BahRamYou
4hr ago
Why do you think we need to do central planning? I don't see how that helps anyone.
The US military is no longer just a hammer. It's very much a smart hammer, honed by 20 years of the global war on terror and cyber/intel development. That helps a lot if you need to find insurgents, or shoot down an ICBM.
BahRamYou
4hr ago
Well, I fully expected the US to win, but I thought it would take a lot longer than this! Maybe I missed the discussion on this from the past 2 years. The saying among neocons during the 2000s was "everyone wants to go to Baghdad, but only real men want to go to Tehran"- even the hardline hawks expected that a war with Iran would be tough.
And I'm certainly not saying the US is immune to nukes, or should seek out such a war. Just that, if it does happen, the losses would be a lot less than people might expect based on cold war thinking. And we've just seen that the US has immense power to devastate a country in the opening hours of a war, before it even has a chance to launch its missiles.
Are we in a new age of hyperpower?
OK, this war in Iran is only 2 days old, and as we all know "truth is the first casualty of war." So this is very much a hot take, and we'll need a lot more time and thoughtful analysis to see how this plays out.
But right now, as an American watching the news, I'm feeling a bit drunk on national power. I can only imagine how Trump and other leaders must be feeling, let alone the actual soldiers who drop the bombs. Already this year we've fought and- it seems- won two wars! The first one with absolutely no losses, and this one also seems quite low casualty. This was done purely with American military (and help from Israel), no NATO help necessary. Iran has spent the last 40 years building up a gigantic military, and now it all just looks like an absolute joke. All their leadership is dead within the first day, and the US has massive air superiority over most of the country. It's now basically just a choice of what targets we want to bomb.
I took this chance to go check back in on Venezuela. I couldn't find many good sources there, but so far it seems... basically fine? There's no civil war or hardline Maduro loyalists fighting to the death. The new president has taken over with basically no issues, and she seems to be cooperating quite well with the US. Lots of Venezuelans are happy that this happened. Of course there are still many problems with the country, but it's fair to chalk that war up as a win.
But what about China? We're supposed to be in a new "multipolar" age, right? The US can't just go throwing its weight around wherever it wants because there are other powers to stop us. Iran was heavily involved in selling oil to China, and was a military ally of them through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Well, so far all China has done is say mean things about us. They can't even say it openly, they have to do it in phone calls to Russia. So apparently they're not much of a counter at all.
I think we've reached a tipping point where US air power just crushes all of its adversaries with no counter. It's not any one weapon, but a combination of factors- more satellites, better human intelligence, more stealth aircraft, better radar, more JDAMs and stand off munitions, cyberattacks, and now AI to help us identify targets. The US can completely devastate most countries, even large ones like Iran, without putting a single boot on the ground, unless we want to send special forces to arrest someone like we did to Maduro. And we've got 100 next-gen stealth bombers currently in production, plus... whatever the hell the F47 next-gen fighter can do, so I expect this dominance to increase over the next decade.
But what about nukes? Soviet nukes held the US in check throughout the cold war, surely those also put a break on US imperial ambitions? Well, to some extent they still do, but the US has made some very impressive progress in missile defense lately. THAAD is now hitting its targets with an impressively high success rate, and was recently used to help defend Israel against Iran's missile barage. The main limiting factor there is just building more interceptors, and Trump is pushing for massive funding there as part of his Golden Dome project. That also opens up some intriguing options in space- and, oh hey, would you look at that, the US also has SpaceX utterly dominating LEO launch, and it will likely get even more dominant there if/when Starship becomes practical. Meanwhile China has a relatively small nuclear arsenal, and Russia's is just leftover Soviet junk that might not even work anymore. I think we are rapidly reaching a point where the US has overwhelming nuclear dominance.
The question then becomes- what do we do with this power? Trump used to always preach the merits of isolationism, and he made a big splash early in the Republican primary by being the only candidate who strongly denounced the Iraq war. He clashed heavily with Marco Rubio over that issue. But now he has Rubio as his Secretary of State, and he seems to have rapidly "evolved" to favor military interventions. But, being Trump, he still makes speeches about "taking Venezuela's oil" and other me-first boasting. So far no such boasts about Iran, but I can only assume there will be some.
