BahRamYou
14hr ago
Except that stock returns are also juiced by inflation- something like 7% plus inflation for the S&P500. Admittedly there's extra variance, but it really is a significantly better return than what you'd get from paying off a mortgage, especially averaged out over 30 years. And you've got the option to refinance to a lower rate (plus take out money!) any time you want.
BahRamYou
15hr ago
To make sense of mortgages, you really have to take into account inflation and the time value of money. Yes, it pays off a lot faster when you pay a little extra. But in inflation-adjusted terms, it decreases even without you paying any principal at all. And then you can put the extra payments into an investment that earns more than the mortgage rate.
I'm apparently one of the few people on Earth that thinks Trump's 50-year mortgage idea could actually be a good idea...
BahRamYou
16hr ago
It seems like the "non credible accussors" thing is a recurring theme in these files, and might explain why so much of them is still redacted. What are they supposed to do if some anonymous source makes up a horrifying claim about a famous person, with absolutely no evidence? They'll record it, of course, but they can't really prosecute the person unless someone else comes up with actual evidence, or at least is willing to give testimony. Releasing this sort of "anonymous rumor" is just tarnishing someone's reputation for no good reason. So it's redacted.
BahRamYou
1d ago
BahRamYou
2d ago
Unfortunately that's the mad logic of war. We must enforce discipline to force our side to fight together at maximum strength. Anyone who dares to criticize our side, even if it's true (especially if it's true!) is either an idiot who needs reeducation, or a traitor to be eliminated. The neutrals will be seized for their resources. Those who just want to grill will end up on the menu!
BahRamYou
2d ago
Maybe, but the history of conscription means that you do have a core population that have trained to go to war, visualised what it would be like, and have been given the confidence that only military service can give re: doing your part. I don't think the ROC politicians would roll over without a legitimate blockade, or buildings being blown up.
This cartoon is what made me worry that Taiwan's conscription is... not really all it should be. (translation: "what i thought it would be, what it was") Like, it's basically just an excuse for their local government to get cheap labor to do stuff like cutting grass. Maybe I'm getting influenced too much by a stupid internet meme, but I certainly get the impression that Taiwan really doesn't have a strong military culture.
BahRamYou
2d ago
He definitely is a blowhard, and it sounds like you know more than him about that specific issue or missile ranges in Ukraine. I don't expect anyone to be right all the time, I just thought it was a good point about what "purges" mean in the PRC.
BahRamYou
2d ago
I've always thought that their strategy wouldn't be to do an outright invasion, but just to do a massive show of force and hope Taiwan surrenders.
To start, they could take some of the small Taiwan-controlled island like Kinmen which would be very easy. Make a big show of sending overwhelming force, but also being peaceful and gentle in the occupation.
Then, make the sea around Taiwan dangerous. Declare it a "no-go" zone, and attack all commercial ships that go there. Even if they can't do a full blockade, they just have to make it dangerous enough that normal commercial ships don't want to go there.
Make regular, obvious flyers of Taiwan. Don't actually attack anything, just show off the air force. Make a few vague threats about nuclear weapons without any specific details.
Would this make Taiwan surrender? I have no idea. My impression is that they really don't want to be a part of the PRC, but they're also not a very militaristic country. They've got a lot of old people, and a lot of computer engineers, but not too many bloodthirsty military types. A few years of this might be enough to convince them to just give in, especially if they were promised special treatment.
On the other hand, there's an argument that the CCP and PLA secretly like the situation as it is. Taiwan gives them a great excuse to make bold nationalistic claims and pump up military spending, but without the necessity of actually fighting a war. Losing that war would be disastrous, and it's not even clear that winning would really give them anything. It's not the 90s anymore when Taiwan was 100x richer than the mainland, the mainland economy is actually quite decent now and continuing to grow. So I suspect that this is just meaningless rhetoric, like how North Korea periodically threatens to destroy Seoul and Washington.
BahRamYou
2d ago
It would be interesting to see real data on this! I think it would effect people more than normal when they're stuck in a small room with you for weeks and forced to focus their attention on you. Over time, little things start to add up.
BahRamYou
3d ago
Yeah, and the red uniforms were (alledgedly?) to distinguish them from the clouds of gunpowder smoke. Makes sense at that time but... there's a good reason soldiers don't wear bright red uniforms anymore. Colors matter!
BahRamYou
3d ago
I actually agree with this pretty strongly. I wrote the other day that I think part of why people object so strongly to ICE is just the aesthetics of their uniforms. I also heard (anecdotally) a lawyer say that he would never, ever wear a black suit to a jury trial- it has a huge biasing effect on people.
I thought that police traditionally used blue for this very reason? It's a color that conveys the right mix of authority and calm. I have no idea why they insist on wearing black- are they trying to sneak around in the dark like ninjas? But even ninjas wore blue!
