BahRamYou
17d ago
How do you actually talk to people there? My problem is that the music is so damn loud that it's aggressively anti-social. You have to scream into people's ears to be heard, and sometimes even that doesn't work. A lot of long-time ravers end up with hearing loss, even if they wear ear plugs. I hate it.
Why are you in such a hurry?
All of those objectives are being accomplished. Their main navy is sunk, their missile boats are being hunted down, their missile production sites are being bombed, their nuclear program has been halted, and their terrorist proxies are being destroyed. Not to mention that most of their leadership is dead- I notice that you never mentioned who the current decision makers are in Iran, because no one really knows at this point.
Before the war, there was endless gloom and doom about what a disaster it would be to fight Iran. They would destroy cities with ICBMs, they would sink aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, they would shut down all our infrastructure with cyber attacks, and launch terrorist attacks all over the world. The entire world would plunge into some sort of Mad-Max style anarchy as we ran out of oil. Etc.
Instead we've been... mildly inconvenienced? The price of oil has gone up, but not enough to cause a recession- the economy is still growing. (Edit: 18-20) servicemen have died, and that's a shame, but that's also a very small number in historical terms- every military person knows the risks when they sign up. Iran's neighbors have suffered more, but most of them have hated Iran a long time, and this only makes them hate Iran more- they're doubling own on their alliance with the US to get rid of the local menace.
This isn't a game or a sports match, so there's no particular time limit on this. The US and its allies can keep this up for as long as it takes. As long as we're there, Iran doesn't get a nuke or ICBM program, so all objectives accomplishd, and they're rapidly running out of money. It would be nice to find a permanent solution so we can leave the middle east forever, but I'm not exactly holding my breath on that. I know that you'll bring up elections and say things like "Trumpt must end this before the midterms" or whatever, but that's not actually true, he can do whatever he wants. The bigger time pressure might be on allied nations that depend on oil imports, like Korea, which is now considering joining the war.
Of course, it's possible that Democrats will sieze power, and then they'll give in. Give the IRGC money, give them terrorist proxies, give them nukes, give them whatever they want. That would be a huge disaster, but it's not the result of this current war, it's just Democrats being idiots. The JCPOA was basically that, with Obama giving Iran a lot of cash while they pretended to not develop nukes or missiles but kept working on them anyway, not to mention massacring anyone who protested the rule of the Ayatollahs.
So my advice to you is: relax, these things take time. The IRGC is getting the shit kicked out of it, so all they can do is spin up propaganda on the internet. I'm about to go on a long road trip, which I can do easily because gasoline is still cheap and unlimited- not what it would be if the US was actually losing this war.
BahRamYou
17d ago
Where are you getting the numbers for all these? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's kind of hard to get accurate numbers about paramilitary forces in an active conflict. They get their equipmenet from Iran, which is currently being destroyed.
BahRamYou
18d ago
All of this, plus the "arms race" effect. It's OK to be a bit frumpy if that's just what all the regular guys look like. But when everyone starts working heavily on their appearance, you start to stand out a lot more (in a bad way) if you're the one who's not.
BahRamYou
18d ago
Unless... he starts sneaking a little "Soylent Green" into the beef supply...?
BahRamYou
20d ago
I suppose it's possible. But like you said, I just don't think the Saudi military is capable of that sort of thing. It's more likely this was genuine, and the Saudis got caught by surprise, but now they can counterattack easily.
BahRamYou
20d ago
As usual, i find it difficult to follow all the details through the fog of war and propaganda from all sides. My main hunch is that the houthis will be quickly fought back- they just don't have the resources to actually hold territory. The market seems to agree, as the price of oil jumped yesterday but went back down today, suggesting an attitude of initial alarm and then calm.
BahRamYou
22d ago
I think it's just very hard to get started in that career. Of course every career has that to some extent, but in architecture it's especially hard to get people to trust you with that first, crucial career building step of being lead designer on a building. Meanwhile there's a ton of students getting architecture degrees thinking it'll be fun.
BahRamYou
22d ago
Now it is the turn of mathematicians to feel doomed; in that context, I find this sentence very interesting.
Is the purpose of the Great Work not for humans to understand mathematics? What does it even mean to "produce" mathematics?
Isn't it proven by Godel's Theorem that any complex logical system should have an infinite number of potentially provable theorems? And no easy way to know which ones are provable? So I guess the field of mathematics will go on forever, just with AIs proving more and more abstract, ridiculously complex theorems. The "job" of human mathematicians, if you can call it that, is to simply marvel and appreciate what they've done, like an art critic.
