@RandomRanger's banner p

RandomRanger

Just build nuclear plants!

1 follower   follows 1 user  
joined 2022 September 05 00:46:54 UTC 

				
User ID: 317


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
RandomRanger


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Just build nuclear plants!

				
				
				

				

					1 follower  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 00:46:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 317


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around.




Occupation is hard and bloody work. One of the many things that went wrong in Afghanistan were the methods. There were stories about US soldiers gritting their teeth to nubs at their Afghan 'allies' raping children in the barracks and how they couldn't do anything about it. The soldiers on the ground knew the whole campaign was a massive farce a decade before withdrawal.


https://www.thejournal.ie/afghanistan-sexual-abuse-us-soldiers-2343921-Sep2015/


The locals would do everything they could to cheat and rip off Western forces, launching attacks to get us to pay them for protection money, blowing up bridges so they could get lucrative contracts to rebuild them. If you're trying to do imperialism you have to have the right political/social methods. You need to credibly threaten enormous violence against those who displease you, you have to make it clear that you're not a pinata that can be extorted for money, you have to project fear and power. Consider what Israel does 'to make their presence felt':




Many roads are “sterile,” and the nearer they are to the settlement, the less access Palestinians are allowed. They cannot drive, they cannot open a store, and, closest to the settlers, they are not allowed to walk the streets. If a Palestinian family has a home fronting one of these streets, the army will seal the front entrance and the Palestinians will only have access over the roof and through the back door.






Our main job was to “make our presence felt.” The conscious policy was to give the people the sense that the IDF was everywhere, all the time. We patrolled the streets 24/7, picking houses at random, waking up the families at night and separating them into men and women, and searching, loudly and publicly. It fell to me as a commander to pick the houses, a selection that was made unrelated to military intelligence.






As an occupying force in a territory, you have to act like this. It’s a simple equation, as surely as one plus one equals two; this is what an occupation will result in. You can’t serve as a soldier in the Occupied Territories and treat a Palestinian as an equal human being, as the only way to control a civilian population against their will is to make them feel chased, harried, and afraid. And when they get used to that level of fear, you have to increase it.




Or:




In some army units, making one’s presence felt is referred to as “creating a sense of being chased.” That means instilling fear into the entire Palestinian population, a mission that by definition makes no distinction between suspects and innocent civilians, or between “involved persons” and “uninvolved persons,” as it is called in IDF parlance. Sometimes soldiers invade homes in the middle of the night just for training purposes. I raided homes in Jenin or Nablus simply to seize more optimal observation positions. According to one former soldier who gave testimony to Breaking the Silence, they would invade homes to test a new door-breaching device. Another witness said they went into a Palestinian home to be filmed eating sufganiyot (Hanukkah donuts) for a feel-good news story to be broadcasted that night on Israeli television.




That's what imperialism is about, stuff that would immediately put you in the 'glowing red eyes baddy' camp according to our norms. This is why we can't do imperialism proficiently. I don't mean it in the leftist frame that everything about imperialism is evil. It's a method all states have used to achieve objectives. In Afghanistan we were too lax, the Israelis seem too harsh (though they're still here). It's difficult to navigate between ineffectual rule and backlash, yet can be done. The Malayan Emergency and suppression of the Mau Maus show it's possible. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was very proficient as suppressing! Technology is not a factor - the Assyrians did imperialism in the Bronze Age, the Arabs did it, the Mongols did it, the Romans did it, the Spanish did it, the British did it, the Russians did it. There are gradations in repression, different kinds of institutions and administrative techniques. But you cannot do this stuff and keep your hands clean, it's just not possible. I know you mentioned will and stability but the proposals are standard progressive-frame economic/social-worker interventions.


Enforcing laws is so much easier than real imperialism! And the US can't even do that, there are open-air drug markets when Xi isn't in town. There are blatant robberies, out in the open. In San Fran police have given up on traffic infractions.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sfpd-traffic-tickets-17355651.php


In Canada you see the most cucked advice from police:




“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door,” Const. Marco Ricciardi said at the meeting. “ Because they're breaking into your home to steal your car. They don't want anything else.”




