veqq
1d ago
We don't live in ancapistan so we have to accept some government services given away at below market rates
A fun thought experiment is analyzing everything concretely done in an economic sector and redoing the cluster analysis. Existing clusters (companies) should be profitable and do many unprofitable things along the way (which they might argue ultimately help the bottom line) but you can reslice in different ways to share some services or remove things which merely compete without value add (e.g. advertising to counter the competition's ads). It's a bit difficult to determine what's ultimately accreative economic activity, just looking at the current clustering.
In a different world, with better policing/less crime making public transit more user friendly and with some union busting, to allow low hanging cost savings like train automation, the relative subsidies could fall while the social benefit grows - and the overall economy would waste less on transportation: roads are one thing, but car's depreciate quickly. Just imagine where we'd be with 7 decades of compounded investments instead!
veqq
1d ago
Tribal clan systems (Arabs, Afghans) are incompatible with democracy.
You don't think they're more similar to the original American representative yeoman democracy pre-1840 or so? In form they seem similar, just without the high literacy and civic engagement the American colonies always enjoyed.
veqq
1d ago
Italy is still mostly run by Italians, Spain mostly by Spaniard
It's insightful to analyze Europe(an countries) by individual provinces; the nation states are mostly rather modern of course. Bavaria, Catalonia, Ile de France, Rhone-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy (cf. blue banana, four motors of Europe etc. and Europe of 100 Flags)
veqq
1d ago
Trump's anxieties and reckless tantrums are creating the very conditions that the US is trying to delay.
Verily! As with his 1st term, I remain convinced Trump is a Chinese agent. His every single action but strengthens China and weakens the US (while of course grandstanding otherwise.)
veqq
1d ago
Meanwhile actual Europeans see them as a bunch of borderline-savages
I think this applied to both Americans and Russians.
veqq
1d ago
What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope?
Byzantine Egypt before the Arabs, 18th and 19th century Hungarian and Polish leadership and national heroes constantly worked with and fought for the Ottomans...
- one of Poland's 3 national poets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Mickiewicz
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Celalettin_Pasha
- Formed a full Polish cavalry division for the Ottomans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Stanis%C5%82aw_Zamoyski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C5%82_Czajkowski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teofil_Lapinski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Kmety
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Saint_Clair
Many thousands of examples, the Hungarian ones are mostly in Hungarian only though:
veqq
1d ago
That I, a non-American, had to make the top level post was evidence enough that it's of secondary interest at best.
You effort's laudable. I've begun a few times, but stop as soon as I consider the audience. Others have tried. I'll disengage with most of the internet/noosphere again, as I did some years back.
veqq
3d ago
I feel far closer to being Chinese than Indian just in ethnic/biological terms etc. But culturally? The PRC's partial deracination makes it easier than before! And well, Chinese culture seems easier than e.g. Pakistani (I mean this as closer than India, because of Abrahamic religion etc.)
veqq
3d ago
drone-based violence
The Mexican cartels have been equipping themselves with drones and counter measures for a while. They're mostly focusing on intel but they've been used offensively too. The army's been capturing very capable ones.
veqq
10d ago
easy for Iranians to claim asylum in Europe
The dynamics are weird. I've known Iranian refugees who settled in e.g. Hungary (which doesn't want any and makes it quite hard) while Germany often denies cases of conversion to Christianity, some official going after the family etc. but accepts gay people. (Tangentially, sex changes are a mandatory solution to homosexuality in Iran - by 1987 Molkara convinced the Ayatollah.) There is a huge brain drain of them going to grad school in Europe or Turkey, so many girls doing MAs or PhDs in STEM to escape. The wealthy have also largely fled - in some nicer malls in Turkey every woman has that fake nose...
A few weeks ago, in my community, based on rumors I thought Trump was announcing Venezuelan intervention and made a megathread for his speech and its aftermath. Nothing happened. A bit later it actually happened... On the other hand, I totally dropped the ball on Greenland - those topics would just emerge out of unrelated threads etc. Modding is hard.
veqq
13d ago
I've written a lot about Iran and political alternatives, but it's hard to find the posts. tldr: The people are good and friendlier to the West than many in the West, the government is the opposite and very repressive.
