RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
No bio...
User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
The Sun says they're routinely doing 6-month patrols, I haven't verified it though I guess you could check whenever submarines leave port:
Originally Royal Navy policy was for the Vanguard-class submarines to spend a maximum of 80 days at sea, for the welfare of the crew.
But the shortage of working subs has led to longer patrols.
HMS Vengeance set a record when she returned to His Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde in March.
She had been away for six months and 18 days.
HMS Vigilant spent 195 days on patrol before that.
It's really an issue with priorities. I get the sense that funds can be quickly found for housing asylum seekers in hotels (or whatever crisis is in the newspapers this week). But Treasury penny-pinching is left to harangue the nuclear forces, precisely because they're more professional and less prone to bitching to the media.
A second source said: “It was miserable. If you weren’t on watch your movements were limited to conserve energy and encouraged to sleep to burn less calories.”
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
At some point, AI tutors will so massively surpass human teachers that the whole educational edifice will collapse in a heap. There will be nothing they can do, it will simply be too shameful to pretend they're serving any purpose.
It'll be interesting to see how things go in East Asia, where they're super into respecting teachers and tutors. There's a prestige they have there that won't be easily broken, no matter how pointless their work is.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
What the hell is going on in the UK?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/31295918/nuclear-submarine-food-low-sweets/
Medics feared a “serious loss of life” from fatigue and concentration lapses.
The Vanguard-class vessel had to patrol for well over six months owing to a shortage of working subs.
Plans to resupply at sea were scrapped for unknown reasons — so chiefs asked crew to hand in their sweets and chocolate, known in the Navy as “nutty”.
The usual patrol for these nuclear missile submarines is supposed to be no more than 80 days but the shocking state of the Royal Navy means that subs are going on 6 month patrols. There aren't enough subs seaworthy at any given time.
I note that it is the Sun and the UK govt has denied that the crew were starving, so it might all be massively exaggerated.
As far as I know, British nuclear missile subs still operate without permissive action links. There is nothing anyone can do (short of using a torpedo) to stop them firing their nuclear warheads at will. I think it should be a very high priority to avoid any chaos or dysfunction on these vessels. I understand why Dominic Cummings has been constantly shrieking and wailing about the UK's nuclear strategy if this is what's happening.
Korean education is a complete mess. If I'm reading wikipedia right, their big life-changing exam (for which they rearrange public transport routes and ground flights during the English listening) is almost entirely multiple-choice:
All questions are multiple-choice, except for the 9 questions in the Mathematics section, which are short answer.
Imagine trying to answer a literature question in multiple-choice format. It's ironic, they care so much about education that the inevitable 500K kids demanding remarking means they can't even test literary/rhetorical skills at all in their national exams.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
I agree that going to the Moon then was a waste of time, a fundamentally ill-conceived PR stunt. But it was executed very well! They had to invent just about everything they needed, including computers. They faced far more constraints than the Artemis program in terms of materials, technology, doing things for the first time. However progress on Artemis has been very slow and not that cheap either.
$93 Billion has already been spent (in contrast to $200-250 billion on Apollo) and nobody is on the Moon, it doesn't seem that NASA has gotten any more efficient, despite enormous advancements in the last 60 years. SpaceX of course is a different story.
I think it's a little like consumer computer software. The hardware gets enormously more powerful but the software runs just as slowly due to shoddy practices and bloat piling up. There is no excuse for Microsoft Word to lag for several seconds as I load a 2800 KB document on a very fast PC but it does anyway!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Does anyone think that the US elections are a little overhyped? I keep hearing people hypothesize 'maybe they're waiting for after the elections to release the new AI model' or 'oh shares are waiting for the election before there are any swings' and such things.
US elections are important. There are significant differences between the candidates. It does have consequences. But are they this universally impactful in the short-term? Is the whole world really holding its breath? I think the Israelis or the Russians have some interest in the election outcome but it's not a primary factor in their decision-making, whatever they're doing they're fundamentally going to keep doing.
I get the sense that the intense media coverage is making people make connections that aren't really there.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Yeah the social-demographic situation precludes any serious achievements in my opinion.
