DradisPing
No bio...
User ID: 1102
DradisPing
1mo ago
I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me. The hawk faction may be in control but the doves haven’t been totally eviscerated. Does anyone have any explanations or observations on this matter?
First here's a map of The Emerging US Mega Regions
The Northeast is the home of America's traditional ruling class. During WWII and after the Great Lakes region was getting rich and powerful. Unfortunately the Great Lakes region (GLR) is in road trip distance of DC and NYC. The North-easterners didn't like seeing them drive up in nice cars throwing money around. They saw them as uppity. So various federal policies were put in place to economically devastate the region.
One of them was encouraging companies to offshore the GLR manufacturing to China. China made sure the Northeast elites got rich off of the deal in various ways.
So the elites see China as a nation of obedient factory workers who know their place and pay tribute to the right people. Things like the 2022 visit to Taiwan by Pelosi were about sending a message to Xi Jinping to stay in line.
Of course that doesn't really line up with China's plans for itself. But admitting that destroying the GLR manufacturing base was a colossal fuck up is too much for most of the elite's egos to handle.
Hawks and Doves is probably the wrong way to think about it. The "Hawks" see China as an economic rival, there's no appetite for violence. The "Doves" are the ones more likely to use military force to keep China in line.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Low density car focussed suburbs don't scale. You just can't widen the highways enough to keep up with demand as you build out. It leads to ever worsening gridlock.
Trying to increase the density later is extremely difficult due to the large lot sizes and strict commercial - residential segregation.
I'm in Ontario where there's a significant housing shortage. Toronto has 360 housing units per thousand residents. Ontario has 398. Canada has 440 nationally. G7 average is 470.
So at least in Ontario we need to build an entire new city in the style of older, denser suburbs like Riverdale: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
DradisPing
1yr ago
The article is misstating the original claim. It was always about bleed through. Republicans had seen bleed through issues in the past, that's why they were so concerned.
They were offset, but some ballots weren't properly aligned. It wasn't a significant number, but my recollection is that they found some.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Singer's argument isn't going to attract much of a response even in the best case. I think it comes off as lazy.
It's not a new issue. I'm sure there has been plenty written on it before. If Singer had done the obvious reading then he should be presenting the common counter arguments and rebutting them. He's not doing that, so he's either hiding them or hasn't done his homework.
He's got to at least make a cursory comment about zoonotic disease risks to be taken seriously.
Twitter's format does favour quick emotional responses so it's not really a good format for a charged discussion.
DradisPing
11mo ago
Having a stable relationship with Russia (and prior to 2014 that’s what they had, it was colder than we wanted, but we got along well enough) is far more valuable than anything we could get from Ukraine.
It wasn't actually stable. The interventionist wing of us foreign policy has wanted to oust Putin and take control of Russian & Ukrainian resources for a long time.
There were articles written in 2008 warning about how US foreign policy was going to lead to a Ukrainian civil war that would be followed by a Russian invasion. They State Department didn't stop, they pushed forward.
The 2022 Russian invasion was expected. What wasn't expected was the failure of the sanctions. They expected to crush the Russian economy and insight a revolt to oust Putin. It didn't work and now they're winging it.
is there any reason to believe that increased Hispanic immigration would help combat wokeness
To discuss this in depth, it's important to first point out that Hispanic is a made up category with very different elements. Traditionally it was made up of Cubans in Florida, Puerto Ricans in the NYC area, and Northern Mexicans in the Southwest.
The Cuban refugees were frequently educated and anti communist, so they have been accessible to voting republican for a while.
The Hispanics being bussed to the southern border in those caravans are a different demographic. From southern Mexico or central America. Bottom social tier in their original countries. Often completely illiterate, unable to read English or Spanish. Due to "bilingual" education, which in practice means doing HS in Spanish, their children never learn college level English. The education system fudges the numbers by giving them affirmative action entrance, throwing them in remedial classes, letting them wash out, then declaring them as having "some college" in statistics.
So the parents and children end up to some degree reliant on social programs run by the PMC. They aren't in any position to fight wokeism.
Venezuelans fleeing Maduro tend to be more similar Cubans but they aren't going to have any desire to rock the boat.
Besides, the woke don't have any objection to making exceptions for non-whites. You won't see them pushing "gender affirming care" on Somali Muslims. The famous famous "gay wedding cake" couple drove way out into the boonies to find a Christian baker who had a problem making the cake, while ignoring Muslim bakeries a few miles away from their home who had similar objections.
So I think that while Hispanic immigrants that get into the PMC would be culturally less supportive of wokeism, they would tend to see it as either helpful to their careers or not worth opposing.
DradisPing
1yr ago
The special forces in Ukraine bit is problematic for the Pentagon. Most people following closely thought that was probably the case. However, there is now confirmation that NATO forces are in a limited shooting war with Russia.
The Dem base is currently solidly in support of the White House strategy in Ukraine. A big chunk would probably push for a diplomatic settlement if they knew how close Victoria Nuland is to starting WW3.
