Three days is the (generously calculated) time until civil defence will have soup kitchens up and running, and at least over here they stock three months worth of lentil stew, pea stew, and bread and more than enough diesel to keep logistics, kitchens and crucial infrastructure such as water pumps running. Heating, push come to shove, would be supplied at the gymnasium of your local school or suchlike. Recommendation is to have 7-10 days worth of stock.

But yes I’d recommend against (completely) relying on stocks that need preparation because electricity and water might fail. Canned soups and stews are good and don’t forget canned peaches or such so you can have dessert. Woodgas burners are cheap camping supplies and you’re bound to be able to find some sticks somewhere so with some water reserve you even can have your morning coffee.

The EEC is such an underexplored subject in the Cyberpunk universe. Member states are actually democratic (shocker, I know), votes in the European Council are allocated according to the member states’ wealth, a hundred million eddies per seat. Want to be a Merc? The European way is to go to a trade school which churn out licensed special force commandos. ESA literally rules space, even Arasaka has to bend the knee, there. Forget nukes if you try shit the EEC is going to drop a couple of asteroids on your head. Worker’s rights? Well yes your implants won’t right-out kill you if you quit your job, and the unions are probably just as capitalist as the companies, maybe reverting to a guild system (both are speculation, as said: Underexplored). Overall much more and much smaller companies, the EEC is actively working against Megacorps being a thing, though at least the Asian Megacorps have a solid position on the European market.

In our timeline it’s often forgotten how the EU started out as a trade cartel and that this stuff is still very deep in its bones, yet somehow the Cyberpunk timeline also manages to capture the fall of colonialism. The EEC is more than powerful enough to take over lots of stuff without breaking a sweat but I guess the consensus is “why should we take over Night City then we have to rule it”.

Regarding foreign policy: Canada indeed is the closest ally. NUSA relations are tense AF because Americans be jealous because NUSA politicians like to distract from their own incompetence and propagandise, USSR solid economical working arrangement (EEC can squeeze more productivity out of Eastern Europe than them and Moscow gets a cut), Asia in general, South America, Africa, generally solid relations but of course competetive, Japan, arch competitor. Also, ex-member of the EEC. Is it even possible to call Japan and Arasaka different entities.

And, yes, the EEC controls the eddie. Primary or secondary currency all over the world with the exception of the USSR.

I guess at this point it’s a matter of numbers: Cases do exist and are egregious (especially because the US somehow doesn’t understand that light 24/7 constitutes torture), but compared to the total number of Germans crossing the border it’s not even a drop in the bucket, they can’t say “The US has a policy of making your life hell” based on pure factual data because “isolated cases”.

So putting out a travel warning at this point would be Germany slapping the US across the face which, no matter how deserved or politically warranted or opportune, is not a thing mere civil servants are supposed to do.

Meanwhile, the outgoing minister is going to say “nah let my successor deal with that shitshow”. TBH Baerbock has been awfully quiet ever since the coalition broke. I guess she might actually have caught a case of civil servant fiddlesticks (An actual term in German, “whoever moves first loses”).

It’s not an agency it’s the ministry of foreign affairs and right now they’re operating in maintenance mode as we don’t have a government proper, only a caretaker government until the Bundestag constitutes itself on the 25th where a new chancellor can be elected.

The change looks like it does because it’s the kind of change a ranking civil servant can do without checking in with their minister, it’s considered non-political.

In ruins would mean the streets and buildings have decayed past the point of habitability and usability.

You’re being overly literal. The standing of the US, its position in the world, all that is certainly in ruins. And, yes, so are plenty of buildings and infrastructure. Whole states are, economically, barely on the level of developing nations, if that.

I live in a diverse multicultural community.

Which is not the US. Your community might make up part of the population of the US, but what you have regarding the “more” part of “more than the sum of its parts” certainly isn’t shared with the rest. It thus isn’t part of the American civilisation, for that there would have to be a shared civilisation, a shared “more”.

