tal

Big events like that are not about profit though. They're really about buying prestige, which remains more valuable than profit.

Ehh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Correctional_Institution,_Ray_Brook

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee needed congressional approval for funding to build an Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Olympics. Congress required an after-use contract for facilities, and Lake Placid's congressman Robert C. McEwen considered the possibilities of having it be repurposed as housing, a hospital, or a permanent athletic facility, but these plans all failed to materialize. As McEwen searched for possibilities, he learned that Norman Carlson of the Federal Bureau of Prisons has congressional approval to build a prison in the Northeastern United States. It was ultimately agreed to create the Village with the goal of repurposing it as a prison.[1][2]

At the time of construction, the Olympic Village had 937 small cells, each holding between 2 and 4 athletes. The majority of rooms had one barred window, although some had no windows at all, and they had heavy steel doors with peepholes for use by guards after conversion to a functional prison. The Village was surrounded by concentric chain fences. The fences were sensitized and sounded alarms if touched. The only entrance to the village was a surveilled double gate. The village saw widespread condemnation from International Olympic Committees, and multiple countries sought to rent housing in other locations. While National Olympic Committees typically need to pay on their own if they choose to find new accommodation, IOC Director Monique Berlioux said, "This time the accommodations are so poor that delegations will not have to pay for them if they move somewhere else."[3]

The delegations of Sweden, Italy, Austria, East Germany, West Germany, and other countries sought alternative accommodations. This created an unexpected boom in the local real estate market, increasing rent in some areas from US$200 (equivalent to $781.5 in 2025) to US$4,000 (equivalent to $15,630 in 2025).

searches

It sounds like they have gender-segregated seating on public transport.

https://anjo.pt/travel/2023/11/24/extra-post-navigating-gender-lines-turkeys-quirky-public-transport-rules/

Hey travelers! Ever booked a seat on public transport and had to specify your gender? Well, welcome to Turkey! In this unique travel experience, seating next to someone of the opposite sex is a bit of a no-no, unless you book together.

Trains: Clear as Day

Turkey’s train system doesn’t beat around the bush. Try booking seats next to someone of the opposite sex, and bam! You’re hit with a clear message saying, “Not allowed.” They’re serious about keeping guys and gals in their separate travel lanes.

Buses: No Mix and Match

Now, buses take it up a notch. Most systems won’t even let you book seats next to the opposite sex. No ifs, ands, or buts. It’s a full-on restriction. Talk about keeping things strictly platonic on the road!

Sure, some argue it’s about passenger comfort and safety. But seems not everyone’s on board with this gender-segregated journey. Critics say it’s a buzzkill for personal freedom. Solo travelers, especially those outside traditional gender norms, might find it a tad awkward or downright frustrating.

Officials said the man also insulted federal police officers during questioning. According to authorities, he made the remarks in Turkish without realizing that one of the interviewing officers understood the language.

I mean, even aside from that, I suspect that they're probably wearing bodycams...

If the European welfare state looks like a pyramid scheme, its pharaohs are the “baby-boomers”. The bumper generation born in the two decades after 1945, aged roughly between 60 and 80 (Hello Mum! Hi Dad!), would like to go down in history as the first in centuries not to have started a war pitting one bit of the continent against another.

I mean...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

Born: 7 October 1952 (age 73)

Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Like, it's in Eastern Europe rather than Western Europe, but it's pretty hard to not call that a pretty substantial war in Europe.

Samsung is one of the Big Three memory manufacturers. Samsung's phone division had some news articles talkimg about how they couldn't get Samsung's memory division to give them privileged access, even.

(Though for context, about two years earlier, when there was a glut of memory and Samsung's memory division was losing money, they apparently went to the Samsung phone division and tried to get them to buy a bunch of the excess, which I suppose would have meant putting more memory in their phones than would have been optimal. The phone division told them no way.)

And now it's the phone division losing money and the memory division making a ton of money.

https://www.megamobilecontent.com/news/2026/07/17/samsung-phone-division-first-loss-memory-prices/

Samsung's mobile division may have posted its first-ever quarterly loss in Q2 2026, despite strong Galaxy S26 sales and record-breaking profits for Samsung Electronics overall.

