For the Ruby! *promote, *beg, *borrow, *steal, *kitchensink

I have a 5C (borrowed until my own 5 is fixed).

That's certainly possible, but I can think of other plausible explanations:

• Spain's problems mainly involved real estate and non-productive investments. Maybe Greece was doing a better job of employing the borrowed funds, and therefore lost more with their removal?
  
• Spain's austerity program started in 2010, their bailout was in 2012 but they left the program in January 2014. You can clearly see the dip in GDP during that timeframe, although as you say it does seem suspiciously small. Perhaps the effect of austerity was actually greater in Greece because the initial recession was deeper and the period of austerity was greater?
  
• Spain's economy is more export focused, which helped offset the impact of reduced domestic demand (although at 33% of GDP vs 28% of GDP it's not enough).
  

In my non-expert opinion the only way to really help Greece at this point is to release a significant amout of debt and set the interest of the rest to zero. (Instead of trying to keep on profiting on their misfortune)

And I fear a Grexit will inevitably lead to the worst case scenario for both Greece and the EU, hyperinflation in an european country.

Edit:
After having read some more stuff about Greece and monetary shell games aka economics I've come to the conclusion that zero interest debt would not actually help. Interest for goverment bonds has been declining worldwide over the last decades, yet government debt has increased proportionally.
Why is that? Well, if you, as a politician, can borrow more money for the same amount of effective interest to fulfill your election promises in order to stay in office for as long as possible then why the hell not? Some day you won't be in office anymore and the higher government debt isn't your problem anymore.
So in the end, lower interest rates may not be 'helpful' for the greek government to balance their budget.

Invisible Inc didn't always include the rewind mechanic and I don't think it was actually a planned feature. Later iterations probably balanced the game more around it, but I still think it is kinda amazing how well it works given it wasn't in the game until relatively late into development.

I'd actually very much like the game to penalise you for not using rewind. Or rather I'd like the game to be balanced with assumption you will use it. I like that rewind creates a nice middle ground between quick save scumming and iron mode. I think it allows for a more challenging game in other respects and that doesn't feel frustrating when a miss click puts your main girl in open ground surrounded by cyberdisks (especially when the UI was pretty bad when it came to different elevations...). It smooths the transition from too easy to too hard.

That said, there are a number of changes from Enemy Unknown that I'd like to have more priority. Borrowing from Invisible Inc again, the ever raising alarm level in that creates a sense of urgency that I never felt in XCOM, even in the bomb missions and with the meld resource. I never lost a soldier because I forced them to take an incredible risk for the sake of the mission, I really only lost people because an unlucky shot dinked them in head across the map when they were in heavy cover. It looks like they are perhaps addressing urgency with the threat of reinforcements, which is cool. The other frustration I had with XCOM:EU/EW is that it always seemed to punish scouting. You'd effectively "wake up" the aliens by finding them which really disincentivised spreading out to cover more ground. It was simply safer to move as ball and let the enemies run into you (with the possible exception of the terror missions). it looks like they might be addressing that by making you the insurgent force with ambush tactics etc.

So yeah. I'm hyped.

I think to be more fair to Germany, the way I see it isn't that German's are complaining about their own benefits being poor by comparison. I don't even see it as German's complaining that Greece's was too rich by comparison. Your point of Greek spending it's money as it wishes stands.

I think the very legitimate side for Germany is that if Greece wanted to borrow German money for those benefits that Germany would like to see that money someday paid back. More over, if Greece is now too poor to pay that money back and is asking for even more loans to scrape by, Germany isn't exactly an ogre in demanding some spending/taxation changes from Greece first so there is some hope at least the new loans will be paid back.

Greece's current finance minister doesn't even seem to deny much of this. Rather in accepting it, he points out that in spite of these debt obligations from the past, if Greece is forced to abide by them, the resulting collapse of Greece will similarly do nothing to help pay back the debts that are outstanding. Basically that Germany and other creditors are going to take the loss regardless, and maybe it's in everyone's best interests to find a road where Greece doesn't become a failed state.

