unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I bounce between term usage depending on who I'm talking to. Email or e-mail to name an example.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
There are combi oven/microwaves
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

My office microwave has a pizza drawer that hasn't ever been used.
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6655|United States of America

This is what I think of when I hear the terms combined.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I think if it was just between the two, maybe, but affixing oven at least makes it consistent, if sometimes unnecessary.

Conventional oven
Microwave oven
Convection oven
Toaster oven
Pizza oven
Steam oven

etc.
uziq
Member
+492|3423
going after the important topics, guys.

'oven' is just a generic term for a heating appliance used by older people here in the UK.

next week in d&st: what's the deal with wearing 'pants' on the outside? when pants are meant to be underwear!

https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/deal_with_it_seinfeld.gif
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6655|United States of America
Also, those Americans say "fanny" to innocuously mean butt. The fools!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

going after the important topics, guys.

'oven' is just a generic term for a heating appliance used by older people here in the UK.

next week in d&st: what's the deal with wearing 'pants' on the outside? when pants are meant to be underwear!

But if you stick a pizza in a microwave it turns black
uziq
Member
+492|3423
there are frozen pizzas that are micro-wave cookable. in fact, microwave ready small pizzas or hot pockets are massively popular in the states.

a pizza will turn black if you stick it in a regular oven, too, by the way. pretty quickly.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I don't think I've ever blackened a pizza in the micro. Larssen, are you reheating for 20 minutes on high or something?

uziq wrote:

going after the important topics, guys.
I don't even remember when this thread jumped the shark. It did jump the shark, didn't it?
uziq
Member
+492|3423
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17 … ther-ideas

good review of thane gustafson's 'The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe'.

touches upon not only the strategic angle of russian-european gas lines but also the differentials and different priorities in a changing europe (northern vs southern especially).

The extent​ of the economic divide in Europe came to the fore in spectacular fashion during the Eurozone financial crisis. It was always the case that southern Europe couldn’t compete industrially with northern Europe, and that monetary union was only making the problem more pronounced. Gustafson reminds us that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a brief experiment with a common currency among the former Soviet states, although plans for a ‘rouble zone’ were soon aborted for the same reason the euro is now under pressure: national economies have divergent monetary needs. Moscow called off its experiment because it didn’t want to give the former Soviet republics the power to print roubles: greater equality between national economies would have come at Russia’s expense. The EU faces a similar divide: the victims of the Eurozone crisis (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) on one side; a German-aligned northern European block (Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden) on the other.

Gustafson’s analysis shows that while the European energy infrastructure is more integrated than ever, energy strategy is still decided at a national level. In France, unlike Germany, nuclear power still dominates electricity production. Uranium has to be imported, but France’s main suppliers are Canada and West African countries. France has long-term gas contracts with Russia, but – thanks to its nuclear power plants – it imports a third as much gas as Germany. Reliance on Siberian gas follows a rough gradient of decreasing importance the further west and south you go: the energy alliance with Russia is vital to Germany and Austria and matters little to Spain and Portugal. Increasing inequality within Europe exacerbates this tendency: the northern industrial centres are increasingly concerned about energy supply, the deindustrialising south less and less so. The result is that Germany has been challenged over its strategic relationship with Russia not just by Poland and Ukraine but by other Western European states. Natural gas, Gustafson argues, has been a bridge between continents and over ideologies, and has been vaunted as the route to a renewable energy system. But it has also emerged as another force of division in Europe.

The German political system is credited with combining effective municipal politics and competent national administration. This has been possible partly because of Germany’s geography. Uniting three fertile but unconnected river basins in what Friedrich List once called the ‘middle position’ in Europe required central planning and compromise. The German mercantile right is no weaker than America’s or Britain’s, or less grasping. But it’s more pragmatic about its own survival. It has insisted on domestic political leadership that isn’t totally incompetent, and it has come up with ways of protecting the poor for long enough to rob them. This national pragmatism has also enabled it to maintain a long-term energy supply from Russia. But it hasn’t extended to Germany’s role in Europe. To this day German policymakers are deluded about the way Germany functions in the Eurozone. The German economy generates an enormous trade surplus, and the great majority of its exports are to other European states. The government and its leaders have simultaneously insisted that the German export-led growth model should continue, and that southern Europe should emulate it. This is an arithmetic impossibility.