BahRamYou
4d ago
This guy has been showing up in my feed a lot lately, and I think he has a good perspective on the situation. Notably there's some history I didn't know: Xi Jinping's father was once "purged," but he wasn't executed, just removed from power for a while. He was eventually allowed to come back. So being "purged" is maybe not as severe a punishment as westerners might think.
The other thing is that there's always a certain amount of petty corruption going on there. For the most part they allow it and tolerate it. It's only used as an excuse to purge someone when they want to remove someone for other reasons. (That said... giving away nuclear secrets seems a lot more severe than petty corruption? but who knows)
So his conclusion is that this is essentially a move by Xi Jinping to consolidate power for himself and the CCP, taking power away from the top military leaders. You might ask why he'd want to do that, since he's already got plenty of power and you'd think he has enough on his plate trying to run a country of 1.4 billion people. But this would give him more power to do something dangerous and unpopular... like, say, start an invasion of Taiwan.
I really, really, really hope that doesn't happen. I've been to Taiwan and it's a nice place. I also think the US and its allies are in a bad state right now, not ready for this kind of major full-scale war.
BahRamYou
4d ago
See, for me, it was playing the strategy game "Romance of the 3 Kingdoms" series on NES. Which tells you absolutely nothing about these characters except their stats. You can recruit all of them, but there's a hidden loyalty stat for how the story is supposed to go. So I kept trying to recruit Lu Bu because he had the best combat stat, and he kept on betraying me XD. I suppose that's a very authentic experience to the story!
BahRamYou
4d ago
I have bent over backwards to try and host spaces for people to hang out casually and meet without much expectations but also clearance to flirt, and somehow I virtually NEVER (like, once or twice in the past year?) get invited to spaces hosted by other people.
Just want to say, you're doing god's work and you'll get your reward in heaven (but probably not in this life).
BahRamYou
4d ago
I mean... it's really long, and really old, and really Chinese. It's not something you can just read casually. It's practically a whole field of study in itself.
I grew up playing Koei games like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series. If you're... a certain sort of nerd, you'll appreciate them. The downside is, they sort of assume you already know the story, so they can be confusing. But they'll still give you part of the story, and a good appreciation for the overall strategic situation and map.
"Dynasty Warriors" is more story based. It's pretty much nonsense, but it gives a good sense for the myths and legends, which is what most people remember it for anyway.
For a slightly more academic approach, I really enjoyed this blog series: Chinese history for white people. Still very limited and oversimplified, but it's a good read.
Beyond that, I think you just have to read Wikipedia articles about the specific people and battles involved. Or commit yourself to learning Chinese lol. I think it's still lacking in proper English-language material.
BahRamYou
5d ago
Seems like there's roughly 4 types of Democrats on this issue:
- is the relatively moderate, centrist opinion. They're happy to accept legal immigrants, especially to fill job vacancies or reunite families, but they still want to enforce immigration law. Obama would be the most prominent example of this.
- is the more pragmatic, squishy, vague position. They're still in principle against illegal immigration, but they don't really want to do anything to enforce it either. There seems to be a strong sense of "but how else would we get the work done without them?" here, especially in certain industries like meat processing that are pretty nasty work for low pay. I think this is how Biden thought about it.
- is the more emotional position. They just hate seeing anyone get hurt, so pictures of people who are not visibly committing a crime getting arrested really triggers them. The actual issue isn't really important, especially when it's a smaller, weaker, more photogenic person getting arrested by an armed federal agent in a black uniform. Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and most of the street protestors seem to have this position.
- is the more academic position. They see the US as being a vast chunk of unused territory, stolen from the native americans, which has no right to be nationalistic. They want to help the overall world GDP by moving as many immigrants as possible into the US, and also create a huge voting advantage for leftists. To that end, they really don't care whether immigrants are legal or illegal, and would prefer open borders. You don't see this view a lot from elected officials (at least not openly), but plenty of people express it online, especially from college students and their lefty professors.
OK, but in that case the professor is responding to simple yes/no questions or giving permission/orders. The student is writing a lot because he's nervous about offending his professor, not because he's putting a lot of thought into the ideas. The professor can still write long research papers though.
In this case, they're talking about fairly high-level stuff and giving opinions, but still writing as if they're a 3rd grader who needs ritalin. You can see he does put in effort when he wants to be polite ("I have decided to resign my position effective immediately with BG3 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I have not come to this decision quickly or without a great deal of thought"). But then he writes shit like: "on a different note=C2 , you have encouraged me to look at data , no holds barred. =A0 mortgages. inequalities . opportunities" wtf is this supposed to mean? I mean I know what he's implying, but the way he writes this is just garbage brainrot. Yeah, "look at data," brilliant advice there, I'm sure no one else has ever tried that, glad he could spare his valuable time to write that out, but obviously his time is far too valuable to bother specifying which data or what he's supposed to make of it. That doesn't read to me like a brilliant guy who's pressed for time, it reads like a guy who's drugged out of his mind and barely able to write anything at all, while desparately trying to sound smarter than he really is.
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