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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In my view, Putin's decision to invade has utterly wrecked his own medium-term objectives.




In hindsight, I was wrong to guess in February that Russia wouldn't be foolish enough to invade.  I can see how, with Ukraine drifting toward the West, this might have been their best shot at returning them to the fold.  Perhaps if the thunder run on Kyiv had gone differently, or Zelenskyy had fled, defenses might have collapsed.  But I don't see any real scenarios where, failing to accomplish regime change within about a week, continuing to press would do anything except start the meat grinder and drive irreconcilable wedges between Russian and Ukrainian identities.  I'm not a gambling man, but I can see how that might make sense to one.  Retreating after 72 hours claiming troops "got lost" or something still seemed possible, and probably would have held off the firehose of Western materiel that they're unable to counter.


Since then, I've realized that my understanding of Putin's goals and methods was flawed, although I'm not sure what they should be.  The current situation seems fairly unwinnable to Russia (and I don't see mobilization changing that -- there's pretty good photographic evidence that they've been scraping near the bottom of the Soviet stockpile for a while), and I can't personally explain any action other than an orderly retreat with their tail between their legs (compare the US retreat out of Afghanistan or Vietnam)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Renewables were always a joke for Germany as well, they don’t get enough wind or sunlight for them to work and battery tech is still not close enough to compensate




While this sentiment is probably unpopular in the green space these days, over the past year or two I've realized that actually fielding scaled renewable systems anywhere roughly north of the Mason-Dixon line requires something like two orders of magnitude more battery capacity than even "battery-backed renewable" systems design for these days.  Expected grid usage needs to go up.  Way up.


To fully switch from fossil fuels, we presumably need to switch heating over from largely combustion furnaces to heat pumps: heating a home in northern Europe in winter takes far more energy than cooling one in a warmer climate.  Electric transportation adds to grid usage.  Including these, total demand is almost certainly highest when solar is least useful.  A few net-zero days in summer is cute, but doesn't really provide a viable path to storing summer sunlight for winter, and without that investments in solar would be better placed in nuclear.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But my understanding is that Germany and Northern Europe are significantly colder.




My understanding based largely on this video is that state of the art heat pumps manage to perform such that even in places like Chicago using them to heat with energy from a natural gas power plant uses less fuel even including transmission and generation losses than a domestic furnace when the temperature is above -15C (5F).  I'm not quite sure how cold any given place in Northern Europe gets, but Chicago isn't exactly known for being warm in the winter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This does happen on occasion, but IMO "life in prison is cheaper because we save on legal appeals" (which is a common argument, but not one you specifically are making here) is wrong because life in prison probably deserves the same standard of confidence the death penalty does.  I don't think someone innocent dying of old age in prison is morally much better than dying by execution.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've observed a large bias in the zeitgeist of even Reddit comments based on the topic of the starting prompt.  It at least looks to me like confirmation bias at the headline level: even major subs can sound right-leaning when talking about things that generally flatter the right like the Kenosha trial.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's worth considering that if this were a Russian operation (likeliness unknown), it could look something like an intentional Crossing the Rubicon moment.  It would serve as both an outward proclamation that Putin wishes to punish Germany and other parts of the EU for opposing him, but also burns easy pathways for anyone toppling the regime to return to the previous status quo.  I'm reminded of how Cortés burned his ships on reaching Mexico to prevent mutiny.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As far as I can tell... That didn't happen? Nothing happened? Did it even matter?




From a technical perspective, absolute net neutrality was probably never a tenable prospect: there are all sorts of reasons why ISPs want to optimize traffic flows.  Interactive applications (Zoom calls, video games) prefer minimal latency, while streaming services focus on bandwidth and can happily buffer enough to handle less continuous data.  Legal streaming being a huge bandwidth user, many services were interested in distinctly less-than-neutral contracts where ISPs would host either hardware or data close to customers to reduce bandwidth costs (these are largely mutually beneficial).  Some internet plans are cellular, and IRL bandwidth is a very finite resource: do we really want to enforce that wireless providers can't throttle video streaming (not necessarily completely, but perhaps forcing a lower resolution) to make sure your neighbors in any sufficiently crowded space don't prevent you from checking your email.  Honestly, some sort of traffic prioritization is probably inescapable, and it's very unclear to me that "neutral" is either well-defined or desirable.