Pray tell, how is that rule of law going? Constructive political discourse? Good relations with your neighbours and allies?

“Not in ruins” my ass.

We just have a bad government.

Because you don’t care to have a good one. Because you don’t care to look over the brim of your burger, to connect with people who do not already happen to be in your in-group. None of those groups has any allies because each is saying “fuck you, got mine”. Solidarity is a curse word. “Solidarity”? Them marchers is all commies, tell me kid are you a red??!

How can you know you cross lines when you don’t care, are apathetic?

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

…I don’t think I need to attribute that quote.

There may be traces left, true, but if OP’s “The American way is to not care” ideal is lived by, what I described is exactly what you get.

And, yes, Americans are a lot more alienated from another than pretty much any other people.

And you misunderstood entirely.

Last I checked, “not caring” has exactly the meaning I took it to have.

You can’t have one when everyone’s alienated from each other, that’s the point. Civilisation is more than the mere sum of its parts: When you do not care about someone else deciding to e.g. oppress a fellow compatriot you only have the sum, not the more. A population, but not a civilisation.

You can have a civilization made of many civilizations

That’s not what e pluribus unum means. That’s what in varietate concordia means.

And that’s precisely why you have a country but lack a civilisation.

Paper + pencil are still a programmer’s best friend. YMMV when it comes to graphics tablets, but no fancy software doing anything but precisely emulating paper + pencil gives you that raw braindump interface, when you have to think about how to squeeze things into syntax you have a bottleneck that chokes everything.

People are taking naps in their car in a bank parking lot while charging.

Missed opportunity, right there, because even the operators still think in terms of “gas station”. Get a plot of land with a nice view, build a cafe, build a couple of charging stations. Make it a destination people want to go to regardless whether they need a fill-up or not.

Heck, whatever happened to car cinemas.

There’s already a low-key travel warning for trans and intersex people in place because the US’s stance on passports having sex entries not matching the birth certificate, or being anything but M or F, is unclear at best. Advise is “get the US embassy to sign off on your papers before trying to enter”. This might amount to a total ban: If your birth certificate says X and they’re not accepting X passports and neither ones which don’t match the birth certificate then there’s no kind of passport they do accept.

Would you be bold enough to write if (i++ == INT_MAX) break? The result of the increment is never used, but an increment is being done, at least syntactically, and it overflows, at least theoretically, so maybe (I’m not 100% sure) the compiler could be allowed to break out into song because undefined behaviour allows anything to happen.

con is with, di apart, both in the “is apart” and “drifts apart” way, also “between” and “not”, and trans is, well, also apart, but implying some sense of border, not just (conceptual) distance. I’d say that digress and transgress are comparatively synonym (if you squint in just the right way) and both antonym to congress.

intragress might be an alternative to the missing cisgress, especially as ingress already exists. And then we could have extragress for being not on the inside but not beyond the pale, either.

Or we could stop this silliness and cast out the Normans.

so, the actual opposite of congress would be digress

How about transgress.

You’re right, that’s what I get for not having written a line of C in what 15 years. Bonus challenge: write for i in i32::MIN..=i32::MAX in C, that is, iterate over the whole range, start and end inclusive.

(I guess the ..= might be where my confusion came from because Rust’s .. is end-exclusive and thus like <, but also not what you want because i32::MAX + 1 panics).

I mean i < 10 isn’t wrong as such, it’s just good practice to always use <= because in the INT_MAX case you have to and everything should be regular because principle of least astonishment: That 10 might become a #define FOO 10, that then might become #define FOO INT_MAX, each of those changes look valid in isolation but if there’s only a single i < FOO in your codebase you introduced a bug by spooky action at a distance. (overflow on int is undefined behaviour in C, in case anyone is wondering what the bug is).

…never believe anyone who says “C is a simple language”. Their code is shoddy and full of bugs and they should be forced to write Rust for their own good.

i <= 9, you heathen. Next thing you’ll do is i < INT_MAX + 1 and then the shit’s steaming.

I’m cooked, see thread.