A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
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User ID: 645
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
8mo ago
Anecdotally, I've been visiting the US for nearly 5 months now and I've been unable to get a state ID (well, driver's permit, I only need to take the picture...) in the 2 states I've been in, waiting in DMVs for literally 10 hours 15 times so far. Appointments in the current place online are 2.5 months out, which is far longer than I'll be here. In a county of a few million, there are 3 DMV offices left. I have a passport but there are extreme barriers in place (...in these Democrat led states.)
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
they don’t actually hate us and want us dead
Why are you so sure?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
Of course it's less credible. It's naught but bare faced lies with the purpose of destroying all that we hold dear.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
I just meant the Communist space narrative; I like the song, but assumed it was quite modern.
For a decade, people on the left have called me a fascist because I believe people can be better, learn more, accomplish anything. To me, that path is straight forward: Learn the systems which govern the world and make good decisions. If you want to read, learn how the alphabet works, if you want to maintain industrial society, learn economics, physics and chemistry, then keep supply lines up. And yet, people who believe in progress believe phonics is bad, that children should spontaneously understand how to read...
There are some leftist progressives: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0i4ZETgfNuM or the 17th century levers, but it tends towards a negative correlation, sadly.
really driven home to me the idea that what counts as left or right is mostly about vibes and historical coalitions
Even less than that, really. Even people who agree entirely with each other and work for the same political program tend to be there by inertia, understanding different things etc. (unless they are so thoroughly indoctrinated to stop thinking.)
Conserve and progress are meaningless without starting and (intended) end positions, details about methodologies and purpose. You can desire to progress entropy, or progress matter's longevity etc. etc. What aspects do the conservatives want to progress, which do they ignore? Which do the "liberals" want to ignore and which seek they to progress? What if I want to progress the nuclear family into a multigenerational thing, is that reactionary, progressive or?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
I'm more curious whether there is actually desire to implement it etc. Trump has disavowed it multiple times and many contributors were kicked out of his past administration. On the other hand, Trump is insincere and the base generally likes it.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
plan
What of the march through the institutions, the endless attempts at entryism?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
Have you written on this yet?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
credibledefense bans all opposing views
...no. I'm literally head mod.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
Aside: In 1000 AD, the Levant and Egypt were both still at least half Christian, according to most modern historian's estimates.
And they definitely are using LDR and DPR troops as cannon fodder
Nah, those reconstituted forces are mostly filled with contract soldiers from Russia now. By summer of 2022, they had been destroyed and the cannon fodder spent. The DPR itself announced over 50% casualties in 2022, after they'd already conscripted almost (3/4) every male 18-65. They literally closed down mines and factories, conscripting their entire workforces. 2 years after, no one is left.
You one part wrong: Moscow did not bend to the Mongols, it was destroyed. Vladimir (and others) bent. Vladimir had (vague) issues which led to people moving to Tver and Moscow, who then fought over Vladimir. But yes, the main part is right. Russia's national mythology's founded on bending to greater powers (like China, today.) For detail (since your main point is incoherent or evil to me):
The Kievan Rus was barely a single entity and disintegrated by 1100. Where the Holy Roman Empire for most of its existence was a very lose collection for a long period, the Kievan Rus was a section of the Rus (East Slavic lands, post facto held by Russia in the 19th century, but can also mean something like city state or East Slavic statelet). Somehow, this concept stretches far beyond Kiev's rule.
Novgorod's, Rostov's, Kiev's etc. territories are considered as one, because Yaroslav the Wise temporarily controlled them (but they didn't hold together afterwards.) Why consider Vladimir's efforts 100 years later part of Kiev, when at best, the connection by this point is Vladimir briefly conquering Kiev (after Ryazan) around 1150. None of these people wrote of themselves under the Kievan Rus or fighting for some past Kievan unity.
150-200 years after temporarily being together, Rostislav, Prince of Smolensk took Kiev (for 1 week). His son held Smolensk and Novgorod. His son took Kiev in 1215, then took Vladimir, losing Novgorod. In 2023, ~20 independent princes and Turkic tribes sent a host to fight the Mongols, half died. In 1237, Bantu Khan took Kiev. Other statelets like Novgorod and Smolensk were unaffected. The village of Moscow was destroyed at this time. A new Yaroslav asks the Mongols to become prince of Vladimir in 1238. When he dies, the Mongols give the eldest son Vladimir. The younger son, Alexander Nevsky is given (the ashes of) Kiev (not physically by their family). When the Khan died, they were to all go to Sarai and pledge allegiance, which Andrey didn't. The Mongol army returned, removed Andrey and gave Alexander Nevsky all of Vladimir's possessions. Alexander Nevsky then led a Mongol army back to Novgorod in 1259... His son, Daniel, born in 1261, founded a monastery and the first stone church in Moscow, ruling over Tver.
