I feel like a good chunk of it is that Poland was hit with by the first decisive punch thrown in WW2 so it isn’t remembered as powerful like other European nations involved in WW2… which leads people to be surprised when Poland appears to become a major power “out of nowhere.”

People readily assume Germany is the European military industrial heavyweight in Europe because of the stereotype of Germany as powerful while not factoring in the fact that any country hit first in the outbreak of a world war such as WW2 is going to be taken out of the fight if there isn’t an immediate international response. Poland was and is an industrial powerhouse, if that is surprising to people I think that is because people are lazy about their stereotypes.

Poland made the fourth-largest troop contribution in Europe,[124][125][126] and its troops served both the exiled government in the west and Soviet leadership in the east. Polish troops played an important role in the Normandy, Italian, North African Campaigns and Netherlands and are particularly remembered for the Battle of Britain and Battle of Monte Cassino.[127][128] Polish intelligence operatives proved extremely valuable to the Allies, providing much of the intelligence from Europe and beyond,[129] Polish code breakers were responsible for cracking the Enigma cipher and Polish scientists participating in the Manhattan Project were co-creators of the American atomic bomb. In the east, the Soviet-backed Polish 1st Army distinguished itself in the battles for Warsaw and Berlin.[122]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland

The area is supposed to be protected for wildlife but often there are “wet wipes and plastic pollution entangled in algae and all over the rocks”, said Lewis Stagnetto, of the Nautilus Project, a local environmental charity.

Raw sewage pollution can trigger toxic algal blooms that strip oxygen from the water, choking aquatic life. It exposes fish and mammals to a cocktail of chemicals and plastics that can disrupt reproduction and damage health, and puts people at risk by spreading pathogens and antibiotic-resistant genes.

I believe any person or country incurs an inescapable debt they must pay back when environmental damage is done by unnecessary environmental harm that is reasonably preventable, no matter where on earth that impact happens.

The losses to the productivity of fisheries and related industries is huge and things like this place entire ecosystems that sustain landscapes under threat.

Then the people who want to own and strangle things will shift their focus to other centralized chokepoints like Bluesky and Lemmy.World.

I think the most impactful thing Ukraine could do here is join the parade with some drones. It would embarass the shit out of russians until they could get rid of the drones and would be a psychological win.

The problem is probably that y’all are being too kind to immigrants, try being crueler to them!

I would argue The Colossal Squid is the Kraken but I guess Giant Squids and Colossal Squids tie here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_squid

Any instrument where the pitch is not quantized into steps by design.

Guitars do this with frets, though there are of course fretless guitars but the problem is the quantization of pitch/fretted strength length that frets provides allows complex chords to be played in tune. This is functionally impossible to do on a fretless stringed instrument and is why violin type instruments mostly play single notes or two paired notes.

A classic church organ is the bridge between the world of quantized pitch instruments and instruments where pitch is constructed as part of each note. Each pipe produces a sine wave at a determined pitch.

The US also still sends quite a bit of aid to Ukraine despite Trump and his fellow criminals doing everything they can to sabotage it for Putin. No matter what Trump does, the fact remains that most people in the US are neutral to positive about Ukraine and see Trump’s blatant attempts to sabotage Ukraine as yet more proof of the fact that Trump is full of shit and Putin is his daddy.

I am not convinced Merz could get away with NOT giving Ukraine a ton of military help, I don’t think that is probably a politically tenable move in Germany if you want to form a majority coalition… so people like Merz undermine help in other ways that are less easy to pin on them negatively… like helping manufacture an architecture of military intel and personnel that makes it easy for rightwing elements of Germany to feed technology, doctrine and intelligence to russia or at least place it in places that are so easy for russia to get that it is basically a gift.

Because Merz and the far right in Germany are decidely on russia/Putin’s side?

What has Merz done as actions that demonstrate he actually wants Ukraine to win?

Kind of reminds me of how people breed and raise show dogs… and not in a good, normal well adjusted way.

Did Merz not get bullied enough as a kid or something?

How did he turn into a human ingrown toenail?

Why do I feel the need to give Merz a swirly so bad?

No and I didn’t mean to imply that if I did.

Lol you don’t think Merz and his rightwing coalition form an extremist rightwing threat?

The center right is hopeless to stop the far right even if they weren’t lying about wanting to rein them in.

Merz only leads to Trump like figures, so yeah Trump is worse, but that isn’t much consolation?

Does a rightwing extremist Germany with a powerful military seem like a good idea to you?

Germany HAS NOT impressed me with the way it has begun to wield this power.

Why would it be cooler for then?

Because they just became more illegal.

Do you honestly think they aren’t going to do that?

The best way to make cigarettes cool to kids is to make them fully illegal, this is a nonsense law unless you are trying to increase the amount of kids smoking cigarettes.

Don’t they agree on most things? Of course Merz must hate Trump for being loud and sloppy but aren’t their politics and policy goals entirely compatible?

What an idiot