veqq
1yr ago
After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.
During Solidarity, emigré publications like Kultura were read through and discussed in Poland, with the anti-communists reaching a clear consensus of what to do. Upon coming to power, they had coherent policy already drafted and prepared. Elsewhere, only after the Warsaw pact or USSR fell were they able to start discussing policy etc. but were then under pressure of momentary politics, corruption, people fiefdoms etc. This is how Poland was able to immediately sign treaties with Ukraine and Lithuania, abandoning revanchist territorial desires - they had already long since decided on this.
veqq
1yr ago
Musk has already signaled cooperation with the Regime.
Or the key fact that SpaceX has been involved with the government since founding, got hundreds of millions in contracts without having launched a rocket yet, with missile defense friends determining where the money goes etc. Musk is the cathdral, Musk is a big player in the military industrial complex.
veqq
1yr ago
Tangential and beyond this, many Muslims (especially in their countries) are really receptive to manosphere and incel type texts. I've recently been befriending Pakistanis, Saudis and such on facebook and they all share the most cringe inducing things by western influencers. It's really disappointing, honestly.
veqq
1yr ago
I know 3 guys who studied theater and acted professionally before becoming right wing political consultants.
veqq
1yr ago
quokka
complains of "akrasia" -- an inability to accomplish things, or he struggles with his own failure to live up to his standards of logic. But his problems are grounded, not in his mind, but in his body
Becoming physically strong is the cure for basically every mental illness in men, such as depression or philosophy.
Hit the gym!
veqq
1yr ago
designed to use asbestos for fire protection. Asbestos was banned right after construction started
Asbestos was used! Near 2000, they were supposed to start removing it. Some of the conspiracy theories focus on the owner destroying it for insurance money to avoid paying for the modifications, with the port authority buying it and paying or... Something. I don't remember. But removing asbestos plays a roll!
Balenciaga is a huge luxury brand. Most better airports have some shops, the flagships in major cities have big lines waiting to go inside. Although around for a century, their primary innovation you're sure to have seen imitations of was sneakers with overly wide bottoms: https://balenciaga.dam.kering.com/m/30e12220cb4b44c9/Medium-544351W2GA19100_F.jpg?v=3
Over the past decade, short atmospheric art films have been huge in the luxury industry. They did one with the Simpsons: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PZHESOq-Gkw
veqq
1yr ago
No one knows what it was programmed to do exactly but here's a good example scenario:
The missile should fly 400km Westward, but a sensor malfunctioned and miscounted its distance. Once that sensor thought it had been 400km, it turned on the visual targeting system. Normally, this would look for a building of a certain shape - but in the middle of a field, it found no buildings. It went to secondary targets, tanks and so on. It found a tractor and went for it.
veqq
1yr ago
That's almost literally my entire approach. My taste stupifies me in its shallowness. Whilst I can wax lyrical on other aesthetic themes, discerning various movements and approaches, describe my personality and character ideals, how they developed, who I know that embody such aspects etc. when it comes to physical beauty:
booba
is all too accurate. It feels like there should be so much more... Alas.
veqq
1yr ago
rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff
I considered that academic scoring could potentially play a big role. In the French system, getting a 20 is extremely rare. It'd be like a 14 year old wrote publishable research. A score of 13 or so is considered fantastic. An Iranian friend applying for US PhDs had an issue where enrollment offices just turned her score into a percentage, giving her a 2.something GPA yet a 170 GRE score. Eventually we got it sorted. The UK has a similar thing too, if I remember correctly. Finland doesn't have such a range however. Germany also only uses 1-5 and expects near perfection.
veqq
1yr ago
Due to "bilingual" education, which in practice means doing HS in Spanish, their children never learn college level English.
This is not accurate: High school is not and has not been all in Spanish. Perhaps in the future, but... California for example only removed the (English for Children) 1996 ban in 2016. (PLIC was offered for a few years in the early 90s.)
-
currently few teachers credentialed for another language
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core subjects are in English (math, science) - there's no current model to do those in another language in highschool
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higher income monolingual parents are using this to teach their kids Mandarin
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these programs concentrate on elementary school immersion
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these programs leverage non-public heritage classes (like Saturday Chinese schools) established to keep kids from losing their home culture (it's not hard to just speak to your kids in your language and teach them, but immigrants aren't generally aware of how language acquisition works.) You end up with 2, 3, 4th etc. generation kids with no connection to the local language, a terrible command of Spanish but perfectly fine English. (Honestly, growing up in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood and going back, I believe complaints about closed off immigrant neighborhoods self perpetuating are solely based on ignorance and memories of them having just arrived in the 80s or 90s. Even the gangbangers primarily use English.)
