functor
9mo ago
The start -stop behaviour is fairly unnatural. People don't do it when walking, cycling, boating or ridng horses. It is really a car specific behaviour. Urban areas existed for thousands of years without traffic lights and then as soon as the car came they were all over the place. Good urban design is less built around starting/stopping and more around interactions. Speed probably needs to come down a lot.
functor
9mo ago
Rather, city streets shouldn't be built for cars. There is no real reason why people should be drivng in cities except for delivery vehicles and workers transporting tools. Streets should be built in a way that is adjusted to people and how people use the streets, not cars.
functor
9mo ago
Rather cars have no place in cities, they take up a tonne of space and make the area around them worse for everyone. Walking and cycling are the natural way of moving around a city and cities should be built around walking first and cycling secondly. Obese people in multi-tonne vehicles isn't practicle, cycling is. That cycling is impractical where you live is caused by cars making every mode of transport impractical including driving.
functor
9mo ago
Why does any of this matter to the US? Sounds like a Ukraine problem. Maybe if Russia had actually achieved any military objectives, instead of being embarrassed over and over.
Your province your problem unless you are starting to let the empire fall apart. If you don't rebuild their massive military your empire has nothing defending that front.
The influences on international finance hit the globe equally
Except much of the world doesn''t sanction Russia and many countries are buying products for bellow the rate sold in the west.
The US remains a hegemon with unparalleled economic power;
China has more manufacturing capacity than the US by a long shot and BRICS has a higher GDP by PPP than G7. China alone outcompetes NATO when it comes to military ship building.
if they wanted they could sink Russia in materiel but what would be the point when they're already achieving their aims?
The point is that they can't find Russia, colonize the middle east and fight China.
Russia is already militarized and is failing to make any noticeable headway in, as you say, a next-level Afghanistan.
They managed to create a giant resource sink for NATO that is going to be impossible to fill with other commitments. For example Ukraine is consuming SAM at a far higher rate than they are produced. Meanwhile China has the most advanced missiles in the world and is producing them at the highest rate.
functor
9mo ago
Change "Western" to American and there's no way to view this other than a colossal victory for the elites who planned it.
What did they win? A client state much bigger in France that is going to be an endless black hole for resources? They have the worst demographic pyramid in recorded history and infrastructure in shambles. They have a military 2.5 the USMC that is going to have to be rebuilt and retrained from ruins once this is over at an enormous cost. Propping up Afghanistan was pricey, this is just next level.
Empires don't fall because they get steamrolled, they fall because they have too many issues going on at the same time. Project Ukraine managed not only to send interest rate soaring while the US pays its interest with new loans, it also became a big black hole for weapons. As for Russia they have managed to ramp up arms production several times over.
The US isn't going to be able to handle a militarized Russia, colonial projects in the middle east and trying to defend Taiwan.
The best the US could hope for is learning what the Romans did at setting up sensible and easily defensible borders.
functor
9mo ago
The issue is that they hyped it up so massively that there is no easy way of pulling out. They lost Afghanistan in 2021, now they have spent three years talking up Ukraine and have wasted enormous resources on it and are losing. Not only has the cost been in the trillions counting the inflation, higher interest rates, and higher energy prices. But the US is constrained in weapons manufacturing. NATO suffers from a lack of hardware, old hardware and low production rates. At the worst possible time a sizeable portion of the stockpiles have been shipped off to Ukraine.
To make matters worse the US will have to reconstitute a military about 30% of the size of the US military. It simply isn't sustainable.
functor
9mo ago
The US is trying to sustain a global empire in which its share of GDP has gone from 50+% after WWII to 17% and falling. The US is overstretched and in a situation in which the US is running from one crisis to another. US military recruitment is way down. The age of equipment is higher than ever and the manufacturing base in a poor state.
The US is now sustaining a force the size of the force in Vietnam at the war's peak for a multi year war far more intense than Vietnam. Ukraine is consuming SAMs and SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. The US army trains 60k recruits a year. Japan trains 10k. Ukraine is going to have to train many tens of thousands per year for the next decade or two, both for this war and for the next. Germany about 200 tanks, Ukraine has lost around a thousand. Comparing the size of the Ukrainian army to NATO militaries shows how Ukraine absolutely dwarfs the UK or Germany. Sustaining, training arming and then reconstituting this massive military is going to be an endless black hole for resources for several decades.
Meanwhile the US is stuck with a bunch of conflicts in the middle east and is trying to outcompete the world's manufacturing super power in an arms race.
Russia doesn't have to defeat the US, they just need to make it impossible for the US to handle all the problems at the same time.
The US wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, regime change Russia and focus on China. Now they are stuck in a massive war against a Russia that is ramping up arms production by several hundred percent, they are sustaining a large force in the middle east and the pivot to Asia isn't really happening.
functor
9mo ago
Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?