There's also a decent argument that it was only really an argument because the people pushing for it thought they might lose.  Millennials and Zoomers with Netflix accounts were scared their ISPs were going to rope them into costly plans to replace falling cable TV package revenue.  Sometimes this takes the form of a generic data cap, which exist but aren't universal even on cellular plans.  I don't know that those fears were misplaced, but in the past 5 years I think it's clear that between the political will of streaming companies and their (voting!) customers, legislators can't outright ignore their concerns.


I'm sure there are some principled cyperpunk libertarians out there that support Net Neutrality on a purely dogmatic basis, but I am pretty confident that most of the folks involved circa 2017 were probably more concerned about who was going to bear the financial burden of growing bandwidth costs.  Personally, I was loosely in favor, since ISPs are often monopolies.  Since then, though, high-bandwidth internet usage has gone mainstream (even outside of the pandemic) such that (even self-interested) neutrality advocates aren't a minority.


There's probably also a darker view that the mainstream left that supported net neutrality as anti-censorship when they were plucky upstarts are now in positions of power and their interests against censorship were never principled, just self-interested.  I'm not sure I would endorse that view, but I see how someone could argue it, and it's not a great look.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Russia is envisaged to remain a hostile actor to the West and to Europe especially




I have observed an interesting parallel here recently between comments about how the left and right view "violence as a spectrum" versus "violence as a switch": American foreign policy definitely tends toward the latter, while Putin seems to have been fairly successful over the last few decades with escalationism convincing the US to back down, winning various regional battles of conflicting interests (Syria, Georgia, Crimea).


The difference here is that previous successes playing in moral gray areas -- neither Assad nor ISIS are paragons of virtue, and previous annexations were not met with sufficient local will to fight back -- are going to turn out very differently once it's clear that violence is inescapable.  Most previous quagmires (Vietnam, Afghanistan) have originated not because American forces couldn't win on the battlefield, but because the local authorities we were supporting lacked a sufficient popular sovereignty mandate.  Kabul didn't fall to the Taliban for lack of arms, but we think Kyiv -- and maybe even all of Ukraine -- won't fall to the Kremlin for that reason with sufficient support either.


Strategically, escalationism works against violence-as-a-binary right up to the point that it doesn't and the gloves come off.  And in this case Uncle Sam is still just brandishing in the hope of avoiding direct conflict.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Gaddafi died on the end of a bayonet.




I'm not going to disagree with your overall point, but Gaddafi was engaged in direct military conflict with the Reagan administration several times (almost dying in a 1986 US airstrike), but managed to rule for almost two more decades before the bayonet incident.  Saddam Hussein survived the overwhelming loss in the Gulf War and ruled for at least another decade.  Castro died of old age, despite the Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiascos.  Kim Jung Un and Khomeini still rule their anti-American fiefdoms.


Being a tinpot dictator isn't alone sufficient to guarantee a bad outcome, although you're correct that there are plenty of examples of it happening.  In this particular instance, I expect either Putin loses power (either violently or through some sort of brokered exile) or Russia continues its current path towards irrelevant North Korean-style dictatorship.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This sounds like a demand for a participation trophy.




It's also fairly well-sourced that USAID funded some of the hardware despite company claims to the contrary.  Although that article is from April, even at the time the company claimed the US was not giving them money and gave the impression it was a donation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From the article I linked:




“I’m proud that we were able to provide the terminals to folks in Ukraine,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at a public event last month, later telling CNBC, “I don’t think the U.S. has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine.”






