RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
Cradle is kind of xianxia but it doesn't capture the full essence of it. It feels like the characters are white, only pretending to be Asian. It's an emulation, a later Cradle scene give me a certain Marvel vibe as the good guys all portal in for a really big fight. That's appropriate, it's a Western book for Western audiences. Wight couldn't get away with race wars, sexism and what would surely be considered transphobia/homophobia like authors can in China.
Reverend Insanity is a different beast, you can tell that they're actually Chinese, playing these weird-to-us mindgames, reciting poems and so on. There's a certain level of sincerity in what happens. It feels a bit more like an open-world game in contrast to Cradle, where our MC is going through set-piece after set-piece, clearing chapter after chapter to reach his goals. For example:
In Cradle the tournament arc takes a whole book, as our heroes march on through to get the mcguffin, training and powering up, developing their character as necessary. They might cheat a little but the other side cheats harder and still loses, they are the bad guys after all.
In RI there are two tournament arcs. In the latter our MC is called in as back-up for his partner-of-convenience, ignores the call for a few weeks and only shows up (on his 4th fake identity) with a sneaky, devious, obnoxiously dishonourable plan to kill this one guy and make off with his soul and looted corpse, even if he has to get kicked out of the sect to execute the plan. The tournament wasn't over a mcguffin, it was about relieving political tensions from an earlier crisis and the big players giving lip service to Longevity Heaven's Edict. Our MC is not developing his character and heroically trusting in the power of friendship, he's an assassin ruthlessly optimizing his chance at success. Then he decides to strike while the iron is hot and ambush a few more people elsewhere before heading off to kill and impersonate someone on the other side of the world.
There's also a thematic level too with the Ren Zu interludes, it's not without literary merit IMO. Later on there's a big struggle over fate, whether the natural order decreed by fate is good, whether it inhibits freedom or protects humanity/the world, what sacrifices are needed to uphold it... It's a reflection of Cradle in that respect, though our MC takes the matter into his own hands.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
IMO it's more like the British and the French but worse in some respects.
Germany wanted land, demanded it and then took it when Poland refused to hand it over. Russia wanted land, found a pretend excuse, went in and took it. The straightforwardness of the robber.
Britain and France promised to protect Poland and launched the lamest offensive imaginable, into the Saar, before retreating back to the Maginot line. They clearly had no plan to save Poland from Germany and refused to even declare war on Russia (which was a wise move). They made promises that they couldn't keep but never even dreamed of demanding Polish resources as recompense for military assistance.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
According to the Telegraph, the US is planning to turn Ukraine into a colony: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/17/revealed-trump-confidential-plan-ukraine-stranglehold/
Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.
The agreement covers the “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine”, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”, leaving it unclear what else might be encompassed. “This agreement shall be governed by New York law, without regard to conflict of laws principles,” it states.
So Ukrainian courts are no longer in control. Reasonable from a certain point of view but well into 'unequal treaty' territory.
The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations.
It states that “for all future licences, the US will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals”. Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. The fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences and projects. And so forth, in this vein. It seems to have been written by private lawyers, not the US departments of state or commerce.
Now it is the Telegraph, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Still it's extremely obnoxious behaviour from America. First it's "You have a bright future in the West. Come on, we'll totally let you into NATO. Just draft a few million more men, victory is near!". And then it's "hand over all your resource wealth, quickly now. Trusting us was a fatal mistake." If this is the case, then America doesn't even have the straightforward dignity of stabbing a man in the front and robbing him, it's pure villainy: trick him into an unwinnable fight, then demand he empty his pockets.
Talk about debt trap diplomacy!
Why is everyone so obsessed with military spending, especially as a % of GDP?
We constantly hear complaints that Europe isn't meeting its 2% defence spending targets. Or Trump wants them to reach 5%.
Defence spending is a basically meaningless number that has only a very tenuous relationship with capabilities, which actually matter. The Taliban did not outspend America in Afghanistan. North Korea could thrash Australia (our defence budget approaches 60-70% of North Korean GDP according to those who invent these numbers) in a war. They have ICBMs and H-bombs, we could barely reach them and couldn't do any damage. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy according to the GDP calculators. But in terms of capabilities...