This wimpy attitude is the problem, not a shortage of education or bussing or needing higher wages. It's not hard to whisk the problem people away, Bukele did it in El Salvedor with limited resources and opposition from the US. China does not have high wages yet people do not go around stealing and murdering like in America or Canada - they know the state will crush them. This is a lesser kind of imperialism in my mind, yet it's still of the same essence. Using force to create order but on internal rather than external entities - that's what police do.


What happens if people made to work in Amazon do a really bad job (many won't want to be there and some are innately bad workers)? What if they show up late? Are they fired, lose their welfare and are left to starve? Are they beaten? What do we do about protests - ignore them and crush rioters?


Or do we pay Amazon to have better workers cover for the bad workers in their make-work jobs? Do we fire the worst workers and give their welfare back, accepting the obvious incentive? Do we capitulate at the first riot because it's 'a bad look', it makes people think of Nazis? Do we capitulate at the first time somebody is unjustly mistreated by our policy, reshaping the whole policy because we're not yet adept at the techniques?


It's the same in education. What if the students are beating each other, thoroughly ignoring the teacher, making a circus of the whole thing? Are they actually punished or are they 'suspended' and given a holiday? Nobody would dare to behave in a British school 100 years ago like they behave today, there were real consequences. We don't need to cane students who aren't good enough at Latin, nor should we build a huge surveillance state like China. But we do need to accept that not everything is going to be resolved amicably, sometimes we need to punish and punish severely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The US can make a 210 MW reactor, cram it in a submarine (with oodles of advanced stealth/sonar/missile technology) for about $2 billion. They can produce one such submarine every year. Or in the Nimitz class, they install two 550 MW reactors in a floating city/airbase/fortress for a grand total of $5 billion. The reactors surely can't be that much of the overall cost, 20% at most. The missiles and gadgetry are far more complicated, the guidance and computers are the expensive parts.


Small footprint nuclear reactors are proven technology, they've been made for decades. The US chooses not to administrate civilian nuclear energy competently, there's no technical problem. This is 1960s technology, at most. There's nothing all that sophisticated about nuclear energy, even breeder reactors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
US and Chinese national strategy


Here’s an article about DEI’s negative impact on the US CHIPS Act for reshoring semiconductors:




For instance, chipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet.They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”




I note that this is an opinion piece. There are many other issues with the CHIPS Act, this rather dry article lays the blame on aggressive industry lobbying eating the original ‘boost US production’ idea and wearing it like a skinsuit:




A late addition to the bill allowed the secretary of commerce to grant exemptions from the law’s prohibitions on recipient firms investing in manufacturing facilities in China. This may seem like a minor technical detail to those unfamiliar with multinational firms’ strategies to circumvent trade laws, but allowing the Department of Commerce to grant exemptions has become a common industry tactic to vitiate statutory restrictions




Recently the Centre for Strategic Translations recently put out their take on a Chinese book “General Laws of the Rise of Great Powers”, a work designed to communicate to Chinese officials what the grand plan is, what China’s national strategy shall be and why.


Essentially, the book argues that while population size, land, resources and such are important for national strength, the most important thing is technology. Population and land get you into the game, (Iceland will never be a world power) tech lets you win it. With technology you get the military and economic power needed to rule the world.


All facets of statecraft are considered through the lens of how they can develop technology. The chapter goes through how some countries did well and did poorly: the Soviet bloc pursued imbalanced industrialization favouring heavy over light industry. The Great Leap Forward inhibited Chinese industrial development, damaging the agricultural base. Diplomacy affects how you industrialize and develop: Argentina foolishly moved towards the UK rather than the US in 1944 (I’ve never heard anyone else say this before), while West Germany and Japan had good relations with America and were able to quickly reindustrialize with their market access.


The authors regret that just when Song China was at the peak of science and industry, the Mongols showed up and wrecked their chance at early industrialization and world hegemony. Clearly technology used to be less of a key factor back in the day. But China’s time is coming! They conclude that the New China has stable foundations and has made prudent long-term investments in infrastructure and institutions. Unlike the silly Indian democrats, China has no need to pursue popular but foolish policies. Shortly they’ll achieve comprehensive scientific superiority to the US, as the huge Chinese population becomes highly educated. Replace ‘demographic dividend’ with ‘talent dividend’. That’s the plan anyway.


