Looking at the Ukraine and Armenia war I am getting curious about “cheap” drones or drone version of light aircraft. For the price of a Grippen, you can get 100 VL3 (even counting the modification for a drone version). Sure a cool ultra light plane isn’t barely as cool as fighter jet.

However, With a swarm of 100, I doubt air defence will intercept all of them even in modern countries. Let alone operations in countries with no air defences

With Orban and Meloni at the head of their respective countries and the far-right emboldened everywhere,

This is actually the real issue, while we look at Trump we have far-right government in the EU, and far-right parties having a significant weight in many countries. So let’s not laugh at US too fast

It’s an interesting societal question. Every worker has the right to social security, which should be paid by the employer. Is a prince who get an allowance a worker ? I don’t know the list of duties coming with it.

20 years ago, a group of french Ph.D student who were funded by a large cancer/disability foundation went to court to get social security, and they win, because they weren’t given pocket money by the foundation but were actually working for them, giving them the same right as every ohter worker. When you’re 25 year old you may not need social security (well breaking a leg may happen) but when you’re 60 year old you have significant chance to get large medical fee.

Because it’s interesting for science, worst case we de precision Higgs physics, best case, we finally find SUSY, extra dimensions or whatever.

Among all the technology developed using LHC money 30 to 20 years ago, the most famous would be the Web (Sharing documents as Web pages linked through hypertext link) but it also gave a huge push to superconducting magnet, vacuum and even detector technology. With everyday application in health (e.g. Imaging) but also enabling research in other field (Particle accelerators are way more common than you think)

Finally, I am rather competing with Russia/China using particle accelerators than guns and tanks

So it looks like a way better investment than fighter jet or tax discount for billionaires

It’s France, tons of politicians have been found of guilty of “stealing taxpayermoney” without much impact on their carreer.

let’s say she’s banned from running to election for 3 years, true, she misses the 2027 presidential election, but she’ll be back in 2032, and can still have a party leadership position, can still run to 2029 European election.