You’re right that populations and opinions change, but I think I remember reporting about more recent opinion polls suggesting it’s still more than 70% “no”. It’s a shame, I would like it if Norway joins, but I just think it’s still unlikely to happen.

Iceland is a very weak country compared to Norway. Has a small population and economy, worse geolocation towards USA, no major moneymachine resource like oil and no major savings fund like that Norwegian pension thingy and a government with bareley any public debt at all… Iceland could be an easy prey indeed. But Norway doesn’t seem easy prey to me at all. Way harder geography to conquer and control, further away from USA, way larger and more diversified economy. And Norwegians have declined membership 2x already, while in Iceland there has never been a real referendum about it yet?

I’m all in favor of both Iceland and Norway joining the EU, but I really don’t see it happening any time soon for Norway, still not also not with recent international political developments.

how much are they paying and why?

They want ever more power and control. Money is just a tool to get that. Most billionaires are sociopaths.

Why would Norway suddenly join? Norwegians already voted against it twice. They are per capita one of the wealthiest countries (the government) in the world, they’d be netto paying loads and loads to EU. They already are in Schengen, got basically a lot of the EU open market advantages without membership. A large majority of Norwegians are still opposed to EU membership.

Iceland is also in Schengen, but they suddenly feel very very threatened by the Greenland nonsense and Iceland is relatively a whole lot poorer, smaller, less people than Norway and a lot easier to invade and conquer (by USA)…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway–European_Union_relations?wprov=sfla1

Same. Spent about 65 € I think, now it’s looking like > 200 €

Of course there are many issues with the ‘normalcy’, but it was more predictable. For example not having to watch your back for your best, longest standing loyal ally to do the stupidest shit imaginable to your own country… I mainly meant it in the international politics, diplomacy sense.

I think even both teddybears and soap are quite regulated markets in EU, could probably require a capital to enter the market a lot larger than you would think, to get anywhere beyond the local flea market level of sales.

It’s not just one dude anymore, system as a whole is shifting drastically, his death is in no way a guaranteed return towards normalcy in international politics. His death could usher in even more uncertainty.

Still trying to wrap my head around how at that time and in that context and when so many technology CEOs and celebrity/politically active people seem involved, they were all sending these plain text emails, didn’t bother the least to try to make communication more secure and private

Als DM einen Monat lang 20 % Rabatt auf alles gewährte, habe ich nachgegeben. Ich habe die App installiert und ein Profil mit einer Wegwerf-E-Mail-Adresse erstellt. Ich habe meinen Keller mit DM-Produkten gefüllt und anschließend die App wieder gelöscht…

I work 30h a week and Merz can fuck off. I would be getting a similar amount of work done, not more, but have a lot less free time to do what I really want and is probably just as productive in many ways, but not in their too limited economic indicators. Sports, cleaning the house, meeting people, growing tomatoes, sleeping enough etc etc

Still no guarantee of the blissful instant kill unfortunately. The ones aimed at your big city may be the ones that fail? Or you big city may be part of a country that somehow doesn’t get directly involved after all?

The annoying part is having to carry the helmet around with you when bike is parked.

That’s why I wrote might

By the time it actually happens there might be a democrat in charge again who can get all the blame…

It also only worked because Norway didn’t get invaded because of this approach. Plenty of countries tried to keep valuable natural in national hands, they get sanctioned to oblivion and then the CIA conducts a coup.

Lol Volkswagen, the company that actively rigged diesel cars to pass the tests… ? Dieselgate. The German car manufacturers are hopelessly late at EV because they wanted to drain every last penny out of their ICE. The EU setback to extend ICE is after German car manufacturers lobbied… They are killing themselves in the long run, for bit more production in the short run. They saw this all coming decades ago and made wrong choices. Now they’re fucked. The Volkswagen id (EV) sales numbers are so disappointing they had to lower production and make employees stay home.

Yes, I know WhatsApp is biggest overall. But for Threema to say that the competition is WhatsApp and that’s it… Is a wrong market analysis imo. In the “privacy conscious” segment signal is the biggest. Threema’s biggest competitor in Germany is Signal, not WhatsApp.

Then it is still not true. Signal has over 11 million users in Germany, Threema has 8-10 million users.