johnfabian
1yr ago
johnfabian
1yr ago
I was reading a thing (probably from one of the pro-Russian sources, so salt to taste) that both sides have discovered a winning tactic that works well in this war along the lines of "temporarily occupy small village that you don't care about with an unsustainably small force -- when the enemy 'retakes' the village, quickly withdraw and level the village (plus enemy troops) to the ground with artillery".
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon - it was first employed by the Germans in WWI when they abandoned trench warfare in the west in favour of a strongpoint system in late 1916. The idea would be you have a lightly held outpost line that you pre-sight for artillery fire. Troops holding this line offer minimal resistance and then withdraw in the face of an enemy attack. Then you can counterattack an over-extended and disorganized enemy with very accurate artillery and fresh troops. This tactic was also used extensively in WWII and was something the Allies would specifically train against because it was so common.
johnfabian
1yr ago
The general principle was that once you seized a resistance line, dig your own foxholes and prepare for immediate counter-attacks. Using German trenches/fortifications was risky because they were usually pre-sighted for artillery and booby-trapped. This might seem like an obvious concept but in the exhilaration of battle when the enemy has seemingly broken it was not second nature to soldiers, and the tendency to get caught out by German mortar/artillery fire was common among replacements. What could really blunt the effectiveness of German counterattacks was having forward artillery observers; the firepower that American or Commonwealth troops could call on at the company and platoon level was in another universe entirely from what the Germans had on offer (German soldiers often grumbled that fighting the western Allies was a "rich man's war"), and the western allies had already mapped out range tables for the whole of France before landing in Normandy. This had been recognized as important in late WWI due to the similar need for breaking up German counterattacks.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Based on the news coming out of the UK, it looks like this might be the end for Queen Elizabeth II.
I think it's easy to underrate how important she has been as a figure of calm and stability after WWII. The Empire fell apart rapidly, and the Commonwealth and the UK itself might have as well if not for a universally respected figure to rally around. We'll see how things go after the initial period after her death but I would expect there to be greater support for Scottish independence and Irish reunification in the aftermath, and a growing republican movement in Commonwealth countries. Some anticipate that Charles will not become King (at the very least he probably wouldn't rule as Charles, given his namesakes) and instead abdicate for his much more popular son.
It's hard not to feel a keen sense of decline that over the course of her life the UK has gone from the likes of Churchill and Attlee to that of Bojo and Truss. Western nations have a tendency to devour each other in the culture wars and one of the few stalwart defences against that was a unifying public figure like Elizabeth II. I don't see any good coming of this.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It's important to remember that the Hugo Awards are not awarded by a panel; they're pure popular vote by those who attend Worldcon (or, alternatively, purchasing a "supporting membership" for voting rights for ~$50).
So naturally they tend to reflect the type of person who cares enough a. to attend Worldcon, b. to vote, and c. to make their vote reflective of their politics.
The results speak for themselves. But I do not think they represent some co-ordinated, deliberate attempt to pander.
johnfabian
1yr ago
To further your baseball analogy, old-fashioned sign stealing is an "acceptable" form of cheating, that everyone does to some extent and is accepted in the culture of the game. What the Houston Astros did was egregious cheating outside of the accepted culture that was universally condemned (except by the MLB, unfortunately).
Any cheating in chess effectively follows example #2 because of how strong chess engines are.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Yes, baseball is very much a "hang-out" sport. I love playing baseball, love going to a game, hate to watch it on TV.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I'm reading The Road to Dien Bien Phu, essentially a chronicle of the First Indochinese War from the perspective of Vietnamese state-building. Essentially the thesis is that Vietnam differed heavily from other post-colonial wars in that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam tried to build a centralized state with the capacity to wage conventional war (what the author refers to as "war communism") rather than relying on a non-centralized guerilla resistance.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I should also add that this individual is kind of a stereotype of a "trender"; she's gone from being a woman in 2019, to agender, to nonbinary, now to ftm trans and nonbinary, with pronouns shifting every time (as she's gained increased prominence within the Green Party/national politics). She now uses he/they/ille pronouns (that's a French neopronoun), so wow, quelle surprise that someone misgendered her.
(I would say that normally I'm fine with going along with someone's preferred pronouns, but when it is so obviously farcical you have to draw the line).
johnfabian
1yr ago
Yeah, I'm on the same page as you are. If you make a genuine attempt to present male/female I'm all good with it. No neopronouns and no they/thems though.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Eh, I think that's underselling Paul's position. Her chief-of-staff was saying that all Green MPs have to be Zionists, and she was backing him.
johnfabian
1yr ago
(e.g. Aragorn wasn't played by an Anglo-Saxon actor, a lot of the music was Celtic...)