The divisions within Europe aren’t helped by the general stagnation of European economies, which affects even the rich North Atlantic periphery. But Germany’s delusions about its own role have stopped it providing a solution to European inequality. Instead it has stuck to fretful expressions of concern about burdening ‘German taxpayers’ – a euphemism, as it always is, for ‘the rich’. The price is mass unemployment across the south and ultimately the internal cohesion of the EU itself. Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a strategist of a future Europe, but in practice his global vision seems to amount to pay-offs for French arms companies. Sustaining European integration in the long term will require pan-European economic planning and redistributive policies. Northern Europe will have to use its secure Russian energy supply and industrial power to support the south. At present this seems a very distant possibility.

Fragile and iniquitous political orders can survive for longer than we expect them to. But if Germany et al continue to view southern Europe as a collection of indentured delinquents, these stresses could be mortal. In response to the Covid-19 outbreak, Germany and France agreed to create an EU recovery fund run by the European Commission. The financial press praised the proposal as a salvatory precedent. But even during a deadly pandemic the EU found it hard to organise a Europe-wide response. Agreeing a shared recovery programme involved a pitched battle lasting weeks. Disaster response is temporary by design. Yet pan-European co-ordination of this sort will need to happen every year for an integrated Europe to survive.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
That was a very random dig at Macron in there.

At its core the issue is that there's multiple fundamental contradictions in the union's MS reliance on one another to survive and its organisation in a multitude of sovereign states who insist on independent policy development wherever possible. The enduring hope is that acknowledgement of the existing interdependence will remain a good enough argument to keep finding compromise whenever a crisis hits. If more constructivist theses on international relations hold true the expectation is that this will ever so slowly integrate the union further. There's definitely some criticism to be levied here, but it's not a bad idea.

The problem is in the fact that over the last decade especially there's an increasing tug on common decision making in areas that more or less define statehood. In addition the issues at hand are becoming more complex, less understood and keep piling up. The rise of irrationality and populism caused by this movement is the greatest threat to the integrity of the EU. It will not be the more or less center parties like Macron's en marche or Merkel's CDU that will blow up the union, but the impatient and uncooperative extreme left and right.
uziq
Member
+492|3423
errr, why do the extreme left and right find increasing popularity and support? it's not all facebook brainwashing and 'irrationality'. it's precisely because the centre and its consensus isn't working for vast swathes of people. accommodated-for irrational simpletons keep voting for the owner that feeds them.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
"the center" is a self serving euphemism for neo-liberal finance capital. What I mean by that is that terms like center/moderate/middle sounds good to people because living moderate and centered lives is good for your health. But there is nothing centered or moderate about international finance capital. They have a specific ideology and that has affected the development of the west in a way people increasingly see as negative. The far right and left can sometimes have more reasonable or socially beneficial plans than "the center". The center was the one that told us we needed to get wrapped up with China after all. The center was the one that led the privatization push of the 80's.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
The destruction of the EU is not a rational minded response. It's lashing out, voting for whoever promises what an ethical and intelligent person never would. In the same vein the election of Trump wasn't simply a rational move away from the center.
uziq
Member
+492|3423
i think framing anything that is anti-EU as irrational is a very suspect move. if you're a working-class person in one of those southern states facing generational and systemic unemployment, with no meaningful hope of development away from your reliance on rich industrialist-banking neighbours, voting out of the current yoke might seem very rational. appeals to nationalism or socialism, for example, are not 'irrational' in quite the way you say they are; you're just speaking for a technocratic doxa there. like macbeth said above, the rhetoric of 'centre common sense' or 'return to sanity/normalcy' is precisely that: rhetoric. you sound like the democrats rounding around joe biden as if more big finance neoliberalism is the only choice in the world.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-17 16:40:09)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6077|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17/tom-stevenson/the-us-had-other-ideas

good review of thane gustafson's 'The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe'.

touches upon not only the strategic angle of russian-european gas lines but also the differentials and different priorities in a changing europe (northern vs southern especially).