After big terrorist attacks, many groups claim credit to display impact and efficacy. Similarly, one can easily imagine relevant groups here claiming a martyr or presuming her involvement - it strengthens the besieged narrative too.
veqq
15d ago
Can we get some links to full videos that aren't on Mass Media website? Navigating those with all of their ads and popus - even with AdBlocker - is a nightmare. The first one I saw, also, was only a clip of about the final ten seconds.
This seems to have collected the different angles at the beginning and then random coverage afterwards (didn't watch that far).
This is just the main video.
Why are you affecting this tone. Surely you've mistaken me for someone else, because I've had an account since September 2022, which suggests the last warning was 8 months ago.
arguing
I would like to ask when I've argued with any mod (I try to never argue but only add color/details), but you began this interaction assuming insincerity. I didn't even defend my above comment, I was just confused that it wasn't the first such one I've made. Worse, the thing I thought was a warning with we didn't have a warning at all...
veqq
17d ago
Feynman Technique
It doesn't seem to be a technique at all, just... Trying to explain it, then try again addressing any issues you had etc. It's the basic process of learning/thinking (with others' critiquing) which is... what conversation is. I suppose this is a very interesting failure mode (of overall human networking), where too many people engaging with a topic before really understanding reduces overall knowledge!
veqq
23d ago
veqq
24d ago
For $60 on Aliexpress 3-4 years ago, they asked for measurements, then cut, made and sent a rather nice and thick leather jacket which has protected me from an attempted stabbing and from a guy swinging a chain. After a few years, there are still no defects. I am shocked by the quality and was surprised to see Jackie Chan wearing it.
I would say 150+ years of mass immigration before American total hegemonic power
Sure, people don't really care about "power" - but wealth? Already from the mid 17th century, America was more or less the wealthiest place in the world per capita and really broke away from Europe in the 18th century.
And precisely this mindset's why the US, yea West is decaying - instead of infinite striving for excellence, those raised here sit on past laurels and cope away anything better. Living without curiosity is comfortable lest you learn something new and convert everything around you into tech debt to work on - yet that comfort's disappeared, hence our entire community, formed around discussions of cost disease and cultural decline.
More glib, is America, are Americans really just better because of superior protestant-frontier culture - even though they lost their mandate and lack children to be replaced? What distinguishes Chinese in America from those in the PRC, home grown communists from foreign infiltrators, pedophiles from the heartland like Hastert and Foley from Afghan bachah-lovers and Pakistani groomers? REV Group closed factories and quintupled prices so an (inferior!) American firetruck costs a magnitude more than Chinese or even German vehicles, which our communities must pay for, our world is on fire, and you say nothing's wrong.
A perfect example of my point, they are the same language but were not unified etc. rather colonized and converted by other areas - and very recently. By 1860, 40% of Frenchmen still spoke Occitan with a literary history older than French and a Nobel prize in literature in 1904. Catalonia recently had an independence referendum. In 1792, 10% of modern France spoke French and it took 150 years to eliminate/kill off minority languages.
Not just Austria, but even Bavaria and the rest of Southern Germany had their own standard until the late 18th century. Some of the Northern dialects until today have maintained their own standard: Dutch, which Germany had to explicitly erradicate in its own areas.
Even today, no one speaks standard Italian without an accent. The "dialects" remain very strong and heavily color speech in colloquial use.
These are standards imposed over various dialects and often larger speakerships, but there's inherent cultural and linguistic bonds leading to the current clustering. The regional identities are far older (often the regions aren't conncted to current administrative boundaries). In a different world, a lattice of sovereign regions where people spoke e.g. a panromance or panslavic standard readily comprehensible to all speakers (indeed often easier to comprehend than many existing neighboring varieties) could have been possible.
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