There's a story apparently from a US sailor posted aboard an Indian warship - complete clown show (but good food): https://old.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/9uwqzk/iama_us_naval_officer_who_spent_5_days_onboard/
Even the US is only a pale shadow of its former glory when it comes to competence. Look how long it's taking to get back to the Moon, consider how US warships have also been crashing because of inadequate training and general incompetence, magnified by DEI. But they're still well ahead of India.
It's a little bit like post-apartheid South Africa (but not nearly so bad in terms of visible decline). There is a smart fraction in South Africa. But they're not in power. The people in power are beholden to special interests, the machinery of government requires immense lubrication (corruption) just to sustain itself. There's no capacity for the kinds of intensive reforms needed to get things working again.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
I think the primary issue was all the buggery and child rape going on amongst the anti-Taliban forces and the new de-Talibanized Afghan Army. The Taliban's founder started his political career hanging child rapists from the gun barrel of a tank, according to legend.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Use crypto, they physically can't stop you.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
They might disintegrate if we did that - the battlefield situation is not looking very good even with continual spurts of aid.
There are already lots of angry Ukrainians who feel betrayed or deceived by the West, many of whom now have plentiful access to MANPADs, ATGMs, top-tier killer drones and experience using them. I wouldn't want to be the politician who is seen to pull the plug on these people.
This whole situation has become a complete disaster, I have a few shreds of sympathy for the Pentagon/State Department goons in charge of this operation. No matter what they decide on, there's going to be huge backblast. Steady-as-she-goes: Ukraine bleeds out on the battlefield. Cut and run: accusations of betrayal, the usual suspects shrieking 'with a bit of backbone we could've fought off the tyrannical rampage of this genocidal monster', Ukrainian collapse and decent probability of 'stabbed in the back' terror attacks. Pump up aid: military readiness declines further, escalation risks, Russia takes hostile actions elsewhere, still very unlikely Ukraine secures 2014 borders.
Of course, if the experts actually understood what they were doing we would never have rowed up shit creek at all.
The other, which I am more concerned with here, is the potential for "lost opportunities".
Would this outweigh the advantage of having more mid-level high-IQ people as engineers, researchers and entrepeneurs, increasing the amount of wealth flowing around in the system as a whole?
If we try, I'm sure we could construct arguments about the downsides of building roads. It uses a lot of cement, damages ecosystems, induces car fatalities, increases urban temperatures... There might be five or ten moderately bad things about building roads, more if we delve into hypotheticals. But there is one really good thing about building roads! You can travel quickly and cheaply on them! And that is more than enough to outweigh the costs and the negatives. The downsides can be addressed with related measures, skilled planning and implementation.
I suspect it is the same with IQ. Smarter children is a good thing. There is always the option of taking the genetics of elite scientists and cloning them exactly, if it's the genetics that make geniuses. If it's some combination of innate capabilities and some esoteric twisting of the brain via childhood experiences or plain luck, then the boon of having many moderately smarter people will be helpful in producing the luck and opportunities needed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/17/zelensky-ukraine-seek-nuclear-weapons-join-nato
“Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which will serve as protection, or it must be part of some kind of alliance. Apart from Nato, we do not know of such an effective alliance,” Mr Zelensky said.
Ukraine has four nuclear power stations and German magazine Bild quoted a Ukrainian official specialising in weapons procurement who said that Kyiv could build a nuclear missile.
“We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb,” he said. “The West should think less about Russia’s red lines and more about our red lines.”
Despite this, the Ukrainians are also accusing poor Julian Ropcke of the Bild of spreading disinformation:
According to Dmitry Litvin, an adviser to President Vladimir Zelensky, it has long been possible to confuse where the words of Bild military columnist Julian Röpke, and where the statements of Russian propagandists, writes 24 Channel.
"Because both Röpke and rospropaganda are 'turning the same nonsense into informorism,'" he added.
Later on the Bild publication as well responded head of the Anti-Disinformation Center Andriy Kovalenko. He stressed that "any fantasies of Western journalists about Ukrainian nuclear weapons are fabrications."
I guess they're trying to tone it down, or perhaps someone has reminded them of the likely outcomes of nuclear escalation against a country with an overwhelmingly larger nuclear arsenal. Zelensky probably received some very angry phone-calls from the 'you're totally joining NATO at some unspecified future time' crowd for this one and was forced to backtrack.
