sansampersamp
No bio...
User ID: 751
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I'm not sure there was that much difference between them before 2016. The DNC is by no means a kingmaker either, and the experience with Sanders' campaigns has only served to weaken it further. Of course, both parties are astoundingly weak compared to peer countries'.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Just another reason why primaries are a bit of a mess. Strong party elites who can clear the field of detritus straightforwardly improve their party's chance of winning, but what little control the GOP once had over the process has evaporated post 2016.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
sansampersamp
3yr ago
While conviction certainly plays a part, it's not particularly confusing if you look at the geography. To turn Kherson into a grinding urban conflict like Mariupol would mean Ukrainian forces entering the city. This would mean Ukraine separating Kherson from the Antonivka Road Bridge that is the only point of supply or evacuation. Any notional preparations to fight a siege in Kherson would therefore only be relevant if Russians had reached the point where they had lost this key bridgehead. Any Russian forces staying in Kherson would be doing so with the knowledge that they would either die or be captured there, once Ukraine closed in.
The timing also makes sense. Given recent Ukrainian advances, there was only about 5km left until Ukraine could comfortably saturate the sole escape route with M777 or 155mm equivalents, after which withdrawal would become much more dicey.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
In this sense it’s in Russia’s interests to make Ukraine disperse their soldiers across the whole territory.
A withdrawal from Kherson would have the exact opposite effect, as falling back behind the natural boundary of the Dnieper will effectively shorten the front and enable both sides to redistribute any forces West of the Zaporizhzhia-Melitopol axis.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
This may have been the case a decade ago, but I'd be interested in anything showing that it still holds empirically with increasing polarisation on density and education, and decreasing polarisation on race.
Of course, I'd expect anyone cheerleading about voting for the sake of voting to benefit their own politics on average, because people cheerlead to their own social networks which usually are in political alignment with them.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I see 40% voter turnout for the 2018 midterms, which were a record high. I'm not sure what's projected for these ones.
We compel eligible people to vote here in Australia, and overall I'm a massive fan of it. Part of that is that politicking does not need to drive turnout itself, so ironically the half-panicked "please vote, please vote" stuff doesn't feature.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I was sympathetic to transhumanism prior to supporting transgender rights to self-modify, simply because of the order in which I encountered both ideas. A clean dividing line between the many ways our lives are technologically augmented and self-modification made little sense to me.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
For a long time, RP or mid-atlantic was the hegemonic "no accent" English for newscasts and politics. This accent is a contemporary RP, but with a mild Chinese accent on some words (e.g. foreign as for-eeyn).
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I think seeing someone do some enormously talented and exceptionally dumb things makes people try to collapse them down into someone whose stupid moves are all 4D chess maneuvers or whose smart moves are all dumb luck. The reality is probably just that someone can be very intelligent in some areas and inept in others.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I don't remember, was it you or someone else early into the war, there was a post with phrasing like «I'm sure Russians too have analytic centers with very smart people dedicated to planning this stuff, and we're seeing the result of one hyperintelligent network beating another, but it's a high-level play, full of feints and moves we cannot comprehend with our limited info».
I have a pretty good memory for that stuff, this is the comment you're thinking of. My reply downthread:
There's actually an idea in FP that essentially all wars are due to someone being very wrong in predicting how the war will go. If both sides know that an invasion would stall into a bloody mess, it won't happen. If both sides know that one side will confidently win, then they can extract concessions without fighting. It's only when one side is confident they will win with acceptable costs, and the other side knows they are wrong, when war happens.
Similarly: the worst hand in Poker isn't 27o -- it's KK when the guy across from you is holding AA. The former player just folds. Latter player loses his stack.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
And more flexible setbacks, and mixed-use, and less arduous parking minimums, etc etc. Even if you think the position is too minimal or cynical, the net result is certainly not an expansion of state power.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Single-family homes seems like a poor example compared to the other ones, since the main thrust of the pro-density activism is loosening control -- giving people more scope to do with their property what they wish
I don't really want to weigh in on this actual debate one way or another, I just got nerd sniped via the all comments feed.
