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Cake day: September 14th, 2026

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  • I’m not talking about British exceptionalism in any way. Clearly lots of people in this thread don’t like the UK. Fine. That doesn’t mean you should twist my words though.

    Your words are not being twisted as I’ll lay out below.

    Multiple EU countries haven’t adopted the euro and don’t show signs of adopting it. So clearly the EU already practises “flexibility” on the euro, to some degree.

    These countries enjoy the things the UK decided to reject when leaving: Special privileges for joining early enough.

    New countries joining do not receive any such privileges anymore and neither should the UK. That is being treated fairly. Any position that wants the UK to be treated better than other new countries wanting to join is what I called British Exceptionalism.

    If EU citizens decide they don’t want the UK in the EU, okay. I would like good UK-EU relations, but I can’t control what EU citizens think of the UK.

    I’m fine with them joining on the same terms as every other new country. If they don’t want to join, there are plenty of ways to cooperate without that. Finally: I generally don’t tend to think of the UK at all (neither negatively or positively), unless it comes up in political topics.



  • But if the EU just wants to punish the UK for Brexit then that is going to go down badly with many Brits, so closer relations will become less likely.

    Being treated like every other new country wanting to join isn’t a punishment. The “British exceptionalism” mentality imho causing these thoughts is one root of the problem.

    A punishment would be if the EU were to demand reparations for the economic damages the UK inflicted on it. Which, you’ll note, nobody is asking for.


  • A lot of people want local inference, and somehow they assume that the problem is solved now because we have open-source models, we’re going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we’re not going to need all the stuff in the data center.

    We don’t need them even without local inference. There was already more than enough total global compute for the most valuable use cases of LLMs (research, development, admin). The datacenter build-up is almost entirely fueled by utterly unrealistic expectations of future capabilities. Before and now the case for local inference is a matter of access, not capacity.

    But from a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time.

    Utilitarianism like this is a disease. By the same logic, it’s inefficient that we allow other species of animals to exist and consume usable energy. Hell, why stop at other species? It’s inefficient to allow humans to exist - let’s kill all humans!

    Now, I know that’s not what he said, the point was to show that when someone uses utilitarianism as a serious argument, they are no longer worth listening to.

    Like you want maximum utilisation in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment,

    The supply is only constrained because you keep hoarding more than you need. Maybe it’s time for some communization? So communities where data centers are built get most if not all of the profits from it?



  • Was war an meiner Aussage verwirrend? Du bist (anscheinend) in einer Partei, deren letztes Bundestagswahlprogramm (BTWP) rechts war. Was das über dich als Person als Person sagt? Keine Ahnung, da hab ich ja auch nichts zu geschrieben. Ich kenne links Eingestellte bei den Grünen, bei der SPD, und ja auch vereinzelt bei der CDU und sogar AfD; das ändert nichts daran, dass man linke Positionen nicht ausreichend viel in den BTWPen von 2025 wiederfinden konnte, als dass auch nur eines dieser insgesamt links wäre.

    Ein zentristisches BTWP auf der Achse links/rechts läge da, wo die ökonomischen Verteilungsverhältnisse nicht weiter verändert werden würden (der “Status Quo” der Verteilung würde aufrecht erhalten). Da aber das aktuell laufende finanzielle Verteilungsssystem in Deutschland in Summe bereits stark rechts ist, müsste man selbst dafür erst einmal die aktuell weiterlaufende Umverteilung nach oben stoppen.



  • My two cents:

    Creating a monetary union without a fiscal union was a grievous macroeconomic mistake. For example, it allowed countries like mine (Germany) to abuse the shared currency to artifically lower the cost of exported goods, with the downstream effect of allowing it to “move” parts of its state debt to others, like e.g. France.

    There really are only two ways towards eventual stability: Create a fiscal union (which for all intents and purposes means turning the EU from a confederation into a sovereign state), or breaking up the monetary union.

    The latter, however, would destroy large parts of the export-dependent German economy almost overnight. It would almost certainly lead to economic suffering not seen since the Great Depression in the short-term. To steelman the argument for a moment, it could theoretically be a (state-)controlled burn to purge all those ailing German big corporations almost exclusively dependent on fossil fuels that have been refusing to innovate for more than 30 years now and be the catalyst for a rapid green transition. But there’s 0% chance of any far-right party desiring this, let alone being able to pull it of.

    So that means either we create a fiscal union, or we’re screwed with a monetary system that will continue to amplify existing problems, instead of being a tool capable of addressing them equitably.



  • Yes, thanks for asking. Did you?

    The Budapest Memoranda do not contain “If someone else (e.g. Russia) attacks you, we will deploy our own military assets against them to defend you”, which would be the requirement for the “the USA agreed to protect Ukraine from Russia in exchange for them giving up their nukes” claim.

    I’m not a fan of the USA’s foreign policy, but there’s no need to claim they promised something they did not.




  • I don’t get why people are saying there should be a punishment.

    Being treated exactly like every other country outside the EU is not a punishment. A punishment would be demanding reparations for the damages the UK inflicted with Brexit, which you’ll note neither me nor anybody else here I could see asked for.

    […] Why not just let them leave and then realise it’s wrong when it happens and come back?

    This is what that looks like: Accept the same terms as anybody else or don’t join. There are plenty of ways to have constructive cooperations without the UK joining the EU.

    Like if a family member that I know and love hurts me and leaves, I’d eventually welcome them back and let bygones be bygones, because we are a team. But if it’s some coworker I don’t care about, I’d want to be made right for the troubles.

    “We” are not a family. The EU is a confederation. If we were a family, I would require both contrition and some form of reparations, because breaking such a much closer bond has more severe consequences.

    It’s good to let the leavers feel a taste of how bad it is to do it, but joining should always be a good thing and not a punishment.

    If the UK thinks joining on the same terms as anybody else is a punishment they are free to not join. We have way too many grandfathered-in friction-causing privileges already.