A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
No bio...
User ID: 645
Warhammer books were packing heat
Generally, they're not particularly memorable 4 hour reads. But the first 2 Fabius Bile books (Promogenitor, Clonelord) are solid. Maybe Eisenhorn? The Infinite and the Divine! Fehervari's Requiem Infernal has some of the best prose in the past 100 years (mixed with vague, wordy evocativity) and sits with you for weeks after; his others are good too.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
I wonder if "decolonization" in practice is somewhat genocidal.
Inherently, yes. The entire colonization rhetoric is incoherent in honest historical context, unless e.g. viewed as moral justification for immediate power shifts and ethnic cleansing.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
19d ago
for alcohol or drug addicts
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/modern-freedom-means-being-a-slave-to-impulses/
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
15d ago
Got it, thank you for explaining!
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
15d ago
So you don't mean that Dewey talked to a small, wealthy, and unrepresentative set and made some mistake? Do you mean that the reporter, Arthur Sears Henning or the newspaper made this error? Or sample bias in early-available data?
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
15d ago
For context, I mentioned that I support regime change/oppose the government because people misunderstood my criticism of the government as "defending". I don't especially advocate for Cruz/Trump driven-regime change though I'd pray for its success.
Hussein was secular, Gaddafi was secular, Assad was secular...
Indeed. The powers that be do not care nor wish for human flourishing (to the extent they had good policies). Replacing the Khmer Rouge with something less bad is a net win for humanity, even if international recognition doesn't improve.
No total regime collapse? No neighboring countries swooping in to setup a puppet state? No civil war? No refugee wave?
I was describing the current situation, to explain apathy/lack of significant reformist movements. A civil war would naturally create a large refugee wave, but we don't know whether continued force will cause regime change nor what any of this looks like. As I stated before, I'm skeptical of the current admin's ability to engineer a positive outcome.
Syria ... "doctors and engineers"
Syrians were at a "higher" cultural and educational level, than other Arab countries. The "issue"'s that they supported the regime and didn't emigrate, which motivated groups deftly left out.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
4mo ago
I just want technocrats who will build a thousand nuclear reactors, regulate industrial contaminants and unhealthy food, craft policy for cheaper industrial inputs, rationalize local (city, county, state) regulations and bureaucracy (e.g. a unified online tax or building permit system) and encourage our people and culture to prosper, like Lew Kuan Yew. I've seen nothing like this in the West. Should I build it?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Has there ever been a golden age of critical thinkers, schooled to think well, untainted by the technology of its era, or the character of its students?
Those growing up around 1900-1914 seemed closest, the great flower of our civilization, who died under flowering shrapnel on the French frontier.
I base this belief on reading historical (highschool/Gymnasium/lycée) exams (and submitted answers, with sample bias, of course) and cheat books (with more detail than modern academic treatments of the same... This is how I originally came to this.) They should write poetry on different topics in a certain style (movement or author), find problems in economic or business data, articulate various thinkers' contrasting beliefs about a topic etc. Transposed to modern times, have a student write a memoization macro, calculate some vector angles, write an essay on LaRoche, McKinley and and Teddy Roosevelt's views on tariffs, another on leadership (why the most popular kid's popular and what prevents the writer from taking his place, and to what extent the (chosen group/nation/state/movement) needs good leaders vs. institutions) ...written in Mandarin. The Overton window was far wider in those days, with multiple popular opinions about why x or y state was illegitimate with justifications from Renaissance, Classical and Biblical sources, advocating for paganism/atheism/state controlled religion etc. etc. Unfortunately, the war seemed to invalidate the whole framework and civilization behind this and mass education never recovered.
That's still a far cry from our ideal, but...
defenders of the proposition that rogue/irredentist regimes
You're responding to a post where I say foreign militias are holding the regime in place, which the people don't support. How do you construe that as defending?! Even the "30%" (I think that's a motivated number, but directionally correct that a majority aren't) of Shia in the country don't support the regime, with grand Ayatollas opposing Khamenei. I'm a am pro-regime change in Iran. @Hadad
Two understood it the same way, so my writing is the common denominator, but... I don't understand.
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
26d ago
tubing ... recently stopped to focus on his family.
