A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
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User ID: 645
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Hinduism is the equivalent of "Mediterranean religions" (including e.g. Mithraism and Greek mystery cults... and Renaissance Catholics writing about Greek mythology, besides the Greek and Roman pagans...). There are mono- and polytheistic Hindus! Yea, there are Buddhists!
Christianity is a single specific branch, equivalent in nesting to e.g. Shaktism. The Catholic Church would then be equivalent to an organization of temples adhering to Shaktism. In Hinduism, there is e.g. Mundeshwari Devi which is like a single small building, but "in operation" for about 1300 years.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
tuna
is delicious and worth protecting. Overfishing's been a huge problem since the Soviets started depleting fisheries in the 60s. Trawlers etc. are painful today. We definitely need research on how to protect our delicious tuna (or e.g. how to farm them cheaply and indefinitely).
China has a severely over-dimensioned property+construction sector and now also a severely over-dimensioned manufacturing base.
In 2015 the Chinese government already stopped emphasizing real estate and announced that it would cut incentives for constructing and investing in it. To stop the "disorderly expansion of capital", they purposefully deflated the bubble, e.g. legislating huge down payment requirements for housing loans, high transaction taxes etc. The expansion stopped a while ago and workers have been reallocated. (Didn't you read all those articles about China's real estate collapse?) (There was a popular narrative around ghost cities too, but they quickly filled up. China urbanized many hundreds of millions of people and still has 150 million to go.) (Freezing real estate, which holds the majority of household savings in China, lets them inject liquidity to specific industries without inflation.)
The industrial base is what you would call an asset. In the absence of trade unions, irksome regulations etc. a greater concentration of capital should reduce production prices (instead of raising them, as e.g. happened in the US) particularly as labor is often quite a modest part of the balance sheet in today's firms.
To paraphrase Rick Rule: "In the super market, when you see tuna half price, you happily stock up. But in the stock market, when your holdings are on sale, you freak out instead of buying more." China did load up on infrastructure. And now commodities are significantly higher than in the past decade, but they just pay their cheap loans off instead of building for 5x the cost.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
4mo ago
The fed's already changed US Q1 growth forecasts from 2% to -3%: https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
Could a rebellion in eastern Congo widen into a regional war?
It already is, multiple foreign militaries are on the ground. Hundreds of Romanian mercenaries were even captured.
most of what we see, believe and hear about is in fact mostly fabricated
Yes, but I'm not sure what the conspiracy theory is. It seems like a paragraph or two was lost before the edit.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2yr ago
Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric
No. Though some splinters remain (some very obvious nazi groups), the model the diaspora coalesced on by the 50s, which became state policy 8 years ago, is a multi-ethnic national state. Rudnytsky, Hrushevsky, Lypynsky etc. are taught in school... Dontsov and his ilk have no cachet today. But yeah, sure, obsess about a few hundred (surviving) neonazis in Azov.
N.b. Kiev already had quite a lot of Afghan and Iraqi refugees. Already by 2017, most drivers couldn't speak Russian, Ukrainian or English.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
25d ago
While I did not find any neutral specific numbers, my gut feeling is that shipping a container by railway is several times more expensive than by container ship.
Rail is surprisingly more efficient than many forms of shipping (e.g. barges).
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
3mo ago
The first girl I ever kissed later did a PhD essentially proposing local government shouldn't be left to regulate things too complex to understand, like energy policy, rather federal or even supranational bodies should.(Our later friendship ended when I pushed for details and asked her opinions on natural counterpoints.) When regulatory capture happens to a national body, the whole thing collapses. When regulatory capture happens in a town, others can still thrive (and you can leave). At e.g. the US state (or European national) level, a few will have enough economy of scale to pass e.g. textbook reform which leads to smaller states following their lead, and e.g. publishers writing books targeting them. Churn happens when a state switches allegiance. Interesting stuff!