So, Greece borrowed more money than they could pay off and had a bad economy.

Part of the problem is with something like the united states sharing a dollar is that spending on social programs and taxation are still centrally determined. Setting up the same assistance for the poor and retirees across the states is a given. In the Eurozone though, Greeks were retiring earlier and with better benefits than the Germans, for a long time too. It is kind of hard to blame Germany for being reluctant to keep lending money to Greece when Germans are working till much older and getting much less in return.

'Cuz it's a fan-made film.

TRON: Destiny is a fan film based in the real world and borrows elements of TRON and TRON: Legacy.

I find it baffling how poorly thought out and executed this was.

Skyrim? Ok, I get that it's got the largest mod scene, but if they'd done their research they'd know that a lot of Skyrim mods have complicated inter-dependencies with script extenders, assets borrowed from other mods, other mod resources such as animation behaviors or skeleton rigs, patches for compatibility, load order management, SkyUI....the list goes on.

The cynical part of me thinks that they knew their micro-transaction model wasn't really a good fit, but they just wanted to see if they could get away with it. Donations or a Patreon type of system would seem to fit modding a lot better, but I don't think Valve or Bethesda can make themselves the middlemen in that arrangement nearly as easily.
The naive part of me thinks that perhaps they just badly misjudged this...I'm not sure that level of incompetency is really better.

I'd love to see some of the more prolific modders able to make it a fulltime profession, if not just so they could hire some decent voice talent...

I love The Fountain, and I pretty much interpreted the movie in the same way as the guy who did the video (give or take a few details).

I agree that it's a movie about coming to terms with death, and that death is not just a part of life. Life needs death to exist and vice-versa. We are all here, because stars died, and from their demise came the stuff that made our existence possible. And plants and animals die (or are killed) so that we can carry on living. And when we die, it doesn't really matter if we are buried or cremated. The stuff we are made of, the basic components of it, return to where it came from. To where it always belonged. We we're just borrowing it.

I think the tree in the spaceship is in fact the tree Tom planted over his wife's grave. And in his inability to accept her death and his eventual own, he grew attached to the tree because in a way it was the only thing he had left that was a part of his long gone wife. Her body nourished the tree, and in that sense became a part of it. But even trees don't live forever, and after 500 years the tree is dying, and once again he can't accept it. That's why he shouted at his memories of her to leave him alone. He just couldn't take it anymore. Living forever and never being able to let go, is not an easy way to live.

His death in the end, renewed the tree, making it bloom once again. Also I don't agree that he's not rational (as the video puts it). I think that's precisely the problem with Tom. He's completely rational, and ceasing to be and never again seeing his loved ones, scares him more than anything else.

I'm an atheist, and therefore I consider myself a rational person, but this movie really gave me a much needed boost to come to terms with death. Not just mine but of everyone I know. It will be terrible (as it is) when it happens, but not accepting it is denying the universe, and denying reality.

Stars die too. What chances did we ever had?

I can't take credit for the stolen borrowed pun... Hat tip to dailypicksandflicks.com for that one

Everyone knows what has to happen but everyone has his own fancy angle on how and why and when and whose fault it is.

A country has spent all the money it could possibly borrow and then some, and has just voted not to stop spending.

Hey Greece, you will have to stop spending one day, the only thing that is not certain is how long this mess can be drawn out. While stopping spending may not look like it can help restart your economy, not getting any further external economic props might just make something happen.

It will be interesting to see how the political bits and pieces will work themselves out.

Its like your cousin borrowed some money from you and leased a fancy car like you have. He cant start paying you back just now, in fact he cant afford the downpayments anymore and now you either have to lend him more money or he has to go back to riding on the bus and the whole car is lost. You hate him because he lied to you about his income and he hates you because you cant really afford to "lend" more money right now.

PS: my bet is Greece gets to keep the car somehow.

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

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Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
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Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.