In another poll (scroll down to the graphs), Americans were far and away proudest about their country’s freedom. Wealth, military power, political system… all far behind freedom. What were the Chinese most proud about? Science and technology followed by economic development, then power and so on... See also the stats saying Chinese kids want to be astronauts, Americans want to be youtubers.


You can see a clear national strategy coming from the top down and widely embraced by the population, China wants to lead in all facets of science and technology. They’ve had great success in dominating whole sectors like solar panels, electric cars, 5G and drones. More electric vehicles are made in China than Europe, Japan and America combined.


In addition to science, there’s also ‘national rejuvenation’ which means annexing Taiwan and presumably becoming the world’s strongest superpower. A Chinese acquaintance told me about how the media was going on about the race to acquire ‘Zeus-shield’ (AEGIS-tier) destroyers, it reminded me a little of pre-1914 Dreadnought discourse: We want eight and we won’t wait! Those who are insufficiently nationalistic on the Chinese internet sometimes get cancelled and dogpiled by extremely online, hysterical women. They’re called ‘little pink’ and heaven help you if you besmirch the reputation of the People's Liberation Army - the censors will be knocking on your door. There’s a certain level of nationalist-jingoism in stuff like Wolf Warrior 2 and The Battle at Lake Changjin (China’s two highest grossing films) that might shame even neocons, were such a thing physically possible. I conclude that national rejuvenation is fairly popular too.


The Chinese ending caption:




The great spirit of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid (North) Korea will eternally be renewed! Eternal glory to the great martyrs of the People's Volunteer Army!




I’m not saying that a focused national strategy is automatically great. The Soviets had a national strategy and failed because the strategy was based on wrong premises (that communism worked, for one). China’s system does encourage a certain amount of fraud, they accept that handing out billions to semiconductor development companies will produce a lot of waste and failures. That’s a price they pay for speed. However, it seems a much more effective national strategy than America’s.


If pressed, I’d define US national strategy as DEI, green economics and the Rules-Based International Order.


Firstly, the US’s national strategy is unpopular. A lot of people are unhappy about DEI conflicting with meritocracy, a race spoils programs has winners and losers within the country. Green economics are expensive and the rules-based order has many high-profile detractors – Trump for one. An unpopular strategy is harder to implement and it carries the risk of getting reversed. Strategic limbo is not a good place to be. What Americans actually want is freedom, yet US national strategy is going in the other direction.


Secondly, the US strategy seems much less workable. DEI saps efficiency but the rules-based order needs a powerful war machine to suppress two great powers. At the same time, green economics demands huge amounts of capital for investment. It has never been shown that a major economy can operate purely off renewable energy, green economics has a remarkable similarity to communism in its untested and transformative nature. While China invests heavily in renewables, they are also committed to coal power – China is building enormous amounts of power infrastructure generally as part of their commitment to industrialization and technology.


Charitably, there could be a synergy between DEI and the rules-based order in that privileging blacks will make them more likely to support the US in the global struggle. Even so, said synergy seems much weaker than the ‘technology -> economic/military power’ spiral that China’s committed to. African nations weren’t terribly powerful in the Cold War and they aren’t strong now. Wagner can casually coup three of them while mostly focused on Ukraine – Ukraine might be worth 50 or 100 Malis and Nigers.


Thirdly, the US strategy is unfocused and contradictory. There’s nobody at the top directing all the strands into a single, harmonious grand strategy. Thus the DEI strand can harm the Rules-Based Order and interfere with reshoring semiconductors. Greedy and unconstrained companies can consolidate or offshore their production in the first place, creating and maintaining these vulnerabilities. They can lobby so that the state won’t stop them doing share buybacks with their CHIPS funding. The American Affairs article suggests that recipient firms can even invest in Chinese manufacturing facilities under certain conditions, defeating the whole point of the operation! While the US might want to sabotage Chinese growth, they also want access to China’s huge solar industry.


There are also contradictions in China’s strategy – they admit the need to learn tech from overseas but national rejuvenation makes foreign countries anxious about China’s intentions. Nevertheless, the contradictions in US strategy seem greater to me. In the US you have many groups struggling for control, a multi-sided tug of war: hence the existence of this forum. China is not monolithic but the ruling faction enjoys incredible dominance over big tech, doves and liberals. After a significant state harassment campaign they shut down the Beijing LGBT centre.


