DirtyWaterHotDog
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User ID: 625
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
I've had a few moments where I thought I was watching fake videos or Indian propaganda. Then looked into it and turned out the Terrorists/Pakistanis are really that comically evil.
No wonder The Boys fell off after season 2. Can't compete with reality.
Few corrections, observations and 'smells' that imply this time it may be different.
1. It's overt - The attack was claimed by the Resistance Front (Lashkar-e-Taiba LeT). Pakistan operates many terrorist cells in the Kashmir area with different levels of overt and covert involvement. LeT is about as overt as Pakistani intelligence involvement gets. Why be so obvious ? It's so overt that Pakistan's defense minister almost let the mask slip off.(ignore the twitter handle, video is real)
2. It's timely - Last week, the new Pakistani General Munir (defacto leader) gave a fiery speech highlighting Pakistan's militant islam identity, Kashmir and Hindu-Muslim strife. It was big new in India even before the attack. Makes it look like Pakistan really want war.
After indiscriminate firing in the beginning, terrorists singled out non-Muslims to kill them. Separately, sources told CNN-News 18 that terrorists checked people for circumcision (this part is unsubstantiated) and asked people to recite ‘kalma’ to identify non-Muslims and shot them (is substantiated) — ‘kalma’ in Islam is a declaration of faith and serves as the allegiance to God. Those who could not recite it were deemed non-Muslims and were shot.
3. It's cruel - The pointed slaughter of Hindus has everyone pissed. I mean, really ? How comically evil can you be ? Almost as if Pakistan is provoking war.
There have been bigger terror attacks in the past
No. Which brings me to #4 and #5
4. It's extreme - The last time as many civilians died to Pakistani terror attack was during 26/11/2008. (India's 9/11). The only reason India did not go to war back then was because Congress's pro-muslim stance makes it impossible for them to sell aggressive rhetoric towards Pakistanis.
5. It's the right people - Unlike the congress, a war with Pakistan comes with better optics for Modi. Both Modi and Munir are seen as hardline strongmen, more conservative than their predecessors during 26/11.
India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers” and would “pursue them to the ends of the earth. The time has come to raze whatever is left of the haven of terrorists.
6. It's the right signals - The military build up is higher than usual. America has taken a suspiciously weak stance in condemning Pakistan & Modi has said surprisingly little (when it is saber rattling, nations take strong stances. When it is real, they hedge). In such situations, Modi jumps on it and makes strong statements. This time is eerie silence. Like the calm before a storm. In time of silence, the words that get spoken are more important. Modi made a speech in English. The speech was for the world, not Indians. His phrasing was ominous. I expect there to be cross border action at the very least.
7. It's the right incentives - India is internally stable, while Pakistan is in crisis. Pakistan uses war to stabilize their nation. India avoids war because it risks destabilization in Kashmir. This time around, local Kashmiris have been silent. India feels confident that a hot border won't hurt its stability.
All in all. While this may still be a nothing burger. There are indications that this time may be different.
What I expect will happen:
In wars, nations have desired outcomes. India and Pakistan do not want land on either side of the border. Primarily, Pakistan wants to destabilize Indian-Kashmir and India wants to stabilize it. Likewise, India wants to destabilize Pakistani-Kashmir.
Short term - Full scale war is unlikely to impossible. Air strikes are near guaranteed. Given the non-commital language adopted by Modi, I expect an un-easy calm and sudden retaliation. Pakistan is reeling from internal strife. Modi has time. If Modi is feeling it, he can try to secure new vantage points near the line of control, but that seems unlikely.
Long term - Hindus will continue to be aggressively resettled back into the valley. Security levels will stay high. Ie. Freedoms of non-BJP operatives will stay limited in Kashmir. Infrastructure development will similarly continue. Kashmir's stability after the attack will come as a huge relief to Modi. It lends credence to the idea that Pakistan has ran out of traditional avenues (saber rattling, funding local opposition and activism for Kashmir's independence) for retaliation. The abeyance of water-rights agreements with Pakistan would allow for resumption of various half-built dams.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
And for a while they were doing good. India was a languishing in socialist democracy (hindu rate of growth) and a Bangladesh was still finding its feet as fledgling nation. In the 20th century, Pakistan was in a better place than India or Bangladesh. In the 90s, they nearly doubled India in GDP-PPP/Capita terms.
