RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Does the stereotypical CEO work hard? I don't doubt that small-business owners and startup CEOs work hard. But what about CEOs like the head of a big bank or an oil company, where there are profits semi-automatically coming in?
Mostly it seems to be the work of a king to me. The king doesn't work hard. But the king is the final authority, he makes decisions between war or peace, he deals with the Papacy, he arbitrates between feuding nobles, he directs that royal funds be spent on bridges or cathedrals, he creates institutions... All 'work smart' stuff rather than 'work hard' stuff. Nobody has the power to make him work hard because normally things are going well and he's the boss.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Well it seems very unlikely that a 1910s Georgia judiciary would believe a black man accused of raping and murdering a white girl over a Jewish man unless the evidence swung in that direction.
Furthermore, the ADL is a very powerful organization and was founded on this particular case. The balance in terms of who is writing history (and whose history will get cited on wikipedia as the historical consensus) is rather one-sided.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
GDP is irrelevant, production is everything. US officials are openly declaring that they can't sustain the flow of supplies that's going to Ukraine. It will take at least 5 years just to have a chance of refilling reserves of key munitions like Javelins and Stingers.
The US might have a high GDP, based on financial trickery and service sector shenanigans but its actual military production capacity is pathetic. It's a bare shadow of what it was in 1994. 100 Stingers per year!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Well genocide usually only happens in exceptional circumstances. Massive wars, radical governments that rise to power after economic collapse or defeat in war... The US isn't there yet. And consider how the US fought World War II, publicly outlining their plans for genocide against Germany (Morgenthau Plan and the associated demand for unconditional surrender) and partially implementing them.
Anyway, what about the whites who went around shooting up black churches? Or the blacks who went around killing whites? There's a broad foundation of racial hatred in the US, it's only that broad prosperity and stability suppresses it.
The people eat great food.
This is a bit much. America has a huge obesity problem because they stick all these chemicals in their food. While obesity is a better problem to have than malnutrition as in India, it's still a problem.
Australia is like a better version of California. American brands like Starbucks can't compete with our domestic, high-quality artisanal quality coffee. Our food doesn't have nearly as many chemicals in it and people aren't quite so fat. There's no weird tipping culture. Our medical system is better than the NHS (we poach a bunch of British doctors) and more cost-efficient than the US. We have good beaches. There aren't any open-air drug markets and barely any visible homeless (this was a big shock when I was in San Francisco). Public transport is used for transporting the public (even people who wear suits), as opposed to being a moneypit full of undesirables. Very low crime generally. Plus we have resource rents to subsidize the rest of our economy because our population/land value ratio is very generous. Our national debt is half that of the US and we had a surplus this year. Taxes are roughly equivalent to the US, well below European standards.
On the down side, there's a cancerous compulsory superannuation scheme that siphons off 9% (and rising) of worker income so big finance can squander it and charge fees on it. You can manage your own superannuation if you fill out a metric tonne of paperwork. Our technology sector isn't as advanced as the US, though we do pretty well in quantum computing and materials science. Wages are somewhat lower than the US, though property is fairly expensive (likely due to how desirable this country is). People don't work as hard as in the US either, so it's somewhat balanced. No guns and a mildly more authoritarian government. It gets quite hot in summer but we can afford air conditioning.
Broadly speaking, I'd put Australia just ahead of the US or UK, having been to all three.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
You can't invade Iran without controlling Iraq or some other land neighbour. Anyway, Israeli influence is all over the war, notwithstanding the many non-jews who also favoured it.
Israel provided faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destructions. For the last 30 years they've been publicly claiming that Iran is a few months away from a nuclear bomb.
Netanyahu wrote an op-ed calling for regime change in Iran, Iraq and Syria (amongst others) in the Chicago Sun-Times, as did Ehud Barak in the Times. Sharon was in favour of the war, as Ha'aretz reported: 'Sharon believes that Iraq poses more of a threat to regional stability than Iran, due to the errant, irresponsible behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime.' Whatever skepticism there was in Israel was about the US stopping short and only invading Iraq as opposed to Iran as well.
And then there are the myriad high-ranking US officials who admit that Saddam was no threat to the US, only a threat against Israel. Zelikow, member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board admitted it. General Wesley Clark admitted that the supporters were truly worried about Saddam's nuclear threat to Israel not the US.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
The European half of NATO has a lot of weapons, a lot of troops, a lot of everything except tactical nukes. They spend far more than Russia on their military. There is no reason to feel threatened when you are very well armed at all levels short of nuclear war.