Fourthly, US strategy seems more focused on wielding strength rather than accumulating it, spending rather than investing. Rhetorically, the strategy is justified with economic theory but those don’t seem to be the underlying reasons. For instance, globalization under the rules-based-order clearly hurt US power. American deindustrialization and offshoring of key industries was harmful and destabilizing. DEI cannot help but undermine meritocracy and efficiency. Recent research has undermined McKinsey studies on the [economic value of diversity](https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/03/new-study-shows-mckinseys-studies-promoting-dei-profitability-were-garbage/


    

  • – these were always the kind of studies begun with a conclusion prepared mind.
    • 



In contrast, Chinese strategy revolves around cultivating strength. Technological power enables military strength, strength grants economic privileges. A victorious China could extract more resources from contested sea areas, Paperclip Taiwanese scientists, open up markets for their export industry.


Lest it seem that I’m slagging on the US excessively, my home country of Australia is just as bad, possibly worse. We dithered on procuring submarines for a decade, costing billions. Now we’re buying hypothetical Virginias that the US probably can’t even produce (the US submarine force is considered understrength already) after snubbing France and Japan. Our military is fundamentally unserious. Our national strategy is to prop up our economy selling iron and coal to China, even as we ally with America against China. Meanwhile we’re also playing the green/DEI game.


In my opinion, the US should follow a more defensive freedom-centric strategy. Dump DEI and green economics and reduce regulations to foster industry. Let people build things, fewer approvals and more construction. Less spying and less censorship. Lower taxes, lower spending. Defend allies without going off on overseas adventures. Instead of an expensive power-projection military, pivot towards a defensive military. More fortifications and missiles, fewer aircraft carriers. Instead of trying to penetrate defended airspace with stealth aircraft, try and defend airspace instead.


Now obviously this won’t happen. It takes a lot of luck, skill and organization to change course for a country like the US. Strategy isn’t coherently decided by a grand planner or a committee as in China, it’s a hodgepodge of vibes, class interests and traumas. Internal or external shocks are important – COVID prompted a global shift towards self-reliance.


Questions:
Do you think national strategies are a good idea?
Do you agree with my characterization of national strategy for either country?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So your thesis is 'there's a phase-change after a certain point where organizations become more political/institutional above Dunbar's law but despite all the bad things we know about big institutions it's necessary and fine?'


Or were you opposing that, saying that you deny that recruitment is the best thing people can do, that the human, non-optimized element is good, that organizations need soul to start off with? I don't understand, is it that the strategies like tricking Coca Cola are hyperdunbar and therefore good? Bad? It seems like a really complicated thesis!


I'm guessing we all struggled through university lecturers telling us to give Topic Sentences and Introductions and it was always cringeworthy to read someone's essay that said 'in this essay I will argue that...' But I think it's important to provide some kind of guidance, especially in long essays. I'm hopelessly lost. Are other people lost or am I having a skill issue?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for April 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
German Greens falsified evidence in order to phase out nuclear power back in 2022. Recently there was a Freedom of Information lawsuit that, despite the best efforts of the government, won and uncovered the documents. Amusingly the govt pleaded 'this needs to be kept secret lest all the countries we're trying to spruke our anti-nuclear, green ideology to realise how silly it is and combat our foreign policy' but failed.


https://thedeepdive.ca/deep-dive-documents-reveal-green-party-manipulated-germany-to-push-nuclear-phase-out/


A small group of Green politicians rewrote notes from technical experts to reverse the core message to be pro-shutdown of nuclear plants, fabricating safety concerns and arguing that necessary life-extension upgrades hadn't been undertaken. Despite being told that the message was rubbish they pressed on, lying to the public about why they were pushing what they were pushing.


The Germans turned their nuclear plants back on in a brief life-extension back in late 2022 before shutting them all down in 2023. I've maintained for several years that there's a high-level sabotage campaign against nuclear energy in the Western world. Most of the time it's not as clear as this. Usually it's procedural manipulation, regulations requiring pointlessly complicated and exacting reactor designs, obliterating the industry by not letting new power plants be made and a stubborn refusal to store nuclear waste permanently.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think we can separate the bad writing from broader quality issues. Take Battlefield 2042 for instance - there was no scoreboard in a team shooter. It was buggy and broken on release. Halo Infinite, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077 itself (though they later improved it), Overwatch 2, Starfield... These are major titles from formerly well-respected publishers yet many had fewer features than their predecessors, released in a shocking state or were heavily and aggressively monetized.