The extent​ of the economic divide in Europe came to the fore in spectacular fashion during the Eurozone financial crisis. It was always the case that southern Europe couldn’t compete industrially with northern Europe, and that monetary union was only making the problem more pronounced. Gustafson reminds us that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a brief experiment with a common currency among the former Soviet states, although plans for a ‘rouble zone’ were soon aborted for the same reason the euro is now under pressure: national economies have divergent monetary needs. Moscow called off its experiment because it didn’t want to give the former Soviet republics the power to print roubles: greater equality between national economies would have come at Russia’s expense. The EU faces a similar divide: the victims of the Eurozone crisis (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) on one side; a German-aligned northern European block (Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden) on the other.

Gustafson’s analysis shows that while the European energy infrastructure is more integrated than ever, energy strategy is still decided at a national level. In France, unlike Germany, nuclear power still dominates electricity production. Uranium has to be imported, but France’s main suppliers are Canada and West African countries. France has long-term gas contracts with Russia, but – thanks to its nuclear power plants – it imports a third as much gas as Germany. Reliance on Siberian gas follows a rough gradient of decreasing importance the further west and south you go: the energy alliance with Russia is vital to Germany and Austria and matters little to Spain and Portugal. Increasing inequality within Europe exacerbates this tendency: the northern industrial centres are increasingly concerned about energy supply, the deindustrialising south less and less so. The result is that Germany has been challenged over its strategic relationship with Russia not just by Poland and Ukraine but by other Western European states. Natural gas, Gustafson argues, has been a bridge between continents and over ideologies, and has been vaunted as the route to a renewable energy system. But it has also emerged as another force of division in Europe.

The German political system is credited with combining effective municipal politics and competent national administration. This has been possible partly because of Germany’s geography. Uniting three fertile but unconnected river basins in what Friedrich List once called the ‘middle position’ in Europe required central planning and compromise. The German mercantile right is no weaker than America’s or Britain’s, or less grasping. But it’s more pragmatic about its own survival. It has insisted on domestic political leadership that isn’t totally incompetent, and it has come up with ways of protecting the poor for long enough to rob them. This national pragmatism has also enabled it to maintain a long-term energy supply from Russia. But it hasn’t extended to Germany’s role in Europe. To this day German policymakers are deluded about the way Germany functions in the Eurozone. The German economy generates an enormous trade surplus, and the great majority of its exports are to other European states. The government and its leaders have simultaneously insisted that the German export-led growth model should continue, and that southern Europe should emulate it. This is an arithmetic impossibility.

The divisions within Europe aren’t helped by the general stagnation of European economies, which affects even the rich North Atlantic periphery. But Germany’s delusions about its own role have stopped it providing a solution to European inequality. Instead it has stuck to fretful expressions of concern about burdening ‘German taxpayers’ – a euphemism, as it always is, for ‘the rich’. The price is mass unemployment across the south and ultimately the internal cohesion of the EU itself. Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a strategist of a future Europe, but in practice his global vision seems to amount to pay-offs for French arms companies. Sustaining European integration in the long term will require pan-European economic planning and redistributive policies. Northern Europe will have to use its secure Russian energy supply and industrial power to support the south. At present this seems a very distant possibility.

Fragile and iniquitous political orders can survive for longer than we expect them to. But if Germany et al continue to view southern Europe as a collection of indentured delinquents, these stresses could be mortal. In response to the Covid-19 outbreak, Germany and France agreed to create an EU recovery fund run by the European Commission. The financial press praised the proposal as a salvatory precedent. But even during a deadly pandemic the EU found it hard to organise a Europe-wide response. Agreeing a shared recovery programme involved a pitched battle lasting weeks. Disaster response is temporary by design. Yet pan-European co-ordination of this sort will need to happen every year for an integrated Europe to survive.
Yes, France and Germany should prop up the whole EU and all the slackers with bucolic lifestyles on the Med.