Records are sparse, but from 0 inhabitants in the 1240s, Moscow was able to wrest Vladimir from Tver in the 1300s, gaining the right to... Collect taxes for the Mongols. (You don't hear about Kiev again until the 1650s. The Western Eastern Slavs (ancestors of Belarusians and Ukrainians) had their own stories with/in/as Lithuania and Poland, using the Ruthenian literary language etc.) (Remember, the Polish national poem starts "Oh Lithuania, my native land..."!)
A far better connection between Kiev and Moscow forms from the 1660s, where Ukrainian statesmen, clerics and scholars move to Moscow and establish the structure of the Russian state, reform its church, found schools etc.
Stop reposting this everywhere
fought in Ukraine
On this very thread, 2 days ago @bro linked: https://search.pullpush.io/?kind=submission&until=1726297200&q=%22ryan%20routh%22&size=100 which has the group he claims to have volunteered in disavowing his membership, 7 months ago...
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
Watching this, the US just feels doomed.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
Trump really got concerned that she said people'd leave his rallies early. "We have the biggest rallies in the history of politics"
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
Oh no, they are smart. Especially e.g. Glencore.
But China currently has 150m tons of EAF capacity, with about 3 years of average construction time. (But they don't fully utilize the EAFs...) They have 900m of other capacity vs. the US at 200m total. I'm not sure if they will make a full transition or become comfortable with say 4-600m tons of total capacity (since cheap infrastructure's been largely built out for the coming decades), but both seem feasible. They don't have such plans, but I'm quite shocked how many EAFs they've erected since Covid. Previously, I thought it was impossible for met coal demand to decrease, but exited after really engaging with this.
That said, India's the main driver for met coal demand (especially higher grade like Warrior's) and they consume a lot of coal. Potentially, China could dump "green" steel into India at some point, bur if India engages in protectionism, well... There are also issues with scrap.
It's also quite interesting to see China using nat gas for heavy vehicles (trucks, construction equipment) while investing heavily in hydrogen. That's caused a 10% decrease in demand already. I suspect that in a few years, they'll be able to put up a (local) price ceiling around $80boe.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
multi-decade process
I've been quite bullish on coal, but China's made amazing leaps here. I wouldn't be surprised if in 7-10 years they're off of met coal entirely. It is really shocking how quickly they've been erecting EAFs. India, the US etc. are different issues, also recycling vs. new steel.
Hey, I made some of these a few years ago. I tried to arrange manufacturing to sell them to hot areas. PM me and we can chat!
N.b. they make vests with pockets to insert ice packs. But even better, put material on large veins to cool the bloodstream. The PCMs do crazy stuff to ferrous metals btw.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
bankrupting
Less than 60 billion in total is hardly a rounding error...
I discussed this in the TG group.
In 1886 the US standardized all rail gauges, moving 11,500 miles of track in 2 days: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html A few decades before, they raised Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago That was more track than modern Spain, 5x more than modern Ireland. Yet they can't change their gauges... Similar issues occur in the Baltics, although they're building new lines using standard gauge to link Poland to Finland. At any rate, the Spanish do build high speed rail, while California...
Self organizing was very common, with public committees of leading citizens popping up left and right to solve common ills and dissolving themselves when the task was done. (We can also contrast this with modern charities which find new goals, to maintain the bureaucracy, funding pipelines etc.) https://scholars-stage.org/lessons-from-and-limitations-of-the-19th-century-experience/ goes into the decline in self governance. During the civil war, Elizabeth Blackwell (et al.) created the 3rd biggest organization, after the army and republican party, with 7000 chapters, who believed they could do a better job than the government: https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/03/30/a-school-of-strength-and-character/
Hell, look at the canal building around 1820, far more than Africa, Latam, Central Asia or Southern Europe are doing. Look at the crane sketches: https://www.thoughtco.com/building-the-erie-canal-1773705 Also Dismal Swamp, Bellows Falls, Santee, Middlesex... They built many canals at this time. (The Dutch are at least still reclaiming land. China is also doing things, including in Africa.)
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
it was easily in the top 10
Oh, definitely. It was tied for 2 when the war started: https://i.redd.it/wyaw5ffttz871.jpg or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#1830%E2%80%931938_(Bairoch)
Or per capita: between 10th (1929) 6th (1937) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Here's some rambling detail:
Really, everything's a comparison to the US with its cartoonish relative economic strength. My personal takeaway of their economy: Germany took out massive loans, made fake money (Mefo bills etc.), invested almost everything into the military and were forced to start the war early, lest they default.