DradisPing
1yr ago
The real issue with MSG is that it's saltier than it tastes. That is, it has more sodium.
A lot of sauces used a huge amount of MSG and masked the sodium flavour with sugar to get a rich semi sweet flavour.
The resulting sauces had a huge amount of sugar and sodium. Some people were getting salt poisoning.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Sorry had some stuff to do earlier.
So from the time I remember seeing articles like this focussed on bleed through https://itnshow.com/2020/11/07/arizona-election-official-seems-to-confirm-that-bleed-through-from-sharpie-markers-do-impact-votes/
It was a well known issue, Sharpies had been banned in previous elections for that reason. That's why the woman was freaking out.
The response was there was no need to worry because of a combination of offset printing and VoteSecure paper to avoid bleed through issues. It turns out the paper wasn't used in all cases.
So the paper thing irked me because it was a specific broken promise. If a printout was misaligned then it would register as an invalid over vote.
Someone fairly prominent on Twitter was claiming they found a handful of instances of bleed through invalidating Trump votes, but I can't for the life of me remember who.
DradisPing
5mo ago
The lack of support in Europe is more of a symptom of declining Christianity. When Jodan was in charge of the west bank they didn't allow Chrstian pilgrims, and that dispute goes all the way back to the crusades.
DradisPing
7mo ago
That's not true, peace offers have been well documented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Russia wanted independence for Luhansk and Donetsk, recognition of Russian control of Crimea, and neutrality from Ukraine (eg no Nato, no arms along the border).
The US and UK convinced Zelenskyy that Nato weapons would allow him to win the war and take back Crimea, so here we are.
DradisPing
7mo ago
I think it's about food safety. Eating at a strange restaurant is inhernently a risk.
The US traditionally got around this by having diners for travellers serve a lot of mildly flavored food (eg maynaise & white bread) that won't hide the tast of spoiled meat. After food inspectors became common, spiced food became lower risk.
Asian tourists can safely eat at restaurants by the same nationality by checking for tells of high conscientiousness. Lazy restaurant owners who cut corners on food safety are generally lazy elsewhere. Looking to see if they follow all of the small rules their culture expects about decor is a strong signal. Also they can scan the other customers to see if they have appropriate standards.
DradisPing
1yr ago
So I'll just offer my response on Musk's points...
Chess isn't a simple game. But it is a solved game at the lower levels. The winner of an amateur match is going to be whoever spent more time studying chess books.
Musk has better things to spend his time on, but doesn't want a bunch of mediocre people running around bragging that they beat him at chess.
So he tweets that to avoid the whole situation.
His Twitter purchase is an interesting topic, and there's a lot of speculation. But keep in mind that there were left wing groups planning to go to court to stop the purchase, and around that time tech stocks took a big hit.
So it was probably a mix of trying to get a lower price, replacing funding that had backed out, and waiting to see if the DOJ anti trust division was going to come after him.
As for Ukraine, this is pretty straightforward. Western governments have committed over $100 billion dollars to help Ukraine, and lots of groups have gotten in on the grift. Weapons developers are getting money to fund new systems to "help Ukraine" that won't be ready for years. If you dig, I'm sure you'll find a bunch of lefty groups getting big bucks for dubious services.
No one expects any of them to work for free.
But Starlink was providing critical communications services for free and it's clear that everyone was happy to leave them holding the bag. Musk just wanted to get paid for services or for the war to end.
So it's not for attention. He's just trying to advance his interests in various ways.
DradisPing
1yr ago
You changed detonation to explosion, then argued that explosion can mean anything.
But articles about the Swedish probe have been specifically using the word detonation. eg https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/nord-stream-leaks-detonation-sweden-probe
A detonation is a supersonic explosion from an exothermic reaction. They wouldn't have used that word for a methyl hydrate pipe burst.
"Bring an end to it" meant to get it decertified.
That's a matter of opinion. Here's video of the quote.
https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser/status/1576413365127155712
When asked to explain how he'd end it he didn't say anything about decertification. He just gave an ominous "We will, uh, I promise you we will be able to do it."
The decertification explanation just sounds like his staff trying to walk back his threat.
As for heavily controlled, while its not an ocean, there is still a lot of water out there. A sub, or a nondescript looking boat with divers could go the area without attracting notice
I think you're underestimating the complexity and the likelihood of being caught. Multiple bombs at multiple sites. A very high risk operation for the Russians.
Sure, it could have been a frame job, but that's not the most likely option.
DradisPing
22d ago
Image hosting is straightforward, jpeg decoders are well established and safe.
They can be easily generated by taking a screenshot.
Bundling text and images together into a safe format that works in different screen aspect ratios is a surprisingly difficult problem. You're introducing a lot of complexity in generating them and safely displaying them.
DradisPing
1mo ago
The strong version gets pretty crackpotty, but in a fun way. It's a guilty pleasure to read.