Someone can not be a threat in normal circumstances, yet be dangerous if antagonized. This is not a contradiction.
Ukraine is a dry run for the west’s response in case of such an emergency, and continuing support signalizes nato’s commitment to defend its members
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it signals that the West is ready to support any anti-Russian country next to Russia. If you're worried about little green men in Estonia, why not base troops in Estonia? Or maybe you could encourage the Baltics to be more tolerant to its Russian-speaking minority? I would've thought expelling people who didn't have sufficient grasp of Latvian is a rather odd approach for an EU embracing multiculturalism and 3rd world immigration: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-take-language-test-avoid-expulsion-latvia-2023-05-08/
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1mo ago
Rich people are only that 1.2 times more likely to be smarter insofar as they were advantaged to develop more of their potential IQ by the fortunes of their environment (like “growing up rich” for example). Once you control for all that, no correlation remains.
Have you met many rich people? They're smart! Some are dumb but there's a clear and obvious connection between intellect and wealth! How many stupid people are on 500K comp packages in big tech companies? Some, presumably... but not many. Doctors, lawyers, tech people, entrepreneurs and high finance are pretty clever.
Statistics are all well and good but past a certain point, if they contradict obvious common sense... away with them! Ten thousand papers saying that intelligence has nothing to do with wealth wouldn't make it so.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2mo ago
lifestyle of a non-Chinese expat living in China like
https://www.thepackablelife.com/travel/journal/living-in-china
Seems OK for English teachers. I hear that white men are considered attractive there too, though that's diminishing.
I don't understand, why do people think China is this super-poor country? There are parts of China that are poor but the major cities you're most likely to be in are quite rich, as shown in my videos. You don't even get accosted by crazy homeless people either. One of my female friends went to China and was raving about how safe she felt everywhere, even at night. If you sold state secrets to them, they'd presumably be positively inclined towards you and unlikely to turn the police state against you.
I don't want to move to China because it's not my homeland and because I don't want to learn Mandarin. But it's not like you're moving to Moscow in the 1960s, where you'll be condemned to a leaky apartment and cars that don't work. There's loads of gadgets and cool things in China.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2mo ago
150K urban postgrads, all three are needed.
The elites I know aren't American but I assure you that's the kind of thing that happens. They all know eachother. The AI regulator in question is one of those people who goes flying around the world to be in the room, making EU policy. He has one of those CVs that just goes on and on, founded this and that, on the board of x, y and z.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4mo ago
The status of women was advancing all throughout the 19th century in the US plus there are other factors involved.
The same thing goes for Japan. The fertility collapse predates liberalisation and workforce participation.
No it doesn't, go look at the graph. There's a brief fall due to the chaos of the Meiji Restoration then fertility goes back up. A fall with the Great Depression and WW2, as you (or at least I) would expect. Then it nose-dives after equality of the sexes is introduced. Same story in South Korea - static for decades under Japanese rule, then legal equality of the sexes, then straight down as the effects of that decision become clear. At the same time of course, South Korea is urbanizing. But it's not like urbanization started in 1950, that there was no urbanization from 1900-1950.
why did Swedens ferility rate recover in the late 80s/90s and again in the 10s?
At no point did I say that 100% of fertility was determined by female empowerment. There are other factors involved, the state of the economy, politics, cultural quirks and so on. What I am saying is that female empowerment lowers fertility. Speaking broadly, Sweden has empowered women and low, sub-replacement fertility, it's not a hole in my argument.
In 2022, the total fertility rate was close to the lowest observed, 1.52 children per woman.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4mo ago
Shortly before Patton's untimely death in a traffic accident, he was going on about how the Jews he was assigned to 'liberate' were loathsome and subhuman, how he much preferred Nazis. That's why he got dismissed from commanding his army.
Either we trust Patton and drop the retrospective moral justification for the war in the garbage, or distrust him.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Where is it written that suffering requires grotesque mishappen faces and inhuman bodies? What about clear human faces or expressions?
It's perfectly clear what's going on, you can actually interpret it in justifiable ways. Korean wearing white for purity, the composition of how they're all staring at her with malign intent, the guy with the cigarette casually contemptuous and approving of his colleague's hard work. Tongs being heated up for more torture.
Or take half of Caravaggio's work, lots of suffering there! But it's also clear, you've got light and darkness, you've got colour, you've got proper human faces and emotions. His work is not a giant mess of disconnected, ill-shaped images.