Going to school myself, only 3 of us spoke English in 1st grade (across all 1st grade classes, and the Vietnamese twins learned Spanish by exposure) - but by 3rd grade everyone had learned. Unlike 20 years ago, only 40% are ESL now. Nowadays they have more kids in the Vietnamese programs than Spanish.
Anyway, education in Spanish or English would be better than what we actually got. I literally had 2-3 actual classes. In all others (including APs), teachers would put movies kids brought in all day and we'd talk or such. I got a lot out of this - reading almost the whole time, eventually going through language learning and programming textbooks.
So to clarify: This is not accurate. These (lower class) Hispanics aren't doing high school in Spanish, because they aren't really getting an education at all. That said, I'm also in Mexico at the moment and quite a lot of Hispanics (and American whites) are studying here (due to the cost) in Spanish. A few girls doing computer science, veterinary medicine, geology...
veqq
1yr ago
In Slovenia, they have university labs full of only researchers who will do experiments for private companies, for a fee. They will invest in newer equipment to do more interesting experiments etc. They do nothing but research. On their off time (not researching on contract), they pursue their own topics with the equipment.
In Germany, there are many research labs, both state and non-governmental like the Plank society (though funded by the state!)
The society has a total staff of approximately 17,000 permanent employees, including 5,470 scientists, plus around 4,600 non-tenured scientists and guests.[2] The society's budget for 2018 was about €1.8 billion.[2] As of 31 December 2018, the Max Planck Society employed a total of 23,767 staff, of whom 15,650 were scientists.
and
In 2020, the Nature Index placed the Max Planck Institutes third worldwide in terms of research published in Nature journals (after the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Harvard University).[5] In terms of total research volume (unweighted by citations or impact), the Max Planck Society is only outranked by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences and Harvard University in the Times Higher Education institutional rankings
veqq
1yr ago
tl;dr: Yes, Russia made everyone choose a side and the masses clearly chose Ukraine, including the vast majority of Russian(speaker)s. The war is daily souring impressions further, making people transition to Ukrainian more and more. Ethnic purity is literally irrelevant, buy in for the anti-Russia project counts. See many Russian dissidents who moved to Ukraine and became Ukrainian citizens in the past years.
Also quite a lot of Turks (ie just Muslims). Very significant parts of Western and Central Anatolia are full of ethnically cleansed people of Bulgaria.
Yes, very much so.
But the resulting country is clearly rather shit and Russians aren’t integrating so voluntarily.
Well, that's not true.
People of Ukraine are being forced to choose a side
They've clearly chosen one. The 20-30% of the Donbas still living there don't speak well for Russian rule. In the past, I was antimaidan (primarily for cultural reasons), I knew many who'd gladly have integrated into Russia in 2015 or so. [3] But time changes things.
Something like 10 million Russian speaking Ukrainians moved Westward as a result of the war, just further to the West or into the EU. I've seen a few online showing support for Russia, I know a few who used to live in Ukraine in the past or who went to the Donbas in 2014, but literally everyone else is strongly pro-Ukrainian. No one cares about "ethnically pure" because it's impossible. Everyone has Russian and Polish ancestors, generally grandparents. Many in government, in the military etc. continue to use Russian day to day (weird instances like the Mayor of Kharkov's fine aside).
I lived in Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa at different times, viewing them as nice Russian cities where I nearly never encountered Ukrainian. I was there not too long before the war too. Hell, just go to Ukrainian subreddits. Plenty of Russian is used. Plenty of Russians use it in Ukraine. Denying that's just a blatant lie [7], whether from ignorance or something else. Well, what is a "Russian"? That's the hard part... [4] You can change languages quickly. See Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (singer of a big rock band), Volodomir Rafayenko (a big novelist) or Zelensky [5] himself. They all primarily used Russian and were very popular in Russia. At different stages, they became unwelcome in Russia - not because of their Ukrainianness, but because they didn't support the Donbas or such. Volodomir for example quickly learned Ukrainian and started writing novels in it instead.
Kharkov and Odessa aren't suddenly speaking Ukrainian (although many people are changing their correspondence to Ukrainian - I've had some friends stop talking because they no longer feel comfortable speaking Russian, associating it with the people shelling them for months - and we share no other language. In the Summer this was higher [2] , but then people shifted back to Russian a bit.) This is what time changed. Russians in Ukraine saw life in the Donbas go from the wealthiest places in Ukraine to a mafiarun hellzone where bandits force people to sign property away at gunpoint, like a far worse version of the 90s. That's what "Russia" means now. Not culture, freedom of language, becoming another Chelyabinsk etc. but the destruction of everything built in the past decades. This is not Russian vs. Ukrainian but Russia vs. Ukraine, two East Slavic states speaking extremely similar languages. The difference is in government, economic outcomes.
