No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
No_one
1d ago
Unless someone invents an inertialess space drive you have nothing to worry about. All the promising asteroids are very, very far away, with a simple return trajectory being at best what, 3 years and at worst way more.
No_one
1d ago
but you can't help but notice that we've nearly x5 the money supply since December 2019.
Is that true? I was looking at M2 money supply recently and supposedly it's up by 50% since '19. So not 500% but 50%.
No_one
1d ago
That guy seems like a blowhard.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ceskPbDtTzY
He's talking how Grad missiles would look the same as GMLRS on Russian radar and thus could complicate shooting down GMLRS strikes. That's bullshit. Grad has a range of what, 20 kilometers. GMLRs, ranging 80 km was used for targets up to 50 km behind the front and was great for precisely that - forcing Russian logistics to move out of range, thus complicating it. Targets that can be ranged by Grads could be engaged with 6" artillery or rocket launchers, so he looks kind of stupid here.
Anyway, Ukrainians did manage to strike some targets by firing in salvos and making interception harder by also firing some of their old and probably irreplaceable Uragan rockets to saturate the defences, but they ran out eventually (probably in '23 or '24).
No_one
1d ago
does Xi really need to trump up corruption charges
It probably takes a fanatic or an autist to avoid doing even a little corruption if you're in charge of gigantic amounts of military procurement or a general officer in an army that is, then, very corrupt. Zhang looks like he was a competent but personable, likable guy. So, not a fanatic nor an autist. In addition, Chinese evolved to love to squirrel away a little money for harder times. There were huge amounts of corruption in the PLA in 90s and 00s. Combine the times and being selected from people who always saved something for a rainy day and the odds are there was no need to trump up charges because there was some little or not so little discreet cushion somewhere and Zhang didn't expect it'd be used against him.
There is no moral difference between being a liar and someone who achieves the same ends with deliberate misdirection.
One could even argue someone like NYT who is usually somewhat correct if selectively ignoring certain things, but will readily deceive in critical moments is worse than a liar, because they're better at deception.
No_one
3d ago
Sure. It's not lying when, while covering a topic you engage in wholesale misdirection by deliberately burying the lede in one half of a sentence 3/4 down the article.
That's fine. It's not deceptive at all.
No_one
4d ago
That's what trade journalists do.
Normal journalists have political agendas.
No_one
4d ago
It's not amazing.
NYT has been like this last 30 years. The only exception I know of was Nicholas Wade who for a long time was a science reporter before getting axed.
No_one
4d ago
I would quibble with your designation of Facebook, Wikipedia as 'cultural centres of the online world'. Unless that was sarcasm ofc.
Yeah, the internet is blocked off for the electorate, but anyone exhibiting the tiniest bit of interest can bypass it.
E.g. a computer game that was wholly banned in China had 40% of global players from China.
No_one
6d ago
Well, it's ruining your, not my country, so I'm not going to argue that it's not inevitable when you clearly desire the ends of said policy.
No_one
6d ago
Chinese have internet, dude. They're extremely common in online games. Some probably even post on theMotte.
You can go on Chinese twitter, loads of action, mostly related to advertising pornography and prostitutes.
No_one
6d ago
pan European problem
You don't get to conflate Italian organised crime with North African gangs. Distinct genetics and history.
No_one
6d ago
Give it a few years. You remind me of the Europeans saying this same shit about America back in early 1900s.
E.g. Wilde with his quote ~"America is the only nation that passed from barbarism to decadence without ever having been civilized".
No_one
7d ago
nobody likes what they produce
?? If that's the case, why do they have an absolutely gigantic trade surplus despite being the world's largest raw material importér?
No_one
7d ago
That's not a natural law.
It doesn't have to be that way. There are ways of doing it that don't require certain states to endlessly produce debt
No_one
7d ago
Southern Italy, which is the source area for most Argentinian population isn't really like that.
No_one
7d ago
Neocon maximalist foreign policy ideas are the water US diplomacy/ related academia live in.
They have no opposition but MAGA and that's new , they have been living in an echo chamber since 2010 and even people who were skeptical earlier fell in line.
No_one
7d ago
That state capacity got eroded. They can't even staff police properly, or intimidate immigrant crime gangs.
No_one
7d ago
When they went along with the J6 narrative, or the narrative that US election are organised in a trustworthy manner?
No_one
7d ago
the intelligent people jab,
We don't live in a just, perfect world.
The world naturally evolved to be perverse and so it's wholly unsurprising that most people who aren't disagreeable assholes or weird autistics naturally gravitate to politics that are emotionally appealing and, on a surface level, sensible.
Look at this chart of donations by profession..
I'm not a believer and never was but I find it very easy to believe in man's fallen nature. Or more precisely man's retarded, perverse nature.
No_one
7d ago
What % of Americans even follows BBC ? This is example of bullshit coverage abroad, not at all uncommon. If this was e.g. British spooks or government arm-twisting a US media company's domestic coverage to be more hostile to Trump, that'd be an example of British meddling.
I agree that they're hostile and all praying and hoping Republicans live up to their image.
No_one
7d ago
US blue tribe is something like 75% of your 'intelligent' people. You can't really pin this 'interference' when 50%+ of the plot is your own representatives, and most of the people on the other side come from an environment where in some major countries, the media have been largely controlled by CIA since WW2..
deep state cutouts like the National Endowment for Democracy
Mike Benz over on twitter is pretty pissed bc Trump admin didn't axe the NED but is trying to use for its own ends.
No_one
7d ago
They are not actually obligated to just take this shit. It's a habit.
If NSA is blackmailing US senators to ensure they vote how it prefers them to vote, what makes you think anyone who isn't a reliable dimwit like the current Czech president or doesn't have a handle ( I dunno, a record of attending Belgian child torture parties) even makes it above regional level in Western Europe?
CIA, hand in glove with BND used to basically run German media during the cold war. Allegations that they're still doing so were levelled by Udo Ulfkotte, who spent 17 yrs as a respected journalist in a prominent newspaper, before leaving and eventually writing a book claiming CIA is basically still running German media, vetting journalists and keeping a watchful eye on the coverage of touchy topics.
I don't believe for a second American influence is just the think-tanker /overt Atlanticist circlejerk that is outwardly evident.
I mean, the tech doesn't exist for either asteroid mining, or AI that could run and maintain mining for years. Also, on average you'd have to wait 2, 3 years before anything even arrives, lowest transit time is 18 months with about 5000 m/s dV. That's near the upper bound for what's possible in a single stage rocket.
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