However there's a weaker take. Astronomy of the solar system was developed before electricity was understood and assumes that everything is electrically neutral. The argument is that electric charges are important with things like asteroids and planetary weather can be affected.
They predicted the first astroid lander would fail due to a difference in charge and sure enough it failed due to a mysterious flash. The one that succeeded orbited the asteroid for a few days, which would have given the charges a chance to even out.
In terms of atmospheric effects it's not a well respected theory because it hasn't developed any predictive models that work on that scale.
DradisPing
2mo ago
Reddit was founded in 2005, so the shared hosting php servers at the time were quite a bit slower than they are now. Also phpBB has probably added some javascript to avoid the full page refreshes on each click.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Maricopa County has been reporting a lot of trouble with tabulators. Maricopa County is famous for being the location of "Sharpiegate" in the 2020 election.
Sharpiegate was ultimately confirmed. Not all of the ballots were printed on bleed resistant paper, some Trump votes were found to have been lost to bleed through. Not a large number, but it was a real thing.
Problems are being reported at 26+ polling locations. Voters are being told to leave their votes in a locked box to be tabulated at a different location later. There are worries about chain of custody.
Arizona currently has tight races for both the Governor and Senator, so this is going to be a major source of contention going forward.
DradisPing
8mo ago
The electors aren't fake either way. They are proposed alternative electors, which is how past elector disputes have been done. There was never any conspiracy to present them as the primary electors.
DradisPing
1yr ago
I think you're overstating the choice of venue issue. In practice it's pretty flexible.
Look at when SDNY when after Bannon et al. None of the defendants were in its jurisdiction. They couldn't find a victim. The case was similar -- residents of SDNY heard about "build the wall" so they had jurisdiction.
For things like libel you're supposed to be able to sue in your home state. If the defendant is politically connected (eg NYT) it'll often get transferred, but that's more of an exception.
There have been a few explanations floated for how the lawsuits proceeded...
Fundraising was undoubtably a goal.
Stating all of the allegations in one place for the historical record was probably a motivation. Multiple separate lawsuits wouldn't have been able to convey Trump's side clearly.
The choice of lawyers was questionable. Trump has a thing for hiring ex-prosecutors. They don't have the right experience for this sort of litigation. I suspect that they are grifting Trump... filing half-assed lawsuits so they can bill him and say they did something. Ex-prosecutors aren't the sort of people who actually want to present a strong case against powerful federal insiders.
Another probable goal was just to get to some level of discovery. Getting the various defendants to admit to various facts not in dispute would have been good for Trump's record. It would have been something historians would have needed to acknowledge.
A more out there explanation I've heard is that the goal of the lawsuit was to create a single intelligence silo. It provided a justification to read in all of the lawyers on information that's still classified. Multiple lawsuits would have meant that lawyers could only be read in on specific information relevant to that specific case.
Filing before the statute of limitations had expired was impossible in this case. He wouldn't have been able to sue as president. Legally he could, but it wasn't practical to. Plus high level bureaucrats have too many ways to slow things down... information came out as a trickle, then he had to wait for official investigations to wrap up.
DradisPing
1yr ago
There was no trial on the merits. The judge issued a default judgment then held a trial purely on damages where Jones wasn't allowed to present any evidence that he didn't actually do what they claimed.
Trials aren't supposed to work that way. It's a politically motivated farce.
DradisPing
18d ago
Islam is fargroup to the blue tribe, so they don't see it as any threat. Whatever Muslims do is excused under the "no enemies to the left" policy. Progressives generally assume that all domestic Muslims will convert to proper progressive values in short order and ignore all evidence to the contrary.
In places like prisons in the UK it's popular to convert to Islam because it grants you protection from both the Muslim gangs there and the progressives running the prisons.
The progressive - Muslim alliance is quite old at this point.
The Toronto District School Board was letting Muslim students use the cafeteria as a gender segregated prayer room back in 2012, https://torontolife.com/city/allah-in-the-cafeteria/
Also the TDSB logo is cleverly an apple, an Islamic crescent, and a communist sickle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_District_School_Board#/media/File:Toronto_District_School_Board_Logo.svg
So protection from progressives is the major thing driving Islamic conversions and their growth in culture. It'll grow until they are powerful enough to turn on the progs.
DradisPing
1mo ago
I'm a moderate believer in the electric universe theory, to the degree that I think it can explain a lot of strange celestial phenomena. eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles
Combine those with the fact that it's hard for people to judge the size of things in the sky without knowing what it is. The limit of stereoscopic vison is about 215m. After that your brain just making an educated guess about the size.
DradisPing
3mo ago
Either we trust Patton and drop the retrospective moral justification for the war in the garbage, or distrust him.
Patton had been fighting the Nazis for years and respected them as opponents.
Seeing Jews coming out of the camps in terrible shape triggered his disgust reflex.
An ideal person would have reflected on that. But he was an Army General, not some humanitarian leader.
It will be very interesting to see if trans activists feel any pressure to tone down the violent rhetoric now that it has resulted in a bunch of dead kids.
More options
Context Copy link