Even as a badly run but stable nation, Pakistan has a lot to offer. It has tons of rare earths. Pakistani-Kashmir is heaven on earth. Punjabi river systems are well-suited for industrialized agriculture. I would much prefer for Pakistan to thrive as nation of 250 million people, than this clown show they've been running.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Temporary victory, but I'll take it. Nice to see pro-transit efforts can't be unilaterally blocked by Trump.
You can't fight Pakistan for the same reason you don't pick fights with a pig. Pakistan doesn't point a gun towards you. Pakistan points a gun and its own head and threatens to shoot. Every Indo-Pakistani war was started by Pakistan, because India has nothing to gain from it.
War doesn't work, because war creates unpopular deaths for India while creating martyrs in Pakistan.
Economic retaliation doesn't work because Pakistan has no economy to speak of. Resource bottlenecking doesn't work because they are already on the verge of famine. Anything more will mean civilian deaths.
Full decoupling does not work because we have long borders. The US can't enforce a border with Mexico, and that's all flat land. Imagine trying to maintain a border up in the Himalayas. Don't even get me started on their nukes.
The failed state of Pakistan is a nuisance past redemption.
If Pakistani leadership stopped to think for a second, they'd realize that India is their natural trading partner. Afterall, these trade routes go back millennia. Karachi is clearly aching for maritime trade with India's west coast. Lahore is 30 miles from Amritsar. Faisalabad is 100 miles from Amritsar.
Geographically, Pakistan's urban areas hug India in the same way Canada's hug the USA. Can you imagine if Canada arbitrarily decided to have zero trade ties with India. Yes, Pakistan is client state to China and could trade with them. But China is too far. Beijing is closer to Anchorage than it is Islamabad. After 100 years of poisoning the well, I am aware that India-Pakistan peace is broken for good. But, what a waste.
Yes, 1 borough of 1 city containing 1.6 million people. All this outrage over 0.5% of the nation's population ?
60% of commuters use public transport in NYC. 3 types of people drive into NYC : Rich people, Blue collar workers and suburbanites who would who have been forced back by RTO policies. Rich people can pay the toll. RTO suburbanites would be compensated by their companies. Hourly blue collar people would rather save time and make a few more dollars.
I don't know if you've driven into Manhattan before, but it is a total shit show. Tolls or not, I can't imagine anyone wanting to drive into the city by choice. Congestion pricing takes what is a universally miserable experience, and makes it tolerable for some while incentivizing the rest to take the less-painful path (transit). It is a as close to a universally good thing as you can get.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Saved ! Great song. Thick basslines make lives.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
It's popular in New York City, because many in New York City don't drive so it's a tax on other people. Not so popular outside NYC.
Exactly ! Why national outrage over a single bridge in a location where it makes sense ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
"Urban crime" is a scoped to make all cities look bad, when the issue is of some neighborhoods in some cities.
Oakland or Baltimore are generally violent. Downtown Seattle or SOMA SF have homelessness and nonviolent property crime associated with it. I dont recommend living in these neighborhoods and I am in complete agreement on the dire need for possibly non-compassionate methods for resolving these issues. But these cities/neighborhoods are rarely the subjects of discussion.
Statistically, transit focused American cities are exceedingly safe. NYC & Boston are the nations 2 big transit cities. Both the cities and their transit corridors are quite safe. Hell, you can fall asleep late at night on the subway and wake up in East NY (murdertown).... and it's still safe inside the subway complex. As mentioned before, bad neighborhoods are ofc crime ridden. But connecting them to a common transit doesnt bring crime to your doorstep.
That being said, I'm glad that the YIMBY/Transit crowd has decoupled from the compassionate/pro-homeless crowd.
Strict enforcement of public safety is essential to getting people to use transit. The caltrain (well run) vs Bart (total mess) are great examples while being within a few miles from eachnother.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
imposition of tolls under the CBDTP pilot project appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) System as opposed to the need to reduce congestion
For context. All revenues collected under this program are earmarked for MTA projects.