The culprit is memory. DRAM prices have reportedly surged roughly 850% year-over-year, driven by insatiable demand from AI server infrastructure. Samsung's semiconductor division is reaping the benefits, but its mobile division is paying the bill.

It takes 4-5 years to build a new memory fab from scratch for companies in the industry.

They're talking about no price reductions for 1.5 years.

(And the reason they're saying that is because the first significant new production capacity isn't expected to be up until mid-2027 and isn't expected to be scaled up to full production until 2028.)

And they already moved that forward by something like six months, probably by spending more on stuff like construction, so I doubt that there's more slack to eliminate. Can't just speed it up a little more.

Earlier this month, research showed that memory prices are predicted to rise sharply between now and 2027, with no reductions expected until 2028. Now, Valve has shared its own view of the hardware market, and it's equally glum.

That's not really a position new to this month.

It had seemed profoundly unjust that Elon Musk had so little money and the German public so much. So great was the wrong that direct government intervention to remedy the situation was required.

The Power of Siberia pipeline reached its designed capacity, allowing Gazprom to supply more natural gas to China … – 38.8 billion cubic meters. The compensation, however, is far from equivalent. Prices for gas sold to China are linked to a basket of petroleum products and are subject to a substantial discount, while the lack of alternative export routes leaves Moscow with little bargaining power.

The lack of alternative export routes leaves Moscow with little bargaining power in selling oil to China.

Yeah, from the various articles that have been coming up in the news on the long-term oil and gas deals that China has been cutting with Russia, I'm actually surprised that China is using said leverage as hard as it is. Whatever negotiator they have on it is extracting as much wealth from Russia that he can.

https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/russia-faces-major-setback-power-siberia-2-over-chinese-price-demands

Negotiations between Russia and China over the proposed “Power of Siberia-2” natural gas pipeline have hit a complete deadlock following Beijing’s demands for steep price discounts, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Sources familiar with the talks said the Russian negotiating team “hit a wall” after Beijing demanded that Moscow price the gas at its heavily subsidized domestic rate of about $50 per thousand cubic meters.

The pricing demand comes despite China already receiving substantial concessions. This year, Beijing pays $258.8 per thousand cubic meters—a 39% discount compared to the $420.2 average paid by Gazprom’s other international clients.

Internal Russian economic forecasts show China's price is slated to drop further to $223.9 next year. Still, Beijing is pushing for a rate eight times cheaper than what Russia's remaining global customers pay.

Like...so, if Russia is forced to take said deals, China is going to be doing very well off it until Russia manages to climb out of the international relations hole that it's in. But the concern that I'd have from China's standpoint is that at those prices, Russia is going to do whatever it possibly can to figure out a way to cut the deal off as soon as it's able.

Companies may only destroy unsold clothes and shoes in limited cases, such as when items are unsafe or damaged, counterfeit or infringing intellectual property rights, or are rejected by charities or donation schemes.

To prevent misuse, businesses relying on these exemptions must provide proof (e.g. documents or test results) and publish annual reports on what they have discarded.

https://www.teenhearts.com/collections/offensive-rude-and-vulgar-t-shirts

A previously-little-noticed corner of European bureaucracy was about to become the new Florida police blotter from an entertainment standpoint.

I think the real question is more along the lines of "is western culture prodominantly evil"

Over surveillance? Western culture?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China

Mass surveillance in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the network of monitoring systems used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government to monitor its citizens. China maintains the largest and most sophisticated mass surveillance system in the world.[2][3] Surveillance is primarily conducted through government entities, although corporate surveillance in connection with the CCP and Chinese government is also prevalent. China monitors its citizens through Internet surveillance, camera surveillance, and through other digital technologies.[4][5] As of 2023, the country had over 700 million surveillance cameras. The surveillance has become increasingly widespread and grown in sophistication under Xi Jinping's administration.[6][7][8][9] In the 2020s, China started integrating artificial intelligence into its surveillance systems.

I remember reading an article about how Europe needed to have states producing more of its own natural gas in the wake of coming off Russian supply, and I remember commenting that there were few states in Europe that produced much. Norway and the UK were the most substantial, and even the UK was a net importer.