HN

Comments (140)

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  jakozaur
  I'm Polish, but this is such a pessimistic, overdramatic take. The visualisations are impressive, but you're living in Poland's golden age. See this Hacker News story with 1,000+ upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
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  Tade0
  I feel like this is overdramatized a bit.For instance: it's mentioned that EU gas storage is at 67% and Germany's at 56%.What is not mentioned though is that Poland's storage is at 97% because the previous administration, for better or worse, was paranoid enough to invest in a sizeable marine gas terminal and the current one stocked up early.Regarding real estate: adjusted for inflation prices peaked 2.5 years ago, interest rates are also much lower than back then. Nobody is buying because all the Ukrainian refugees who were moving to Poland are here already and that's the last bump in population this country will see for the foreseeable future.Also there's the threat of war on Polish soil, which affects investor sentiment.
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  roenxi
  > Every generation believes it is living through the end of something.Many generations are. Last century saw the collapse of the British and Soviet empires - titans by any measure - through mismanagement. Europe as an international power was also broken (compared to how they used to be). I can easily imagine 1900s me fleeing to America in fear of the end times and feeling quite justified in his choices with hindsight. Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.Most of the people who died didn't get an opportunity to complain, so we live with some serious survivorship bias on how bad things got.
• jf
  This is one of the most cogent summarizations of the status quo that I've seen.It leads nicely into a conclusion that, even without the preface, seems reasonable: build personal buffers of water, electricity, and cash.
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  NKosmatos
  I feel you... the situation is more or less the same for Greece (and many other countries). Things are not looking very good and I don't know how all this situation is going to stabilize or even better come back to normal.
• human550
  I normally just lurk, but this is one of the cooler and actually functional website designs I have seen in a while. Sceptical at first, but it's innovative, and serves to elevate the content, truly chef's kiss.
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  odiroot
  This is generally a great article. I just wish the author would also mention how Poland (among other EU countries) is also hyper focusing on populist policies that benefit the older generations while heavily burdening the younger generations with a cost of these policies. This is even a bigger problem than all these named external dependencies (which may or may not hurt us).
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  zkmon
  Blame too much connectedness. Humans are not designed to be affected by things that happen 100's of miles away. They shouldn't even know the names or those far away places or people. They shouldn't have dependency on things that are produced far away.Tribal populations lived isolated lives. Most of human life on Earth involved only small-sized settlements with occasional visitors from the far away places.Connectedness opens the flood gates . You get inundated with news from every corner as if it is happening in you neighborhood and as if those are your people.You are not designed for this.
• lee_ward
  Having spent time there, betting his 2026 world-view includes solid coffee and battling some new EU regulation.
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  sajithdilshan
  This is a way over dramatized pessimistic perspective. If you think this is bad, then look into world from an eye of a pole during 1772 (where Poland was even wiped off of the world map) or 1939 or any year during the Soviet rule.Poland has become a rich country within one generation after the fall of Soviet Union and one of the safest countries in Europe at the moment. There's always gonna be crisis in the world but at the same time you have to admit that we're living in one of the most comfortable times for humanity in general compared to past generations.
• phyalow
  Aidr
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  teiferer
  > A price cap meant as a cushion, in a system with no slack, turned a price shock into empty pumpsIt's almost s if economic theories actually describe reality! Given that it's economy 101 predicting that this would happen.Still, people do it again and again. Rent control proponents for housing should take notice.
• Aeolun
  This is cool, but like every website that tries to manipulate scrolling I eventually got too tired of that shit.
• maelito
  Thank you for talking about energy and food.
• harrouet
  This how empires collapse:- To maintain fellowship, the empire spreads money to buy influence- eventually this starts to cost too much, so the empire reduces spending- wars ensue and independent voices emerge- unable to establish order, the empire loses its influence and collapsesYou can see this patterns as the US is overspending (high debt / trade deficit) while reducing its diplomatic influence on international programs. Not sure how they can save the USD value over time.
• PersonalJarvis
  very cool website
• clutch_coder99
  This is informative
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  thisbrt
  POLSKA GUROM!
• anon
  undefined
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  ergl
  Once again the top submission of HN is an LLM-generated article. I know we're not supposed to speculate on people reading past the title, but I incur you to read 3 paragraphs and tell me with a straight face that you did not eyeroll at every short, empty phrase stated with enormous confidence.