If it is the primary goal of the program is up to interpretation. And as you said, the state could always throw it into a pile and use it for MTA projects anyways. Earmarked or not.
I'm with you on everything else. For once, I'm a shameless partisan on the issue. I like to think I can empathize with the stance of my ideological opposite. But car brained Americans have to be operating under advanced stupidy or extreme malice. I see no sympathetic position for them.
Even the smallest inconvenience to cars thousands of miles away makes them go into a frenzy. No one is coming for cars in rural America or the suburbs or even godforsaken cities like Atlanta. We're talkimg about vanilla-ass transportation policy in world cities like LA, NYC, SF, Boston, Philly, Miami and DC.
Not even a red vs blue thing. Californian opposition is so comically evil in their demands for an acceptable subway line that I cant help but think there is something I'm missing.
based on two defects
From the document, this came across as an argument rather than a statement of fact (Sec Transp argues that the 1991 exception for congestion pricing was vague so he he's going to interpret it as he sees fit )
Reading between the lines, it's pretty much a 'Biden let you do it. I wont. Fuck you' letter. It even acknowledges the positive reception among the public.
It comes across as another example of Trump pushing the power of the executive to its furthest limits (every executive outdoes their former on this, but Trump 2 is a whole another level)
Congestion pricing is popular. Its in a deep blue state and doesnt have a partisan bent. (Republicans take the subway too). Im not sure why Trump is so appaled by it other than simplistic 'highway good, transit bad' memes.
Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.
Executive overreach vs executive overreach. About damn time Democrats started playing politics rather than fumbling around like baboons.
I recognize that FHWA under the prior Administration concluded, when executing the November 21 Agreement, that the CBDTP was eligible for approval under VPPP, and that my determination represents a change in position.
What is the precedent around retroactive change to previous approvals, esp. when the capital expenditure is already done ?
Man, is it hard to get anything done in the US. No wonder the infrastructure is crumbling.
Congestion pricing launched after surviving multiple lawsuits filed on both sides of the Hudson River.
How did stuff ever get built in the US ? The system offers infinite tools for opposition to block every project. How did the interstate system get built ? Was there a clear before-after for when this kind of systemic obstruction became commonplace ?
I'm surprised that Trump fans didnt see the civic disobedience coming. Politics and the balance between the various pillars is a massive grey area, always has been. The boundaries around this area are primarily upheld by expectations of civility and perceptions of what gets you voted out of office. "X is illegal" is never that straightforward.
Trump won by throwing civility out the window, slaughtering every sacred cow and still got the popular vote. Dems are learning the obvious lessions. Trump is about to find out why certain pandoras boxes stay closed. (Assuming the dems are somewhat competent )
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Fighter pilot.
Resilience to stress is more important than excellence. Both of them can fly a plane. Only one of them knows how to keep his cool in stressful circumstances.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
In stating examples of scissor statements, your post will recieve dismissive comments. But, I loved it. It articulated why I felt a strong discomfort while reading scotts post.
I thought, ofc no one takes POSWID literally. Then Scott wrote a takedown of the literal implication. It felt oddly tonedeaf for him. Turns out, people do care about the shallow claim.
To me, POSWID accusations are veiled versions of "sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice". This is especially relevant in American meritocracy, where incompetence may be seen as worse than malice.
If American police keep killing black people without sufficient body cam footage and police are good people, then maybe theyre stupid. After spending a year in SF, maybe social workers combating homelessness are incompetent. American defense, healthcare, etc. Stupid or evil. Pick one.
Calling people stupid is a social faux pas. POSWID claims are a socially acceptable way to call people stupid.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Yes, but that's because they believe they can have their cake (their Indianess, communities ties) and eat it too (be in a clean & wealthy place).
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Unfortunately, change usually comes from violent revolt. Olds don't fight. Geriatric welfare is a democratic phenomenon.
SK is primed for revolution. Every man serves in the military. They had a (failed) emergency and subsequent (successful) impeachment last year. The leader before that was ejected in a anti-govt protests. So far, jobless men giving into a 'laying flat' depression rather than violent retaliation. Not sure how long that will last.
