Probably to continue getting ‘Gulf Region’-rich off the back of the oil it found in an area that is internationally recognised as their territory.

Even Venezuela recognised it as part of Guyana’s EEZ until very recently.

After Maduro mismanaged one of the most resource rich countries into basically a failed state, he’s now trying to cling to power the tried and true way: stoking a pointless war with its neighbour.

Best case he’s trying to rally support for a 2025 election, or use the threat of as an excuse to say the election. Worst case he’s gonna do a Putin and actually start a war. Not a bad time for it either, whilst the world is already distracted with Ukraine and and Gaza.

Here’s a decent video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ7fTSirNDs

I don’t know, your #2 reason doesn’t seem to stand up to reality.

I don’t know where you are, but where I am (UK) you can go on any high street (in most towns there will be an area where most shops are, think strip mall in the US) and you will find at least a couple shops that fix and sell electronics - primarily smartphones, but also vacuum cleaners, TVs, computers, games consoles.

Pretty much all of them are locally-run and are, I assume, profitable in spite of every electronics manufacturer trying to run them out of business.

I say I assume because they wouldn’t be everywhere if they weren’t.

I’ve had phones fixed by them, they offer warranties, reasonable prices, only had an issue once and it was put right after a tiny bit of back and forth.

I think by “we can’t afford it” you mean “capitalism hasn’t yet found a way to centralise the profits and run the small business owners out of business”.

2&3 completely agree

On 1 though, I agree IF every other game embraced the modding community as much as Bathesda games do. GTA is the only other game I heavily mod, and in comparison it’s such a pain in the ass, the game engine is not designed to support it so you get weird bugs, just overall a worst experience.

So I think it’s fair to rate the base game highly for its support of mods. They’ve decided that providing a great experience for mods is a high priority for them. Maybe they can make the base game better if they don’t have to make it compatible with whatever modders want to throw at it.

I assume that you’re talking about the Dacia Spring which got 1 star (though the Renault Zoe got 0 stars recently and a few others did too in the past).

So whilst you’re not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I’m sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.

And it’s fundamentally flawed to subject a tiny 970kg EV city car to the same tests as a 2-3 ton towering SUV. Besides the vastly different use cases, bigger and heavier vehicles will have an inherent advantage in most of the tests - hint none of them are adjusted for the weight of the vehicle.

I’m not saying this is somehow wrong, they’re simulating crashing into an average car or a stationary immovable object, just we’re automatically discounting small vehicles which have a genuinely valid reason to exist.

The new NCAP ratings only makes sense if we’re saying affordable, small, light cars don’t need to exist. Like everything automotive nowadays, it’s designed to gently nudge us towards big lumbering swollen hatchbacks as the holy grail of the car industry.