What is it that Europe needs that they don't have? Ammunition? Then build ammunition factories. Shell factories should be cheap, this is WW2-era technology. Drones? Then build drone factories. Defence spending seems to usually translate into ludicrously expensive purchases of equipment from the United States, which is why the Americans want it constantly raised.
In reality Europe doesn't need any additional militarization. The European half of NATO has about 2 million troops, a population of about 600 million. If Russia is struggling to burn through Ukraine's male fighting age population, how are they supposed to cut down 20x more? How is Russia supposed to man a frontline from Turkey to Finland? How is Russia supposed to contest huge navies with submarines and aircraft carriers? How is Russia supposed to deal with large and powerful air forces, Eurofighters and F-35s? Why would Russia attack such a gigantic, powerful, nuclear-armed alliance?
The European half of NATO alone has the power to smash Russia's conventional forces and force them to fall back on nuclear weapons, where they Russia has a considerable superiority. No additional militarization is needed. There's plenty of room for defence cuts, unless Europe plans on helping the US fight China, nuclear war with Russia or further wrecking in the Middle East.
Talk of defence spending should be wound down and replaced by talk of what specific capabilities are needed to achieve specific objectives. Is it necessary to build fortifications in Lithuania? Do airbases need to be hardened against drones? Anything but 'lets throw billions of dollars in the general direction of these schlerotic military bureaucracies that consistently fail to deliver success'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Not everything that comes out of China is tasteless, they produce plenty of good stuff.
Wukong and Marvel Rivals are good, though they're not my kind of game. There's Genshin Impact which is pretty good though again, gacha isn't my thing. How is that not tasteful? They made up a huge original fantasy world that captivates millions of people just like Star Wars. Mechabellum and Dyson Sphere Program are quite strong in the strategy genre, which is my thing. There are a bunch of Chinese mods for even fairly obscure games like Star Sector that got translated back into English for people for people to play here. You can't make game mods without craftsmanship, nobody does that seeking a profit.
And there are plenty of good translated Chinese novels, as mentioned downthread. The Three body problem series for one, how is that not tasteful or sophisticated? It dares to break some conventions and says that treehugging and spiritualism isn't such a great idea, let's embrace technology. It points out that men are getting more effeminate and soft over time and projects this trend into the future in a mildly unsettling way. It has a wide range of original ideas in an expansive universe, truly alien aliens...
China is a very big country! You can't judge the entire output of such a huge country from a single film. It's like watching the highest grossing American movie Avatar, and concluding that all American culture is CGI moralist slop with no deeper meaning or value than 'empathetic scientists good, mining and military bad'. And maybe there are a few exceptions.
If someone came to that conclusion about the US you'd assume they had an axe to grind against America. There is more to American film than Avatar, there is horror, comedy, superheroes, romance, oscarbait... There is more to American culture than one Hollywood film, as we all know because America projects their entertainment all around the world. Plus a huge number of non-Americans speak English.
China doesn't project its culture all around the world, much of it is never translated (especially smaller, niche products). So you see a bunch of slop like Honour of Kings (Chinese DOTA) and some gems and think 'oh it's mostly slop with some exceptions' because you never see the niche products in the first place. They're not vomited out at you by a gigantic global media system. You don't look for them and they might not be in English (or have a lame sounding name like Honour of Kings). You get the equivalent of Chinese Avatar and Call of Duty, never see Chinese Homestuck or Worm or Factorio. And you hear about some Chinese gems but never see a gem in your own preferred areas.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
We live in one of two worlds:
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The Secret Service was genuinely trying to protect Trump and were so clownishly incompetent that people in the crowd were warning them about a guy with a gun going up onto the roof but still let him take his shots. Men With Guns are supposed to be their forte, this is the one thing they're not supposed to let happen. Why wasn't there a drone or something providing overwatch? How hard can it be?
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The Secret Service/Deep State was trying to kill Trump and chose some MKUltra victim who wasn't a good shot, as opposed to something like a drone or a precision mortar strike which would at least be reasonable for them to heroically fail to intercept. Intercepting drones is hard.
