Macron is the president and head of state. He’s elected directly by the citizens of France.

Attal is (was) the prime minister and head of government. He’s elected by the members of parliament. He’s appointed by the president but needs majority support in parliament.

“To form a government” usually means that someone is tasked by the head of state (president or king) to come up with a group of people (cabinet) that has majority support in the house(s) of parliament. That’s easy for Starmer when Labour has a majority. In other countries like the Netherlands, Germany, or Italy, that usually requires a coalition.

That will now also be the case in France.

(yes I wash them)

I had assumed as much, but you explicitly saying so just makes me doubt it.

Celebrated!

Ehh… “He had one chance to do something great” almost makes it sound a bit positive. It wouldn’t have come close to making up for the complete shit stain he left on human history.

Good riddance indeed.

*By order of the republic.

If there’s one dish where I feel it’s a waste to eat animal meat, it’s hamburgers. Vegetarian alternatives have come a long way and in a burger they’re often the superior option.

There’s a small difference for sure, but the BM patties are far from inferior. And much of the difference is masked by condiments anyway.

It doesn’t help, but there are a few factors that are more limiting right now. Labour shortage is one, as are nitrogen emissions. A lot of developers also find the current building costs too high.

There are plenty of plots that can be built on, with all of the paperwork good to go.

This feels a bit surreal. After all of the scandals over the past few years, I hadn’t expected this to be the breaking point. I think it’ll be good for the Netherlands to get a soft reboot of politics. Most of the country was very much fed up with Rutte.

Not sure where we’ll go from here. I hope GroenLinks and PvdA together can gather lots of support. If not…

I, for one, welcome our new BBB overlords.

Let’s Gamble, Try Merging!

I think China could use some realpolitik here. They have very little to gain by invading Taiwan, and a lot to lose. If they could change their policy and work towards a clean split, I doubt Taiwan would keep insisting that they’re the true China. And they would earn a lot of goodwill throughout the world.

I’m torn on this. Restricting the when and where inherently restricts the extent of free speech. That’s not great.

Nonetheless, the guy burning the book is being an asshat for the sake of being an asshat. Generally speaking, I think we should let the asshats know that nobody likes them.

Every analysis I’ve read from reputable sources have come to the conclusion that this was bad for Putin. I think I’ll stick to Occam’s razor on this one.

Go Estonia! Really admirable how much progress they’ve made in the past 30 years.