Bombadil
1d ago
At the very least, there seems to be enough funding for 2026. If funding dries up next year, then I agree that looks bad for Ukraine. But that seems pretty far from guaranteed. With Orban no longer in power, the European will to support the war seems greater than ever. Support may diminish due to the Iran war, but that hinges on the Iran war continuing in the first place. And keep in mind that Russia is also suffering from attrition, that they have other neighbors beside Ukraine that they may want to defend themselves from, and that they have a lot less to lose here than the Ukrainians.
I genuinely think this could go either way in the coming years.
Bombadil
1d ago
I personally think NATO membership is the best option. Ukraine would get guaranteed military backing from other powerful nations, while NATO gets access to the best drone operators in the world. Whether this is possible with Trump as the American president is the big question though.
Bombadil
1d ago
Anything that would credibly deter Russia from attacking again. UN troops at the boarder, membership into NATO, or even nuclear missiles could do it.
Alternatively Russia could give back the land they conquered and pull back. That I imagine the Ukrainians would accept even without guarantees. Russia is never going to let that happen though.
Bombadil
1d ago
Being a mother is supposed to be a rewarding activity in and of itself. She does not "lose" years of her life. She spends them caring for her children, watching them grow and teaching them about the world. Time will pass however she choses to spend it. The soldier is the one making a sacrifice.
But as you say, the narrative has shifted. What matters now is travelling, partying, and getting a degree. Doing this is freedom. Parenthood (for both sexes really) is something to be postponed for as long as possible while adolescence is romanticized.
I doubt forcing women into pregnancy would do anything except cement the idea of motherhood as a prison. The implication being that it is so bad that no sane person would do it voluntarily. But it does sadden me that so many seem to see family and adulthood as antagonistic to enjoyment and self actualization.
Bombadil
1d ago
There is no way Ukraine accepts any deal that does not include security guarantees. The risk of Russia regrouping and attacking again in the near future is just too high.
Bombadil
2d ago
He would say that, given that the Russian goal is to win. The Ukrainians also do not intend to stay in a state of frozen conflict. They want to kick out the Russians and take back their territory.
But right now, it looks like neither side has the resources to turn their intentions into reality. The best they can do is keep fighting, which in practice prolongs the stalemate.
Bombadil
2d ago
Is there any reason to believe the stalemate won't just continue for the foreseeable future? Russia is nowhere near backing down and still has troops and equipment to spare while making progress at a pace slower than a snail's movement.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is unlikely to surrender without security guarantees and can expect increased European support now that Hungary will no longer be vetoing the aid packages. However, every Ukrainian victory seems short lived, as every time they come up with a new innovation, the Russians are sure to adapt in short order.
So my prediction is that the stalemate will continue for the rest of 2026. It seems to me that neither side has the decisive advantage needed to win, nor is Russia willing to negotiate any peace short of an unconditional Ukranian surrender. And so the only option left is for the Drone Wars to continue.
I do hope that once this is eventually over, Ukraine will teach the countries who helped them how to wage drone warfare from their specialists.
Bombadil
2d ago
One could also make the argument that any war requiring a mandatory draft is unjust. If the citizens are unwilling to fight for their country unless threatened with imprisonment or death, then you should allow them to surrender instead.
Bombadil
2d ago
The issue is that Trump is siphoning money to himself. Siphoning money to your voters is arguably part of what a politician is supposed to do. The leftist interest groups supported things that were part of Biden's political program. This is what he is supposed to spend money on. Fulfilling campaign promises and furthering the political agenda of his party.
Using your presidential authority to funnel public money to yourself and your family is clearly different, and much more corrupt. This seems to clearly be what Trump is doing with this.
Bombadil
4d ago
For a murder mystery to be a mystery you need the murderer to be competent enough to hide their crime. I think this excludes drug addicts and the feral teenagers who would probably commit the crime out of impulse, leave tons of evidence at the scene, and already be suspected by the police.
This is hardly an interesting story. For that you need a villain with the foresight to plan the murder, the intelligence and knowledge to do a competent cover-up, and the self-control to stick to the plan. It seems very unlikely that such a person would not be either middle-to-upper-class or in a position of power in the criminal underworld. Especially if the crime requires an accomplice who must necessarily be loyal to the murderer.
