arsv
1d ago
Ukraine joining NATO would have meant that a major military alliance would sit directly on its border, severely shrinking Russia’s strategic buffer zone
Well FWIW Peter Zeihan is a big fan of this theory. Not sure which way it weights though, given it's Peter Zeihan.
(except that the NATO part is a red herring and is usually skipped, including by Zeihan iirc)
arsv
2d ago
However, this outage reportedly occurred mid-day, when the power load is relatively stable.
There are hints that Spain might have lost a line from France amounting to about 10% of total consumption.
That's a large shift, but on the supply side, not on the load side.
Possibly followed by cascading trips downstream due to mismanagement/negligence/general unpreparedness for such a situation. At least that would be my initial "benign" version of what happened.
arsv
21d ago
It took for granted that the future was communist
... on their future Earth, which is not a part of the story, no need to worry what happens there, and letsnottalkaboutit. That book iirc is the only one that does explicitly mention communism, and even that passage always stood out to me as, I dunno, tucked on. It has nothing to do with the rest of the story which is set on not-Earth.
This was a very common trope in Soviet fiction, so much that even genuine attempts to play it straight were mostly not taken at face value. Wikipedia:
Most Soviet writers still portrayed the future Earth optimistically, as a communist utopia - some did it frankly, some to please publishers and avoid censorship. Postapocalyptic and dystopian plots were usually placed outside Earth – on underdeveloped planets, in the distant past, or on parallel worlds. Nevertheless, the settings occasionally bore allusion of the real world, and could serve as a satire of contemporary society.
There's a second layer to this with Strugatski brothers specifically, they were progressivists and one of the key assumptions behind their stories was that some problems which are "hard" today will become solved problems in the future, including apparently the problem of keeping a stable society. However, this was a background assumption and they were very light on the specifics.
arsv
21d ago
Master and Margarita would be a much better choice for this list. It's a staple in similar lists for people who can read Russian. But it's not science fiction, by any stretch, it's just fiction.
Gulag Archipelago, please no. Literally anything else by Solzhenitsyn. The MENSA list has One day of Ivan Denisovitch in there already, that pretty much covers the topic. If I were to pick anything else, The Cancer Ward would by my choice.
arsv
21d ago
No Eastern Bloc/communist authors. Communism might be bad, but it is an ideology that determined the course of the 20th century. Why not add some Soviet Science fiction,
Not sure if I'm reading the assumption here right, but: that's a very bad slash. My #1 choice for "Soviet Science fiction" would be something by Strugatski brothers, the thing is, Strugatski brothers were borderline dissidents and there's nothing particularly communist about their stories. Even those few that have non-negligible political elements, you'd probably never guess those were written in the Eastern Block, never mind Brezhnev era Soviet Union.
I would describe this list as emphasizing a modern (in reference to the modern era of history), Western, progressive (as in history as progress, not woke), Liberal, and individualist perspective of the world
Trying to fill that gap with Soviet science fiction is er not very productive idea. I'd even say, counter-productive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_speculative_fiction#Soviet_period
"Digging your hole deeper" level of counter-productive.
arsv
22d ago
There isn't even a cooler or bracket to worry about.
You sure about that? 350W to 700W TDP depending on configuration. If you look for images of actual installations, they all feature large blow-through heatsinks (sometimes very large) or custom-made water cooling.
arsv
1mo ago
The problem for the Left is how to extract themselves from these bubbles, or maybe even reform them. But the problem for the Right, which already believes them to be irredeemable, is what to replace them with. And it looks like the Right has coalesced around an answer.
Twitter. The answer is Twitter.
Twitter was one of the most prominent Left bubbles. Especially in the context of finding the party line and cancelling dissenters. Twitter mob was the staple of the cancel culture. It's not at all obvious how picking Twitter represents an alternative to what the Left was doing with Twitter.
See also: https://www.themotte.org/post/1741/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/308862?context=8#context
arsv
1mo ago
the public needs to be informed to give them a better understanding of the risks of research in this area. If you keep it a secret, you lose one of the most important levers to prevent further accidents.
I don't think this is a universal idea. It might be true, mostly, in the US, although I would doubt even that. But in places like China, no, not really. You do whatever it takes to prevent further accidents within the lab, and you do whatever it takes to control public opinion, but these are completely separate concerns.
Furthermore, if the research is dangerous but the government thinks it has to be done, I totally see the government deciding to do it anyway, in secrecy if necessary. Especially in China, but really in a lot of other places as well. Including the US.
but in medical research, and I don't get the impression that we've done anything at all to prevent further accidents
This is a valid argument, but only if you think that the likely safety recommendations following the accident would be applicable to your facility.
