BahRamYou
4hr ago
I'm also a fan of ACOUP, but I feel like he's talking about something very different there. The siege of gondor is written from the perspective of high-level commanders, with a god's eye view of the battlefield and full intel. Even today, there's very few generals who would have that level of intelligence and control over an active battle. The "fog of war" is very real, and Tolkien would have known that since he was just a regular lieutenant in the trenches leading enlisted men. Admittedly he didn't last there long before getting disabled by trench fever.
BahRamYou
4hr ago
It feels like you're making a bizarre 19th century type argument over which countries have an "imperialist instinct" or are an "imperial civilization." Should we also go after Mongolia and Macedonia just in case they try to take over the world again?
I also find it dubious that the US would fight WW3 just to protect our high-end gaming rigs and bitcoin miners. It's more likely we would simply onshore production (as we are already attempting to do) and put up with slightly decreased performance for a few years.
BahRamYou
6hr ago
It really feels like a stretch to say that they'll domino their way from Tibet and Hong-Kong to the US. Those places are chinese speaking neighbors that were part of their territory not long ago. I really can't imagine them trying to invade Europe or the US. They might try to dominate the economy and make censor movies but... that's what the US is already doing.
BahRamYou
9hr ago
but frankly I don’t think it has much to teach us about the real world
I've heard it said that it offers a surprisingly realistic description of what it's like to be a regular soldier in an extended war. Not the big fantasy battles with Gondor and Rohan, but the endless march of Frodo and Sam. Every day they're cold, hungry, and tired. They very rarely fight, mostly they just try to avoid the enemy. They are of course terrified of the enemy, which has magical powers that could kill them at any moment, but their more immediate concern from day to day is just getting enough food and finding the strength to keep marching. "All Quiet on the Western Front" had a similar feel to it.
BahRamYou
19hr ago
I'd be curious to hear your opinion on this article: https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2022/11/submarines-and-asw-in-china-war.html
He agrees with you that subs and ASW are the most decisive weapon, but he thinks that the balance is relatively even thanks to China's numbers and sensor arrays.
My point is that China's problem isn't a problem you can solve with mass-produced FPV drones.
I do agree with you on that. I think the linked article is way off base to think we can somehow "bring back manufacturing" and then mass produce drones like they're WW2 liberty ships and have it be effective.
BahRamYou
20hr ago
yeah i'd put him up there equal or better than all of those writers, at least to the extent that I've read them and remember them. They all have some cool ideas for worldbuilding, some fun scenes or characters, but then also a lot of uh.... filller.
BahRamYou
1d ago
I feel like people have forgotten what the general scene was like for Fantasy books in the 80s and 90s when Martin was making his bones. You could walk into any big bookstore (much hated at the time for driving out indie bookstores) and see shelf after shelf of books with swords and dragons on the cover. Most of them pretty bad, but still entertaining in a trashy way. Occasionally actually good. As a kid I loved them all, but looking back I have to admit that the general quality was not good.
Compared to that, Martin's books are amazing. If you want to compare them to some of the all time greatest books of all time, yes, they fall short, but that's kind of unfair.They're entertaining, have more depth than a typical fantasy novel,, and that's really all you can ask.
BahRamYou
2d ago
But China has an answer to US Submarines: the underwater great wall. It's a massive network of underwater surveilliance platforms that they've been methodically building up for many years now. Will it work? Who knows, this is all untested and highly classified. But we shouldn't dismiss offhand the idea that they're able to build a defense, when they have unlimited time and money to do it. (I also think it's blase to think they wouldn't be able to defend against stealth bombers or cruise missiles for that reason). And more specifically, in the Taiwan Strait, the water is quite shallow- only about 100 meters deep on average. It's a horrible environment for submarines.
China doesn't have to cruise in open water to win, it just has to defend its coastline. The US and its allies have the much more difficult job.
BahRamYou
6d ago
Presumably those were all people who had a choice to have kids? At least the choice to not abort. You might hear differrently from women in 3rd world countries where they really don't have a choice (if you can even get them to speak honestly)
BahRamYou
7d ago
As you said, the birth rate has dropped despite healthcare getting better, which suggests that it's not a simple matter of healthcare. But while women might have had the same legal rights for a while now, their social and economic power continues to increase.
BahRamYou
7d ago
do you have a link to it, or remember the author's name? I wanted to read it again but I can't remember it.
