1 Don’t imitate the American tourists who were seen trying to take down a French flag on July 14th and wondering why they’ve been arrested by the police.

2 Avoid jokes about the white flag, reverse gears… we hear that joke ten times a day, no more a joke but harrassment

3 behave normally in the street, don’t shout. We always say : you hear an American tourist before you see him.

4 Don’t try to bring back a piece of historical monument. After the Da Vinci Code movie, it was necessary to put up plexiglass panels to prevent damage in the church of st germain des prés .

5 Don’t think you’re in a third world country or at Disneyland.

6 Politeness is important, so a hello when entering a store is important.

7 Don’t call the waiter in a cafe with a snap of your fingers. Likewise, in a cafe or restaurant, don’t forget that you are not alone, be discreet. Not everyone wants to hear your donkey yelling accent.

8 Avoid what I heard on the Champs Elysees: farting contests from us tourists resting on a bank.

9 don’t wear MAGA caps or shirts, especially in Denmark

10 please note that the river “Seine” does not flow into the gulf of America but in the english channel or la Manche.

11 don’t wear fanny packs. To avoid confusion, i change the Word for banana pack which is the name of this bag in france

12 don’t try to pay with US dollars. the official currency in Europe is the euro, the british pound or the danish crown (for denmark and greenland) 6 other currencies

13 don’t complain about Cobblestone streets, lack of air conditioning or about small portion sizes while dining out

14 don’t come with Karen

so in conclusion don’t be like this ! and remember Europe is not for sale…

other points suggested by quora members and the last one from a friend waiter in a restaurant in the town of Eze

avoid the comment like : Hey, you oughta be grateful – we pulled your fat outta the fire in WW I and II.” or “Why aren’t the menus in English and the prices in $?”

don’t come with Karen and Kevin

thank you for the 1000 upvotes. for those who deny, read the comments of other members especially those of David Rh. Kris Je. and Wolfgang H. who made my day. very funny

They’ve sort of tried before.

Project Babylon was a “space gun” developed in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq based on an earlier US-Canadian research project called HARP. The idea was to use a chemical propellant gun (railgun technology simply wasn’t there yet) to boost a payload up high. In theory, the payload (which could be a rocket) can then ignite the motor and reach orbit like any other spacecraft.

However, this being Saddam’s project, only an idiot would think that this is an actual, peaceful space vehicle launcher. The inventor, Gerald Bull (who was part of Project HARP too), was then found with a severe case of multiple high velocity lead injection ala Mossad (I’ve also heard CIA too).

As I said, there’s nothing theoretically wrong with it. Boosting a spacecraft to altitude will (on paper) reduce the insane amount of fuel needed to escape the atmosphere. This is why we’ve made quite a few air-launched rockets, the latest iteration being the absolutely humongous Roc by Stratolaunch, now one of the largest airplanes around after the An-225 was destroyed.

It was originally intended to launch a special version of the SpaceX Falcon rocket, but the deal fell through and Stratolaunch went their own way. However, the rocket they can launch with this thing is really tiny in comparison, and this also highlights the issue with the “space gun”.

It takes SO much energy to boost the rocket appreciably that we’re generally better off just using rockets all the way. I don’t think this will change even with railgun technology unless both the electricity and parts for the giant gun (especially) becomes literally dirt cheap. You probably will need to hook it up to a nuclear reactor or something.

As other answers noted, the gun itself will not put an object into orbit. It will send it on a suborbital trajectory like a ballistic missile. This is why the Babylon Gun was dangerous because it really was just a giant artillery piece that you can use to bombard other countries. You still need at least one rocket stage to boost it into a true orbit.

De-orbiting is exactly the reverse and can’t be done with a gun from Earth. It’s the rockets that do the job.