------ random links etc -----
Note, no census since 2001. I believe Ukraine's population is quite low now, perhaps even under 30 million (the Donbas is certainly under 2 million): https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ymryp5/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_05_2022/iv97rtc/?context=999
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ze65px/credibledefense_daily_megathread_december_06_2022/iz7tc06/?context=999 and https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/u0g54m/ukraine_conflict_megathread_april_10_2022/i45tf36/?context=999
[4] censuses in the whole region are deceptive. E.g. the terms translated as "native language" don't refer to the language(s) you grow up speaking, but what you believe your ancestral language is. Many will declare their native language as something they don't speak, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan.
This may interest you: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/yom5fv/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_07_2022/ivi3blh/?context=999
Also n.b. I'm pro-Crimea not being in Ukraine. E.g. https://old.reddit.com/comments/45tl6z/_/d00bq3i/?context=999
If you want, pm me and we can talk on telegram. Perhaps you can speak to many Russians in Ukraine/Russian Ukrainians or however to phrase it.
Note, I say Russian and Ukrainian are nearly identical, yet it's uncomfortable for me to try to understand Ukrainian or to Ukrainianize my speech. So the differences are there in practice but they feel small. Really it's a sign of weak friendship, eh?
[5] Zelensky being pro-Russian language: http://news.sevas.com/world/zelenskij_o_zaprete_vezda_rossijskih_artistov_v_ukrainu
Also note Zelensky's corruption shown in the Pandora papers.
[7] but there's a lot of uncomfortable space re: language laws. But every article about "Russian being banned" exaggerate much smaller steps.
veqq
1yr ago
20% of the total wealth in the Western world
Where does this number come from?
veqq
1yr ago
A lot of cult classics like Fight Club and Taxi Driver had already impended signs of a male crisis.
They were talking about a male crisis in the 1800s. Masculinity's always under threat
veqq
6mo ago
Well, Lee was the only confederate leader who could win. The other theaters all collapsed rather quickly.
veqq
1yr ago
Someone else in these circles mentioned that black people see overrepresentation and feel excluded, but when they really look into it and see Jews make up some huge percentage, significantly higher than blacks - but also whites... They fill in the rest of the owl. So we have Kanye who sees black and even white people these days complain about the whites, but what about the elephant in the room? Even the whites are underrepresented!
To respond to your prompt: You can tell kanye that the black people don't have a single monolithic belief structure. There are religious and conservative blacks (more so than white democrats), there are intellectual, n#$@$, old money elite, farmer, atheist, politically mobilized, muslim, new world conspiracy muslim etc. etc. blacks. In the last election 14% voted Republican. That's not 0. In other countries, there's quite a plurality of opinion.
veqq
1yr ago
His 911 call sounds a lot like someone who has dementia
He seemed normal to me.
The context of the call is baffling. Why would this guy let him call? Clearly Pelosi was trying to get the police to come without saying "HELP" while the responder seemingly had no clue what was going on (for most?) of it.
veqq
1yr ago
In the 911 call, he's asking where the capital police are since they normally protect his wife. I guess they just protect her? Or he gets a minimal detail, someone went to the bathroom or... Who knows
They clearly have cameras since we can see the security footage of him hammering his way in.
veqq
1yr 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.
veqq
1yr ago
"software architect" type people
Could you give more detail? In my (biased) experience, they're normally competentish (if given to trends and overcomplicating things). Generally they've been developing for a decade+ before taking the role, from what I've seen. There are however many PMs or such who misrepresent/get overly stuck to diagrams and i've met some people who managed to become architects without coding at all. At my work, I make architectural mvps with seniors with chunks of the functionality and low effort piping, then tell other juniors how to make everything production ready while seniors work on hard parts we aren't quite sure about.
But fundamentally it's an organizational issue. 10 experts alone could very well be better (and in some projects, I'm able to give parts each to domain experts who write their parts in a week and it's all done (waterfall can work!)). But engineers are normally at the behest of non-tech people coming up with stupid features, who change their minds, or the domain space isn't even properly explored with exploratory test models (so we can't do good engineering practices). But this can be justified, since the tech is supposed to automate away concrete tasks and processes, for people who are paying for it. Path of least resistance etc.
veqq
1yr ago
This is a telegram channel doing the same thing, but less doomsdayish: https://t.me/axisofordinary
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.:
which would add any successful people into this, as if making "kulak" an ethnicity.
🤷♀️
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.
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