But according to documents obtained by The Technology 202, the U.S. federal government is in fact paying millions of dollars for a significant portion of the equipment and for the transportation costs to get it to Ukraine.




I would also observe the difference between the original press release of April 5, which stated that SpaceX donated about 2/3 of the terminals, while the current press release doesn't mention donations (the change is not mentioned or explained that I see).  There are also sources suggesting that additional terminals have been donated by Poland, for example.


After previous shenanigans with cave rescues and ventilators, I don't have much faith in Musk's claimed "donations" these days.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To establish a nation, and not a handful of disparate gangs battling for control over an area (which is what we have now), some social or cultural cohesion is required between the rulers and the ruled.




To abuse a quote, "a nation is a meme with an army".  Of these, the army is the easier part.  Trillions of dollars gave Afghanistan an army, but weren't able to establish a meme of national cohesion.  Honestly, I would suggest you consider a soft power approach to convince Haitians that a better Haiti is a meme worth putting blood, sweat, and tears into.  But even then, it's unclear how to improve your probably-still-questionable chances.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well said - whether it's spun as 'face' or 'prestige' or 'credibility', ultimately what matters is power and money.




While those are important, I think in this case actions towards or against credibility count a lot more than words.  American credibility is riding high because the answer to "Would NATO (in particular US) forces risk their own lives or the risk of nuclear war in the event [enemy] invades my beloved homeland?" is much clearer than 12 months ago.  Sure, Trump made comments skeptical of the alliance (IMO largely from a place that Western Europe was ignoring the costs of continued vigilance), but if the US is willing to spend billions and provide valuable resources like training and intelligence to help out a mere friend, it seems there's less doubt that they'd roll tanks and launch airstrikes to defend or retake small Baltic allies like they did for Kuwait in '91.


Fairweather allies are useless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming.




One comparison I think is interesting is that the number of illegal border crossings each month in 2022 (~200k) is roughly the size of the Russian force that originally invaded Ukraine in February.  Obviously those crossing into the US aren't an armed force bent on regime change, but I think it gives an interesting perspective to the scale of the problem that someone (wrongly, as it turns out) thought that was a large enough force to invade a country with more people than California.


Honestly, I think the Democrats have a branding problem in that they've been positioning themselves as Anti-Republican on this (among other issues) without universally wanting unfettered immigration either.  But when word gets around that "Uncle Joe will let us in" and people start turning up, they can't exactly admit that some degree of restriction is valid and desirable, so they do things like quietly continue building Trump's wall.


I also think we need to reconsider the idea that the shibboleth "asylum" when said to border agents should grant months-to-years of legal residency until claims can be reviewed with no real teeth for failure-to-appear.  It sounds nice in principle, but seems prone to abuse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do we really want presidents to effectively unilaterally nullify laws the president thinks are wrong? How would those in the blue tribe react if a President Trump pardoned Jan 6th offenders?




There is some amount of precedent to pardoning (or more likely commuting sentences) of perceived political prisoners.  Carter rather famously pardoned commuted the sentences of the Puerto Rican nationalists who "attempted to assassinate President Truman" and "sprayed gunfire from a gallery overlooking the House of Representatives".  Obama commuted Manning's sentence.


Honestly pretty much all application of the pardon and commutation powers are some combination of nepotism and corruption (Clinton pardoned his brother, among others) and politically principled overturning of perceived injustices.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Whoops, I knew it was supposed to be "commuted" but must have been in too much of a hurry when typing the original comment to notice.  Thanks for correcting that!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I haven't read all the source material here, but I would draw the line between criticising actions ("his comments are deeply troubling") and people ("he is deeply troubling"), where the latter implicitly denies the capacity for sincere repentance that the former leaves open.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think it depends where. It seems like for certain tech jobs the divide between work and showing up is more blurred.