OK, here is how it will work out:

Farmers and ranchers produce about 2 to 3 times the amount of food we need in the US. The rest is sold to other countries or used as cattle feed or to make other foods. We also buy a lot of food – like beef from Australia and fruits from several countries. Let’s say they make 1 million pounds of each – people food, export food, animal food, other foods – just as an example.

The reciprocal tariffs price our products higher than other sources so other countries are not buying our farm products. That puts 1 million pounds more on the US market but the US market usually uses less than that so to sell it, the farmers have to lower their prices – a lot. Some will go out of business because it costs more to harvest than they can sell it for. Lots of farmers will have to fire people because they can’t make enough money. As soon as the current glut of food is gone, there will be scarcity because next year there will be fewer farms and they will not produce as much. Prices to US consumers will come down for a few products and go up for most of the others.

A lot of crops are grown to feed cattle. Reciprocal tariffs price our beef and meat products higher than other sources so other countries are not buying our meat products. Deals have already been made by Australia to sell beef to China and Japan. The EU won’t buy our beef. We have lost most of the export market for our beef products, which means that we will have a glut of cattle in the US that will temporarily lower the cost of beef but, as with grain crops, as soon as the excess inventory is gone, prices will rise. Ranchers will reduce their herds and the grain bought that would be used for cattle feed. This will further reduce income to the farmers and eventually increase the price of meat in the US.

We deported a lot of migrant workers so a lot of farms will not be able to produce as much as they had in the past. Some will let the food rot in the fields. Some will harvest part of their fields. By this Fall, US-produced veggies and fruit will be in short supply making the price go up.

The import tariffs Trump has put on foreign produce will jack up prices on imported fruits and veggies to consumers. Combined with the scarcity of US produce, grocery prices will rise a lot. A lot of people will not pay $1.50 or more for one apple or orange so sales might drop – driving up prices even more.

Most of the larger countries on Trump’s tariff list have made trade agreements among themselves to the exclusion of the US. In the years to come, they will buy and sell among themselves and NOT buy from the US or sell to the US without charging very high prices. BRICS, Canada, China, the EU, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Spain, South Korea, and Italy have all agreed on trade deals that exclude the US. This means that in the future – all the things we used to buy from them will not be available or will cost a lot more.

Even if Trump were gone tomorrow, these trade agreements will persist for a long time and the US will suffer being isolated from global trade at favorable prices. The reduction in planted fields and farms and the reduced cattle herds will take time to recover, which will continue to cause scarcity for several years, which will cause grocery prices to stay high longer.

Trump has screwed us royally. . . . and he has not stopped making it worse.

UPDATE: China – our largest grain buyer – has stopped ALL farm purchases. China now buys from Brazil, Argentina and Canada in long-term trade agreements. 88% of farm exports have stopped. Grain silos are full with no buyers. Fields are unharvested. Produce is rotting. Because of the high fees for using the silos, some farmers are dumping their crops into landfills or into the ocean.

Many farmers are not replanting for next year because they have no assurance they will have a buyer.

Some farmers are selling their equipment just to pay for food for their families.

Short answer: yes, and destroyed.

In less than 100 days, Trump destroyed 100 years of cooperation. It will be a very long time indeed before Canadians trust the word of an American President. Even when Trump is gone from the scene, his junior MAGA opportunists are just ready to carry on in his name.

Here we have the main street in Burlington, Vermont. It’s just over an hour from Montreal. They’ve (temporarily) renamed Church Street as Canada Street/rue Canada. Along with all border communities and states, they’re facing the loss of Billions of dollars of Canadian tourist revenue, and they’re desperate to get it back. Look, Canadians like Vermont – but we’re staying away as long as Trump and his ICEstapo are in charge

How effective is the travel boycott? American tourist destinations are shitting bricks over the massive loss of Canadian travellers – echoed by the loss of overseas travellers. Canadian airlines are slashing US destinations, and are replacing them with domestic flights and with flights to friendly countries.