BahRamYou
23d ago
Is it not customary for parties in Germany to have a campaign platform outlining all their proposed policies? That's how it works for American elections. They don't have to fully follow it, of course, but it's nice to see it. If they're a more established party then people can just look to their track record to get a general idea, but for a party that's never held power before I think it's valid to ask what they're going to do, outside of their one signature issue (and I'm still not clear what exactly the AfD is proposing their either- limit immigration? halt it entirely? remigration? concentration camps?)
BahRamYou
24d ago
Does the AfD actually have anything to promote "human flourishing?" Genuine question, all I know about them is that they're anti-immigration. I think they might find out what countries like Hungary found out... just because you block immigration, doesn't mean you magically fix the economy or birth rates.
BahRamYou
24d ago
Ah, thank for adding context. Sounds like there's a real chance for AfD to win the governance of Sachsen-Anhalt, then. Still, that's (a) just one state and (b) still a slim majority that relies on a very different party to help it keep it's coalition. So would expect them not to accomplish much. Maybe this will actually cause their support to break, if they finally win power and people realize... it's still just a regular political party, they're not going to snap their fingers and magically solve everything. They probably can't even significantly affect immigration.
Satirist Martin Sonneborn has called for a reestablishment of the wall for decades (and this time it would actually be an antifaschistischer Schutzwall), and more and more I feel that reunification was a mistake. It would have been better to let them join what would become Schengen but keep them separate. An AfD running the government of East Germany would not be so different from Orban in Hungary, PiS in Poland, Haider in Austria and so on, all very tolerable from West Germany.
OK, this would be hilarious. And it opens the door for the funniest election ever. Germany wants a president who is has experience building a giant border wall along politically contraversial territory. Someone with huge name recognition, a fresh approach to politics, and no sense of shame. He's got experience, but he'll be a free agent after 2028. He even has (distant) German ancestry, making him potentially eligible for citizenship if they can dig something up. Drumpf for Deutschland, 2028!
BahRamYou
24d ago
So... big win for AfD last night: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4zejgz3z9o. How important is this?
Since I'm not one to closely follow European politics, at first I thought this meant that they had won control of the entire national parliament. But then I noticed that, no, it's just one state election, and they're still short of a majority. In every other state, they have far less support, and every other party is still maintaining a rule to never work with them, so the AfD is still effectively shut out of power everywhere.
I suppose it's another sign of their trajectory, though. They seem to win more and more votes in every election. I remember when, not long ago, they were an extreme minority fringe party. Now they get enough votes that it's difficult for the other parties to form a coalition without them.
Is this a sign that the people of Germany are secretly longing to Nazi again? I doubt it. They seem to still be, on the whole, an extremely leftist-liberal nation. Pro-immigration, pro-welfare, anti-militarism, anti-nationalism, and anti-nuke. So I wonder how much this surge in support for AfD is driven by immigration, or how much of it is just them being the only real conservative party that gives voters an alternative to the status quo?
I also wonder what the AfD would actually do if they came into power? There's a big range between "slightly restrict immigration" and "force all the immigrants to pack up and go home." I suspect they haven't entirely figured it out themselves, since for now they're still just a protest vote. Not to mention how they'd have to figure out their policy on every single other policy issue. It's easy to make big promises when you have no actual power to deliver on them.
But I don't know! Maybe I'm wrong. I really don't know much about German politics, I just saw this and I thought it was interesting. Anyone else have thoughts?
BahRamYou
26d ago
but how do you force jurors to listen, understand, and actually follow those instructions? Once they're behind closed doors in jury deliberation, the judge has no power anymore.
BahRamYou
26d ago
It seems like the law, at least in the state of Massachusetts, is just riddled with contradictions when it comes to this. What is "reasonable doubt?" What is "Burden of proof?" What is "insane?" These are tough questions for even the wisest of philosophers to determine, let alone regular people in a criminal case. But that's OK, let's just throw it to 12 random people in a jury... surely they'll figure it out, right? We won't need to see the horrendous flaws in their logical because the jury deliberations are all secret.
BahRamYou
27d ago
...do you think that people in Russia, China, and other countries had some sort of fair democratic election over whether they wanted to join the communist bloc? They didn't. It was enforced upon them.
BahRamYou
27d ago
Right now, the secret "real system" seems to be that the both sides will make a highly emotional argument, and then the jurors go and decide however they want. Jury selection is by far the most important factor, and written legal precedent means very little. Hooray.
BahRamYou
27d ago
I think, no matter what happens, this will just continue to add to the general schism between men and women. Men are starting to develop some of the same in-group bias that women have always had.