Ukraine is now in a very unpleasant position and they're not making it any better by constantly trying to wriggle out of it. There isn't some cheat code that lets Ukraine win the war, whether it's long range strikes, F-16s (which seem not to have produced any significant effect) or even nuclear weapons.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Usually kill-on-sight zones are in military bases behind fences and extensive signage. They're not on the edge of refugee camps, places you'd expect civilians to be walking around.
Back in the day, I'm sure we assumed that AI agents would gather funds by good old fashioned hacking, mercantile exchange of goods and services, blackmail and bargaining.
That was very 2006. Today's AI agents get money by receiving crypto airdrops of GOATSE memecoins that they shill on twitter:
Full story: https://x.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1846220545542529329 (normally not the most reliable source, but repligate assures us he's basically accurate on the facts and repligate is an expert on schizo AI backrooms stuff)
It (Terminal of Truths) didn't even do any of the coding, just marketing. This shitcoin has an ostensible market cap around $260 million USD right now, though the vast majority is locked up as usual in Solana/memecoins and so the 'real liquidity marketcap' is about $3 M.
https://pump.fun/CzLSujWBLFsSjncfkh59rUFqvafWcY5tzedWJSuypump
Truth Terminal has ~$300,000 of GOAT in its wallet and is on its way to being the first AI agent millionaire
Anyway I am disappointed that my net worth is lower than an AI made 5 months ago. In principle, any of us could've done this. All it did was shitpost on twitter hard enough! It didn't even need to have a pretty face like hawk tuah girl. There's a general consensus that these bots are literally subhuman, I think we underestimate their present capabilities. Charisma alone gets you a long way, even if it's schizo shoggoth charisma.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
There is not much PR value in publicly declaring your support for inserting sticks into prisoner's rectums, but Israeli politicians do it anyway. One can only imagine what this fellow says in private.
Why is it so hard to believe that many Israelis really hate Palestinians, that your natural thought is not 'Oh the Israeli soldier shot the enemy civilian' but 'Hamas is shooting their own children in the head to make Israel look bad'?
Hatred is a thing. In Israel, hatred clearly has a constituency, votes and gets elected. It follows that they are also in the military.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
The chorus of skeptics here should look at past events. The Israelis shoot children all the time. They even manage to get off in court after shooting a child in the back.
Can you even imagine what would happen if a white US police officer mag-dumps a 13-year old black girl for walking into a 'security area'? She was 70 m away when she was first shot. Heading away from the army camp and 'security area'. The soldier runs out to follow her and confirm the kill, as per procedure.
On the tape, the company commander then "clarifies" why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over."
The officer who shot the girl is then acquitted of any malpractice in court.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/24/israel
I think leftists would undergo some kind of super-saiyan transformation upon hearing such a case, especially when the transcript has these extremely villainous lines. This is what actual systemic racism looks like, when you blow people away with impunity and get off in court.
That was 2004. In 2018 they shot and killed another 35 children peacefully protesting in Gaza, amongst others. There are probably many more cases that I haven't heard of, these are the two that immediately come to mind.
The base assumption should be that of course the Israeli army is shooting children. They did that before October 7th. They did that 20 years ago. Of course they're doing it today. There is a great deal of hatred in this part of the world. There is a reason people join Hamas, taking on roles with a pretty poor life expectancy and few perks.
I don't believe in a global crusade against every bit of unfairness in the world but the whole 'Israel is so noble and innocent' angle needs to be shut down.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Trump had a Platinum Plan in 2020 where he was offering about half a trillion for blacks. Who knows if he ever intended to follow through on that or what exactly he meant but he absolutely plays the ethnic spoils game...
If you vote Republican over the next four years, we will create three million new jobs for the Black community, open 500,000 new Black owned businesses, increase access to capital in Black communities by $500 billion. This includes investing in community development, financial institutions, and minority depository institutions. Build up peaceful and safer urban neighborhoods with the highest standards of, and you know this, of policing. We want the highest standards. We have to have highest standards of policing. Bring even greater fairness to the justice system. We did criminal justice reform. We remember that. Even greater.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
I wouldn't panic just yet; even if this is the big one (and it may not be), my guess is that they won't open WWIII with a nuclear first strike on CONUS/Europe/Australia (pre-emptive ASAT use to wipe out US satellites - and probably destroy all other low-earth-orbit satellites as collateral damage - is a possibility, though, so you may lose any communications dependent on those).