Canadians are actively boycotting American goods. Canadian stores are jumping on the boycott bandwagon. Their “earnest” will go along with the boycott is resulting in fraudulent “Canada” labels – more embarrassment for the stores concerned.

I haven’t seen American citrus in my supermarket for months. I see citrus from Mexico, Brazil, the rest of South America. I see citrus from Spain, South Africa and the Middle East. But not a Florida orange to be seen anywhere.

Our family stove died earlier this year. The salesman at the appliance store showed us a couple of American-made models – from a Red state no less. We said no thanks. The salesman said we weren’t the first. We eventually bought a South Korean stove. Not only do they use Canadian aluminum, but they also had the guts to lock up a criminal insurrectionist president.

And you won’t see American beer, wine, or liquor anywhere in Canada (with the exception of the MAGA Maple Premier of Alberta’s province). The state of Kentucky is whining about the loss of their biggest export market for bourbon. Too bad – they should have thought of that before voting for President Pedophile.

In a word:

NO.

All four Iowa-class battleships, the USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Wisconsin, and USS Missouri, are privately-owned by various non-profits (or, in the case of Wisconsin, the city of Norfolk, VA) dedicated to preserving them as museum ships, historical artifacts to be enjoyed by the public. “Reactivating” them for military use would not only be virtually impossible, but reactivating just one battleship would be prohibitively expensive. In a recent study by a Defense Department think tank, the cost and work involved in bringing one of these ghosts back from the dead would be enormous, somewhere from $700 million to over $1 billion. Reactivating all four with upgrades to keep them battle-ready for today’s style of naval warfare, not to mention maintaining them and crewing them with enough officers and sailors, would equal close to $80 billion per year, according to conservative estimates.

That’s not to mention getting them out of their moorings on their own power. All four ships had their propeller shafts removed, so to move them, they’ll have to be towed. No factory makes those parts anymore, and the people who did design and make them are all dead. Then you have the issue with the infrastructure: most of the electronics have been removed or degraded to a point of being unusable. All that would have to be ripped out and replaced. Their boilers and turbines are either degraded or dismantled, requiring either a new propulsion system entirely, or finding someone who makes updated versions of those massive steam engines. Also: all the weapons will need upgrading. A 16-inch 2,700-lb armor-piercing shell is still something spectacular when fired, but advancements in newer ships’ armor may make them bounce off their hulls, not to mention those big 50 caliber Mark 7 main battery guns only had a range of up to about 27 miles. A modern guided missile destroyer, by contrast, can launch a Tomahawk missile with a range of over 1,000 nautical miles, destroying a target far beyond visual range.

But wait! you say, can’t they be upgraded with the newest cool stuff?

They actually were. Before their final decommissioning in 1994, all four Iowas were upgraded with Tomahawks, Phalanx guns, and RGM-84 anti-ship missiles during the Navy’s “600-Ship” era in the 1980s to counter the Soviet Navy’s expansion, which also saw the battleships’ armoring, internal electronics and radar updated. The new upgrades served the BBs well, as they certainly had the room for them. But the battleships were eventually sunk by two things: first, the overall cost. Maintaining an Iowa cost over $100 million per year during their late Cold War reactivation, and that was for the hardware alone. Then there was the cost of paying over 1,500 sailors to man the ship. Adjusted for inflation, you’ll be looking at over a billion dollars per year just for upkeep.