Second, given the unusual structure of the virus compared to its alleged progenitor, even a honest mistake lab leak does actually imply with overwhelming likelihood a non-natural origin.
It might come down to the definition of "natural origin" then. Does releasing a virus onto a population of (very much not natural) humanized mice and allowing it to naturally evolve in that population count as a natural origin to you? Especially if accidental.
For me, that's still very much natural origin. As opposed to engineering, as in deliberately adding specific sequences to the genome using genetic engineering tools. But I totally see some people classifying it as non-natural instead.
the virus first gets changed in the lab but then gets spread from a completely different point of origin
Just for reference, I think that the virus likely jumped species in the lab, but it was not the goal of the people working in the lab to make it do that.
Yes, sure, ass-covering was absolutely a major part of it. Doesn't even need to involve personal links. As long as it's clear that blaming China openly will not help with either cleanup or preventing further accidents, there's no point in doing it. If China says (through less-than-public channels) that yeah, we screwed up, we're sorry, let's stop the blame game and instead let's think how to handle the mess, it makes practical sense to play along.
However, that's not exactly my point.
and motive of dismissing the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy
The quoted guy is not dismissing the lab leak theory. He wants "to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin", he's dismissing the engineered origin. This is then transformed into the lab leak conspiracy by equating lab leak to engineered origin, but that's not what the guy is saying. And I think this is very typical, a lot of what was perceived as establishment's denial of the lab leak theory was instead the establishment denying the engineered origin theory while trying to dance around leak question for practical/political reasons.
arsv
1mo ago
a hunt against even mentioning the possibility of a lab leak. To quote he top german establishment expert of the time, Christian Drosten: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin (...)"
Natural origin does not exclude the possibility of a lab leak.
The conspiracy in question is that the lab leak implies some kind of biological warfare work. It doesn't, by itself. Almost any work with viruses bears some risk of a leak, even a completely passive study of viral evolution in natural environment or something like that. My reading, both at the time and now, is that the establishment was aware of the widespread but not at all justified hysteria that the virus was engineered, and was trying to calm people down on that specific concern.
The other explanation is that it was a routine screw-up in a research lab. That's something the intelligence should be able to pick through its channels, and it fits very well with how the political reaction to it. Once it's clear that the leak wasn't intentional, the focus would shift to clean-up and preventing further similar accidents. Conspiracy talk is grossly counter-productive to that, especially for the government.
arsv
1mo ago
In terms of production, likely yes. That's the least concerning part IMO.
Politics is a much bigger question. The possible internal instability, as well as the ability to withstand external attacks of political or hybrid nature. Second to that, manpower issues, and the societal implications of the possible solutions for those. After that, I'd say various enablers (satellites etc) which Europe depends on the US for.
arsv
1mo ago
Funny thought: replace "blacks" with "AI" and you have one of those take-off scenarios.
arsv
1mo ago
Clarification for those reading the post and not the linked paper:
Tied for the best was a message that basically said ...
The point there is that "if Democrats ever want to win elections again, people need a clear message from them about what they stand for and what they’ll do" but it comes at the end of the sentence. No specifics as to which message, it's just that they need some message. The opposite of rolling on with the no-message approach which is presumably what the party has been doing recently.
This doesn't affect anything else in the parent post, it's just that this quote out of context is rather confusing.
arsv
1mo ago
If I was a secretly Russia aligned president who had been elected while hiding those views,
I don't think Trump is trying to hide his views. Your own post is about how even the people who'd rather stay quiet are starting to talk about it openly, because at some point it becomes difficult to ignore.
FWIW Noah Smith's opinion:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-is-being-sold-out-by-its
Imagine, for a moment, that the U.S. lost a major war against a coalition of China and Russia. What would the victorious coalition force our country to do, as the terms of our surrender? (... 1, 2, 3 ...) Anyway, now realize that under its new President Donald Trump, America is very rapidly making moves in all three of the directions listed above.
It’s basically an early surrender in Cold War 2, but Trump, Musk, & co. may see it as their only option for preserving their vision of Western civilization.
Why exactly does Trump thinks it is so important to take this option as early as possible is a whole different question. Large part of conspiracy speculations are going on precisely because there are no clear reasons for him to do that, so people assume there might be something secret going on behind the scenes to justify his actions. But the actions themselves are quite open.
arsv
1mo ago
The strategic objective is the war to end.
