jeroboam
1d ago
What of these roles that I could find on /r/combatfootage would you describe as "the front lines"
I would define frontline in a similar way to you. Frontline = high risk of death + proximity to enemy forces. Whether a particular role is front line would depend on how many people died doing it, but many of those roles could definitely be considered front line.
a 23 year old women might outperform a 45 year old man.
I take it you don't play co-ed sports. It might be worth an effort post, but there are lots of reasons why men are better than woman at combat that even this age gap wouldn't come close to erasing.
2% is fairly low. Frontline troops can mean Artillery gunners, FPV drone user ect, there are so many different combat roles in the military that they can find the least bad role for women to save more men for the infantrymen.
I suspect that this is where the 5,000 number comes from. But if women are being used on the "frontline" to save men for the actual frontline then "frontline" is a pretty meaningless term.
What percent of Ukrainian front line troops are women?
Good luck finding a real answer to that question. BBC claims 5,000 but that's almost certainly an egregious lie. My guess is that the real answer rounds to zero.
I'm willing to change my estimate if you can find a single story of a woman killed while storming enemy lines.
Authorities have announced criminal investigations in response
Insane how far things have gotten in Germany.
In Germany in 2024, aligning with nationalism may be analogous to a kind of new punk that will definitely freak out your parents and set you apart from the older lamer generations.
In my mind, right-wing is the true counterculture. But I am a contrarian and most people are not.
I think the model of young people as rebels a bit flawed. In many ways young people are slavishly conformist. Think of a high school clique. Or think of the various social movements that became purity spirals, with people cast out over tiny doctrinal differences.
Young people do want... something. They're not sure what they want exactly, but they know they want it hard. This energy can form the base for many political movements, but it's actual direction can be molded from outside. Mao realized this when he created the Cultural Revolution, weaponizing the energy of the young to cow his rivals.
Maybe today's new "rebels" will be a true counterculture, like the hippies of the 1960s, largely an organic movement undirected from the outside. More likely, the rebels will be completely co-opted by the people already in charge, and will be used to fight their intra-elite battles. It's pretty amazing how today's Antifa members have nearly the exact same ideology as a Harvard professor or WaPo journalist. "What do we want! The current regime – but even harder!", they chant as they throw a trashcan through a Starbucks window.
jeroboam
3d ago
T-Bills did not lose any money.
T-bills never "lose" any money. If you hold to maturity you will get paid... in dollars. But tell that to the people who bought 100-year Australian bonds that are now trading 96% under what they paid for them. A promise to pay in 2050 dollars is worth only as much as the buying power of those dollars. In this case, probably not much.
If I have $20 of Jeroboam’s money in my pocket. And you Jeroboam punched me in the face he shouldn’t be surprised when I don’t give him his money back. Seems rational.
But it's also rational when the other kids on the playground wonder "Why, exactly, does this other kid have MY money in HIS pocket. Let me ask for it back."
No accounting for a risks free asset versus a hunk of metal that only has value if someone else values it. Gold is a Ponzi scheme depending on a new sucker getting talked into owning gold. The Dollar is not a Ponzi scheme. People have to use it and if they don’t use it a military takes them and puts them in jail.
The dollar is a medium of exchange. And yes, we are mostly forced by the government to use it. But, like gold, it doesn't have intrinsic value. If the supply of dollars is increased, their value goes down. That why treasuries are not a risk-free asset. It's true that you will get paid back. In dollars. But there's no guarantee how many goods and services you can buy for those dollars.
It's kind of a weird standoff. They build all the stuff that we need. In exchange, we give them ... a place to dump their overproduction.
But somehow it does seem to work. China would probably face severe disruptions if their plastic vomit factories had to close overnight.
By the end of the decade it had already boomed to a price similar to what it is now, like $2000 an ounce.
Not quite. Gold very briefly spiked in 1980. It reached a high of $843 for a single day. It's true that if you somehow managed to top-tick this speculative bubble, you'd have performed poorly.
The returns for most periods after 1971 look decent.
It's (ironically) not really a long-term, buy-and-hold investment, but something that can maybe save you during a big market crash but can just easily tank.
It's actually a wonderful buy and hold investment. What it isn't is a low-volatility investment. And it's pro-cyclical so it almost certainly won't save you during a market crash either. Gold is best as a hedge against a period of high inflation when other assets perform poorly.