The second factor in their consignment to the annals of history is even larger: the nature of naval warfare had completely changed. Battleships (and battlecruisers) used to be the top dogs of the sea in the early-to-mid-20th century, and the mere sight of a massive capital ship like that sailing toward you was enough to intimidate. Those huge main guns were constructed to frighten without firing a single shot, but when they did fire, it was Armageddon in a salvo. A direct hit by one of those 16-inchers would reduce a cruiser to sinking wreckage in minutes. The Battle of Jutland in 1916 was probably the largest battleship fight in history, about 250 surface ships in total, but most of them fired from distances of up to a dozen miles away, due to improvements in gunnery and fire control systems. More ships were damaged than actually sunk, and the battle ended in a technical stalemate. But during World War I, new threats emerged for surface navies: submarines and aircraft, and when Eugene Ely landed his plane on an aircraft carrier for the first time in 1911, battleships and battle lines almost immediately became irrelevant, as naval aviation became the deciding factor in winning sea battles in World War II. Almost the entire Imperial Japanese Navy was completely annihilated by torpedo-carrying planes launching from carriers in the Pacific War. The absolute last battleship fight in history occurred on October 25, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when a battle line of 6 US battleships blew the Japanese battleship Yamashiro to flaming wreckage before she sank in the Surigao Strait. That engagement was almost a total fluke. In the following engagement, the Battle of Samar, US Navy warplanes battered Vice Admiral Kurita’s formidable main force to compel the Japanese fleet to retreat. One year later, the Japanese navy was destroyed, and Japan surrendered.

With the characteristics of naval combat heavily favoring aircraft carriers, submarines, drones, and missiles that can be fired from beyond the horizon, battleships today would be literal sitting ducks. They’re huge targets, not that maneuverable, expensive to operate, and their role in today’s forms of naval combat would be very limited. It makes no sense to maintain a fleet of huge capital ships anymore with main weapons that can’t even hit a target from a distance of the size of a small city, with themselves offering a huge target for anti-ship missiles that could easily shred their hulls.

But what about fitting them with new stuff like railguns?

It’s possible, but railguns consume a huge amount of energy, more than the Iowas’ power plants were ever capable of generating, which averaged about 10 megawatts. A railguns, as currently under development, would consume over 5 gigawatts. The ship’s power grid would burn out without even firing a shot. While a railgun could conceivably fit on the ship, they’d have no way of firing it. Making a railgun practical for military use without having such huge energy requirements is one of the major challenges of making these potential weapons useful for combat.

So. No. The Age of the Battleship is long over. The Iowas fulfilled their purpose, did their duty with honor, and America is lucky to be able to have them as artifacts of a bygone era.

I love battleships and am an aficionado for the old fashioned surface fleet engagements. There was always something romantic about them. I was privileged to visit two Iowa BBs in my life, the New Jersey and the Wisconsin. Both times, I was awed by their latent, raw power these beautiful warships projected, and I came away with an appreciation for the sacrifices their long-passed crews made for our country. I very seriously doubt the old battle wagon-style ships will ever make a comeback…but perhaps we should pray and work to ensure the world won’t ever need them again.

(USS New Jersey, Getty Images, public domain)

Drones are definitely the future of aerial warfare. No tank in the world can withstand a $400 drone.

Robert “Magyar” Brovdi — founder of Ukraine’s first drone brigade — delivered hard truths about the war to NATO generals at LANDEURO 2025 in Wiesbaden.

Key points:

• No tank in the world can withstand a cheap $400 drone.
• 4 of our drone crews could destroy your NATO base in 15 minutes, from 10 km away.
• What will your military do if Shaheds fly over Europe? NATO doctrines need an urgent review.
• Unmanned Systems Forces: 2% of the army, but eliminate 1/3 of enemy troops.
• Ukraine is building a drone wall taller than the Great Wall of China.
• The Ukrainian experience must be integrated into Europe’s security systems.
• Optic drones can’t be jammed. Take a look at the battlefields. They’re post-apocalyptic steampunk covered with fiber and net tunnels.

Of course, tanks remain a crucial asset in military operations today — and you cannot operate without infantry.

Robert “Magyar” Brovdi — founder of Ukraine’s first drone brigade.

However, the war has changed significantly; at this point, only 2 countries possess combat experience and battle-tested technologies. It’s Ukraine and Russia.

NATO must bring Ukraine into the fold, for their own safety.

NATO is woefully unprepared for the 2025 reality of war — they need Ukraine to be ready for today’s level of warfare.