jkf
2mo ago
So you don't like hearing people talk about the Ukraine war at all? Nobody is forcing you to read it of course, but it's been a pretty major topic of discussion on here for a number of years.
jkf
2mo ago
An army green t-shirt and an cheap bomber-style jacket, yes -- that's kind of the point being made here.
jkf
2mo ago
Looks more like the guy who shops at the PX of the local army base and then hangs around nearby bars to me:
"I'm not saying I'm a soldier, buuuuut...."
jkf
2mo ago
So now that you know what realpolitik is, how confident are you in your ability to distinguish it from Russian propaganda?
jkf
2mo ago
The only IT practices you need there are regular backups though -- "fuck off" is the best response to ransomware people -- a week's financials are not much leverage for them.
jkf
2mo ago
I'm thinking of stuff like this:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5692
Granted it doesn't say "send Ukraine X tanks and Y artillery shells", but doesn't Trump get into impoundment issues if he just sits on the allocation?
The 1938 parallel just does not work. Germany at the time was weakened but growing stronger every day. That's the exact opposite of today – where Russia is strong (due to nukes, leftover Cold War firepower) but growing weaker every day.
Interesting that the warmongers always want to look at 1938 and not 1914 when talking about appeasement -- it's pretty easy to make the argument that absolutely everyone would have been better off if Serbia were just given over to Austria.
It would even solve the question of whether to appease Hitler in 1938, since all he'd be after is a few pfennigs for his latest artwork.
jkf
2mo ago
Interesting about Macron -- Zelensky, I think he just doesn't get the joke TBH. Too much getting high on... if not his own supply, that of the social media egregore which turns out not to have much actual power.
That said I didn't really seem much in the deal for him, so he hasn't really lost anything. Does Trump even have the power to unilaterally cut off aid? I thought that was mostly a Congress thing.
jkf
2mo ago
AFAICT all of the facially-retarded diplomacy that Canadian politicians have been doing on the Trump issue has in fact been pretty effective for their internal political fortunes -- not sure I see an angle here for Zelensky/Macron, but that'd be the way to bet.
jkf
2mo ago
Might want to tune into something or other in case of Emergency Broadcast System messages tho...
jkf
2mo ago
If the government can retroactively declare you illegal because you cheated with your immigration paperwork
Well they can certainly do that:
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-l-chapter-1
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/us-citizenship-revoked-bulgarian-man-marriage-fraud-scheme
https://fam.state.gov/fam/07fam/07fam1200apD.html
that would immediately call into question the US citizenship of a lot of people.
I think that's the point!
What I was getting at with the spies (vs the soldiers) is that they do get tried and jailed for whatever crimes they commit in a more-or-less normal way -- so they are 'subject to the jurisdiction' in that sense -- but it would seem kind of weird to create more potential spies who actually are citizens this way.
I'm unaware of any real life examples of this, but it seems like the sort of thing that must have happened at some point?
jkf
2mo ago
So the children of (non-citizen) spies get citizenship?
(Maybe they do, IDK -- the Rosenbergs were Americans, and I don't know of any other famous examples)
jkf
2mo ago
The original polio vaccine was kind of like this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/02/the-virus-and-the-vaccine/377999/
jkf
2mo ago
That doesn't happen very often, and it's always pretty obvious when it's happening
I'm just not sure that's true -- they lied to us about various covid related facts because they thought it was Very Important That People Do As They Are Told; thing is, they think that about the flu and HPV too. Was covid an aberration, or a removal of masks? I don't really know, but am pretty skeptical of any recommendations based on unverifiable statistical data as opposed to a clear and present benefit case. (Both I and my kids have the usual childhood vaccinations BTW, and I should probably get a tetanus booster at some point -- I'm not anti-vax per se, but I'm not a sucker either.)
jkf
2mo ago
Imagine for a second you belief the vaccines are safe.
Great, even if fatality rates for kids from COVID were super low....well what's the harm? Plus you get the added benefit of herd immunity!
This sounds like a wonderful idea.
