keyboardpithecus

After long debates the EU is deciding a very weak response to Trump's tariff. Which show that the union is still behaving like a US colony.

The obvious is that the actions still overlook the core of US exports and the base of their wealth, digital services. The most widespread money bleeding comes from the payment systems. Visa, Mastercard, Google pay, Apple pay and so on. They get a cut on the majority of financial transactions happening in Europe. It is like a Tobin tax that pays private corporations.

Is it technically feasible to target those systems with any political action as a response to the tariffs levied by the US?

Actually the same question applies to all the other countries targeted by the US where those payment systems are as much widespread, how much should the US be worried about such a possibility?

Suddenly after Trump took office he started talking about brokering a peace deal in Ukraine that would imply territorial concessions to Russia. On this line he also bypassed Zelensky and held direct talks with Putin.

It is not clear what is in the peace plan, but it emerged several times that he asked Ukraine to sell off their mineral resources.

So, in the end, part of the Ukrainian territories would go to Russia and the mineral resources of the rest would go to the US. Isn't that a blatant partition?

An often repeated statement about any extraterrestrial object is: "if it has liquid water it might suport life". On this assumption a lot of space probes, robots and rovers include the sensors and the instruments the search for traces of past life. This has had high priority in many missions to Mars and it will have high priority also in future missions to the satellites of Jupiter.

Now the thought came to my mind that the ability to support life might not be enough. Life on Earth exists in the most inhospitable places, even in lakes that formed below the polar caps. But the theory is that life evolved in the primordial soup, which was a very favourable environment, only later it spread to inhospitable environments.

To repeat myself, what I am saying is that the ability to support life and the ability to support the birth of life might be two different things. How much different is the question. If the answer is that the difference is strong and life needs a cosy environment in order to arise the assumption it had liquid water therefore it might have had life is moot.

So, how strong is the difference? Is just some liquid water in unknown conditions enough to let life arise, even if it might support existing life?