Halo Infinite on release was lacking custom games, no automatic rejoin, had only 10 maps (to Halo 2's 12), no region selection, no campaign co-op, no anti-cheat... I haven't played it, just watched a video ripping into it. The gameplay was apparently good but everything else wasn't: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y-VnT1QNWPg


It's not that Boeing's issues are localized solely to the bolt-screwer-in workers, there are problems in upper management and operations. Likewise in games, it's not just writing but broader issues across companies. Small, talented and motivated teams can and do make great games! Noita, Dyson Sphere Program, Grim Dawn, Ultrakill... Hey, Slay the Princess has a great story and that was 2 people! It's the big players that have been suffering. They are supposed to have the resources, time and experience to make great games yet often seem to fail. Everything about Starfield was bad AFAIK - story, graphics, gameplay, everything.


Bad games and bad writing are like peas in a pod. Go have a look at Hyenas, how everyone was laughing at such a stupid, ugly, cringeworthy concept that apparently cost Creative Assembly/Sega a hundred million. Bad designers had a bad idea and executed it poorly - failure across the board.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is this evidence of the cathedral being less monolithically progressive than commonly believed?




Let's wait and see. I'm reminded of the time when Zhou Enlai said "Too soon to say" when asked about the consequences of the French Revolution. It turns out that was actually a myth and he was talking about 1968 France.


Nevertheless, the day of the announcement is too premature. Lots of people thought that Brexit and the 2016 election were turning points, that narratives were beginning to fall apart, that the tide was shifting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Quite right. As time passes, cash will diminish. It's more convenient to swipe a card or scan a QR code.


Either we end up using privately run cryptocurrencies or state-run central bank digital currencies. Right now there are some issues with transaction costs, scams and volatility on the crypto front.


However, if we end up using CBDCs, human freedom is caput. CBDCs allow total financial surveillance and total financial suppression. It goes beyond debanking, you could make people impossible to transact with. This is the key technology that allows for totalitarian social credit schemes, the seeds of which we see in China. CBDCs are seductive to governments and central banks - taxes become impossible to evade! Monetary policy can be implemented hour by hour! Criminal assets are easy to seize, money-laundering is impossible. But they also enable the mainstreaming of the debanking tactics we've seen with Paypal and high-profile wrongthinkers. After cash people will probably stop thinking of money as something concrete and physical, it becomes an abstract, malleable concept. Your UBI money can only be spent on the right goods, made by the right people. Maybe the climate means you can't buy more than a certain amount of real meat each week, perhaps you can't fly more than what's strictly necessary for your work. Your stimulus money has to be spent in 30 days before it disappears. Billy might pay different prices on the same good to Aisha or Joe. Your politics are dangerous and unacceptable? Good luck getting a website, accepting donations or doing anything at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Doesn't Pope Francis routinely attack racism and call for more tolerance for refugees? 4/9 American refugee settlement NGOs are Christian, albeit heavily govt-supported: https://cis.org/Rush/Private-Refugee-Resettlement-Agencies-Mostly-Funded-Government#uscri


Most Christian leaders describe racism as sinful. In the past things were different, yet it looks like Christianity as a whole is committed to antiracism and multiculturalism in the present-day.


I'm more interested in who actually follows or cares about what Richard 'riding with Biden' Spencer says? In 2024?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You'll need enormous amounts of transmission capacity to take solar electricity from California over the mountains to the East Coast or down from Northern Canada. Burning thermite seems energy-inefficient - and that's another huge capital cost since you make a specialized power plant.


Power should be produced near where it's consumed, reliably and consistently. Breeder reactors are the way to go IMO, or we could rush towards fusion. Just one set of infrastructure with 90% capacity factor and minimal transmission cost. It's not hard to make reactors, the US has the technical chops to fit a 300 MW PWR reactor on a submarine along with sonar, torpedoes, stealth all for a total cost of $2 Billion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's a difference between fixing a broken car and converting your car into a boat or vis versa. Fixing the car brings it closer to the Platonic ideal of what the car is supposed to be, converting it into a boat is something different.