Or this - clear emotion, realistic imagery.
https://media.timeout.com/images/105652224/750/422/image.jpg
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Well, it's not aesthetically pleasing. It looks like a jumble of ugly, mishappen, misproportioned figures. It's supposed to look like that.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
That doesn't demolish anyone, they just repeat tired old myths like the 'security guarantees' that Ukraine was given in exchange for transferring nukes they didn't control (what is a permissive action link?) to Russia. People don't even bother looking at what the agreement says, they don't bother reading the wikipedia page, they just lie! Ukraine was not given any security guarantee:
Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Seeking security council action is meaningless if it's against a veto-power.
You get your arguments from youtubers like 'Spaghetti Kozak Media & Heavy Industries LLC', I get mine from published authors (who predicted this whole affair years in advance). These people don't understand Mearsheimer, I doubt they've read any of his work. They grossly mischaracterize what he's saying: 'Europe is a poker chip'. At no point did he say this, it doesn't even have any meaning! Is Kraut talking about France, Germany, the EU? Who knows! At no point do they even repeat Mearsheimer's thesis from directly relevant books like 'The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities'.
It's also deeply ironic for these people to cast themselves in the moral high ground over the cold realists when the idiotic, reflexive interventionism they support has gotten an enormous number of people killed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
If you are in NATO, then you have nuclear weapons and huge, technologically advanced armies on your side. You are not facing any threat, existential or otherwise, from a Russia in normal conditions. Only in certain scenarios are you in danger - if there's a war between Russia and NATO for example. Why might there be a war between Russia and NATO? Perhaps if this war in Ukraine massively worsens Russia-NATO relations... Europe's hysteria about the threat from Russia is ill-informed and makes no strategic sense. They have huge conventional and significant nuclear forces.
Ukraine, Georgia and so on obviously faced a threat from Russia but this does not mean NATO countries face a threat from Russia. There are significant differences between small countries without nuclear patrons or allies who have ongoing conflicts with Russian minorities right next door to Russia and NATO members.
Just because the bear is eating fish, it does not follow that it will start eating killer whales or giant squid.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
to a country barely hanging onto its ability to field forces outside of the Ukraine theater.
Citation needed. Hasn't there been scaremongering about Russian control over Sudan of all places, via Wagner? There are still a fair few Russians in Syria too. Russia seems to have plenty of energy left to pursue other campaigns.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
17d ago
They're either pirating it, streaming it from some sketchy website that pirated it, or watching free preview stuff.
There's loads of porn available for free. Twitter, reddit, boorus, 4chan, discord... People who pay are suckers or have more money than sense.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
20d ago
Should we have a 'should be longer' and 'should be shorter' upvote/downvote button?
A good few reported comments make a point but I believe the real problem with them is that they don't substantiate their claims or elaborate. They can't, nobody can in only a few sentences.
Alternately, there are some top-level and mid-level posts that are so long my eyes just glaze over and I scroll onwards. I'm wary of doing that myself and try to prune things down. That comes at the cost of detail, I sometimes end up letting considerable weight rest on single word qualifiers I add where perhaps sentences are needed. Scylla and Charybdis. I don't know how hard length-voting would be or if anyone else cares. Opinions?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1mo ago
Ukraine has been by far the worse Russian strategic failure.
I'll stop you right here. No, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin era was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not. Massive impoverishment of the population, economic collapse, social collapse, demographic collapse, military collapse. Gorbachev had a strategy to reform the Soviet Union with policies of perestroika and glasnost. He wanted socialism with a human face and to preserve the Union. It failed massively and disastrously. I'm not sure if Yeltsin had a strategy other than 'remain in power' but it certainly wasn't good for the country.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita-ppp
It's possible to reform a socialist country into a market economy without shock therapy, without shelling Parliament, without a decade of chaos. China did exactly that. Ideology is a part of national strategy, if people stop believing that's a problem in and of itself. With better management of the economy and internal politics, the crisis of belief would've been mitigated. They could've transitioned to other sources of legitimacy in a more graceful manner. And hey, there are people in the West today who still believe in socialism. Indeed, the Russian communist party was quite competitive electorally - it took some trickery to keep them from ejecting Yeltsin.
Equivalence of NEETs and cultural equivalencies isn't an advantage remaining with China, it's the undermining factor of any strategy that depends on social elan by denying it unique advantages proscribed to it.