My guess? He keeps doing this. Cuba is on obvious target, they're pretty much falling apart already. Next would be Panama, where he always talked about wanting the Canal back. After that... I have no idea. Colombia? Mexico? Somalia? Cambodia? He could potentially attack all of those places, if each one is as fast and decisive as this current Iran war seems. I... don't think Trump would actually invade Greenland, or attack China, but... who can say? If he chose to do those things, who could stop him?
BahRamYou
2d ago
No idea about that particular drone, but there sure is a lot of buzz around Iran right now. Trump has said he's "not happy" with Iran, and betting markets have shown a huge spike in the odds that the US strikes Iran by the end of February. As in, by tomorrow.
BahRamYou
2d ago
But where will you get your recommended dose of crazy autistic neckbeard condescension?
BahRamYou
2d ago
Did you feel like the employees there are/were heavily using AI in their regular job to become more efficient now? Do they have have agentic AIs that can totally replace some people's jobs?
BahRamYou
2d ago
Could be a lot of things. It definitely sounds a lot better to say that they made massive layoffs because of AI then because "we had too many useless employees doing nothing" or "our stock was way down so we had to try something drastic." But given that they're a fairly mature software service company, I can actually see them being a prime use case for AI making their employees more efficient.
BahRamYou
5d ago
Do you get the same problem with it that I usually do? That is, the first attempt is really good, and a few additional prompts make it even better. But the more I work with it, the more it seems to get stuck in weird errors or unnecessarily complicated code. After, like, 10 prompts, if it's not working perfectly I just have to start from scratch. It's like pastry dough- a little kneeding is necessary, but too much can ruin it.
BahRamYou
6d ago
I think some countries/cultures are just better at certain things than others, and it's almost random as to what and why.
Like, sure, we could make excuses why Americans don't need to learn other languages, and that's certainly part of it. But early Americans didn't need to know Latin, and yet apparently that was common enough to be a routine entrance requirement to Harvard and other universities. We also don't need to be good at niche winter olympic sports, yet we still consistentlly do well and are currently 2nd in medal count, behind Norway (which has the advantage of basically inventing most of the winter olympic sports). We are consistently bad at professional international football/soccer, despite spending increasingly large amounts of money on it, while tiny poor countries like uruguay and croatia do increasingly well at it.
Looking internationally, the pattern becomes increasingly strange. Germans do great at learning English as a second language. Dutch, even better! French... not so much. Swiss people learn English, but struggle with whichever of French/German is their non-native language. Meanwhile Belgiuns, Luxembourgians, and Alsace–Lorrainians (in my highly subjective experience) learn all 3 languages with no problem. 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics in the US are all over the place in terms of language skills, but tend towards English-only as they get more removed from their parent country.
In asia, it's even stranger. Japan has been heavily promoting English since the 50s, but is still terrible at it, despite massive amounts of English loanwords. Korea used to be pretty bad at it, but now seems very strong. Taiwan is incredibly strong at teaching ESL. I challenge anyone to find a consistent pattern there.
My only guess is that you need the right balance of resources and motivations. You need enough money to properly teach children a second language, but not so much money that they feel like they don't need to bother. They need to be constantly immersing with the second language, but not so much that they just forget their first language. They need to feel like the target language is "cool" and exotic, but not so distant that it's overwhelming. Basically, they need the right mix of "want" and need" to feel like "I will learn this language within the next 5 years"- not so quick that they give up when faced with drawbacks, but not so distant that they slack off and feel like it will never happen. Willing to spend some money to help them learn, but also willing to just grind and memorize.
BahRamYou
6d ago
It would be interesting to research how this tracks with overall demographics of society, especially in historical times. After WW2 there was a huge shortage of males (because of the war) and also a huge baby boom (...maybe because of the war? But maybe other reasons too? Still not fully understood). As a result, there were a lot of young women, so I think people just didn't notice or didn't care as much about age gaps. If anything, they were more worried about the opposite- what if a woman couldn't find a suitable husband!? Disaster!
Nowadays the population pyramid has been inverted. There's more people above 30 than below, and more men than women below 30, so the competition to date under-30-women is intense. I think it's natural that society in general takes a harder look at such relationships (are we sure there isn't an unhealthy power dynamic there?) and also that under-30 men would feel jealous and protective.
