sansampersamp
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User ID: 751
sansampersamp
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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:
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Aaron Mate
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Max Blumenthal
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Tulsi Gabbard
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Caitlin Johnstone
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Greenwald
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Michael Tracey
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Jimmy Dore
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Kevin Gosztola
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Richard Medhurst
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Peter Coffin
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Caleb Maupin
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Katie Halper
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Ryan Knight
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Scott Ritter
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Richard Sakwa
Unsurprisingly a lot of overlap with RT America, when that used to be a thing.
sansampersamp
2yr 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:
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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.
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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.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Unconventional assets (stealth) are rather scarce and whether they're truly stealthy to a peer adversary is a rather open question.
Have to admit I was expecting a link to some Russian wunderwaffen instead of a 1980s tracker that can be completely foiled by turning your radar off (like anti-radiation missiles haven't been a thing for decades).
The strategic air defense network they have is expected to require weeks to months of reducing till bombing can proceed in earnest with conventional assets.
This RUSI link from January is a fun throwback too, I imagine the assessments of Russian IADS have changed somewhat since then. Note that it doesn't say it would take months to carry out effective SEAD, but: "The question is not whether the Russian IADS could eventually be degraded and rolled back, but whether NATO forces could do so quickly enough to avoid defeat on the ground while deprived of regular close air support in the meantime."
Not a particularly relevant concern re: Ukraine.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Why is the assumption that Germany was taken by surprise, conditional on the US being responsible?
Funnily enough I was thinking how once again Australia was passing through with a much more mild economic cold than the rest of the West (inflation has consistently been a few points lower than the US). A falling currency is also not necessarily a bad thing for a net exporter.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
If we're talking predictions, I'd say with 80% confidence that nothing of political consequence (leadership changes, notable policy backflips) will happen in Germany as a result of energy-related popular unrest that remains salient or has otherwise lasting effects into the following summer. Similar 80% prediction that winter protests or riots don't noticeably exceed the impotency of the covid ones.
I'm fairly confident it was someone in Nato or aligned with them, just pointing out that there's a bit of 'worst argument in the world' going on calling it an attack on state infrastructure when that infrastructure was not in use and the government had standing political commitments to not use it again.
The practical function of "covert" means state actors can let norm violations slide without undermining the norms. Sometimes it is in your interest to pretend not to see something. Ukraine equivocating as to whether it directed the helicopters that bombed Belgorod is another example: everyone knows they did it, but Russia and the US can pretend otherwise if a frank accounting of the facts would trigger responses they actually don't want to or can't follow through with (e.g. US constricting arms shipments, Russia escalating).
A military would sometimes burn their boats after landing on enemy shores to impress upon all soldiers that the only way back is through (Cortés, famously). Everyone may vocally say they'll cooperate at the outset, a good way to get them to commit to that is to just burn the defect button.
sansampersamp
3yr ago
Very unconvincing to me, not least because Putin has been incredibly risk-adverse and reticent to do anything that could be construed as escalatory as far as Nato is concerned.
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.
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