Luke Smith had left the internet for 2-3 years, until (sadly) returning a few weeks ago, with a bigger beard, to declaim the evils of the internet.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
22d ago
The whole movement is bankrupt. While I theoretically understand "imperfect instrument" or "who cares about corruption if they still solve problems", it's literally not clear that MAGA is better for libertarians, conservative christians or anyone with a desire for intergenerational stability.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
24d ago
Stephen Miller's reach goal is 3,000/day, which, if we're generous and assume that government workers get in a whole 52 weeks a year, would be 156,000/yr
day =/= week
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
In Morocco I got about 150 likes per day and literally didn't have time to look at 3/4ths. I think online dating is evil and have never otherwise tried, so nothing to compare.
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
3mo ago
There are many errors in the common retellings:
- in 1990 Ukraine's declaration of sovereignty rejected nuclear weapons
- in 1991 Ukraine signed away any rights to Soviet nuclear weapons
- in 1992 Ukraine signed Start I pledging no proliferation etc.
- Ukraine never had launch codes, command over the soldiers and equipment (the Russian and Ukrainian were still the same and working directly together under the CIS framework until perhaps 97) not that it had money to maintain it either
The Budapest Memorandum helped implement this, but contained no security guarantees just promises to vaguely help or not to attack.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
3mo ago
For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading ... we hated it ...
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do ... we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out
https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
Everyone wants
Obama-era regulation makes small cars almost important to sell on the market (due to sky-high efficiency requirements, relaxed for larger vehicles). The manufacturers are only offering hatchbacks etc.
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!
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
should not be a citizen as he has no actual connection
It's only consistent, as the US rather aggressively applies citizenship. There's a basket industry for "accidental citizens" who first discover they're American upon receiving a 6-7 figure bill for back taxes and renouncing citizenship incurs a tax on all assets. Further, because of FATCA, they suddenly get debanked.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Trivial to find: https://odysee.com/@LightElf:0/Kanye-West-Heil-Hitler:9
Not worth listening to, rather terrible, but such is our fallen society that some like rap.
tl;dr: Yes, it would not degrade readiness against China, at all nor require out of theater assets. NATO air forces would quickly defeat Russia, NATO land power would help but not change things without air support.
Ok, let’s pretend that we actually have the balls to go fight Russia and curb-stomp them out of Ukraine (including, of course, Crimea). Does the US and her allies really have the ability to fight a two-theater war? I would question this.
Ukraine is conventionally equal to Russia. (Ignoring making Russia sad and nukes), a small increase in power would result in local overmatch cascading to relatively cheap victory. Even just the EU's F-35s (though they're probably lacking in munitions) are more than enough to shape the front (like 2022 with HIMARS in Kharkov) or even win the war (there's debate how effective Russia's air defense would be, but failures in Syria (of Russian operated systems) against Israel suggest not very.)
NATO minus the US and Turkey doesn't have especially more ground power than Ukraine (e.g. in brigade numbers, due to lack of mobilization and equipment). ( /r/credibledefense there are some comments giving detail) but even some 10 brigades would be enough to break the current stalemate (if not for drones and the recon fires complex. That is, the stalemate is of a different kind.) But if F-35s' EW capabilities are able to saturate the spectrum, degrading Russian C2-5 or degrade air defense enough for other assets, existing Ukrainian forces could very well suffice (but more would help.)
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
Tangential, but SWIFT's barely relevant anymore. There's no compelling or procompetitive reason to pay 5% fees and wait days when CIPS is instant and essentially free (cents to transfer millions of dollars, or small sums). The future of settlement's here: DPI. Brazil's Pix showed the way, China's CIPS now has integrations with some 20 countries and they're fusing their own systems together. Brazil used to have an ecosystem of Visa equivalents and banks charging high fees, now it's all free and instant through Pix, because of legitimately better technology. The US' protectionism for rampant rent seeking practices of its banks is a barrier to grow only rivaled by suburbia. Imagine if the US were able to leverage efficiency factors like this, if you could just freely scan people's phones for payment etc.? (Actually, I'm pro cash, security and tax issues but payment processing in the US is hellish.)
I typed up fluff I wanted to edit into a coherent comment, but something just came up. I'll edit it later.
Your numbers are off and your explanation is more confusing. The $1.8T deficit is more than 25% of federal spending. (Debt issues are far worse if you include more local government.) Interest payments are 15%. As others noted, it would take 10 years to pay off the debt, if all current tax revenue only went to that. In reality, we'd have to cut spending by 30+% and spend the rest of our natural lives paying down the debt. None of this will happen. The government will simply inflate it away as it has done before.
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