BahRamYou
8d ago
I've watched Pippa a lot. I think the overall culture has changed a bit (partly because of her). Vtubers really took off around 2020, when people were stuck inside due to lockdowns, with nothing to do but consume endless content online. And between covid and the presidential election, some people were desparate to find a happy space where people weren't talking about politics, so vtubers became something of a sanctuary. And the En world especially, everything revolved around Hololive, which was set up like a traditional idol company, with them having a carefully curated image and avoiding contraversial subjects (although they could still be pretty edgy sometimes).
Pippa was originally just some random streamer working for a small unknown agency. She wasn't trying to be "based" or political at all, she was just a weird shut-in who spent too much time chronically online looking up weird edgy content, and then she started talking about it in streams. She intentionally referenced 4chan memes, although usually not political ones, and 4chan at the time was a big hub of vtuber discussion, just not one that anyone in hololive or nijisanji would ever acknowledge.
So OK, she does occasionally mention things like how she owns guns or is interested in the Bismarck. But she's really not doing "based" political content at all. She's just cracking jokes, trying to be high energy, and doing whatever she can to be funny. She'll mention people like Asmongold or Alex Jones, but almost never discuss them in any detail. She certainly doesn't stand up on a soap box for any specific political causes. Still, even that much was pretty shocking the general vtuber culture of 2021-2022.
Nowadays, of course, there's a million indie vtubers, and most of them are a lot farther removed from Hololive or any other "idol" types. So now we have some that are explicitly political. It's not that shocking though, it's just... kinda boring, they repeat the same talking points as anyone else on the internet.
All of this is to say that Pippa just kinda pretends to be edgy, but it's pretty tongue-in-cheek and she's actually a sweet girl, so I wish people would just leave her alone.
BahRamYou
12d ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/se_la_v%C3%AC is correct in italian
BahRamYou
12d ago
Sure, but who else is like that, who writes prolifically on the internet for a general audience, in modern times? I think you'd have to either go back to much older sources, or look to some fairly obscure academics who don't even have a twitter or any sort of online presence. Academia in general just... doesn't do a good job of catering towards popular interests.
BahRamYou
12d ago
Yeah, I feel like I agree with you in principle, but in practice that would just lead to awkward cutoffs like what happened to me in this case. I wasn't necessarly looking for a lifelong friend, just one good conversation at a party. Se la vie.
BahRamYou
12d ago
I think I answered @JeSuisCharlie's question of "is he a trustworthy source?" You're now asking a different question- "is he more likely to put forward an argument in good faith?" (presumably you mean, more likely because of his political beliefs?) To that I would say no, but neither is anyone else. Like everyone, you need to read him with an eye towards his potential bias.
BahRamYou
13d ago
I dont believe any source is trustworthy in the sense of "oracle of truth." I just appreciate his perspective. He must be read in context, just like every single other human who ever dared to speak with authority. I so generally trust him about the specific factual details of life in the ancient world, but much less when it comes to editorializing or drawing broad conclusions.
BahRamYou
13d ago
I was having a nice time talking to her until this one mind-killer topic came up. Guess I'll just wait until there's a democrat in the white house until I'm allowed to talk to women.
BahRamYou
13d ago
So you just pretend like you don't know who Trump is or what the US presidential election is? how does that usually work out for you.
BahRamYou
13d ago
They just randomly bring up the Byzantines or 1990s Russia? That's... interesting. (personally I would think those subjects are way more fun to talk about than contemporary US politics, but admittedly I would't want a random person to try to lecture me about them)
BahRamYou
13d ago
I think he's just caught between a rock and a hard place.
If he wants to keep his position as "internet historian," it's essential that he has some genuine academic bona fides. Right now he's an adjunct professor, which is just barely enough to call himself "professor," even though everyone in academia knows he's not a "real" professor.
His specialty is an classics, specifically the military history of the Roman republic. That's a very old-school, white male coded, conservative interest. It's also been out of favor with the academy for, I don't know, at least 100 years. So if he bends too far towards his fan base, he'll get excommunicated by the academy and lose all of his professional bona fides. He'll become just another internet "roman statue guy." On the other hand, if he leans too far towards the academy, he'll spend all his time writing about the queer women of color in the roman republic, or whatever. He wrote a whole series about how women traditionally made clothing and he had to admit that primary sources were sparse because even the primary sources of the time thought that this was an incredibly boring topic which no one cared about. They basically just took a strand of wool or flax then "spun" in a circular motion, over and over and over, for approximately one million hours, until it resembled something like a modern dress. Neat.