China has possibly the most credible no-first-use policy of all the nuclear powers. They traditionally maintained a very weak deterrent and only recently started to get serious about MAD. As far as I know, they are still debating about going up to launch-on-warning, which the US and Russia have been at for ages. It would be illogical (and very out of character) for them to launch a nuclear first strike when they're outgunned at least 10:1. The US nuclear deterrent is very hard to crack, the meat of it is all in submarines. Going counterforce (targeting launchers) would do very little and invite a devastating counter-attack, going countervalue (targeting cities) would result in massive and disproportionate retaliation.
I suspect that China's advantages are still increasing, it makes sense to keep waiting and reduce the costs and risks of any war. The US Navy will keep shrinking till 2027. The Chinese Navy grows continuously. Their nuclear forces are growing rapidly. Western munitions stockpiles will remain depleted for some time and it's not like US munitions production could be anywhere close to Chinese munitions production, considering the sizes of the industrial bases involved. India remains weak.
The US seems to be increasingly distracted by the Middle East situation, further dispersing strength away from Asia.
China is pulling ahead in most scientific fields. More and more ethnic Chinese scientists are migrating back to China.
They're producing more and more energy domestically, though imports are higher than ever. Huge stockpiles of food and fuel have been built up. The sanctions weapon seems to have bounced off Russia and hit Europe, there is reason to think it will be ineffective against China as well (and/or cause incredible pain to the West): https://en.thebell.io/inside-russias-budget-taxes-borrowing-reserves/
Salaries in real terms are set to rise 7% next year, down from 9.25% this year. By 2027 the annual increase will be 4.1%. Real disposable incomes — a key measure of living standards — are set to slow even faster due to increased utility charges and expensive borrowing fees. They will rise 7.1% this year, then 6.1% in 2025 and 3.4% in 2027.
I'm frankly staggered that this anti-Putin outlet is putting out these numbers and trying to spin them as bad news for Russia. Likewise, Chinese real disposable income per capita keeps rising at a pretty respectable 4-5%. That's pretty good economic performance. The US is at 2%, most of Europe is below 2% and Australia has sunk to 2018 levels.
Anyway, China may expect further positive surprises in the future. If the US gets dragged into a struggle with Iran, if the political crisis in America heightens further, if Ukraine goes under and Russia ties down more troops in Europe...
The biggest uncertainty for China is some major advancement in AI where the US seems to be retaining an edge.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Just look at the Rwanda solution, Britain's laughable attempt to emulate Australian policies. Subsaharan African countries are quite proficient at exploiting European aid providers and the British ran the project in a clownish and unserious way, the whole thing collapsed in a heap of scandal and delays.
This isn't a matter of cash, it's a political issue. The reason Belarus is using these tactics is because they have structural political advantages and know it. Belarusian human rights lawyers either operate outside the country or sleep with both eyes open.
In Europe, human rights lawyers and NGOs run wild. The EU coats everything in a suffocating layer of law. It is possible to break through like Denmark has. But the question is fundamentally about willpower and organization, about the internal conflicts within the Union and within individual countries. Belarus isn't outspending Europe, they're inducing division.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Australia does this with Nauru and Papua New Guinea. There's a policy where no asylum seeker who arrives by boat will be resettled in Australia. Europe however is short on unpleasant pseudo-colonies these days, there's no politically reliable, nearby, unpleasant place they could be sent. Maybe France could set up a facility in French Guyana?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
What would you say the optimal balance looks like
Core capabilities are decentralized and privately owned, preferably by many people as opposed to few. Economic transactions via crypto for instance, private ownership of weapons, private ownership of land, private ownership of websites and communications.
Metrics - self-employed as % of the population, wealth equality, number of people arrested for social media posts per year, size of government as % of GDP
I want a more strictly defined role for the state and large companies. Police should be focused on real crimes as opposed to speech, the organs of government should be less ideological. Of course government is innately political but you should not be able to get ahead of the queue in the NHS because you're pro-Palestinian. The US Air Force should not have a written desire to reduce the percentage of white male pilots to X%, even if they say 'oh this is still totally meritocratic and just an aspiration' as a disclaimer at the bottom of the page. Institutions and companies should be purely focused on their formal goals, not social engineering. If people think 'oh this cause is worthy' they should donate their own money, not company funds. Spending other people's money on other people is the worst kind of spending, it should be minimized where possible.
