Pasha
Defend Kebab
No bio...
User ID: 481
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Fair, I applied the European salary scale in my head and misjudged the class of people you are targeting. High 5 figure salary easily gets you into 2-3% income percentile or so in most of Western Europe and is only attainable in very expensive cities.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
I feel that there is a sense in large parts of the elite and elite adjacent people that Trump is actually serious this time and has gathered a large following of competent people who are quite black pilled by the accelerating absurd excesses of the liberal state apparatus in the last decade.
Also he can work around almost any judicial block this time thanks to his Supreme Court appointments.
It feels almost like in 2016 almost nobody including Trump, his biggest supporters and his biggest enemies didn’t quite understand the force pushing the man to presidency.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
High paying jobs are in high cost areas. If you want to participate in this narrow part of the economy (and not spend half your day in a ridiculous commute) you have to shoulder some serious burden.
On top of it, large swathes of these high cost areas are populated by the urban underclasses that decreases your quality of life massively. So avoiding them is another big cost increasing factor.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
This is why I firmly believe some degrees of low level corruption (ie just paying a little bit or invoking a relation to work around complex dysfunctional systems) is a massive public and political good.
Without this option, modern societies fall prey very easily to financial engineering or bureaucratic management types who are leeches and will run wild imposing low intelligence taxes on the society for their own benefit or satisfaction.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
I have no opinion whether Anatoly Karlin is correct or not, but what sort of problems are you imagining?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
While I find Patrick Mackenzie’s writing very insightful sometimes, he also really makes me question if I am as competent in English as I think so. Sometimes I just really can’t parse the guys sentences
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
Are you sure you can get nothing? Last time an airline messed up my connection I got around 800 euros out of it
Pasha
Defend Kebab
6d ago
A website that follows and shows you the chain of previous flights of your plane sounds like a pretty cool idea
Pasha
Defend Kebab
10d ago
I actually gave some thought to this and literally the last person I remember who cared about poetry was an insufferably conceited gay man. So yeah
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11d ago
Picked up a random short book meant for a teenage audience about the conquest of the Incas. Mainly for language learning purposes but also the subject is just so insane. The “plot” of capture of Atahualpa is so infeasible that it feels like reading a book about the last season of game of thrones.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11d ago
What makes you think they care about poetry? I can’t remember the last time I came across someone who actually cared about poetry
Pasha
Defend Kebab
25d ago
What’s the deal with the Athletic Greens. Why am I marketed that stuff everywhere
Pasha
Defend Kebab
26d ago
Finding studies is easy but I don't trust myself to be able to scan the literature and ignore the garbage (which is most studies in nutrition and fitness).
TBH this is wildly important information for how little awareness there is of it
Yes but there are reddit fanatics for literally every single nutrition and fitness trend out there.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
26d ago
How do you evaluate health/diet/workout claims? For example just heard yesterday that a tea spoon of vinegar before meals and eating meals in order of greens-proteins-fat-carbs reduce the insulin spikes. Sounds plausible but if I try to search online then it is just bullshit popular science articles and reddit fanatics.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
27d ago
Turkey has not seen a successful coup since 1980 either. In the late 90s the generals tried what’s later called a “postmodern coup” by parading tanks in the streets menacingly and using their media power to force the Islamist government to resign. Even though they did resign, it was a fiasco and caused enormous political chaos and led to Erdoğan’s election a couple years later.
It’s not a strange thing Erdoğa wasn’t in Istanbul. That’s not the capital after all. The strange thing was that the coup was so focused on controlling Istanbul. Traditionally the coups happen mainly in Ankara as that’s where the entire state apparatus is.
The firing definitely wasn’t aimless. The regular troops were hesitant about shooting at civilians and police but many button pushers in helicopters and armoured vehicles weren’t and more than 300 people died that night which is an enormous number for Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of Erdoğa supporters legitimately and knowingly risked their lives by following his call of resisting the army. People pretend the fighting was fake to avoid thinking about what this says about the level of dedication Erdoğan inspires in large parts of the population.
Extremely rapid arrests are also nothing surprising. Erdoğan and Gülenists had been in an open power struggle for the security state for years at that point. Obviously there would be many purge lists floating around.
I don’t know about the inner works of what happened that night but it’s clear that many of the involved soldiers were indeed Gülen supporters. If they were simply desperate or were somehow tricked into exposing themselves it’s hard to say. It’s all complicated further by the unspoken Gülen-CIA connections and the broader conflict around Turkey’s relationship with regards to the NATO hegemony.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
At work if someone seems to enjoy meetings too much I just assume they aren’t good at what they are actually supposed to be doing.
If a pretty girl is claiming to be lesbian/bi it’s just a phase. For an ugly girl it might actually be permanent.
Anyone saying something genuinely interesting and smart on the internet is very very likely Jewish.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
Is the Russian army still using prison recruitment at a serious rate anymore?
I will not bother with seriously replying to the second paragraph because it’s hysterical. For all its faults, there is a more or less free flow of people and information in and out of Russia so I will trust the conclusions I can draw up for myself from the available data unless you can provide anything better. The only thing hampering me from accessing information about Russia is EU’s ban on Russian news outlets.
"real" is doing a lot of work here
No it really isn’t. My question was regarding educated Russians who are working IT jobs in Kazakhstan or whatever. Yes I am aware that Russia recruits (not conscripts, recruits) heavily among certain groups who are poorer and have martial traditions. Every single modern army does this. Istanbul boys don’t fight Turkey’s wars and New Yorkers don’t fight Americas wars.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
Even when the war was developing very dangerously for the Russian army they have only ran a very limited conscription scheme that amounted to “urged volunteering” of the lowest classes of the society. My understanding is that they sent summons to stg like 10 times the men they needed and as soon as the targets were reached by people voluntarily responding to the summons in 1-3 days they immediately ceased recruitment. I am not aware of any coerced conscription of a Russian man who would otherwise definitely not enter the army.
Right now the Russian army has a clear upper hand in fighting and reportedly a steady stream of volunteers. Meanwhile an incredibly disquieting amount of press gang/abduction style of conscription videos are coming out of Ukraine.
This is my reasoning for why there won’t be ever real conscription for this war in Russia. Russian speaking friends I have talked to seems to agree with this assessment
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
What’s up with Russians who fled abroad at the start of the war nowadays? It looks pretty certain at this point that they won’t be conscripted and Russia won’t go bankrupt anytime soon. Has there been a silent remigration wave or are they just stay put in Georgia/Turkey/Kazakhstan wherever now
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1mo ago
Your reasons are somewhat valid but at the end of the day so what? You are a man. Nobody will give you a pity trophy. If there is adversity it’s your job to overcome it.
Theme song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TafuUDUhYmw?si=C7Ip2zUoyhUbnEkr
Recently got a Financial Times subscription through work. Any authors or sections definitely worth reading?
More options
Context Copy link