Frexit and Gerexit can't be far away.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5514|Toronto
France and Germany probably remember why they signed the Treaty of Paris in the first place. For them it's not about prosperity/being dragged down. It's about not dying in a war.
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
uziq
Member
+492|3423

Dilbert_X wrote:

Yes, France and Germany should prop up the whole EU and all the slackers with bucolic lifestyles on the Med.

Frexit and Gerexit can't be far away.
the EU exists for the purpose of distributing their finance capital and trade surpluses. as the author rightfully points out, the 'tax burden' of 'southern slackers' on the french and germans is nothing but a liability for their banks and a distant threat for more tax from the mega-rich. it's not a tax burden fro the red-faced man in the street.

and you rather ignore the problem that the asymmetry is baked-in as part of the common market. the southern states need different monetary policy, different economic development and stimulus. merkel et al encouraging the southern states to emulate the northern ones makes no sense, when germany for instance is the country with the huge trade surplus. how can every country within a common market have a trade surplus? they're beholden to the north's show and only redistribution is going to remedy that.

'bucolic lifestyles' lol. i'm sure it's great to be a 20-something spaniard with multiple degrees and no graduate prospects, or an unemployed farmer. seasonally adjusted youth unemployment in spain is at 40%. that's a generational tragedy, not a 'bucolic lifestyle'. derp derp dilbert.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-17 17:08:15)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6077|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

the 'tax burden' of 'southern slackers' on the french and germans is nothing but a liability for their banks and a distant threat for more tax from the mega-rich. it's not a tax burden fro the red-faced man in the street.
LMAO Of course 'the rich' have plenty of free money to send out of the country.

Wouldn't that money effectively go to 'the red-faced man in the street' you so despise, instead of going to some red-faced peasant and his one-goat farm?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3423
i'm completely in support of that. working people across europe have a lot more in common than the ultra-rich and the patriot peasants within their own country.

also whose idea was it to bring all these much poorer nations into the eurozone? who benefitted from adopting a common currency? derp derp. yes let's blame the goat-farmers and not the banks and industrialists who have been taking maximal advantage of these developing economies and cheap labour for 20 years.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6077|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

'bucolic lifestyles' lol. i'm sure it's great to be a 20-something spaniard with multiple degrees and no graduate prospects, or an unemployed farmer. seasonally adjusted youth unemployment in spain is at 40%. that's a generational tragedy, not a 'bucolic lifestyle'. derp derp dilbert.
Its horrific, what we need is for the currencies to float, the German currency to rise and the Spanish currency to fall and it will even out.

This EU thing, keeping everything level and having bureaucrats play Sim City 4 with everyone's taxes isn't working and makes people angry.

Its working great for Germany, not so much anyone else though.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3423
which is exactly the thrust of the long block quote you just responded to with 'pah germany and france will leave soon, those damn lazy southerners!'

you make no sense.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6077|eXtreme to the maX
Yeah the common currency isn't a core part of the EU, I'm sure they'll just drop it.

I thought the currency allowed Germany to dominate without the pain of an inflating currency, I'm sure they'll just let it go quietly.

Thank fuck Britain wasn't part of it.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

i think framing anything that is anti-EU as irrational is a very suspect move. if you're a working-class person in one of those southern states facing generational and systemic unemployment, with no meaningful hope of development away from your reliance on rich industrialist-banking neighbours, voting out of the current yoke might seem very rational. appeals to nationalism or socialism, for example, are not 'irrational' in quite the way you say they are; you're just speaking for a technocratic doxa there. like macbeth said above, the rhetoric of 'centre common sense' or 'return to sanity/normalcy' is precisely that: rhetoric. you sound like the democrats rounding around joe biden as if more big finance neoliberalism is the only choice in the world.
People are oblivious to consequence, as was the majority who voted for Brexit in another such example. Most hardly understand to what extent EU laws, arrangements or funds are part of their daily lives, yet they will happily do away with them?

Of course there is reason for a deviation from the status quo, but rejecting the EU entirely would be like some farmer in southwestern England rejecting the entire existence of England/the UK. The functioning of and interdependence in the EU is literally that of a supranational organisation. I won't for a second entertain the deluded twats who believe that Jorge the Iberico ham farmer should vote to decimate the fabric of his life as some misguided solution to his current financial predicament.

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