Afghanistan was a war without a goal after the first few months. There wasn't much more than slogans as war aims and no real negotiations could be made. Taliban are pure evil, are motivated by nothing but evil, have no legitimate concerns or demands. Those who fight the taliban may rape children and sell drugs but they are still the good guys.
Iraq was mission accomplished without a real plan.
The plan in Ukraine seems to be built entirely on slogans, an extreme sense of moralism in which the western elites are seen as a self evident good and Putin as a completely illegitimate evil.
The people running the west are effectively campaign staff addicted to social media. There is no serious group of people to negotiate with. There is no plan. There is just slogans and polling data on what will yield the most traction as well as whatever the donors are pushing for. Nobody is going to have a serious conversation about eastern Europe's security architecture. Nobody is going to have a sensible discussion about what can be achieved. There will just be virtue signalling on twitter.
Politicians will be allowed to say all sorts of crazy slogans such as "we need to bring down Putin!" and no journalist will ask follow up questions.
We have another forever war with no plan, budget, war aims or leaders that will be held responsible. A war lead by people who will never go any where near the front themselves and who are more interested in the perception of the war than the war itself.
Wars like that don't tend to end with nice treaties.
functor
9mo ago
Colonial wars in the middle east.
It was the first time enemies couldn't be seen as having any legitimacy. There were no rules of war, just terrorists that have no more rights than vegetables. They can't be negotiated with, they are barely treated as prisoners of war, have no arguments that can be accepted and anything that happens to them is justified. There is no judicial process for terrorists and anyone suspected of being sympathetic can have all their rights striped. Total surveillance is acceptable against terrorists.
Much of the legal framework for the deplattforming comes from the war on terror.
The west built up a huge apparatus of professional regime change counter terrorists who worked in the middle east from 2001-2015. Then they came home and brought their tactics with them. Secondly, the big challenge to the regime is no longer Al Qaeda it is the own population.
Right wingers who supported the wars in the middle east effectively scored the most epic own goal in history and shot them selves in the face. The repression of the last couple of years is the military industrial complex being used against the own population.
functor
9mo ago
Labour got fewer votes in this election than the last one. There was no labour hype, there was just a collapse of the tories. Labour got 33.7% of the vote in an election in which the turnout was 60%. About 21% of those eligible to vote voted labour. Among ethnic british people less than 20% voted labour.
functor
9mo ago
I would probably get a better contract for something that big. But there are a million little agreements that have to be signed. I got a rental agreement for a 4 square meter space in an atic written by chatgpt. If I lose that small amount of money because someone actually wants to bring it to court I am still saving money.
functor
9mo ago
I find it is excellent for small simple contracts. Want an NDA, a form for a leave of absence application, a privacy policy for a website, a small contract to sell a used car, a contract to hire the neighbors kid to work a bit during the summer as a tester or similar it works well. A will for a person who has simple finances or the paperwork that needs to be signed when checking into a hotel.
It is pretty great at coming up with domain/name combos for a business.
Chatgpt did a better job of explaining the swedish tax forms for me than the government website.
One thing I have realized after spending a few years in the startup scene is how legal expenses are a huge burden on a startup. Various contracts need to be drafted and they can cost thousands each. ChatGPT can draft these simple contracts.
functor
9mo ago
The Soviet union fell without guns. The people who built Detroit, south side Chicago and Atlanta largely were forced to leave their cities and were replaced without any resistance. The US has never really had any insurgency or militia fighting the government. Northern Ireland had the IRA, the Spanish have independence groups, Italy has had groups fighting the state, Germany had the Baader–Meinhof Gang. The US has had indviduals go bananas and a group of Saudis conduct a major attack but no organized insurgency.
functor
10mo ago
They have no other option.
They have created a society in which people have less sex than ever, have fewer children than ever and can only dream of getting the housing their parents had at the same age. They have no idea how to fix it so the result is to find ways to make the people who point out the problems seem illegitimate.
There were large riots due to the problems immigration has caused. Nobody in government has a serious and realistic plan for fixing the massive issues so instead of acknowledging them they simply have to blame a handful of Russian accounts. It can't have anything to do with crime, lack of social cohesion, rampant housing shortages or any other issue that the politicians simply can't fix.
If someone is living with their parents at the same age that their parents owned a house the problem has to be their micropenis. They are loser incels and therefore not worth engaging with. There is no political option to create affordable housing as it would completely crash the financial system to bring down housing prices to 3x an average annual salary. Therefore, what is left is repression and arguments that are insults.
Incels are a real threat to the system. The system has failed to create a society in which people can find housing, start a family. People are angry and politicians have no solutions. Lots of young men with nothing to lose and no prospects are the greatest threat to any regime.