You don't see the kinds of hysterically aggressive Western nationalists that are found in China. There's a reason why I highlighted Little Pink and not lying flat. You don't see many novels in the West heaping xenophobia and revanchism into their story, demonizing national rivals. Furthermore, US social elan is in a pretty poor condition - January 6th is proof of that.
You seem to be under the impression that the national security strategy is only about the field of security, which is a very important indicator that you haven't read it. And are probably confusing it with the National Defense Strategy.
Above you were saying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, unrelated to security issues (which is wrong, given how Chechens and Islamists immediately took advantage of Russian weakness). Anyway, you were saying strategy was about security. Now you want to say that US strategy encompasses more than security? I had a look through the document you nominate as the holy text of US national strategy and there's loads of ideological and legitimacy content in there, the need to defend democracy and human rights. Plus there's a fair bit of DEI stuff as well - they want more STEM for girls, there's anti-racism content, they affirm diversity as a national value...
They don't outright say DEI is at the core of their ideology, they say many things they don't really mean. It's a public document, not to be viewed as a window into their innermost beliefs. Only in the implementation, in the specifics of outcomes do we see what they truly desire. That's what's important and why I brought up the DEI/CHIPS article in the first place.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2mo ago
If "AGI" is even possible at all, it's not happening this century.
Have you seen Claude 3? It's going around answering PHD-level questions in a bunch of different fields. https://twitter.com/idavidrein/status/1764675668175094169
Five years ago we had none of this. The whole field of chatbots was a joke: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6rEkKWXCcR4
If you weren't predicting five or six years ago that we'd have AI this capable, how can you possibly say 'it's not happening this century'? You think you can predict 75 years into the future?
One formal method might be creating a body against historical falsification or radical ideology in AI to fine companies. Or you could have various agencies find trouble with companies that don't uphold the party line, informally demonstrate the penalties for unorthodoxy. You could prevent state funds buying Google shares or withhold govt contracts.
Most anti-BDS laws have taken one of two forms: contract-focused laws requiring government contractors to promise that they are not boycotting Israel; and investment-focused laws, mandating public investment funds to avoid entities boycotting Israel.
Texas took steps to curb funds that were anti-oil/gas.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/07/texas-investment-funds-teacher-retirement-system-esg/
But realistically this won't happen because the state isn't really opposed to this kind of thing. Hawley hardly seems to care either, he wants to let somebody else try to do something about it! Repealing 230 is barely related to the issue, it's milquetoast and pathetic. To be fair, he says that Big Tech controls the Senate so it's beyond his power:
People ask me all the time why the Senate doesn’t do anything on A.I. or all the child porn online or the child predators. Simple: the Senate is bought and paid for by Big Tech. If Tech doesn’t want a bill, it doesn’t get a vote. They control the floor. They own the place
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3mo ago
We spent 20 years fighting Islamic terrorism and spent trillions of dollars fighting much of the Middle Eastern public and you think their public opinion doesn't matter?
The Abraham Accords caught... Bahrain and the UAE. This great success was followed up with Sudan, of all countries. Not Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia: any of the relevant powers. UAE is vaguely relevant I suppose.
On November 2, 2023, in view of the ongoing Israel–Hamas war, Bahrain said in a statement that the Israeli ambassador left Bahrain, that Bahrain recalled its ambassador to Israel, and suspended all economic relations with Israel, citing a "solid and historical stance that supports the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people."[14][15] The statement was made by Bahrain's parliament and Israel said they had no knowledge of the decision.
So that leaves just the UAE. Not a great success.
The Palestinians dont get in the way of dealings between the Middle East and America and Europe. Its largely just some past time that has no affect on international relations.
Did you miss the Yemen/Red Sea war we're now fighting? Iran and the US are fighting a proxy war in Iraq as we speak, shelling eachother.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4mo ago
Fair enough, I just thought de Boer was in the aggravating kind of mental illness camp, as opposed to the 'fun or amusing' camp. From the tone of your post, you didn't seem interested or happy to read his content.
They could've shown a mother mourning at her dead child and bombed house, they could've shown people laughing, crying and having mental breakdowns in an air raid shelter... There are enormous numbers of options available. That would've invoked the suffering of people being bombed without looking the way Picasso does.
Art can be aesthetically pleasing and still confronting. You can get pathos from paintings, that can elevate the human spirit. If you can't tell, I reject the notion that Picasso produced good art, know that I'm in the minority and don't care.
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