• stavros
  > Half of its six biggest diesel plants cut or halted output this monthClaude chose a weird turn of phrase here. Does this mean "the smallest of the three was the sixth largest"? If the Ukrainians hit a tiny plant, will it now be "three of its hundred biggest diesel plants"?
• locallost
  The world always had problems. It's like software, the work is never done. Sometimes new times ask for new solutions, and people need to find them. Adapt or die.I do think though it's a little dishonest to be this alarmed now just because the crisis is at your doorstep. There is continuous misery all around the globe which everyone should acknowledge. The wars in the middle east brought destruction for generation and for entire regions. I am not sure those people are worried about the interest rates in Japan as much as they are about surviving. Including the current war. Think about Iran and its government what you will, but when a school gets bombed, innocent children die. I am not sure I find this less concerning than the state of natural gas capacity in Germany. And I live in Germany.As for the energy crisis, the solution is in front of us. If you don't want to depend on foreign fossil fuels start electrifying and switching to renewables and batteries. You can do it cheap and fast. In fact, this is already happening in parts of the world and they are much more shielded from the current issues than elsewhere.
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  andai
  ...as seen by one ChatGPT.
• jaza
  [dead]
• lifestyleguru
  Criminals and medical doctors are funnelling a fortune into domestic and foreign real estate, and into premium cars. Polish public healthcare basically doesn't exist. Nearshoring and outsourcing centers are fleeing the country. Polish army expenditures are at the level of Israel and South Korea. The budget is spent on 40 years old military retirees while Russian drones and missiles are freely entering and penetrating the airspace. I'd say so long Poland, a failed experiment again. Polish elites don't even have to flee this time, they're already watching from their 10th or 20th real estate in Spain, Switzerland, US, or Italy (their real estate in Dubai is a bummer).This technical analysis is really futile and counterproductive, there exists only vicious greed which will be followed by a catastrophe.
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  flossly
  The west wanted a confrontation with Russia (pushed Zelenski out of the Misk accords; keeps supplying weapons for the lost cause Ukraine; Merkel lied about seize-fire intentions; NorthStream was infighting in the coalition pushing Germany further from Russia).The Israel wanted a confrontation with Iran, and used it's --as we now all know-- pit-bull lapdog USA to do most of it for them. They killed Iran's leader and some of his family: something we long ago decided is "not modern".Both countries are not giving in. And they should not. These are existential matters for them; they crossed red lines; they are illegal escalations by all rules and conventions. But the west can do what it wants.Now Europe is caught in the middle. US has fuel, and basically annexed Venezuela. Europe has to pay through the nose for energy.The narrative has never been more blatantly misconstrued in the corporate media: Russia will not attack Europe, and if genocidal-Israel can have illegal A-bombs while refusing inspections why bother with Iran doing the same?Fearmongering. All to "save our democracies and freedom". It's getting old really quick. And combined with ridiculous immigration policies they may destroy Europe as we know it in a few decades, I'm afraid. But saying so, results in the immediate "extreme right-wing Putin propagandist" label, and thus can be disregarded.
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  Schlagbohrer
  Very AI written
• bariscimen
  lol what a hypocrite. when he was getting uncle sam's money and security umbrella, he was happy and not questioning anything then now facing a bit of the reality scared my poor poles
• crazybonkersai
  The most sensible thing the EU could do right now is make peace with Russia and stop this confrontation before it is too late. NATO has been deaf to Russia’s security concerns for decades, so maybe it is finally time to listen.And before the NATO zealots, warmongers and NATO wannabes come here crying that you cannot trust Russia and that war is the only way (provided, of course, that you are not the one fighting), let’s address that right away.You cannot trust RussiaRussia has maintained good relationships with a lot of countries, but none of them are NATO members or NATO wannabes. And, as a reminder, it was NATO that broke promises about not expanding eastwards.You cannot deal with a country waging a war.Yes, you can. Just take a look at Israel or the USA. One is committing a genocide in real time, while the other has been waging wars of aggression for ages. European leaders have no problems dealing
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  hehimself
  Phew, thanks God Europe introduced unremovable plastic caps and deposit for plastic bottles. It's gonna save it, right?