I have seen cool figures for this, but don't want to dig now, here's a video-graph: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UrUp5Rm_Ncw?si=bgnTAdqvsmnJ6S9v&t=227 I don't quite trust those numbers, but meh. They suggest Germany'd have massive overmatch in Europe (or a lot of embezzlement), which makes sense (since they steamrolled everyone). I'm unsure to what extent it presents/exposes difficult issues like training etc. where longer investments pay off (vs. just buying a bunch of equipment today.) On the other hand, it shows the German citizens were using less of their productivity for themselves, such that life in the UK was perhaps 40-60% "richer". This can make sense in some ways, perhaps exposing the huge infrastructure projects which didn't have civilian use (road network but no cars...)
I dug into this some years, ago, and learned German industry largely rejected assembly lines, struggled to make interchangeable parts (thus making new vehicles to arm new units, instead of supplying veteran units, though weak transportation infrastructure also played a role), wouldn't share designs such that each company would build its own model and its allies would have to develop their own equipment from scratch. And yet, that was still better than most. It's really a world away from our ideas of modern industry or what the US was doing. It's hard for many to realize how close we are to the drudgery of subsistence farming most of our ancestors did in the last 1-200 years.
Czech industrial infrastructure was largely built by Germans
This is a big topic. Short summary: The main industrial centers were in Czech lands with fewer Germans (the Sudetenland was mountainous and poor.) However those Czechs had largely German speaking ancestors 100 years prior. The national revival saw the language spread in the cities etc. Czech leadership in Austria(-Hungary) drove industrialization harder than in Austria itself! Austria, for whatever reason, got stuck in the first industrial revolution (steam and water power etc.) but was behind even Hungary by 1880 in the second industrial revolution (electrification, trains, standardization). In 1918, Czechoslovakia had 3/4 of the former empire's industrial capacity. Slovakia was extremely poor, however; driving the statistics down. To accentuate the issue of identity, though German townfolk became Czech over time, rich Czechs became Germans. Škoda was born to well to do (Czech) peasants (doctor and politician), founded a huge factory, but his son identified as German! Indeed, as Germany in WWII, so Austria-Hungary in WWI. Why is Austria-Hungary, a more industrialized country than France, considered so backwards?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
If you're right, I should murder my accountant.
That's simplistic. Yes, the techo ecosystem was largely a money incinerator with even the biggest companies (e.g. Uber) burning billions a year. But they could do that because they weren't taxed on those losses. For a personal example (I disbanded a company because of this), 17 million in, 22 million out = no tax. 25 million in, 28 million out = 33.5 million out (5.5 million in taxes, some coming back along 5 or 15 years (as interest free loans to the government)) We went from (hopefully) burning 3 million to 8.5 million, almost triple projected costs (and backwards from 5.)
This came into effect in 2022 before the first interest hike in March. (The equity correction started at new years, coincidence but not related.)
The numbers in that link include factories in occupied lands. The Czech Republic in particular was very industrialized. E.g. France was making 1400 planes/month for Germany: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9m3nb6g1&chunk.id=d0e5350&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5350&brand=ucpress This is obvious when you notice the Czechs continued operating the same factories, exporting thousands of BF 109s.
Wikipedia shows the same numbers in more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production Note how in 1941 the UK had almost 2x the production.
Germany couldn't mass produce a 4 engine bomber; even their larger 2 engine bombers like the He 177 had tortured developments. The UK made at least 20k. Why did Germany's 1944 aircraft production soar to 40k while the Western allies lowered production? Germany had been retooling captured factories, moving facilities around etc.
So when you talk in another thread about "Potemkin" production, you are making the mistake of equating single engine fighters with 4 engine bombers with far more advanced engines etc. Germany was never able to even replace the BF-109 (40,000 built) and couldn't retool existing factories to e.g. the FW 190, which struggled at altitude. The Ta 152, with an engine capable of bringing it up to the Western bombers was only produced 69 times. Britain continuously created new planes (e.g. the Firefly) and phased out older types (e.g. the Defiant) besides the famous Spitfires and Huricanes.
More damning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Land_forces
Although this conflates Canada etc. with Britain, 10x "other vehicles", 1.5 million compared to 150k for Germany. 3x the artillery...
Amendment 3 to legalize marijuana in Florida failed with 56% (needing 60%), while prior polls showed 63% support.
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