Either way they don't come off as very capable.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Quite right, the infamous Salo Thread on HIV has extracts from a book where certain gays compared closing the bathhouses they were using to have lights-out orgies to gas chambers.
We can never criticize the genre-unawareness of zombie movie protagonists when stuff like this happened in real life:
Many members from the gay community were at that meeting. Bobbi Campbell, who was already infected with AIDS, was standing at the back. I remember at least three members of the gay community, nude, just with towels around them, holding signs that said, "Today the baths; tomorrow the ovens." They meant that, if we let you close the baths on us, next thing you'll quarantine us, then we'll be in jail, then you'll destroy us, like a Hitler. It was very, very extreme.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Unapologetic whataboutism is the best kind. It's no good when people say 'I decided the subject of discussion will be something that paints me in a good light and you in a bad light. No it's actually a fallacy if you try and do the reverse'. The rhetorical tool of whataboutism favours those with the bigger megaphone, those with agenda-setting power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
The Chinese social credit system is hugely overrated in intensity. You don't really lose Social Credit quantitatively if you're late to dinner like Noah Smith seems to have thought: https://x.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1780129054240510461
Most of the obtrusive stuff the Chinese state does is just the same old heavy-handed policing but with modern surveillance technology. If they don't like you the police will bring you in to 'drink tea' with them and mess with you. If you dissent on the internet they can get rid of your content the old fashioned way, with human/machine censors. East Germany didn't need social credit to be totalitarian and neither does China. The strongest anti-Chinese arguments shouldn't be social-credit related.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
That is a good, thought-provoking response. My primary concept of libertarianism is pursuit of a smaller state which just does less in all domains generally. The Britain of 1900 vs the Britain of 1950 for instance. One of the most important liberties strikes me as not getting dragged away by draft officers, heading off to fight and possibly die in a trench somewhere. Or having to pay high taxes (which are needed for powerful armies). Reason-magazine libertarianism might be seen as inauthentic by other schools of thought I guess but it does seem like libertarianism.
There's nothing inherent in libertarian philosophy that requires a low state capacity for dealing with external threats
With regards to state-capacity libertarianism, I have fewer complaints. It does lead to an increasingly expansive definition of military capacity though. You obviously want to have state arsenals and dockyards, that expands out into investments in steel and chemicals, support for heavy industry and power plants, technical education in schools... At some point it merges with a nationalist state's military-industrial complex. It's a basically continuous spectrum. But at the far end you end up with China's five year plans to develop strategic industries and huge state investments to reorient the economy on autarchic lines, inculcate patriotism and nationalism into the youth and it can hardly be called libertarian. They've clearly passed some key threshold a long time ago.
libertarian attitudes thrive in places like the Anglo-Scotch border region, the Comanche tribes of North America, I hear perhaps Somalia
Was the Anglo-Scottish border really that bad? It was bad by British standards. Most of Britain was pretty peaceful. There was long-term low intensity violence. Likewise with the American westwards expansion.
But it was not extremely severe violence. The Native Americans could not produce 80,000 troops seemingly out of nowhere and ride up to besiege Boston like the average steppe horde circa 500 AD. Cities weren't being razed to the ground. It was not the kind of violence that threatens national extermination if you lose - it was that for the natives, not the Europeans. In Eastern Europe you had cities getting razed and countries getting wiped off the map all the time. In Asia you had steppe nomads showing up and exterminating whole countries. Or they'd install themselves as the leaders and conduct humiliation rituals. Small kin groups and decentralized defence works against a small tribe of natives but will not hold back the Mongols, Goths or Manchu.
I think there's a certain kind of sympathy Anglos think we have with the Eurasian powers. In Australia we have ANZAC Day and bands playing The Last Post, there's a lot of mythologizing. In the US there's supporting the troops and so on. But our wars are nearly always fought overseas and/or against much weaker opponents. In WW2 we lost 0.5% for Australia and 0.3% for the US. Not 17% like Poland or 13% like the Soviet Union. That is a totally different kind of warfare.
