get you up to scratch.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Dummies-European-V%C3%A1zquez-Bermejo/dp/0470688157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526293687&sr=8-1&keywords=Spanish+for+Dummies

Definitely get ths one: Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

Contents: http://i.imgur.com/Rxxxo.png