Mortensen is Danish, so it's very plausible he's a direct descendant of the Angles.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It's especially ironic in that Redditors have done a 180 and now are all for companies using their power to discriminate
johnfabian
1yr ago
I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons.
Some good ones I think of from time-to-time:
-
incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent
-
Terri Schiavo
-
stem cells in general
-
Israel/Palestine (comes in waves; gets forgotten for five years then comes back)
-
creationism
johnfabian
1yr ago
Yes, LEDs ended up being much better peformance-wise and were introduced shortly enough following fluorescents that the weird culture war element of it fizzled. But back in the day there were a lot of bizarre op-eds written about it
johnfabian
1yr ago
Firstly, tactical nukes would be used against formations in the field, not cities. That's what strategic weapons are for (of which Russia has 4000).
In the context of anything except a global thermonuclear exchange, there is effectively no distinction to be made between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Either would be a massive escalation of force and perceived risk. And even the yields on smaller tactical nukes make large civilian casualties/devastation inevitable. Little Boy would qualify as an unusually small tactical nuke in the modern context, and it killed 100k+
johnfabian
1yr ago
It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).
I've wondered whether I should make some kind of post about why neoliberal (so to speak) visions are so ugly. Like when the Soviets or Nazis dreamed big they dreamed a perfect world, where people were strong and brave and smart and beautiful. (nevermind the pile of corpses just out of frame)
But then you compare that with whatever the hell this is. This was a Green poster for the most recent German election. Forget about whether or not it's feasible. Their idea of a utopia is just ugly (and never mind all the weird elements that frankly make it look like a far-right parody of what a liberal would want)
Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create. More and more I wish the Soviet Union hadn't fallen; we've just gotten so pathetically complacent without a rival ideology
johnfabian
1yr ago
My dad went to two Indian residential schools in his youth (he's white, just grew up in the north). Every now and then I mention it and it kind of breaks people's brains because they never consider it a possibility. Because 1947 was the end of mandatory attendance most of the indigenous people around where I live don't have parents who went to residential schools (or at least my three friends in high school didn't).
Though let me say I never use this as kind of a trump card or whatever. My dad's experience was fairly out of the norm and it doesn't really have any relevance to the years (mostly the 1890s-1910s) where the residential schools were pretty awful for students.
johnfabian
1yr ago
There was an amusing article linked on /ssc the other day (since deleted) which decried those who supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "brainwashed empire automatons" and "imperial apologists."
Whoops, I got that mixed up. The author actually meant that if you opposed Russia's war of conquest you were an imperial apologist.
All it is is that that some people hate western liberals (the people they know, and meet, and talk to on the internet) more than they do people committing war crimes. You've read the SSC essay.
About a decade ago I read a history of the Third Republic and found myself bemused that there were so many French who hated the opposing political faction that they would very literally prefer a German or Russian takeover (and the ensuing bloody purge of their rivals) than trying to work together and prosper. Now I don't find it so amusing.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I was bemused, and subsequently not amused.
Plus, it is not as though RoP is actually a Waterworld or Heaven's Gate or similar; as you say, the perspective is that it isn't a "ground breaking masterpiece".
Quality-wise, it's really bad, and given that they're on the hook for five seasons of this it might yet turn into that level of disaster if they're paying for all five seasons of it.
How to exactly gauge the success of a streaming show is difficult; what does a Waterworld/Heaven's Gate-esque flop even look like in the streaming environment? But this might be the one.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Deviations from the source material are about problem #500 with this show. It's really shoddily made.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Just as a gauge of the fan response, House of the Dragon gets on the order of 3-4x as many comments for each episode thread on /r/television than Rings of Power. Similarly on their main respective subreddits (/r/houseofthedragon and /r/lotr_on_prime) participation is about 4-5x higher on the former. For example the "no book spoilers" thread for HotD episode 5 has 11,399 comments at the moment, compared to the no spoilers thread for RoP episode 5 which has 2,586.
At least on reddit it's obvious what is driving more organic fan participation.
johnfabian
1yr ago
even in the Medieval era elective monarchies like Bohemia and Poland practically preferred to pick foreigners rather than from among their own nobles
I think your framing as Napoleon as "absolutist" is wildly incorrect. Napoleon is the central figure of liberalism's history. He more than anyone else is why liberalism won out. France unburdened by the extractive institutions of feudalism was able to fight the whole of Europe and (nearly) win. Massive armies of patriotic men led by officers who gained their positions by merit, backed by an economy not hamstrung by the Church, nobility, and state monopolies forced the rest of Europe's monarchies to make popular reforms, or perish. Even when Napoleon was ultimately defeated he had made 1848 inevitable.
Market economies tend to very badly outcompete state-directed ones. And that means that in a war, it's the market economies that are vastly more efficient and producing all you need to win one. In WWII the western allies absolutely clowned Germany, Japan, and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union with respect to production of materiel.
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