Not to me -- the safety of these particular vaccines vis a vis myocarditis is still kind of up in the air AFAIC, but giving the benefit of the doubt on that due to fog of war doesn't get you off the hook. They were also produced on an accelerated timeline as compared to what's normally considered safe by the FDA, and contained some pretty new tech. Even if you believe that vaccines in general are safe, there were unknown unknowns with these ones that really require a sane cost-benefit assessment.
Anyways, if it's such a wonderful idea, why didn't the public health people make that argument instead of trotting out every cancer kid they could find who had the bad luck to die of (or with) covid and scream to anyone who would listen "GET YOUR KIDS VAXXED -- YOU DON'T WANT CHILDREN TO DIE, DO YOU?"?
jkf
2mo ago
HPV for boys? Infection with high risk strains can increase risk of anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers.
I have no idea if the risks are particularly high in absolute terms
Total incidence rate of those I'm getting something like 1/100k/a (https://www.mcgill.ca/hitchcohort/hpvfacts) -- no idea what percentage of those would be HPV related, but that is already well, well within the OOM that I'd find plausible for unnoticed/rare serious adverse vaccine side effects.
You and @Throwaway05 may have some new news on these rates -- but then the question is raised as to why anyone would believe doctors about this sort of thing after having seen how fast & loose the relationship with facts has been, once public health gets on some hobbyhorse.
jkf
2mo ago
Do you have evidence for this?
Evidence that the COVID vax recommendations were not primarily motivated by benefit to the individual recipients?
<gestures wildly at 'everything'>
Recommending them for children at all (or anyone under ~40 really) is a good starting point -- the age stratification of severity was never remotely uncertain.
jkf
2mo ago
I don't know what you're pointing at when you say something like:
what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".
I'm talking here about vaccines that are on the schedule with no clear benefit to the recipient -- COVID for kids, HPV for boys. 'Society' wants these administered for herd immunity reasons (I guess); 'society' also taxes us to the bone and provides pretty marginal access to services that we do want. (ADD drugs, for instance)
What has society done for me lately, that I should bend to its will?
jkf
2mo ago
Sure, that's a reasonable position -- thing is, it's not really aligned with what the public health people say. Hence the burnt credibility.
jkf
2mo ago
by the time the typical vaccine reaches market (let alone when it becomes part of a national schedule), the evidence is very strong.
Flu vaccines? Even people wanting you to take them usually stick to a pitch like "it doesn't work every year, but... can't hurt, can it?" IME. (possibly moving on to "you wouldn't want to kill grandma, would you?")
jkf
2mo ago
Flu: -PMID: 37247308 for a citation that disagrees with your conclucion.
Plenty of citations available saying similar stuff about COVID vaccines -- and the motivation for that (encourage people who don't really need some vaccine to take them in protection of the elderly, opposite sex, etc) is just as present for the flu shot.
That's the thing about burning your credibility -- after you've done it on one thing, people are apt not to trust you anymore in areas where they previously did.
jkf
2mo ago
opting out of vaccination is, to an extent, mooching off the commons.
More than the commons mooches off of us? Citizens don't owe the commons one damn thing by default, and the balance seems tipped pretty far in the other direction lately what with all the accomodations we're expected to make around "living in a society".
jkf
2mo ago
I'm thinking that I should look into working on refrigerators.
I've heard (from a refrigeration/AC tech) that refrigeration/AC techs are in high demand pretty well everywhere, make great money and can do as many hours as they want. I think there's some certification/apprenticeship thing involved (jurisdiction dependent, probably) but you seem resourceful.
My point earlier was that the realpolitik perspective is indistinguishable from the Russian propaganada, for me anyways. Continuing to fight a war you can't win is just not a good idea, even though invading your neighbours is not a nice thing to do.
So Russian propaganda says "Russia Stronk -- Ukraine can't win and should give up before we crush them" -- how do you tell the difference between this and a complicated analysis of military strength arriving at the same conclusion? (which is basically my position on this, despite not being a Russian propagandist -- I do read with interest (for example) Dean's complicated analyses showing that Ukraine might win in the end; I just don't think they are correct)
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