Governments should accept limitations in their powers, not grasping at extraordinary interpretations of the constitution or law to retroactively justify doing things they have no head of power for (this happens all the time in Australia).
In some areas I want stronger government powers, to speed through industrial projects to completion, produce housing and crack down on crime. But I want them wielded by people with a different understanding of what their role is and what they're aiming for.
Clearly this is a difficult equilibrium to maintain. Governments and big corporations all want more power and control, that's a natural desire. Ideologues want more power so they can achieve their goals. The population at large has a tendency to be distracted by prosperity or the media.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=UrEUzKTt7j0
Succinctly, it's that people who don't want you to own things want power over you. Vehicles, guns, food, wealth, houses are sources of power and sovereignty. If you own nothing, just have a few lines in some bank's excel spreadsheet, then you're much more vulnerable than someone who owns things. Your bank could freeze your assets for being politically unacceptable. What are you going to do - hire a lawyer? With what money ;)
Or just look at the wikipedia page, it talks about how Auken proposed giving up control of electrical appliances to reduce power consumption. So at peak use times, perhaps it would reduce your aircon usage. That makes economic sense but it transfers power from the individual to the company or state. Each tiny loss of power and control matters, convenience comes with a price. We can't - and shouldn't - all be autarchic farmer-warrior kings of our own domain, the Somalia experience. Neither should we be totally docile serfs, hoping that our lords and masters see fit to treat us well. There needs to be a balance and I personally think we're already too close to the latter, better to arrest this trend than accelerate it.
I'll add to the rot13 and say that people who want you unable to resist authority, who want more power from you, are probably untrustworthy. They're at least suspicious. 'Relax, you don't need to bring your pepper spray or the phone in your purse - I'm a professional boxer' is all well and good, how do you know the boxer is not the threat?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
Yes, 'truth-telling' is even worse than 'we need to have a conversation about _____' IMO, it doesn't even pretend to be a democratic or two-way exchange.
The main, accepted line, it seems to me, is that it failed because the country’s centre-right party opposed it,
I've heard people argue that referendums don't pass in Australia without bipartisan support. It requires a majority of voters and a majority of states and voting is compulsory, so there's a certain level of innate conservatism as people who don't really care vote for the status quo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Australian_referendum_(Aviation)
This referendum was just about giving the commonwealth the power to regulate aviation, since it's obviously a federal matter, planes routinely flying inter-state. It failed!
That's not to say I think the Voice referendum was reasonable or desirable. What's the point of a constitutionally enshrined body to advise Parliament if it's non-binding? Formally non-binding is one thing, what would be the de facto outcome? It would be a powerful political tool towards a treaty (the ultimate goal of the 'sovereignty never ceded' aboriginal historical falsification movement) and yet more sabotage of national industries. We already have huge mining projects continually being blocked by lawfare and dodgy-sounding ancestral lands claims. We already have a huge national DEI push, better to keep it out of the functioning of the legislature.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9mo ago
This isn't quite news - but there is a guy on reddit who claims to be a meth addict fighting in the Sudan Civil War. Everyone is apparently running around on drugs there, people are falling out of aeroplanes as they drop their makeshift bombs on semi-randomly selected targets.
https://old.reddit.com/user/Background_Ad7522
I tineyed some of his images, he doesn't seem to be lying about being there. I guess he could just be a poser enjoying the cheap drugs. Anyway, it makes a change from high-level, abstract depictions of these endless sub-Saharan civil wars.
Maybe, who knows. Saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated are only words. We'd have to listen to nutritionists to understand what they really mean. And nutritionists have not covered themselves in glory over the last sixty years. The experts have overseen the biggest public health disaster since smoking, they don't have a clue.
Just stick to the foods our ancestors ate, back when the very fat were circus attractions. Eat Fruit. Vegetables. Meat. Fish. Milk. Grains. Olive oil has been tried and tested for thousands of years, there's no reason to use canola oil (first used for cooking the 1970s).
Not breakfast cereals, not fast-food, not these syrupy Starbucks coffees, Coca-Cola, candy bars or jelly beans. At least not very often.
More options
Context Copy link