The Information's claim that DeepSeek, a private Chinese AGI company owned by Liang Wenfeng, is implementing some very heavy-handed measures: «employees told not to travel, handing in passports; investors must be screened by provincial government; gov telling headhunters not to approach employees».
Is this actually happening and not just coping accusations from a dying empire? We've known for a long time they're ahead. But truly, where Liang last year spoke of Chinese industry seeing its place as only productizing, they see true innovation's around the corner.
American theory of victory
I don't believe it exists. The only articulations thither I've heard involve the Benedict option or deportations, but lack positivist goals. Hajnals of yore built cathedrals, today's don't even hope to build, let alone transcend. It's shameful what they've taken from themselves. This is the West's century of humiliation, but worse as the sell themselves to the youthful Chinese like African leaders to slavers. Many Western traditionalists, Christian nationalists etc. have told me they believe China'd be a better hegemon though, and welcome this. How insular. What of striving, Promethean urges? Does myopic Icarus now only build rocket emojis for his stocks?
How can we disagree? Seeing the new paradigm, my little mind just wonders how to amass and secure resources and continue my line, such middling human concerns. I even work finance instead of pushing the envelope. No wonder we've stagnated.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
5mo ago
Yes this seems Bad For The Economy
How did this impact the German economy if it never circulated (neither entered nor left it)?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
7mo ago
there is zero corruption here, no scope for dishonest people to survive, those at the very edge are people who are not only competent but just better people
This is the most shocking thing I've read in months. No wonder I didn't understand what the conspiracy was. Surely you did school projects and saw people do little getting a lot of credit, surely you've heard of Enron, Theranos and thousands of other companies...? How could you suspend such a thought for so long? How did this Bolt guy of all things break the glass?
That's simplistic. Yes, the techo ecosystem was largely a money incinerator with even the biggest companies (e.g. Uber) burning billions a year. But they could do that because they weren't taxed on those losses. For a personal example (I disbanded a company because of this), 17 million in, 22 million out = no tax. 25 million in, 28 million out = 33.5 million out (5.5 million in taxes, some coming back along 5 or 15 years (as interest free loans to the government)) We went from (hopefully) burning 3 million to 8.5 million, almost triple projected costs (and backwards from 5.)
This came into effect in 2022 before the first interest hike in March. (The equity correction started at new years, coincidence but not related.)
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
10mo ago
Tradition is acknowledgement of eternal truths and their practical, moral, social and metaphysical requirements
@hydroacetylene recently wrote:
every society in history has figured out that harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society. You can have the public and public institutions be unfair to people- indeed, it's impossible for them to be perfectly fair- they just need to work.
What other eternal truths build and uphold society?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1yr ago
What's with the synagogue tunnels?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1yr ago
Off topic:
A reminder to everyone, we have a Telegram group with nearly 100 members. Join us: https://t.me/quokkas_den
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2yr ago
Well I don't buy the whole 'Russia inflicting genocide' line
Russia's stated goal is to reunify the Ukrainian people with the Russian people, destroying an independent Ukrainian identity. That matches the definition of genocide.
By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. ... The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups
Forced assimilation qua taking Ukrainian children is one of the 5 prohibited acts, amounting to genocide in context.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2yr ago
Could you explain the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu?
Previously I vaguely remembered colonial authorities basically made them up. So I looked into it a bit. Wiki e.g.:
They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical features of a longer thin nose, high cheekbones, and being over six feet tall, all of which are common descriptions associated with the Tutsi.
which would add any successful people into this, as if making "kulak" an ethnicity.
Both the Tutsi and Hutu had been the traditional governing elite, but both colonial powers allowed only the Tutsi to be educated and to participate in the colonial government.
🤷♀️
Is it the case where a few disparate groups were sublimated into either Tutsi or Hutu? Or that the Tutsi were a coherent group? Are "official" takes as distorted as e.g. HBD? I'm more familiar with Central Asia, where Kazakhs, Uzbeks and such were basically invented in the 1920s, almost whole cloth.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2yr ago
Tether's story went from "backed 1:1 to dollars" to "holding various tokens" to "we mostly have Chinese corporate paper" all along fighting or failing audits by state regulators and redefining what it's backed by, while printing billions a month without relative inflows.