The birth rate makes the UK pension system completely unsustainable. Filling the gap with third world labour is going to cause major issues for which nobody has any answers. So if you ask how this is going to be solved your dick is small, you are ugly, your momma is fat and you are a Russian bot so you have no legitimacy.
functor
10mo ago
That is because the people living there are the current stewards of the country. That doesn't mean self interest. Just like parents make the choices for a family doesn't mean that the choices purely reflect their needs.
functor
10mo ago
It isn't an economic issue. It is the UK no longer being British. It is the loss of a people, an identity, a culture och sovereignty. The UK belongs to the people who built it for the past thousand years and those who will inherit it for the next thousand. It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.
functor
10mo ago
I find the lack of self awareness of the British middle class and above to be fascinating. Despite losing an entire empire they still can't see the issues with their behaviour. Do you not think Marcus Aurelius and Alexander the Great found some of their peasants dumb and brutish? Yet they lived among them, fought alongside them and worked hard for them. The UK has some of the most working class people in Europe. Despite having industrialized far ahead of most of the rest of Europe, your country failed at uplifting its people. They are behaving like hoodlums because the people who are supposed to take the role of the parents in the country have completely abdicated any sense of responsibility. Your ancestors took illiterate peasants and got them to build Australia, Canada and the US. Current elites are crying because people called them the wrong pronoun. Current elites are hiding in an area they can barely afford to live in and whining that the proles are throwing trash bins at the cops. William the conqueror was royalty and acted like it. The current elite act like boy emperors in China in the lead up to some major war. A fish rots from the head, and a society does the same.
The British elite got their people to build the first railway system in the world, the current elite couldn't build HS2 while Uzbekistan has high speed rail. The UK is failing as a state because the elite is corrupted to the core. They cargo cult aristocratic traditions while failing at leading a nation. The fate of Britain is going to be a Guatemala with few areas in which people can play with horses and pretend they are nobles, just like their ancestors in the 1800s.
If a class of pre-schoolers have chased the teacher out of the classroom, it is the adults fault for abdicating their role as adults. If the population is revolting against the elites, it is because the elites have abdicated their role as elites.
The post above is written in the spirit of Versailles in 1789.
functor
10mo ago
Often the reasoning becomes circular. Israel helps the US against US enemies. The enemies are enemies due to conflicts caused by Israel.
A good alternative approach is that of China. They buy oil from Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis. No trillion dollar wars and yet they have consistently gotten their oil. They even managed to get Iran and Saudi to join BRICS together.
functor
10mo ago
Being bullied by the US isn't a good policy for Europe. American meddling is terrible for Europe. From the loss of culture to being dragged into forever wars the US creates constant headache for us. The US makes the rules, we follow the orders is a sad arrangement for Europe. With the US becoming more diverse, more divided and increasinly dysfunctional it is high time to move on.
functor
10mo ago
Next time someone pretends to be horrified over Russia killing a guy in the UK just remember the amount of assassinations the US and Israel does.
functor
10mo ago
If you truly think Muslim immigration is the worst problem facing Europe, then that person needs to accept LGBT rights, a massive welfare state, supporting Ukraine, and so on, and you might get somewhere.
Absolutely not, the polar opposite. A few years ago an Afghan migrant stabbed 8 people in a town not to far from where I live and essentially nothing happened. If the king had brought in a bunch of Afghans into that town in 1900 and the Afghans stabbed people they would have been kicked out. If anything it is doubtfull whether a bunch of Afghans would have been allowed in at all. While today's elite hide in suburbs far from problems the aristocrats of yesteryear would have been sent in first to deal with problems. I worked in a tech park in which thousands of tech workers worked and a few gangs of youths terrorized the place. It would have been completely unthinkable that a group of muslims in the past could have terrorized an area with thousands of men and nothing would have happened.
The issue is not migration, the issue is atheism, no-fault divorce, LBGT, obesity, lack of classical architecture, consumerism and hollywood. The issue isn't migration, it is a symptom. Migration happened because countries are weak and won't be reversed until countries heals. In many ways migration might actually be highly beneficial. We need muslim migrants to act as battering ram to deal with the welfare state and pride. Islam might very well be what saves us from diversity.
More LGBT and Ukraine flags means weaker people and more migration.
functor
10mo ago
Immigration would be really easy to reverse. Start handing out real punishments for hiring illegal migrants. The US is a surviellence state in which the NSA pretty much knows the physical location of every person in real time and spies on all communication. Yet they can't seem to cut off services to people who are in the US illegally.
functor
10mo ago
Also a huge portion of the college degrees require a big left wing government. Sociology majors need a welfare state. Much of the regulation the government invents requires college educated bureaucrats to enforce. A radical reduction of the state would be an absolute disaster for gender studies majors. Lots of college educated women work in child care and other fields that are built around feminism.
Bicycles are far more efficient than cars
By moving people from cars to bikes saves a tonne of space. One of the main problems in cities is that too much space is taken by cars which makes the city spread out and hostile to walking and cycling. This also makes public transit hard as people don't want to walk to it. When everything is spread out walking, cycling and public transit doesn't work well.
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