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wlxd


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 08 21:10:17 UTC

				

User ID: 1039

wlxd


				
				
				

				
2 followers   follows 4 users   joined 2022 September 08 21:10:17 UTC

					

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User ID: 1039

A Memory Called Empire (…) [isn’t] awful, (…)

Is it not? I heard similar sentiment from someone whom I respect, and I started reading it without prejudice (I don’t follow who wins Hugo anymore, so I didn’t know who the author is). Wow was I disappointed. Constant mulling on the protagonist’s emotional state really made me queasy, but when the main character casually shared the most important secret of her culture to some freshly, randomly met guys, it was too stupid to continue.

To my understanding this represents an escalation of the war, wherein NATO forces commanded by Nato leadership are directly involved in a major offensive for the first time.

Which NATO forces? What country of origin, which unit?

Among soldiers in the offensive there certainly are some who served in NATO militaries before, but this does not make the offensive force NATO. It’s makes as much sense as saying that it’s the Soviets who invaded Ukraine, because some soldiers in Russian force served in Soviet Union.

Yes, that’s what I said: there are former NATO soldiers in the offensive. No, this does not make them NATO forces. Similarly, NATO has been funding Ukraine, sure, but it does not make NATO forces Ukrainian forces, any more than “moderate” Syrian rebels were actually US forces.

Let me be quite clear what I would accept as “NATO forces” participating in offensive: a unit of active duty soldiers from the same NATO army, which was put together by said NATO army and sent to join AFU. Volunteer veterans slapdashed together into a unit upon arrival by the AFU military leadership does not count as NATO force.

This is important distinction, and I hope you are not purposefully trying to confuse people.

If I were to speculate, it probably has something to do with Americans who think of themselves German or Italian, because they have one immigrant parent, but cannot even speak their language. Many such cases. They think that they are part of one of those European ethnicities, which is why they are confused what “ethnicity” is.

It is much clearer in Europe: people of different countries are, by and large, of different ethnicity, and some countries even have multiple ethnic groups within the country (e.g. Belgium or Russia). An Italian living in Italy would find the idea that Italian-American with Italian parent who doesn’t even speak Italian, to be his fellow Italian, rather ludicrous.

One is a dystopian surveillance state with legendary intelligence services and diplomatic acumen, a history of attempting and partially pulling off ludicrously illiberal tech regulations, but not (yet) any de facto obstruction on advanced AI research for smaller actors; the island where core DeepMind staff is physically located, and Stability.AI incorporated.

Would be hilarious if it actually turns out that Brexit was the singular event that allowed UK to remain sovereign. It would vindicate the deplorables as nothing else.

You are looking for “Random Critical Analysis”.

Here are some choice ones from last weeks

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1567548940610043906?cxt=HHwWhIDQ0ZndhsErAAAA

I suspect that the normal person goes along with LGBT propaganda in schools not because they're intimidated by radical activists, but because they see it as an acceptable way to make the weirdest and ugliest kids feel better about themselves.

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1567521638236946433?cxt=HHwWgoDQjf-n-sArAAAA

Taliban has an interest in establishing relations with Russia, extremists opposed to gov trying to sabotage. In a sane world we’d help Taliban deal with terrorism. It’s in everyone’s interest, but no, we’ll let everything burn for girls education, which you won’t get anyway. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1566739026031194112?cxt=HHwWgMCl5fu1lr4rAAAA

This story. If you have faith that there is hope for reaching out to leftists, read it and see the kinds of people that make it in their institutions. Hard to be optimistic, a level of ugliness and evil that expands your concept of what is possible. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1566390991380103168

I don't think you can be in the EU and use oil heat, lol.

A quarter of German households use oil for heating, and a third of Polish households use black coal.

Yes, it's a much more efficient heating system than one that is simply converting fuel or pixies into calories,

It's not. Heat pumps typically have something between 200% and 300% efficiency at converting electric energy to heat. However, power plants are typically around 30% and 40% efficient at converting fuel to electricity, and modern home furnaces are typically around 80% and 90% efficient at converting fuel to usable heat (some will escape in exhaust). Therefore, it actually all nicely evens out.

Now, heat pumps can still make sense, because they can double as whole-house air conditioners in summer (if you're using heat pumps coupled with forced air, instead of, say, water-based radiant heating). They'll also make more sense in unlikely future where power generation is majority nuclear, or in even less likely one where we build out wind turbines on an area equivalent in size to the entire Northeastern US. However, as of today, the difference in efficiency is really not big.

Can you provide an example of a paragraph when you would want to use “stylistic quotation” ?

In fact, many defense companies will higher non-citizens too, for work not requiring actual clearance: note that ITAR regulations, for example, apply to exports to non-“US persons”, and a permanent resident is a “US person”. Thus, a permanent resident can work on ITAR/EAR controlled stuff just fine.

I guess then if you obviously make it not real, why not just use the same quotes?

