ijon_the_human

Edit: Noticed you asked for thigh high socks. These manufacturers probably don't have any but I'll leave the comment up in case someone else finds it useful.

If you're asking for dress socks or something in that direction there are tons of brands.

On the "budget but quality" end I recommend Viccel although they're from Turkey so not strictly EU.

https://www.viccelshop.com/about/

On the more expensive end of the spectrum there is:

https://www.bresciani.it/en

https://meschaussettesrouges.com/en

Then there's Bexley, a cheap French store that used to sell shoes online and has since then expanded into other areas as well. Products weren't necessarily top quality but they had a few notable shoe models that became popular for being decently priced/made back in the day. If you need "normally" priced socks that are over the calf they have them. They are made in China though so not exactly what we're here for, but given the company is European maybe it's an option if nothing else works out.

https://www.bexley.com/

And lastly there's Suitsupply from the Netherlands (socks made in Italy). They at least sometimes sell over-the-calf socks but their socks and products in general were never really good quality and they've gone down hill from there over the years. They are cheap though and made in Europe so I thought I'd mention them too.

https://suitsupply.com/

Hope you find what you're looking for!

Maybe the fact that Gerber is owned by Fiskars, a Finnish company, will make you feel a little better 🌞

Saving you a click, the hat says:

"Make America go away"

Not a fan of subscription models either but I would also love to be get useful software updates somehow.

So many fetures are not released for older models because they need to sell the newer ones.

It's great to hear recommendations of European brands but posting ads and framing them as "honest" irks me out a bit. It's still an ad and posted without any context or personal insight to accompany it.

Are you looking for animations only or are comics and childrens' book characters also welcome?

Belgium - Spirou & Fantasio, The Smurfs

Italy - Corto Maltese

Germany - The Little Sandman (Unsere Sandmännchen)

Sweden - Peter-No-Tail

I'd like to know a bit more about this graph.

Things are always more complex than they seem and I'd hate for relevant news to contribute to someone's doomscrolling habits. We have too much fear already.

So a couple of comments from the top of my head:

You don't buy stuff like fighters everyday so the data points are quite scattered over time and have huge weights.

Does this graph represent money spent or commitments?

The first date is in 2015, after the Crimea annexation which probably spurred arms deals and at that time most likely from the US since there was a strong NATO positive momentum at the time.

The second date is in 2020 so five years later. If the graph displays money spent then the deals made after the annexation of Crimea would only start to show up a few years later. This would also explain the overal shift towards US buys.

Another thing to note is that the shift displayed here happened in a five year time period. It's also been five years since the last data point on the graph.

The shift towards EU manufactured military equipment is still expected to be somewhere in the future so there's little doubt that the issue is wrongly depicted. However it is a bit two dimensional when you conider the fact that the journalist made the choice of what to include and what not to include. They could've chosen to include a projection of future spending or perhaps more historical data. They could also have added a breakdown of purchaed equipment.

Lastly, the title is "Most European countries have increased their dependence on US-supplied arms". Again, I don't doubt this is true but I would also like to see these numbers compared to the entire defense budgets, their growth and if possible a comparison between how much has been bought and the value of existing equipment. Any of these metrics could put this graph in a very different light.