Bombadil
4d ago
That is a matter of definition. Many would absolutely say something like "I spent my youth seducing women, but my wife convinced me to settle down". I see promiscuity as a lifestyle where you have sexual relations with multiple people within relatively short timeframes. This lifestyle can change over time. What you describe sounds more like a sin that cannot be undone.
Bombadil
4d ago
One thing to note is that people generally have less sex as they age, which makes them less promiscuous. Promiscuity being limited to a small subset of the population, could actually mean that promiscuity is limited to young people. Assuming this population pyramid from Wikipedia is correct, people aged 20 to 30 (where I would assume most promiscuity happens) contain just north of 10% of the entire population.
So theoretically two statements could be true at the same time:
- Young people are generally very promiscuous.
- Only a small subset of the population is promiscuous (because people tend to settle down as they age).
My recollection is there's strong empirical evidence that comparable cash awards for actual child birth have barely done anything at all, though I don't have the time to go digging right now
I honestly think this makes sense. There very much seems to be a fantasy where you can spend most of your 20s partying, travelling, and getting educated, and postpone children to later. Having a child early significantly interferes with your freedom to do whatever you want when you are young. In other words, the fantasy of extending your adolescence for as long as possible is worth much more than the state is willing to pay you to have a kid. $10k surely wouldn't cut it. You would need life-altering amounts of money to convince the average 21-year old middle class woman to give it up and pursue a family instead.
The state could pay for every expense associated with child rearing, from diapers to education to the sports they play in their free time. And young people would likely still not consider themselves ready to have kids.
Bombadil
5d ago
Plenty of young women want children though. They just postpone it as they want to focus their early and mid twenties on partying, travelling, and education. Only to realise too late that finding a lover worth starting a family with is much harder than expected and can easily take years. Suddenly they find themselves in their mid thirties where pregnancy and childbirth is much more risky and their fertility lowers year by year.
I imagine this is the group @self_made_human is trying to cater to. Pay them to freeze their eggs while they are still young, so that they are more likely to still be able to get pregnant once they feel ready to start a family.
Considering that children is something they actually want, and supposing that this makes it significantly more likely, I could easily imagine that a lot of young women would actually be okay with this.
Bombadil
5d ago
Likening the invasion of a sovereign nation to ordinary law enforcement seems incredibly bad faith. It is more like if a gang was trying to force you to join it under threat of stealing your belongings and killing you if you refuse. Depending on how you expect them to treat you should you accept, "Keep fighting!" is not unreasonable here. Especially if you have already managed to keep them at a stalemate for four years and the terms for surrender boil down to "give us all your stuff".
Bombadil
6d ago
Subnautica 2 just released into early access. The early game seems basically feature complete, and it really nails the feelings of exploration from the first game. Your spaceship crashed on an ocean planet which is incredibly hostile to human life. The circumstances of the crash and what happened to the ones you were traveling with, is a mystery that you slowly piece together as you explore.
I like that. Having the story be a mystery suites the game really well. It is a survival game where you explore an alien world, learn to exploit the natural resources to construct advanced technology, which allows you to explore even more, find rarer resources, and build even more advanced tech. Rinse and repeat until there is nothing left to find. I am the type who likes looking for secrets, and as such this game loop really appeals to me. Since the story is told through logs spread around the world, uncovering the truth blends really well with exploring and looking for resources.
Finally, the game is just beautiful. The fauna is of course inspired by what we have on earth, but is suitably new and alien. Different biomes feature different color palettes, but nothing feels out of place. Subnautica 1 was a game that many people would come back to just to admire the game world, and I suspect this one will be similar. The art really does tie everything together. The game can be beautiful but also scary when necessary. After all, the ocean is deadly and some of the creatures lurking in the deep are absolutely deadly.
Bombadil
8d ago
Neuroticism specifically has some pretty clear advantages when it comes to surviving in times of adversity when those around you are untrustworthy or dangerous. This makes it pretty hard to select against; Once the neurotics find out what you are doing, they are going to hide away and work hard to minimize it showing.