Where is the evidence for Tether being fraudulent?
Surely you're joking? Google "Tether scam" and there's a deluge of proof, including successful investigations against Tether, which led to Tether providing new reserve definitions.
Iran has 80% VPN penetration. How is that a "small, wealthy, and unrepresentative set"? Although I can be wrong, I'm specifically stating that this isn't just a narrow elite - that the Iranian people are majority friendly/not anti-American islamists.
Thomas Dewey
What are you referring to? I didn't understand but would like to!
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
That's the wrong framing. "Realist" defense concerns play little role in Russia, otherwise it wouldn't have emptied its borders with NATO to feed the grinder in Ukraine. There've been a gish-gallop of contradictory reasons how x or y impact and threaten Russia's security posture, but they are trivially rejected when looking at Russia's actions and the arguments in totality. Rather, for both Russia, this is a question of self identity:
The standard Russian self-image includes Ukraine, where the reformers (1654) and leaders of the church for most recent history, where the first educators, language reformers, where your ancestors (1000 years ago and 80 years ago) came from, where the very fairy tales happened! At the same time, most of Ukraine was not Slavic until the Russians came and took the South, letting the central planes populate, now safe from Turkic slavers. Over time, Russia developed into a great, welcoming multiethnic empire, a true melting pot for its peoples with the sternest nationalist smiling on his Muslim Tatar friends and the president kissing the Quran, brought man into space and brought the arts and mathematics to great heights (otherwise abandoned in most of the West, today). Yes, this great project has had many struggles, but... How can you believe your brothers spit on this, abandon your shared history, authors, everything and move out? (Think of your wife showing you divorce papers...) Love turns to hate, spite, evil, post facto justifying the split.
Translated to American sensibilities, imagine Philadelphia succeeding, the great colonial cities, home of the liberty bell, the continental congress etc. and insisting you have nothing in common, you New Yorkers and Georgians just oppressed them and they don't even want to speak English anymore, but create some new literary tradition etc. etc.
The same process happened in Yugoslavia (which one common Russian narrative holds, broke hope of Russia-West integration.) China is not identical (Taiwan being far smaller and weaker, today and lacking historic relevance), with explicit reunification rather being an important political point. But most importantly, China has already won, as it races past the West in wealth, cultural power and future shaping vibrancy, the growing support for reunification will see Taiwan (even if only by creative interpretation) in the PRC's sphere.
The worst part about Russia in this is that, had they just gone in in 2014 or integrated the Donbas, instead of turning it into a mafia run hell hole, Ukraine wouldn't really have resisted now - indeed, had Putin not invaded, but worked with Zelensky who won on a pro-Russia platform, none of this would have happened. This is a self-own the US is now copying. (For lack of time, I will not go into polyphonic government, where seeing your neighbors thrive might inspire you that there's a better way. Squashing this threat by incorporating or forcing Ukrainians out helped regime stability.)
I'd like to dunk on Mearsheimer as a broken clock which looks right twice a day, but actually that's a stain and it's missing hands entirely. For one thing, he repeatedly stated that Russia would not invade Ukraine (as I too believed) and after it started began “There is no evidence that Putin wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine” yet somehow people claim he predicted everything? Baffling! He constantly praises Russia on the field, claims victory's just on the horizon, that Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk and and and will soon fall, while the lines haven't shifted a day's walk since the end of 2022.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
4mo ago
Either way, why not say it?
Lying is a sin.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
9mo ago
I'm more curious whether there is actually desire to implement it etc. Trump has disavowed it multiple times and many contributors were kicked out of his past administration. On the other hand, Trump is insincere and the base generally likes it.
Can you give examples?
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