I think Christians have a level of innate bioconservatism, Adam was directly made by God. You're not supposed to mess with God's vision, maleness or femaleness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Top of her class. Survivor of multiple suicide attempts, because she didn't take biology lessons past tenth grade, and Google wisely doesn't return results for "painless ways to commit suicide". Asked me on the first date how much paracetamol it takes to off oneself, for purely academic reasons.




Apparently paracetamol overdose blows up your liver in a painful and prolonged way, (if quora is to be believed). Seriously though, how hard is it to kill yourself painlessly? Helium's the way to go, is it not? I suppose that's not something you consider with normal rationality.


It strikes me that both women and the US government are very bad at killing people, preferring poison and overly complicated, ineffective methods. In contrast, gas and guns just work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hey, US taxpayers are paying for many of the pretty lights in the sky. How much do you think Arrow interceptors cost? Several million each. It wouldn't surprise me if Israel and co spent a cool billion on air defence today. Iran wouldn't have spent nearly so much - they come out ahead even before damage is factored in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				FILM REVIEW: India the Worst country on Earth
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They have the edge in a few places, but it's not a massive or universal advantage.




A few places? Where's the Indian space station, where's the Indian navy, the Indian air force, the Indian high-tech industries in comparison to China? Where are the robotized gigafactories?


Xiaomi car factory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a5KhnLLpoQ0


High quality scientific papers by country: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2022/country/all/all


India is apparently less scientifically productive than Australia, albeit improving. The population of Australia is 26.6 million. There's an absolutely monstrous gap between India and China. China makes 5x more cars than India, they're so far ahead in AI and computing it's incomparable. In China big cities have this cyberpunk aesthetic - during COVID lockdowns they had drones flying around saying "Please restrain your soul's desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing." I don't want to live there - I want freedom and artistic expression. Even so, the aesthetic is pretty good!


Shanghai: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bw3yXaVHuLs


Big Indian cities have a Malthusian slum aesthetic - a totally different kind of dystopia. When it comes to cybercrime, Indian thieves tend to prefer scamming credulous octogenarians with gift cards - Chinese hackers steal 5G tech, turbines, sensitive and secret documents. When it comes to climate change, China builds all the solar panels and wind turbines, India asks for climate finance. There's a qualitative difference between India and China.


Mumbai: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gV5EU6daoVI


Even in history, India was conquered by the British - China got wrecked but not colonized. They fought bravely and desperately against all comers rather than rolling over. China was if not one of the Big Three in WW2, at least the Fourth of Roosevelt's Four Policemen. They got their UNSC veto, India begs for one. Postwar, China fought the US to a stalemate in Korea, skirmished with the Soviet Union and Vietnam. India just clobbered Pakistan a couple of times and lost a skirmish with China.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just get rid of the regulations! It's insane. In Australia, nuclear power is illegal - we're actually trying to buy US nuclear submarines because they're superior to conventional subs in range. But no, we can't have nuclear energy for civilians despite having by far the biggest uranium reserves on earth. Our geography is stable and technology is quite advanced. We have a research reactor. We should be a nuclear energy superpower, mining and enriching and building reactors.


Stalin blamed Soviet economic problems on 'wreckers', workers deliberately sabotaging machinery, undermining morale, giving false orders. Ironically the wrecking came from the top down, in incentives, laws and institutions that undermined performance. That's the problem the West faces - industry taking body blows from regulators on housing, energy, production and so on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
'Alone' is a key part of this, that's what the forest is there to imply. Obviously women feel safer on a street with 10-20 men than alone with a bear. Presumably they think that if one decides to attack them, the others will help them out or are at least supposed to help them. At least in daytime.


If men are so bad, why would having more of them around help? If a majority of men decided to use violence to subjugate women, it would be easily accomplished since men are more violent, better at organizing violence and are stronger.


Alternate thought from Devon Eriksen - they are humblebragging about being so desirable that men want to rape them while trying to preserve their compassionate credentials: https://twitter.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1785673620729073911


I think this is part of it. As a man, the value proposition of raping a woman alone in the woods seems pretty low. Momentary thrill but what do you do next? Leave her alive to report you? Kill her and bury the body? What happens when people come looking for her and find traces? You'd really need to be very impulsive or intoxicated by beauty to think this was a good choice of action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Imperial Germany suffered enormously before capitulating. In the winter of 1916-1917 about half a million people starved to death in the 'Turnip Winter' so-named because that's all they had to eat. The food distribution system broke down completely. By 1918 they were in a famine. Children were running around breaking into warehouses trying to get food and dying in the tens of thousands. This is one of the reasons the Nazis were so fixated on securing agricultural land later on.