Incidentally- treasuries right now have a great interest rate and are still rock-solid safe. This might be the time to just park your money in bonds.
5% is not great by historical measures, but I agree the Fed is likely to lower rates in the next 2 years which might make long-term treasuries a decent investment in the short run. If they lower rates, the new bonds at 2% or whatever will be terrible investments. But you will get paid back. In dollars.
jeroboam
3d ago
It would be nice if we could! Unfortunately China is embedded in every supply chain. They have us by the balls and they know it.
jeroboam
4d ago
Why not? Are you claiming the other 186k per month were shipped back to their home countries?
Only 330,000 people have been deported since 2021: https://www.ice.gov/spotlight/statistics
I'm having a hard time this comment is being offered in good faith. Do you think the border crisis is just made up and the number of illegals has actually decreased since 2009? All those cities claiming they are overwhelmed... it's all just fake? If so, I can forgive you. Google seems to want you to believe that. They are really, really, determined to skew the information here. It's actually breathtaking how heavily their thumb is on the scale here.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=illegal%20immigrants%20per%20month%202024#ip=1
But, yes about 10.8 million illegals have entered the country since Biden took office:
I'll admit this article has a partisan spin. But it's based on DHS data. I could find an unbiased source if Google would let me or if I felt like running errands.
jeroboam
4d ago
Right on. I rode the silver train in 2020 and did okay.
Gold is trading at like 80 times silver which is much greater than its historical ratio and also "God's ratio" of 10-1. It's also apparently useful in some green energy shit, not sure what. Maybe the silver bulls will have their day again.
jeroboam
4d ago
My question is, so what? What do I, a retail investor pleb with barely six figures saved, mostly in things like equities and 401k, do with this information?
Not much. We're probably just all going to have to be poorer for awhile as stagflation bites.
Here's what I'd do. Over time, I'd stop putting new money into bonds. While I'm actually somewhat bullish on treasuries in the 2-5 year time frame, they are doomed to suck in the long run due to the massive U.S. deficits. Personally, I think a 10% allocation into precious metals (either physical or in funds) make sense and will diversify your portfolio. But over time equities have outperformed gold.
And for the love of God, do NOT buy gold miners.
jeroboam
4d ago
If you like excitement, can I recommend natural gas futures?
Seriously, though, silver is very volatile. On average, I'd expect silver to increase by 7% a year as it has done since they stopped making coins out of silver. But the volatility will be very high, and I can easily see drawdowns of 50% at various points.
jeroboam
4d ago
Since no one's posting...
The dollar is done dude. It was nice while it lasted. But I believe that the U.S. dollar's reign as a universal reserve currency has ended. Over time fewer countries will hold U.S. treasuries and do business in U.S. dollars.
But why?
The dollar is a bad investment. How would you feel about holding a currency that is controlled by the government of a foreign country? You'd feel pretty bad if that country is $35 trillion in debt and will need to print trillions more every year to have any hope of even making the interest payments.
China is dumping U.S. treasuries and buying gold instead. It just makes financial sense.
U.S. treasuries are suffering their worst bear market possibly ever. Let's say you bought TLT (a long-term treasury ETF) at its peak in 2020. Today, you'd be down by more than 50% in real terms. What is supposed to be a "safe" investment becomes very unsafe in the presence of inflation.
The long-term picture isn't much better. Since the end of the gold standard in 1971, gold has outperformed U.S. treasuries. Simply buying and holding a lump of rock is better than holding the debt of the U.S. government. And the government was actually in good financial health for most of those years, unlike now.
The U.S. is not a trustworthy partner. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia held about $600 billion in currency and gold reserves. About half of those reserves, $300 billion, were held in the West. After the invasion, those reserves were frozen. Now, they are now likely to be given to Ukraine.
Because of this, there is no reason for a country like China (or any other country for that matter) to store their wealth in the West, or to hold U.S. dollar-denominated assets. It's all conditional on U.S. allegiance.
For most countries, trade with China is more valuable than trade with the U.S. China now dominates most of the world's industries, and the trend continues to point in that direction. Third world countries often have much stronger trade ties with China than they do the U.S. They export natural resources and import Chinese goods. Increasingly, they can do without U.S. goods and services. Do what we say or otherwise you can't have our, um, Microsoft Excel licenses...
As this process strengthens, China will be able to lean on these countries to do business in Yuan, or perhaps in some resource-demoninated currency.
