IIRC that same crisis also spurred funding for some of the key initial research that eventually culminated in lithium ion batteries. Considering the various stops and starts in that timeline, battery tech could easily be a decade or two behind where it currently is if not for the oil crisis.

This is a fair analysis, but remember: Europe today is much, much less competent than in the 70s. Folks like Starmer and Merz don't strike me like the "every crisis is an opportunity" type.

I’m just joking, but yes.

There’s an old riddle that asks “if there is a door 8 feet away and you step half way towards the door each time, how many steps does it take to reach the door?” Same idea 🙂.

1/3 of this country would like to kill 1/3 of this country while 1/3 watches.

"Everyone I’ve talked to"

The propaganda is on TV. Faux Nooz and such.

Everyone I've talked to This is a thing called confirmation bias. It is highly likely that you surround yourself with people who have a mindset similar to you. Of course they will agree with your standpoint.

Nah, the Antarctic penguins were already punished by tariffs, they don't deserve another penalty.

He is doing what putin asks. Putin loves creating dilemmas.

The ideal (for putin) scenario would be to have Europe to decide between getting oil from Russia (this is why trump lifted sanctions) or get involved in Middle East.

Both of those would lead to decreased support for Ukraine, first one he could threaten to cut oil off they didn't, the second would be very unpopular with public and Russia would exploit isolationist tendencies.

I'm actually glad that it looks like Ukraine is bombing Baltic terminals and Europe realized that greeting involved in the mess trump started will make things even worse.

And yeah there are people saying "how can trump new helping Russia when he attacked Venezuela and Iran who are Russian allies" the answer to it is to look if those actions helped putin or hurt putin.

In Venezuela he removed Maduro but kept the old Russian friendly government.

Iran it massively helped. The oil prices spiked when previously Russia was selling at a loss, by helping Iran Russia still is seen as ally and now US is dragged to the same war Russia sights with Ukraine (ideally he would want rest of NATO be dragged there too).

He didn't understand that he couldn't make deals with individual countries in the EU in his first term and badgered Merkel about it repeatedly despite being told. So he doesn't understand it, wilfully or otherwise ... but he's also surrounded himself with people that don't understand it either.

People like Trump don't use this type of talk to gain a better understanding or to communicate truth or ideas. They use it to get what they want, which is why his statements are jarring to people that pay any decent attention.

"The strait is fine" is to try to calm the stock market -- but -- "NATO needs to help the strait" is to get other people to fix his fuck up