My kid moved from the US to Vienna for work. Loves it, says there is no reason to come back...I know a few more folks whose kids left after Uni to work in the EU and have no plans on returning. For a young person who values working to live more than living to work, the EU is very attractive.
It's an infinitely higher quality of life if you're not in the 90th income percentile in the US already. You'll never make that much, but you'll never have half the worries we do here for lower income people.
I'd say even if you are on the 99th percentile, the quality of life will be much better. You'll make less money, but you also won't have to spend on things like health insurance, good schools, and so on. Your house might be smaller though, unless you opt to live further from urban centers, which will demand a car, but it'll be a safer and more efficient one.
My child’s situation is somewhat different from many others in the U.S. He never has to worry about money because he benefits from the security of multi-generational wealth. He simply finds Europe and its values to be culturally superior to the United States.
In my niece's (relatively rural) US high school class several students decided to attend university in Europe with no family ties to the countries in question. It was pretty common in my generation to see, as you note, kids moving to Berlin etc after their studies, but this strikes me as relatively new. Anecdata that seems supported in some of the public numbers [0].
Yeah, it's been a relatively rational decision for a while now, but one I personally hadn't really seen taken until recently. Again, all anecdata, but I am curious to track how much of a trend it really is.
That's just the futures price. If you wanted to buy it, you would be paying $140 plus.There is a growing divergence between futures pricing and actual real world price.
The actual real world price for immediate delivery is called the spot price. The price of the future is just the price for a contract to have it delivered on a certain date.
As I understand it, Oil Futures come in two varieties, one kind result in you actually taking the oil when they happen, which is why that negative price craziness years back because if you're holding the futures and haven't got anywhere to put that oil that's a problem for you. The other kind though is some sort of cash equivalent, I guess maybe it resolves to the current spot price or something at the moment it stops being a future ?
So, for these mispriced Futures, what happens? If I buy $1M of Brent Crude futures and then just wait, and when my futures resolve that much Brent Crude would be worth $1.5M at spot prices do I... get $1.5M and somebody in the oil industry just lost their shirt? Do they just ship me enough Brent Crude to sell it for $1.5M at spot prices? What if they were lying and they can't deliver ?
Yes, there are physically settled and cash settled futures. The futures price converges to the settlement price (tied to spot) as the expiration date approaches.
Futures are marked to market every day and gains and losses are paid out daily in cash. So in the example you gave, you would have received $500K profit between when you bought the futures at $1M and when they expire at $1.5M. For cash settled futures that's the end of the story - a final small adjustment happens, in cash, your position disappears, and that's it.
For physically settled futures, the story is the same, but on the day of delivery, you (as the buyer) would be required to pay $1.5M cash to receive the oil, and whoever held the other side of the contract (as the seller) would be required to deliver it to you at some named location, typically a storage facility.
Who loses the $500K? The seller (who was short the contract) has been paying the losses daily as the price moved against them. The payments are handled through the exchange/clearinghouse and their brokerage.
What if they can't deliver? The exchange steps in and provides guarantees.
If I bought $1M of Brent Crude Futures settled by delivery so I can make fuel for cars and you "step in and provide guarantees" rather than delivering I cannot refine "guarantees" into fuel for cars.
Ordinarily I'm sure such "guarantees" are enough, maybe for 10% above spot price we can get enough oil to my refinery to make that fuel and the exchange is able to cover this cost from their operating budget. But when the deliveries don't even resemble sold futures that stops working, that oil isn't available at any price and so those "guarantees" become worthless.
This is the other end of the problem the ETFs had last time. The ETFs couldn't go negative because an ETF is just paper so if my ETF had a notionally negative value I don't pay I just tear up the ETF instead whereas the notionally negative value of an oil delivery was like yeah, this is nasty toxic black sludge, you're going to need to put that somewhere.
The other end is that ETFs aren't actually oil, if I have an ETF but I need diesel that's not a thing you can make from the ETF. Even if my ETF tracked the price perfectly, I still don't have diesel, I need to find somebody who wants to sell the diesel and maybe if supplies are tight that's not one of the options.
Taking it to another level, there are several cases where people who weren't dying experienced the NDE (ex: Nurses, loved ones at someones bedside, etc). They actually witness what the dying person might have been experiencing when dying.
It's quite interesting to see how much earth is typically above ancient ruins. Cities built upon cities for 1000's of years where a street or building was once at ground level and now is 2-4 stories beneath our modern world.
While visiting Vienna, there are ruins on display in Michaelerplatz (central Old City), so cool.
I've always been confused how this works. Did people shovel soil on top of buildings then build new buildings on that? Why? Did it accumulate naturally perhaps during periods when a site was unoccupied? Would some buildings be higher than their older neighbors, with entrances above street-level until everyone else caught up?
I believe in Rome, it was mostly flooding/alluvial debris. But yeah, sometimes buildings would collapse and they would just build again on top of the ruins.
There definitely are instances of buildings being misaligned.
In my ancestral family home there was a door wat ground level, but originally it had a few steps to get to it; the outside ground had gone up by some 40cm with sediments over a century or so.
In this case, I think not: there's paving stones under the dirt, if the building had sunk those would have to be comparatively higher up (they don't weigh as much) but they still lay at the front of the steps.
(or I should say, laid, sadly the building had to be levelled after an earthquake)
This was the core reason Trump was elected. His MAGA base wanted to see the country burned to the ground. If they couldn't participate in the "American Dream", they didn't want anyone else to either.
(Optional: I would really appreciate it if you can from now on, optionally add these things on archive.org as well, I have made a submission on how to use these things, It's just a non profit effort on saving things on archive.org as well as some people's dns is starting to block archive.is or captcha related issues)
I would encourage all young men and women to avoid the military. Who in their right mind would want their young men and women to serve under this administration. Just avoid the military period, nothing admirable serving a country that doesn't respect democracy and freedom.
I disagree. If this ceasefire had not happened, the US and Israel would bomb all of Iran's electricity and fuel facilities. That's what was supposed to happen today, and is what forced Iran to the negotiating table with an hour to spare. China and Pakistan told Iran to come to the table, and negotiate, because they do not want a collapsed Iran.
Without electricity, there is no modern life. There is no ability to communicate, run a financial economy, pay salaries, etc. Without fuel, there are no logistics; there is no capability to transport an army. Nor is there an ability to transport food; it would cause an enormous civilian crisis, and this would cause massive riots.
Iran would collapse, within a week. It would devolve into factions, and a civil war would start, similar to in Syria.
The US and Israel have been sitting on this card the entire time. They don't want to do it, because it would cause near permanent economic damage to Iran.
Now reason without water, aka Israeli + GCC desalination. Iran with shit water situation is still less existentially water stressed. Iran 5% vs others 80/90%+ dependency on desalination = once Iran demonstrated survivable regional strike complex, they own the top end of escalation ladder that can take out everyone with them while coming out least harmed.
This not to mention, relative to US performance / conemps, i.e. going back to standoff munitions, there's not really enough discretionary high end munitions to take degrade all Iranian infra vs Iran has enough in reserve to take out all regional desalination. Nevermind US expending 1000s more TLAMs / JASSM(ER)s leaving it unprepared for any other near peer conflict. Reminder Iraq was 20% size of Iran, and so far US+Israel only flew ~20% of sorties via Iran than it has Iraq. Even factoring in precision munitions, US would have to expend more munitions than it has to actually cripple Iran on par with Iraq.
they dont want to do that attack, because Iran can still respond in kind, and both Israel and the US have some value in electricity, oil, and water existing around the gulf and in Israel.
if you make Iran pay that war cost ahead of time, what are you gonna negotiate for after?
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