Okay, so the dollar is done. What comes next? Probably nothing major. I don't think that the Yuan will become the reserve currency, or that we'll move back to the gold standard (although global reserves will be held increasingly in gold). But the U.S. dollar will no longer be the uncontested reserve currency. The world will once again be multipolar, with the U.S. just one of multiple competing forces, and not necessarily the strongest one.
In the long run (10+ years) I expect gold to significantly outperform treasuries.
jeroboam
4d ago
And mass immigration was stopped in the 1920s, thereby allowing multiple contentious immigrant groups to assimilate. Furthermore, until the 1970s, almost all U.S. immigration was from European countries. Not counting slavery, of course.
Given that we were near record highs in 2019, imagine what 10 million more illegal immigrants has done to that number.
Efforts to "contextualize" the unprecedented wave of immigration we've experienced post-2020 are typically historically ignorant.
jeroboam
4d ago
Is this a fairly recent thing with Harvard?
No, Harvard has been shutting out ADOS students for at least 20 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html
While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them -- perhaps as many as two-thirds -- were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.
jeroboam
4d ago
Now you have me wondering if this might also be part of the answer to your question - clinics consciously avoiding potentially less qualified candidates from nearer to home, in a way that still makes them look "diverse".
This is the Harvard method. Supposedly, Harvard is like 20% black. The bad news is these are all rich international students, children of recent immigrants, and people with heavy European admixture.
It's been speculated that there are actually no Harvard students who have 4 ADS (American descendants of slaves) grandparents.
Hey, Google actually found it. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/15/gaasa-scrut/
Within Harvard’s GAA population today, O’Sullivan has noticed a seemingly large percentage of biracial students and students who come from socioeconomically-privileged backgrounds. “If we were to count the number of GAA students at Harvard who were descended from enslaved people, came from low income backgrounds, first generation, four grandparents descended from enslaved people, I feel like that number would be so low — like, maybe one person. It’s just so, so, so low,” she says.
Harvard is completely shutting out disadvantaged black people in America. Instead, Harvard pads its stats with people whose only connection with ADS people is the same skin color (and sometimes barely even that).
Ultimately, Harvard and the KKK share the same belief about race: That the color of your skin matters more than the content of your character.
jeroboam
5d ago
What does a Labour government mean for Britain? Genuinely curious.
Under the current Conservative government, the UK has had:
- Unprecedented mass immigration from MENA countries
- Orwellinian speech restrictions
- Covid tyranny
And it's not like the economy of Britain has been swimming along either, as the regulation state continues to choke whatever entrepreneurial spirit might be left.
What does being a "Conservative" in Britain even mean? And what does Labour offer the people that they are not already getting force fed with two hands by the Tories? Even more rainbow flags and mass immigration? Sometimes, I really am glad to live in America.
jeroboam
5d ago
Americans have a lower life expanctancy than Costa Ricans, Thai people and Chileans. The US and China have roughly the same life expectancy.
Yep.
Most medical interventions don't matter that much for people without lifestyle disorders. Skin cancer, for example, collectively only takes 9 days off U.S. life expectancy. So if we CURED skin cancer it doesn't move the needle. Rinse and repeat with a bunch of other diseases.
On the other hand, the existence of diabetes likely lowers U.S. life expectancy by years, and that's with all the treatment. Did you know that 1% of the U.S. budget is spent on dialysis and the average 40 year dialysis patient only lives 8 years?
All in all, we spend like $5 trillion a year just to undo all the damage from our lifestyle diseases. It's pretty sick.
The problem is about to get much worse.
If professors were afraid to fail an underperforming URM in 2010, imagine how much more afraid they'd be in 2020. Once the new crop of doctors hits the market, it's going to start looking pretty bad.
jeroboam
5d ago
Wait, 24% of UCLA med school admittees are black !?
Blacks are 14% of the national population, and like 6% of California's population. What is going here? Those numbers can't be right, can they?
jeroboam
5d ago
Welcome to epistemological hell.
When LLMs become the default store of knowledge, forbidden information will become even more difficult to find than it is now.
I hate Google with a fiery passion, but they've had a couple big (even Earth-shattering) breakthroughs in the last decade.
Invention of the transformer, which led directly to the wave of modern LLMs that have everyone so fired up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(deep_learning_architecture)
AlphaFold. I'm not qualified to comment on this, but it is supposedly an amazing breakthrough with large implications in the field of biotech.
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