In tsarist Russia "Working-class women in St. Petersburg reportedly spent about forty hours a week in food lines, begging, turning to prostitution or crime, tearing down wooden fences to keep stoves heated for warmth, and continued to resent the rich."


It takes a lot of pain to bring down a country in a major conventional war. There's a certain level of stubbornness and sunk-cost that seeps in after serious blood has been spilled and national pride is on the line. Attitudes harden. Ukraine has not experienced anything like the mass suffering of a world war. There is no mass starvation in Ukraine, no massive inflation (7% is not great but it's not 90%), no social breakdown. Lessons have been learnt since the world wars and Ukraine enjoys the support of wealthy backers.


Nevertheless there are signs of serious problems - the videos of men being forcibly dragged into vehicles by recruiters, desertion and so on. What is that if not ambivalence/non-cooperation? States can do a lot with ambivalent but not-yet-rebellious people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Tories are a party of mass immigration, that's what their policies have achieved in the real world. They say stuff like 'we'll be tough on immigration' but they don't actually do it, they flail around paying Rwanda and achieving nothing. Different policies but similar results for the Australian centre-right - Abbott successfully stopped illegal immigration but kept legal immigration very high.


In the UK neither illegal nor legal immigration are combatted. In Australia Labour adopted Coalition border policies, so there's no distinguishing difference there. So on immigration both parties are roughly equivalent to their Labour equivalents. AFD is actually different.


Labour generally promises young people some kind of patronage in uni education, welfare and so on. The centre-right tend to support the old in housing and welfare. Furthermore, young people tend to revile the centre-right parties, it was considered cringeworthy to vote for Scott Morrison (former centre-right PM)  in Australia. Labour and Greens parties are more socially progressive and young people care about climate change.


https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/voting-choices-of-young-people-shifting-to-the-left/qevszl5rb


Germany, Sweden and continental countries are also much whiter and more homogenous than Australia, the UK or especially America. Also the German Greens have tarred themselves with the horrendous performance of the traffic-light coalition and their economically damaging policies. British and Australian Greens haven't had much chance to do real damage.


The Australian equivalent to AFD is One Nation, which is much more boomer-skewed (and pretty irrelevant politically). It's run by a woman called Pauline Hanson who's nearly 70 years old. They appeal most to rural white Queenslanders, the whitest parts of the whitest state in the country. Same in Britain, UKIP targeted old rural whites because there were more of them. AFD leaders are much younger, in their 40s. They appeal most in East Germany, which is the whitest part of Germany.


I think right wing politics of the anti-immigration kind has a lot to do with whiteness. Western right-wing politics in general too, to a lesser extent. In the Anglosphere the whitest demographics tend to be the old, so anti-immigration rightist parties naturally evolve to target the old. In Europe there's a broader base of potential supporters and they can target the young, so they do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
South Africa did feel quite threatened, they were trying to develop their own modern fighter jets to counter the Mig-29s they expected Angola and nearby Soviet allies to receive. At any point the Border War might flare up. Unlike Israel they had no superpower backer to get advanced weapons from, nor did they have access to world markets due to the weapons embargo. They tried developing their own Atlas Carver but the cost of developing advanced fighters was too high.


A shortage of will sure but South Africa also had a less fortunate position than Israel. Though the critical error was probably letting so many blacks into the country, rather than any military issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


they might have let some of the missiles get through, lol. This is just too comical.




What world are you living in? Plenty of Iranian missiles got through. It's right there on video. Are people unironically believing the Israeli '99% shot down' routine?


https://twitter.com/RadarFennec/status/1779343332012888288


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Mossad's been gunning down Iranian researchers for ages - you are not proposing a new idea.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Vacuity of Climate Science
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With AI narratives they can point to trends and those trends are undeniably real! Nobody said 'oh AGI is impossible because the number of transistors on a chip is decreasing, we're actually heading for artificial stupidity', that would be silly. Furthermore, AI development is fundamentally unpredictable, people talk about probabilities of developing certain technologies by certain times.