I would like to register a prediction that absolutely nothing will come out of any of these suits. At best, they will all be dismissed due to qualified immunity. But, more likely, today is the last time we are hearing about them.

Russia has just mobilized twice as many people as entire Polish army + reserve. This is even before the utter hardware disparity. In terms of competence and experience, I’m sorry to say that I have no reason to believe that they are any better than Russians: no smart Pole has enlisted in Polish military in 30 years, there was too much opportunity elsewhere. There might be good amount of morale and bravery, or there might not, same as in Russia.

In short, if you want to win this, you’d need to send your friends from Joint Base Fort Whatever en masse, instead of expecting that more Slavs will grind each other to dust.

The West has not even started to massively expand its production capacity, and our peace time production capacity is order of magnitude too low to keep up. By the time we get on that, it might be all over.

The West is no longer the place where things are built, where factories pop up, where you can find tens of millions of people who know how to operate a bridgeport, lathe, or a rivet gun. It’s no longer in our DNA. We outsource that shit to China.

I think many westerners look at the achievements of their grandparents and great grandparents, and believe that we could do the same. We can’t. We would need to change our entire culture, and we won’t do that in a matter of months. My hope is that the current predicament at least causes our society to get on that path and start to grow serious. Might be the only way to recover from current degeneracy.

I mean, my point is that of course US is very happy with Slavs grinding each other to dust, but I think it would also like to actually win.

Dunno about Germany, but having spent a few weeks in Airbnb in winter in Ireland, wow. The host gave us electric blanket and told us to never mind that the room was not room temperature. And Ireland is not even cold!

Why would he do it, though? What’s the gain? If someone were to buy an apartment from him, he’d notice that it’s a third of its advertised size, so no buyer would ever be defrauded. Similarly, higher valuation means higher property taxes, so overstating value of his apartment is a loss for him. Seriously, why would he do that? What for?

Is it so? I heard that recent African immigrant communities in the US often don't feel much kinsmanship with African Americans (descendants of slaves).

Observing their behavior, which is to me clearly different than the behavior of native blacks, I can certainly believe in this. However, as far as the behavior of their children is concerned, I must say that they assimilate into standard American black culture very well.

I watched Meloni’s talk at that congress. Is everyone in Italian politics so high energy?

Just saying that becoming a drug dealer is not a rational economic decision.

You cannot conclude this just based on the fact that they are making less money that they could in a normal job -- unless, that is, "rational economic decision" is equated with "making the most money possible", preferences be damned.

Here's the thing: many people will simply find a job of dealing drugs to be more preferable than, say, cutting chicken all day long. I mean, think about what a typical drug dealer is actually doing when he's performing his job. If he's a street dealer, he just hangs out at a street corner all day long, shooting shit with his friends passing by, watching youtube on his phone when bored etc. If he deals out of his home, that's even better: you just hang out at your home, can play XBox all day long, you just have to answer the door every now and then. If you're delivering, it's basically same as dealing out of home, but answering calls just takes longer. In any case, either of the above is way more preferable than having your hands elbow deep in animal guts eight hours a day, or hustling in McD kitchen. Think about it: assume that legal risk is negligible. Would you prefer to serve an occasional customer from out of your home for $7/hour, or stock shelves for $8?

Now, I assume that the studies finding that drug-dealing income is often below minimum wage actually do it after taxes and transfers: note that you don't have to pay Social Security on income made from drug dealing, and it's easier to qualify for and get higher payouts from SNAP/TANF/SSI etc if your over-the-counter income is zero. This is minimum level of competency I'd expect from researchers in academia. Now that I think of, however, I am reminded of the fact that the entire notion of growing income inequality in US in recent decades is entirely false, built upon foundation of ignoring taxes and transfers, which tremendously reduce actual consumption inequality. If they can fail (or, less charitably, lie) at something so basic, they can also be similarly full of shit here as well.

...and before anyone tries to paint this as an uncharitable weakman I must ask "what is a woman?".

No need to reach so far, we in fact literally had disputes on whether 2+2 = 4.

Very good point as well.

meaning simply "those the court decided were victims"

The court did not decide that any of that. This was a jury trial, so the court was not making determination here. Instead, it was the prosecution who claimed that those killed by Rittenhouse were victims. The jury unanimously rejected that.

I simply thoroughly disagree with this sentiment, and I am quite certain that I am not exceptional here. The process is important, the social context is important.

I would probably go as far as to posit applicability of some sort of labor theory of value: if you print out a random photograph, nobody will value it very highly, but if you paint the contents of the photograph on canvas, it will immediately be seen as having more value. Even more so, if we build technology that allows us to make a painting with a some kind of a gantry CNC painting machine, it’s product will be seen as less valuable than something that human painted by hand.

I think the above sentiment is shared by most normies, whereas your comment exhibits rather postmodernist ideals that few people actually share, as shown by revealed preference. Why are people spending millions on original artworks, instead of hanging cheap replicas that are exactly as beautiful? Because they strongly disagree with you.