Doing what the US did in WW1/2 and switching from huge civilian industry to wartime industry when war arrives is a privilege of geography and size. In 1941 the US Army was smaller than the Portuguese army, that just wouldn't work in Eurasia. The most important thing for winning a huge struggle like WW2 is being big, industrialized and resource-rich, military efficiency and ideology is secondary. If the US had to cope with having negligible oil production like Germany, a population 50% lower, shortages of iron, nickel, chromium and just about everything except coal... German victory in Europe would be hard to avoid.
Germany is the heartland of the Anglo-Saxons (who, if memory serves, were noted in antiquity for their egalitarian attitudes) and (almost) the geographical home of the Austrian school of economics!
Germany is also the home of Prussian enlightened absolutism and militarism, von Schleicher's Military State, Marxism and national socialism itself, I don't think it can necessarily be claimed as a bastion of libertarianism. It's certainly not a very libertarian state today and wasn't historically, aside from the Holy Roman Empire period.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Britain does have an aircraft carrier and enough H-bombs to put a real dent in any country on the planet. The weakest of the strong powers is still a strong power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
To a certain extent sure, but it's usually only very sheltered peoples that embrace libertarianism. The British avoided the need for a large standing army because of their geography. The US enjoyed the luxury of having no strong powers in their entire hemisphere. Neither power ever really suffered at the hands of any foreign forces like the less fortunately positioned countries.
If you tried libertarianism in central Europe or Asia, then you're in for some really bad experiences. Germany - 25% dead in the Thirty Years War. Unity is strength, be the hammer not the anvil. Poland -- annexed because they weren't strong and autocratic enough. Decisive, central leadership has its virtues. China - massive crises and disasters with tens of millions dead whenever the state shows weakness. Don't show any weakness.
What is the libertarian response to a bunch of bandits coming over the hill? There's more of them then there are of you. They're bandits, they're professional robbers and you're an amateur homestead defender. You need numbers, you need preparation, you need professionals, you need a state to fight them off. The only way to be without those things is if people are benign and don't decide to repress you in the first place. In fact the bandits could make their own state as stationary bandit. They become the nobles that own all the land that you pay taxes to, they provide protection. Either way you lose freedom if there are enough bad people.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
That's fair. I suppose that's another way of looking at his Anglophilia. I see it as 'Germans and English are basically the same people, let's work together' but you could go 'the English are also a top-tier race (plus China/Japan), let's work together'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
I agree, good post. Hitler is not complicated.
Hitler's goal was to increase the strength of the German people by uniting them and conquering more land to settle. Land is the base of national strength. You need lots of good land if you want a large population and a strong country. He wanted this because Hitler conceptualized the world as a competition between nations, the state is a suit of armour for the nation. That's what identity politics is. It's the belief that politics is about using the state to strengthen and benefit one's people. It's about creating the biggest, toughest suit of armour that can brush aside any physical or psychic attack in a dangerous, bloody world. And you are allowed to strike first, if necessary.
This is totally against the concept that politics is about doing good in some universal sense, or leaving people alone.
The libertarian sees the state as a bikini that should only provide the bare minimum of protection, provide the maximum freedom of movement. They think that the world and other peoples are fundamentally good, the environment is pleasant and danger is rare. If you're on a tropical island why constrict yourself with clothing?
The moralist sees the state as a fashion statement, a social statement, a political message, it's about ensuring that the poor textile workers received a fair wage. Thus the state can be bound by international law, clothing is bound by fashion. The international community matters, those judging eyes are watching. Trendsetters should be followed. Getting one's hands dirty is to be avoided, you don't want to get blood on these jeans!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Pick out some tech stocks you like. Nvidia or ARM or whatever you believe in. Make a thesis.
Index funds are boring, guaranteed mediocrity and it is very possible to beat them. I beat the NASDAQ by 78% over the last two years and probably much more over a longer period (the chart my bank gives me stops in September 2023), mostly thanks to being early on NVIDIA and crypto last cycle. It's not impossible to make those calls and beat index funds. You don't need to read reports, outsmarting the giga-quants at hedge funds isn't about doing more work or being smarter than them, it's just about deducing the right thesis from having the right vibes. The numbers are already priced in, vibes are where the alpha is.