In of his recent article, he did admit the contradiction- if he was a woman or Black person, writing about more academia-friendly topics, he'd probably be a full professor by now. Instead he's marginalized as basically a glorified grad student, despite having a huge internet following and way more funding than most full professors. And yet, he has to kind of look down on and despise his followers in order to maintain his standing. Truly a difficult position.
BahRamYou
13d ago
To be fair, she's not wrong. If you had put a gun to my head and forced me to pick between Trump and Harris, I would have picked Trump. She seemed intelligent and fun to talk to just... completely mind-poisoned by politics. I was really hoping we could drop the subject and talk about literally anything else. But no. No compromise, no "agree to disagree," no mercy.
I don't think I could convincingly lie and pretend to be an ultra leftist. I suppose I should have just said "Harris," and then quickly changed the subject to something else. But I suppose it would only be a matter of time until I was found out.
BahRamYou
13d ago
How do you handle it when people ask for your political opinions in real life?
I had a woman ask me suddenly, out of the blue, "who did you vote for in the last election?" We were having a nice conversation before that point (not like, a meet-cute instant love or antyhing, but at least it was a good conversation). I answered truthfully that I had just recently changed my address at that time, so I didn't vote, because I was dealing with a lot and it just wasn't worth the effort for me of updating my voter info on top of everything else. She instantly made an annoyed face and turned away, never to talk to me again. She was obviously a liberal- god help me if I had said I voted for Trump. But like, what are we supposed to do in these situations? Is it just impossible to talk to people with different political opinions now?
BahRamYou
15d ago
Even if/when there's problems, is there any indication that the war hungry empire wannabe nations are fixing any of these? Russia has been killing off hundreds of thousands of their young men trying to take even a small portion of nearby territory.
Well, I haven't done a robust statistical analysis of this, but there does seem to be a trned where the more war-hungry nations have a higher fertility rate. Africa and the Middle East most especially. Israel also, and they might be the best example of what I'm thinking of- they seem to have accepted that they'll just be at war in Gaza forever, never going full genocide but never finding a peaceful solution either. The US isn't very warlike, but we are somewhat more warlike than Europe or East Asia, and correspondingly have a higher fertility rate. Russia is admittedly an outlier, but I think they're just slowly finding their way forward after the absolute devastation of the USSR breakup in the 90s.
China is probably the only working example whatsoever and that's still because Deng Xiaoping the so called "number one capitalist roader" introduced market reform to them and allows them to actually meaningfully grow. And even then they're still fucked. Even just among the other majority chinese Nations, China is the poorest per capita. They just make up for it through sheer numbers.
China really needs to be judged on a curve. Remember they went through the century of humiliation, followed by Mao just absolutely ruining whatever was left with his retarded policies. The fact that they still exist at all is incredible, and they seem to be quickly making up lost ground.
Technology cooks your food, gets you from one place to another, brings you entertainment, saves your life and all sorts of other things.
Sure, there's obviously some good uses for technology. I just dispute that technology on its own can make people happy or give us meaning in life. As you noted, even poor people now have plenty of access to technology, so we don't need to be rich to enjoy it. This is going past what we can prove with statistics, but my impression of most poor people in the US is not that they want more technology, but a deeper meaning in their life. Put another way- they want social capital, not technological capital.
...and there's something to be said for having an actual human cook food for you or provide live entertainment, instead of a robot and a screen. Nothing I've ever watched on a screen is as memorable to me as some of the events I've seen in person from a real human.
BahRamYou
15d ago
Hmm, that's interesting. It seems like they were afraid of runaway population growth in their slaves, to the point where the entire south would just be overpopulated with slaves if they weren't allowed to expand territory. Suffice to say that kind of population growth is no longer a concern these days.
My understanding is that all of the Houthi missiles and drones came from Iran. So it makes sense that bombing Houthis wouldn't really stop the missile attacks, at least not without completely genociding them which the US was obviously unwilling to do. But with Iran's regime gone, the Houthi's will no longer have a source of weapons. This clears up a lot of problems if you can simply stop the weapons at the source, instead of trying to target every single insurgent.
But yes, maybe I'm wrong and Iran is still firing missiles all over the place forever, in which case this looks horrible for Trump and the USA as a whole.
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