I think you're right that some places do manage to have a legitimate investment in their employees, but there are plenty of examples of companies claiming to be "like family" only to take advantage of the situation.  My personal rule of thumb is that explicit statements to that effect are worthless or possibly even negative valued, but actions (flexible work hours, better pay, improved working conditions) are meaningful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If, for reasons beyond their control, the price of their property increases, they can be financially forced from their homes, which is about as soulcrushing as being foreclosed upon, while also seeming much more unfair.




Notably, many states have callouts in existing property taxes to (ideally) avoid this situation.  Some probably work well, but others (notably California's Prop 19) are borderline comical.




After all, most people recoil about applying the same logic in other contexts: should a person's income tax be based on the amount of money they theoretically could be earning, if they worked as much as possible in the most valuable field they are qualified for, in the location with the highest salary?




As a relevant example, the State already does calculations like this when computing child support payments and means testing benefits.  I don't think it's particularly popular method, but it does exist in limited practice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


People execute with the military and the information they have, not the military and information they want to have




This sounds a lot like a famous Donald Rumsfeld quote.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's probably also worth mentioning the 1997 Miami mayoral election, which was found by a judge to be fraudulent enough to throw out the election results.  From that article:




In his written decision the judge said the absentee ballots cast in the election included those from people who did not vote, did not live in Miami or the district in which their ballot was cast, and did not qualify as unable to vote at the polls. Several ballots were even doctored to alter a vote for Mr. Carollo into one for Mr. Suarez, the judge noted.






''This scheme to defraud, literally and figuratively, stole the ballot from the hands of every honest voter in the city of Miami,'' Judge Wilson wrote.






In a similar case in 1993, a state judge also threw out the results of a mayoral election in the nearby city of Hialeah and ordered a new vote.




I don't have particular evidence that serious fraud has happened in the last decade, but the idea that American elections have always been sacrosanct and nobody could ever question their validity is IMO laughable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Imagine if a democrat arrested 20 republicans for possessing an illegal firearm because they misunderstood an ATF statute and the ATF webpage said that particular modification / accessory was legal.




You don't even need to misunderstand the ATF: they're sometimes quite clear, like the since-rescinded 2004 letter in which they ruled that a "a 14 inch long shoestring with a loop at each end" was, by itself, a machine gun.  In 2007 they were gracious enough to rule that the shoestring in isolation is not a machine gun, only when combined with a semiautomatic rifle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Isn’t the big issue that all of this can be recorded in a government database instead of a blockchain. And a government judge is the one who at the end of the day decides all these title issues. Being that the government still has the monopoly on violence and the blockchain doesn’t have a single soldier it’s the government that ends up enforcing the title.




This is part of it: existing proof of work is absurdly inefficient compared to a trusted database.  Even proof-of-stake is still much more complex if a trusted party exists.


But I'd also point out that blockchain-related attempts to create their own governance have been doomed to slowly recreate much of the existing governance stack.  There are already instances of "code is law" being worked around because software developers can find the same sort of loopholes that lawyers are famous for.  I'm not going to say it's completely insurmountable, but it seems quite likely that these sorts of issues will continue, requiring the creation of a legal apparatus that looks a lot like a centralized court.


Many of the interesting use cases for "blockchain" (much of the traceability) really depend on Merkle trees that are ubiquitous in cryptocurrencies.  Merkle trees are really useful, but don't strictly require the expensive distributed proofs in many interesting cases.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the class of white women who pretend to be Native Americans




While most of the examples mentioned are women, I'd also consider "Jamake Highwater", award-winning author and noted consultant for Star Trek: Voyager who was actually European.  Note that he was originally exposed in 1984, a decade before the Star Trek involvement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Meanwhile this all looks like nothing but roses for China.




I've been unable to decide how China is supposed to feel about Russia's humiliation here, given their presumably similar concern over Taiwan.  On one hand, I can imagine "I'm glad they fell into the trap assuming that Western nations are too weak to oppose hostile imperialist takeovers rather than us", but also "Why did Russia have to go and ruin the surprise that it's time for a little imperialism?  Now they'll be prepared for us."  I'm not really sure which is more credible: perhaps even both to some extent.