Best outcome would be that corporate refuses to reimburse, claiming that the payment was entirely the manager's personal decision that had nothing to do with them, and so the court rules the airline hasn't paid and the bailiffs can make a second visit.

And then the manager sues the airline too.

The US will be losing and then some French players will help from the sidelines.

Reparations don't have to be in the form of land.

Ah, so this is an entirely self-contained belief system. He chose this option because he's "eurocentric," and he's eurocentric because he chose this option.

His most recent official line.

The next thing out of his mouth could be completely different and that will become the official line at that point. He only sticks to any sort of agreement or position for as long as it benefits him, not one second longer than that.

Trump hasn't backed down from the 51st state thing permanently, he just gets distracted. Trump is deep into dementia and one of the things that results in is obsessions that simply cannot be let go of. The 51st state thing will keep coming back, just like the Greenland thing.

What stops him is that even though he managed to ensure that there are no adults in the room this time around to rein him in like last time he was in office, even the children in the room that he's surrounded himself with realize that this is a terrible idea.

I would hope so, but you're laying it on pretty thick with this hypothetical scenario. Makes it hard to imagine.

Which, conveniently, Anthropic CEO defines as "AI from our competitors."

Success for Rutte (and NATO) is protecting NATO members against invasion or attack.

If the US' membership is raising that risk for the other members rather than lowering it, then in that situation letting the US exit can be a net benefit for NATO's members (which would no longer include the US).

The point is to make belligerents back down by raising the cost they'd have to pay by carrying through.

This particular belligerent backs down so often that there's a special acronym for it, so NATO's a perfectly good protective tool here.

40 years is an unreasonably long timeframe to be making projections like this. Assuming the US is still having elections there will have been 10 opportunities for their government to completely flip-flop its intentions in that time.

There have recently been direct annexation threats against Canada.