South Korea is a fascinating nation. A first world nation where everyone seems miserable. Strong contrast with India, where people live in literal filth, yet seem happy and content. What's the main source of this deep nihilism ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons
Fisheries is a massive industry. We're seeing widespread collapse of wild populations for crabs and migratory freshwater fish.
Agriculture, fisheries & husbandry are always subsidized by govts. Govts move research burdens away from the farmers, by making public universities do the heavy lifting instead. These jobs were not created as a result of DEI. The 'tuna research' guy was in his job since the mid-1990s. It's indirect social-welfare.
US will experience a "brain drain"
The US is defined by brain-gain like no other nation before it. It has selected for 2 things : Intelligence (high skill immigration) and agency (the kind of person who will seek gold an ocean away). Brain-gain is practically American industrial policy. Cooling down would still imply brain-drain on the balance.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Vivek and Vance seek power. Ackman seeks money. It's different.
Lastly, the current trading system, while far from perfect or fair to the U.S., has served us extremely well so we need to be prudent in how we change it so as not to upset the world order in such a manner that it disadvantages our country over the long term.
The fear is palpable
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
because of low hanging fruit like the Common Crawl
You're underselling the size of Common Crawl. At that pretraining scale, the emergent properties of the model are near identical. Shady data is useful for turning models into experts at narrow tasks. But if the task is generic and isn't gated by access to shady data, then the models will give identical answers.
Broadly speaking: Model_output = function_of(prompt, post trained personality, conditioning information)
I am assuming that the prompts were identical and the post-training personalities don't factor into this exercise. That leaves conditioning information.
Fields like programming (Github) and News (Twitter) have private sources that Openai or Grok can leverage to get an edge over their competitors. Other fields like Physics, gaming & image creation are amenable to simulation and therefore improvement through RL. Lastly, private data collection can help fill in gaps for applied fields where there is a rift between what is written and what is understood. (medicine, law, etc). Macro-economics is none of these 3. There is no simulation, no private corpus, no information that an expert can feed into an LLM that improves its intuition on how markets work. In such cases, the LLM will default to a logical process that emerges from the median knowledge of its public corpus.
This means that models will give identical answers.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
4o, o3 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily.
Bruh, they're all trained on the same base data.....ofc they give the same answer. It's like seeking the true religion, and then interviewing 5 different people in Saudi Arabia.
The models diverge in post training areas (coding, creating writing, etc), but not on long-tail questions like 'how to implement tarrifs effectively'.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
Neither are unconventional but....
- Banana bread should always be toasted. toasted till the (salted) butter burns. Heaven on earth.
- Pain Perdu = French toast. But, instead of adding sugar into the mixture, you sprinkle it on the soaked bread and then toast it in butter.
I suspect Brazilian cheese bread will toast great.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
They aren't anywhere near the city of Dnipro, but they control the other side of the bank for the last 400 kms leading to the mouth.
These are the control maps as they stand: [1] [2]. The 400 km stretch gives them plenty of bottlenecks to choke Ukraine's economy with plausible deniability and limited military intervention.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
Could you elaborate on this ? Do you mean the GTA ?
25% of Canada's population lives inside of Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal. Ofc they get to decide regional and national outcomes.
- Greater Toronto controls Ontario.
- Greater Montreal controls Quebec
- BC / Vancouver are wild cards
- Greater Montreal + Greater Toronto control national politics because they have more people than all the remaining provinces combined (Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland)
For all intents and purposes, the nation of Canada is one consequential urban corridor containing 50% of its population (Quebec City -> Toronto). The remaining Russia sized mass doesn't get a say, because it is the minority. That is how it should be. For comparison, the Boston - NYC - Philly - Baltimore - DC corridor only contains 14% of Americans.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
What's your current take on the ongoing Ukraine diplomatic drama? Are the Trump Talks likely to lead to the Trump Treaty? Or are they just ongoing comedy and flailing? What does a durable peace treaty look like these days?
Trump squandered hard won leverage for nothing in return.
Ceasefire is a good idea. But the terms hugely favor Russia. By freezing current boundaries, they give Russia full control over the Dniper river. For all intents and purposes, this will doom Ukraine to Russian control. Trump held all the cards, gave Russia everything they wanted, and asked for nothing in return. I don't get it.