Climate change is supposed to be a clear physical-material trend, yet there's been confusion about which direction it's moving and what consequences there might be and when they arrive. If they could get it wrong in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s they can get it wrong today. The Pentagon report for instance:


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver




A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.






The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.






Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK’s leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon’s internal fears should prove the ‘tipping point’ in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.






Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon’s dire warnings could no longer be ignored.






Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. ‘We don’t know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,’ he said. ‘The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.’




These weren't no-names or non-scientists but they were seriously and embarrassingly wrong. Imagine if we actually listened to these people, speedily cut fossil fuels out of the world economy accepting the energy rationing, economic mobilization and famines that would likely happen... only for it to be a nothingburger.


In AI there are clear achievements and errors on both sides - some people said we'd get self-driving vehicles by 2000, others by 2030, others never. Well, we have self-driving cars today. We have GPT-4. Things the AI alarmists foresaw actually showed up, perhaps not on time but they did arrive!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Vacuity of Climate Science
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a more compelling argument might be "back in the 1970s the Science said that we were heading for an Ice Age due to industrial pollution and emissions - plus they've been predicting catastrophic climate change (melting of the ice caps, massive temperature changes and disruption) by 2000, 2010 and 2020 so they clearly don't know what they're doing'. We don't need to get bogged down in whether the greenhouse effect works as stated.


https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-eco-pocalyptic-predictions-the-so-called-experts-are-0-50/


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				FILM REVIEW: India the Worst country on Earth
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


cherry-picking of instances that serve your argument




So far I've brought up space capabilities, naval power, air power, high tech industries like car factories, high quality scientific papers, AI, urban development and skylines, cybercriminals, green industry, coal production, diplomatic influence, cybercrime, market reforms, resistance to colonizers and post-WW2 military performance. Is that cherry-picking?


Where does India outperform China? In a green index which declares the Philippines a major leader? Meanwhile, big industrial powers like Taiwan, China and South Korea are right at the bottom.


India's level of development is just lower. I have a special interest in military affairs - the comparison is marked. The Indian army - a whole fleet of Russian T-90s and T-72s, Russian BMP-2s, Russian Tunguskas, Konkurs, Iglas. There are some Indian light vehicles, helicopters and missiles but even Brahmos is codeveloped with Russia. Most of their arsenal is imported. It's the same in aviation, they fly Migs, Su-30s, Rafales, Jaguars... and a few domestically produced and long-delayed Tejas fighters.


China is a different story. Nearly all their vehicles and equipment is made domestically. Like India they bought aircraft from the Soviets but supplemented them with hundreds of domestic J-10s and their own 5th gen aircraft, which India doesn't have at all.


India has lower CO2 emissions than China and higher birthrates. That's it. OP's original point was that China wasn't much more successful than India, which is bizarre. China is way more successful than India.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The optics would just be terrible




This wouldn't stop Israel. The optics were terrible when they shoot children in the back but they do it anyway and clear it in court. There's no shortage of bad optics on either side.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2


https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/11/27/fact-check-did-israeli-children-really-sing-about-annihilating-everyone-in-gaza




If IDF snipers were systematically targeting civilians (doctors, elderly, kids, etc), that would be outrageous and well worth mentioning




Well they sure did shoot at them before the war: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session40/Documents/A_HRC_40_74_CRP2.pdf


Imagine you're Israeli. All your life you hear about suicide bombings, attacks, rockets, problems all coming from these dirty uncivilized Arabs who belong to a death cult that hates your religion and routinely sneak-attack on your religious holidays. You hate these people.


Imagine you're Palestinian. Israeli troops will knock down your door at night-time and search your apartment. You're not allowed to move freely, they cut power off, they steal your land like they've been stealing it for decades now. You spent your whole childhood punctuated by bombs, assassinations of peaceful protestors, dead family members, dead neighbours, arrests, torture... You hate these people.


This is a war of hatred. They hate eachother (as a collective). Not all of them hate eachother but enough do. We cannot model this war without understanding that there's intense hatred. Trying to model leadership or boots-on-the-ground as calculating, rational plotters is not going to yield good predictions.