(note also that the third factor being the slope in the road is also not correlated with the speed, despite a causal link -- these self-regulating scenarios are common in biology, signals, etc, think body temperature)
As a formal note, causation does not require correlation. Consider speed as a function of how much a car's accelerator pedal is depressed, and look at someone going up and down hills while keeping to the speed limit. The car's speed is not correlated to how much the pedal is depressed despite the obvious causal link.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I think there's two main types, the first being ideological MLs, and the second basically being conspiracy theorists. Both types can be similar to online fascists, in that the appeal is mostly aesthetic and deeply contrarian -- imagine investing your time in vehemently defending the DPRK of all things. I think there's more of them than Noah surmises, unfortunately. There's little in the way of a firewall between leftist (as distinct from liberal) commentators/politicians/journalists and these conspiratorial elements, and it takes something like Ukraine to lay these bare. The Corbyns and Chomskys of the world are all too willing to break bread with Aaron Mate and the like, and as far as the former is concerned at least, pay a political price among normies accordingly.
Here's a rough list that might illustrate a more useful cluster than strict doctrinaire tankyism:
-
Aaron Mate
-
Max Blumenthal
-
Tulsi Gabbard
-
Caitlin Johnstone
-
Greenwald
-
Michael Tracey
-
Jimmy Dore
-
Kevin Gosztola
-
Richard Medhurst
-
Peter Coffin
-
Caleb Maupin
-
Katie Halper
-
Ryan Knight
-
Scott Ritter
-
Richard Sakwa
Unsurprisingly a lot of overlap with RT America, when that used to be a thing.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
I saw some screenshots complaining that it had been used as a honeypot for Jan 6 attendees, which while hilarious if so, strikes me as a bit 'too good to fact-check'.
As a mod there -- some would? I think most would reject the dichotomy. Being against a corporate tax and for a land tax or carbon dividend, against most land use regulation, for some form of distribution and universal healthcare, against student loan forgiveness -- you'd lose a bit too much information to sum it up that pithily.
(referring here to the ideological core of the sub, i.e. the flaired DT regs -- the drift-in commenters commenting on random posts are obviously more diverse)
Pinochet support was a bannable offense on day 3 of the sub going live, if I recall correctly. To the extent the subreddit polarised against republicans since 2016 (which is true, and justifiable), that particular stance fell outside the sub's overton window from the start.
Two options you're potentially underweighting:
-
Germany did it. After tense negotiations with the US, Germany agreed to cancel NS2 in the event Russia invaded, in exchange for a carveout of sanctions to complete construction. Germany's commitments may have exceeded what was disclosed.
-
West-aligned non-state actor. This was within the capabilities of anyone with a dozen oil drums of ANFO and recreational diving gear. I've heard too many idle musings from people wishing to do essentially this to discount the option out of hand -- particularly because the frustration usually comes from domestic ambivalence, believing that the state's hands are tied by corrupt commercial interests, etc.
I don't think I'd weight any individual option here >50% though which makes for an interesting scenario all round (though the hydrate plug theory is probably closest to that, with simultaneity explained by them suddenly wanting to fix things).
Wildcard: Russian saboteurs, but they intended to blow up the Baltic pipe instead.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Easy to confuse them, but no, Tamara is a PET (passive ESM tracker) while the systems using second-hand sources like TV broadcasts are PCL (passive coherent location). PET does rely on you having your radar turned on.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
The web service equivalent of not backing up your database, or having an open backdoor hidden somewhere in leaked source code.
To twist the analogy slightly, imagine getting an email from someone saying they have such a backdoor and want to be paid. Do you pay them? What if they just ask for more and more? Where's the SOAR playbook for that?
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Despite being the perfect candidate for corrupt neglect, I don't think I've seen anyone pin their nuclear strategy arguments on the potential state of Russia's nukes. This seems like a massive strawman in that regard.
The argument for why they won't use nukes is based on an inability to construct any kind of payoff diagram for the Russian chain of command in which the nukes square looks preferable to the alternative (given mutually acknowledged tail risks).
The penalty for emboldening dictators is not worse than the penalty for encouraging nuclear war
Permitting nuclear weapons to be used coercively (i.e. folding to nuclear threats) does both in this instance. This is an iterated game.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
The US joins the war conventionally is about the minimum I've seen communicated. Since a non-strategic nuclear first strike by Russia in Eastern Europe or the Baltics is probably the single most examined scenario by the US post-ww2, I'd be surprised if the playbooks don't have the timings down to the minute and statements prepped like a newspaper's obit drawer.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Some real work has to be done to flesh out exactly why Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons makes that preference cascade less likely, not more.
On what point? That 2016 was a significant inflection point or that centralised control under the dems were not also weak (but perhaps stronger than today). Your linked post largely agrees on the importance of 2016 (even if painting it as the apotheosis of an ongoing trend) and doesn't address symmetries or lack thereof.
More options
Context Copy link