Trump's actions ensure "the war" will keep on going, in one form or another. Russian expansionism is not going anywhere any time soon, and Trump just gave it a boost.
Leaving aside less charitable explanations, Trump is more likely trying to put pressure on the EU, using Russia as a lever. His opinions on the EU are well known, and the challenge from the Russian side will likely be serious enough to lead to major shifts within the EU, potentially in a way that's appealing to Trump or Trump's circle.
arsv
2mo ago
Hence, all persons means all persons. The jurisdiction clause was only put in because the government had already recognized certain exemptions prior to the amendment's passing:
Also literally everyone outside of the United States, obviously those were not US citizens. "All persons under US jurisdiction" was a neat way of describing both the citizens-prior-to-the-amendment and the ex-slaves, with a single phrase, as one group.
Irrelevant for the birth-right citizenship debate, I should have clarified that.
It is meaningful, but it's there to address a completely different issue. The debate is about whether the US has anything to do with the babies born on the US soil, but the amendment is about people for whom it's already been decided. It's downstream from the decision.
It does imply that it is possible to get US citizenship by being born in the US (as opposed to going through naturalization process), but not that being born is the only requirement. And that's what the whole debate is about.
arsv
2mo ago
The question, now, is who is subject to jurisdiction.
I would read the whole sentence like this: all persons who are born or naturalized in the United States, and as such subject to the US jurisdiction, are citizens both of the US and a certain state within the US. Or put another way, all people subject to the US jurisdiction are citizens both of the US and of a certain state within the US, regardless of how they became subjects to said jurisdiction (through naturalization or by birth right).
Something else has to decide who are subject to jurisdiction, it's a precondition. Both for naturalization and for birth right pathways. Then, for those who did pass the subject-ness test, this statement claims that they are also considered to be "citizens" of two distinct entities.
So my take would be that the answer to this question is in a different place altogether. This passage is just irrelevant. But I'm not a judge or a layer, and it's the US law, so yeah.
arsv
2mo ago
the best selling movie you’ve never heard of
At least some people here clearly have.
https://www.themotte.org/post/1689/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/299405
On the action side, it's also a lot more extreme than what you'd expect in a typical American Kid's movie. The movie does not shy away from some of the effects of the action that's shown.
I'd say it's a very American thing, and to a certain extent somewhat recent. While Disney has been known to sugar-coat and soft-pad stories for decades, even in the US more serious takes were not exactly out of question up to the edge of 00s probably. Which was accidentally (or not) about the time anime started taking off in the west.
Superb review by the way.
Death is also not shied away from. Outright death is not shown on screen, but there are definitely sanitized and implied scenes of death.
Don Bluth has entered the chat lol.
arsv
2mo ago
Lemurs come from a sister family to the group that includes humans. Which is to say, we not that closely related, about as close as cats are to dogs if I'm looking at the right numbers. It doesn't kill the argument, there are snouted primates and tree-jumping primates which are much closer to humans, but it does make lemurs specifically a poor supporting example for the argument.
Our closest common ancestors did look vaguely lemur-like apparently, but it also was quite a long time ago.
arsv
2mo ago
G. Friedman, The Next 100 Years (for no particular reason other than I just finished it)
...puts it more like natural enemies, for about as long as he thinks Russia will be a major factor in international politics. Which won't be very long in his opinion. From that point on, it just won't matter much for the US. At no point in the next century does he predict Russia being particularly friendly with the US, not even as an ally against a common enemy.
arsv
2mo ago
Wikipedia has a whole page on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_Queen_Victoria
De novo mutations do happen. Your idea would require her mother (who was in her early 30s at the time) to cheat with a hemophiliac man for whatever reason, but life expectancy for hemophiliac men in the early XIX century was abysmal, and guy she was rumored to have an affair with was quite healthy. If anything, her cheating with a younger guy would actually lower the chances.
arsv
2mo ago
Timing, mostly. There was presumably a window when the administration could have done something to mitigate the spread of a new disease but didn't (see the original question). Within that window, it was already too late to do anything realistic about the gays. Ten years prior, before anyone in the US knew anything about HIV or AIDS, yeah maybe. By the time the healthcare system started noticing the first wave (mostly gays coming down with late stage disease) the infection was already spreading beyond that particular group.
Reminder that HIV infection has a latent phase measured in years.
I would personally file Mearsheimer under "pure expansionism, and that's not bad", taking his arguments realistically and in good faith. His justification through spheres of influence and great powers does not require any actual threat to be present.
Zeihan is lot more straightforward, he talks about very conventional military threat, in very direct conventional sense. Like actual land invasion.
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