BahRamYou
28d ago
It feels pretty mean-spirited to describe tech billionares as simply "nerds". Maybe they started off as humble computer nerds, but that was a long time ago and they've done a lot of other stuff since then.Now they have a lot more in common with the richest CEOs of non-tech companies than they do with the rank-and-file engineers. And like you said, theater kids can be nerds too... what about them?
Imagine if they wrote a book talking about Hollywood celebrity culture had gone too far, and for some reason the subtitle used the word "fag." I feel like that would not go over well, even if they later clarified that "oh I didn't mean all the fags in Hollywood, just the ones who run it!" But I guess it's still normal and cool to throw out slurs against people who work with computers for a living, even though that's an increasingly large and diverse part of the population.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I think my criticism is that, even with the second type, their history didn't evolve because of any sort of deterministic, psycho-historian type play. It still seemed to rely on some individual doing a stroke of genius, like the mayor with his "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" saying. Good thing they had that genius mayor or they all would have been annihilated by their more violent neighbors, regardless of their more advanced technology.
A rough real-world analogue is Marx. He had this whole complex theory of how society would inevitably evolve into Communism, regardless of what individuals did. But revolutionaries like Lenin seemed to take matters into their own hands, and relied heavily on a few powerful men taking very specific actions, which weren't at all pre-determined!
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I enjoy those books for how weird and unique they are. They remind me of Star Trek, where great men solve problems by calmly discussing philosophy over a conference table. But I agree with you that a lot of the characters end up sounding exactly the same. (To be fair, he wrote them when he was quite young, and just trying to make some extra money on the side while going through grad school)
I do think there's a bit of a contradiction built into them. The whole premise is that humans, at the large scale, are ultimately predictable: individual decisions don't matter, and there are no great men of history. But the entire plot depends heavily on the actions of Hari Seldon, and a few other great men who think and act just like him. So... what's up with that?
BahRamYou
1mo ago
The original trilogy really is a miraculous convergence where brilliance met technological limitations in the best possible way, and he was somehow lucky enough to remove all his bad ideas while keeping all his good ones. All of the missing stuff contributed to the magical, mysterious atmosphere, while he kept just enough details to make it seem realistic. The prequels were... the opposite.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
That's interesting. I didn't know that either. I wonder why no one else wanted to do it? It seems like that would have been the dream project for a lot of up-and-coming young directors.
And yeah... I can't help but think that it would have been better off with someone else other than Lucas at the helm. Spielberg would have been amazing, I wonder why he was so against it? Maybe he was just scared that he couldn't do it justice.
The midterm elections aren't a time limit, because Trump will still be the president and commander-in-chief regardless of what happens, and continue the war at his disgression. Congress's powers to stop a war have proven very limited in modern times. The next presidential election might be, but that has a lot less to do with the war than it does all the other factors that determine elections. It's pointless to ascribe an election to any one particular factor, especially one that hasn't happened yet.
But more importantly: this was never the Iranian strategy. Their original strategy was to use an overwhelming missile barrage to level cities, banking up sheer destrictive power that no one would dare attack them. That hasn't happened, instead their missile attacks have been largely impotent, mostly thanks to the US (and Israel) blowing them up on the launchpad before they get a chance to aim and fire. It's easy to take that for granted now that it didn't happen, but it could have easily been a massive loss of life. They were building up longer-range missiles that could Europe and the US, and I, for one, am grateful that they no longer have that capability. "Paying the danegeld" was not a stable long-term solution.
Their backup plan was holding the strait hostage. In a similar way, this was supposed to cause enough economic damage that no one would dare to attack them. Predictions were for some sort of massive global recession, oil above $200 a barrel, and massive lines at the gas station like what happened in the 70s with the Arab oil embargo. But that hasn't happeend either. It's gone up a bit, but not nearly enough to cause a recession or act as any sort of serious deterrance.
At this point their real "attack" is just political propaganda. All of the people who already hated Trump (so, most Democrats) have simply latched on to this as the new Latest Thing to attack Trump. Iranians proxies make vague threats on twitter promising doom, and then all the useful idiots in the media breathlessly repeat them. They want the war to go badly so that Trump will lose the election. But if it wasn't this, they'd find some other excuse to hate him. It's kind of funny that now they're saying he's an Israel agent, when just a year ago everyone was saying he was a Russian agent.... which one is it supposed to be? But meanwhile the economy continues to grow, the world keeps not-being-an-apocalypse, and the regime change in Venezuela looks like a better deal every single day.
More options
Context Copy link