BahRamYou
7d ago
i can't find it right now, but someone linked a substack here a few months ago that laid out in brutal detail just how bad the entire process of childbirth is for women. Of course maybe it pays off in some longterm, ineffable, spiritual joy, but you should be able to appreciate why a lot of women wouldn't willingly take that deal.
BahRamYou
7d ago
Thanks, that's a good response. I don't know how to quantify it or prove it either. I've just noticed that a lot of people on the internet seem to think "oh, those east Asian countries are all so sexist" to the point where its becoming a stereotype.
Eastern Europe I think is more of an economic problem. A lot of this countries really cratered with the end of the USSR, but have since recovered a bit
BahRamYou
7d ago
this is one of those things that gets 10000x updoots on reddit and yet no one can ever show the work to actually prove it. why do you think that east easian countries are all horribly unfeminist?
BahRamYou
7d ago
Sure, babies too. the whole package deal is kind of a crappy deal when you think about it logically. worst deal in the history of deals, etc. It's not surprising that women are choosing not to take it.
BahRamYou
8d ago
I would argue it's just feminism. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Pregnancy sucks for women, it takes 9 months and does permanent damage to their body. It's only natural that as women gain more power in society, they make the rational choice to not have kids and do other things instead.
It jumps out at me that all the high fertility socities you list- Mongolia, the Amish, the Haredim- are, uh, not very feminist groups. I think people get distracted looking at the economy, because most socities get more feminist as they get wealthier.
I know some people will argue with this by saying "but what about Korea!" And I would argue that Korea is actually a very feminist society now, maybe not in the same way as the US, but in the sense that women have a huge amount of social power there. Notably, they elected a woman president, while still excluding women from the draft. The men are killing themselves at work just so they have a chance at getting married, but the women are under no obligation to produce a baby.
BahRamYou
10d ago
but presumably those people just took their degree and left, right? They didn't stick around to become professors and shape the entire field.
BahRamYou
11d ago
I think that rule of thumb only works for the US and a few other western countries with very high-paying enterprise dev sectors, especially the countries with a booming financial sector. It is not the case in Japan, Korea, or China, where game devs can make as much or more than enterprise devs.
BahRamYou
11d ago
"bean counter" isn't exactly the right word. But he instituted the "rank and yank" system which pitted employees against each other in a brutal competition for survival. From a distance I can sort of see the logic, but in practice it completely destroyed their teamwork and cohesion as everyone tried to make sure someone else was below them in the pecking order.
BahRamYou
19d ago
I've unironically done this. prostitutes tend to be very open-minded people who are also good at keeping secrets. downside is they can't really give you any meaningful advice, but i don't think that's really the point of therapy.
BahRamYou
20d ago
I agree with all of this. I would add that, in my experience, Korea is not very good at advertising its more interesting places to foreign places. It just sort of shunts us all to the same basic places ("here, look at some kimchi being made. Here, rent a hanbok and walk around an empty palace ground"), while you have to really do research and plan a bus trip to the countryside to see the more interesting places.
That said, there are some fascinating neighborhoods in Seoul. Not really "historic," but you can really see how some places were just build up crazy fast in the 80s and 90s, with some incredibly weird (and sometimes dangerous) choices of how to fit them in to the hilly terrain.
BahRamYou
21d ago
I'm not against Trump, I consider myself neutral. But it's just an objective fact that he churns through people around him quite quickly. I've never before heard of a president where his own vice president publicly came out against him, for example.
Steve Sailer once said that this kind of constant churn is common in a certain type of hard-charging, 80s, NYC business guy. I think that's a fair description for Trump.
I find that blog quite fascinating. He seems like the sort of obsessive weird nerd who can produce great insights, since he's been obsessively writing his google blog on the navy for well over a decade now. And he makes a lot of sensible points. On the other hand he's also quite iconoclastic, and not afraid to go on rants about how the entire navy is stupid and only he can see the truth, so sometimes he's totally inaccurate. He has an obsessive hatred for the LCS and most other modern naval technologies, and wants to bring back the battleships, or at least something with heavy armor and gunfire. He usually advocates for single-purpose ships, so he'd probably say that a ship won't be good at ASW unless it focuses completely on that mission with it's equipment and training.
On munitions manufacturing, I agree that it's critical. But the Ukraine war has given me a dim view of US/NATO manufacturing capacity. We're getting massively outproduced by Russia and North Korea. All the money in the world doesn't seem to translate into much of an actual production improvement.
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