The standard argument is that American resources can't be stuck in Europe. The next war will be in the Indo pacific, and resources need to be focused there. I agree on all points. But then, why not force Russia to economically decouple from China ? Post-Ukraine-war, Russia has become economically dependent on China, ending up as the clear junior partner in a fast developing 2nd front. Before the war, Russia was economically coupled to the EU. From an objective perspective and from the perspective of political maneuvering, this sudden ceasefire doesn't help him or his allies. The US might be able to refocus on China militarily, but I don't see them gaining economic leverage on China.
Everything from now is speculation and likely won't happen, but Trump's actions increase the possibility of the following events if nothing changes. Here goes: Ukraine is too dug in. Lot more Ukrainians will die before they formally concede. Now that Ukraine is caught with their pants down, Russia is free to mount a fresh offensive come spring. EU will have to choose between focusing their large capital expenditures on reindustrializing vs rearming. With the (arguably misplaced) paranoia of a hot-war with Russia, they will be forced to pick the latter. Therefore, they'll losing vital ground to China as it eats more of Europe's high-skill industry lunch. Ukraine's reliance on EU will make it bad optics for Europe to repair ties with Russia. As a result, Russia will build deeper ties with China formalizing the 2nd front for good. By creating strong incentives for an economically strengthened China, a concrete China-Russia block & a weakened EU, I fear that Trump might have kick started the end of the empire.
I don't believe that Trump is a Russian asset. But the man is following every step of the 'is a Russian asset' playbook.
P.S: My fanfic assumes that the publicly shared details of the deal are what the deal is.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3mo ago
Agree. There aren't a lot.
The last 2 years have been especially lame. For me, ZFold3 (2021) was the last 'special' phone.
But, ones I use daily are:
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Folding phones - I had the Samsung folds and it isn't a gimmick. The huge screens make a difference. I loved being able to point the point at any angle, rest it on a surface and take photos of myself without needing to ask a bystander.
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Remote trigger - specifically, the ability to press the samsung stylus buttons to take a photo. They enshittified this one though. The S25 stylus lost this feature and the ZFold 5 doesn't allow you to store the stylus inside. This paired well with folding phones because I can place the phone where ever, and take a photo from the button on the stylus.
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Better GPS & fitness tracking - I put them together because they're usually used hand-in-hand with the smartwatch. GPS is just better (agressive) now. I use it for skiing and it tells me my top speed, tracks my runs and all the standard fitness stuff down to the second. Eats your battery really fast though.
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Location based actions - Auto switching my ringtone/vibrate/notification profiles between work & home locations.
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Picture in picture - Not exactly new. But now stable in all new phones. I can have a floating window playing youtube on my phone 24x7 without affecting the smoothness of the phone.
As I type this, they're all minor.
I has a OnePlus 3T in 2017. It was a substantial improvement on every aspect of my previous smartphone experience. Between the 3T in 2017 and the S25 in 2025, Not that much has changed.
There is AI stuff ofc:
- Better camera post-processing
- Google Lens
- Google Translate
- Insane image editing (removing objects, moving people within the scene)
But for some reason that feels like its own thing.
The rivers are already shut off for all intents and purposes. Pushing it further can set scary precedents in the sub-continent.
India could go upstream and cut off rivers at the source, but Pakistan's best friend (China) controls even more important rivers upstream. If China did a tit-for-tat than India would lose a lot more than they'd gain.
It's the main reason I consider Indian inaction to the Chinese annexation of Tibet to be the worst strategic misstep of a newly independent India. And for those who say 'India did not have the resources', Tibet is a defenders dream. All supply lines are cutoff for half the year. You can't lay siege, you can't set up shop, you can't invade. Well, I have enough reasons to dislike Nehru already. But here's one more.
Ofc Patel was on the right side of history. Everything I read about him makes him seem like a 'Lee Kwan Yew' style pragmatic statesman that India needed. But ofc, Nehru chose naive optimism as he always did. Oh, how I wish the man had just gone to Cambridge and been a brown Francis Fukuyama instead.
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