Of course I've made lots of mistakes and lost lots of money in various errors. That is inevitable if you make aggressive moves and control your own money. I encourage against using leverage. I encourage patience. But risks are needed to earn rewards.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Yes Minister is relevant as ever: https://youtube.com/watch?v=En4lu_1bcsI
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Wisdom involves judging and drawing up permissible and impermissible risks.
Playing football in high school is risky. Self-testing novel chemical amphetamines you bought online is also risky. But they're not the same kind of risk.
Having sex with a 17.9 year old or an 18.1 year old doesn't seem very different. But it doesn't then follow that 35 year old men should have ready access to 12 year old girls. At some point a line must be drawn on a qualitative, continuous and complicated scale. And people must fundamentally reason out a series of rules, guidelines and reasonable applications of flexibility in special cases to make this work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Maybe consider something, anything, a little more broad and wide-ranging than one battle? It's not like this is a new idea:
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Maybe it was because the Americans knew they had total air superiority, columns of tanks (with fuel!) and broad numerical superiority. They could wait for the weather to improve. They could expect relief.
And the goal of the offensive was not 'encircle and destroy a few cut off Americans' but 'reach Antwerp and cut off the entire American army'.
How about the first three attacks on Monte Cassino? Or Operation Market Garden?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Firstly "putting all of Israel-Palestine under American control so as to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from hating each other for long enough" would make it extremely difficult to do anything about China.
Secondly, chaos finds its way to America precisely because of its support for Israel. First World Trade Centre bombing motive? US support for Israel. 9/11? Osama Bin Laden was heavily influenced by his anger over US support for Israel.
RandomRanger
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5mo ago
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest?
RandomRanger
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5mo ago
If Germany was able to surprise France after a good 9 months of Phoney War, then something was really wrong with France. Britain had years to notice that Germany was building up a powerful army and yet couldn't manage to get enough troops to France in time...
Israel isn't really that liberal, they're more like Britain in the early 19th century or (ironically) Nazi Germany. Liberal countries don't conduct opportunistic border revisions, evict people and settle their land. Liberal countries don't sterilize Ethiopians. Liberal countries don't launch sneak attacks on their neighbours. You wouldn't see Americans storming a military base to protest the imprisonment of soldiers accused of raping civilians.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Again, we look at a map. The British empire: Canada, India, half of Africa, Australia. The French Empire: the other half of Africa. America! Russia! Gigantic global empires - plus Italy, Romania and Japan.
The German Empire? 2 tiny scraps of land in Africa and Papua New Guinea. The Austro-Hungarian empire? Small, poor and disorganized. The Ottomans? Mid-sized, poor and disorganized, the sick man of Europe.
Germany had no rubber, little iron, not enough food, they had to choose between fertiliser and explosives.
Germany was massively overperforming, fighting three huge empires to a standstill and knocking Russia out of the war while France and Britain underperformed considering their size and access to world markets. But it was a totally stacked war where most of the strong powers were on one side.
(Italy had universal male suffrage since 1912, it was arguably more democratic than Britain in WW1 but their military performance was horrendous).
My theory is not that autocracy correlates to positive military performance but that liberal countries have inferior military performance considering the size and resources of the powers involved. Autocracies have a huge range from astonishing capacity to horrendous. But liberal states are regularly subpar.
Damn, I did not realise they were only now adding AESA radars on those things, I thought they were half decent! Were they cribbing notes from Indian military procurement? Or did the Indians learn how to design aircraft from Europe and apply those lessons on the Tejas? The Rafales at least have AESA.
Yes tactical nukes are one field where I think there's a real case for further development. Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.
But it seems unlikely that either party would take such risks. Does Russia really want to subjugate some extremely unruly and recently irradiated Poles? Why would they so greatly desire to conquer the tiny Baltic states? There are potential strategic gains but huge risks.
And Europe's population is so high that they can afford to buy time with hundreds of thousands, millions of lives in low tech, defensive trench warfare. They might have readiness problems, they might have shortages of this and that. But they're so big that they have the time and space to fix this stuff and fight a long war. Russia does not have the blitzkrieg capabilities to reach the European industrial core before they can militarize. Bombing Ukraine is one thing but Russian PGM production surely isn't sufficient to bomb out the combined military industry of Europe.
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