I guess modern society and social media is kind of doing it though. The neurotics can seek safety in their room bathed in light from their screens whilst minimizing interaction with the outside world. Meanwhile, the western world is safe enough that most risk takers are likely to survive and will have many opportunities for procreation if that is what they desire. Caution may have been a winning strategy a hundred years ago, but now it seems like taking risks is the way to go, as you can bank on modern medicine saving your life if something goes wrong. If the modern west continues unimpeded for a thousand years, perhaps neuroticism will be considered a weird mental illness, and our descendants will all be men of action. I wonder what kind of society they would create.
Bombadil
9d ago
If Mississippi consistently produces better educated people than other states that sounds like a pretty huge advantage. I can imagine parents would want to move there to secure a better future for their kids, and companies would like to recruit the people living there.
That seems like a pretty good incentive for other states to follow suit.
Bombadil
9d ago
exclusively based on merit.
Merit is just very limited when it comes to kids. They don't have as much agency as adults, so their abilities are often a reflection of how involved their parents are. If my parents help me with my homework and feed me healthy meals, I will obviously have a natural advantage over kids for whom this isn't the case. It seems really hard to solve this with extra funding. Sure you can provide free meals and expertly educated teachers to level the playing field. But good parents is not something that you reasonably buy with money.
So I think any kind of merit based education will run into complains about it favoring kids from good socioeconomic backgrounds. Overall, these children are just going to do better, so granting merit-based benefits will in a way always be a "rich get richer" policy.
Not that this is necessarily disqualifying though. I personally believe that society should encourage skills and hard work in children more than it currently does, so to some extent I am very much in favor of incentives to support these values.
Bombadil
9d ago
I am skeptical of the whole "encouraging children's natural interests instead of formal education" part, but I do like the idea of segregating students into different groups based on their abilities or how they act in the classroom. I am biased due to being the kind of kid who would have greatly benefitted from the bottom half of the class being shifted into different grades though. I think it would still be a hard pill to swallow for broader society.
At the end of the day, this system will benefit the best students the most, and it seems likely that the students would form cliques based on whether they are in the good or the bad class. The best students are usually from good socioeconomic backgrounds, so this will easily be spun as discrimination and enforcement of the existing social order. Limiting social mobility, putting disadvantaged groups further behind, etc.
On the other hand, the new system only needs to be better than what we currently have. Having the school environment be destroyed by a handful of kids that obviously have no business being there, seems overall worse than excluding said students from normal teaching.
Bombadil
9d ago
You need a special ed teacher for the special ed kids. If you pretend that no kids are special ed, you only need the normal teacher and no extra help for all the normal kids. In other words, you save money on the teacher but sacrifice the quality of education that the majority of the class receives. This is bad for the kids and society, but seems good for the school budget in the short term.
I obviously don't know if there are additional costs to having difficult children in a normal classroom. But it seems logical to me that mixing all the kids together lets you save on teachers, meaning that having separate classes for special ed kids would be more expensive.
Why do you expect it to be cheaper?
Bombadil
9d ago
I imagine "kicking out the kids" would in practice mean "moving them to special ed" or something similar where they can stay for the day (so the parents have time to work) and hopefully learn the skills they need to function in a classroom (or at least not make the day a nightmare for the other kids). In that case money would not be saved, merely moved around. Not providing them with a chance for an education at all due to factors outside their control (mental disabilities, parental neglect, etc.) seems contrary to modern values.
I guess you could maybe do it when they are older though. Expelling a teenager is very different than expelling a 6-year-old. An argument could be made that if a kid is still unwilling to put in effort and constantly disruptive by around age 14 or so, society has done all that could reasonably be expected of it, and from now on the duty is on the parent.
Bombadil
9d ago
It's a hard sell, emotionally and ideologically speaking. Education is meant to be for everyone, and the entire point of making it mandatory and free is so the children from the weakest backgrounds get a level playing field with the rich kids. Not educating the very weakest is counterproductive to this ideal.
Besides, you run into the problem that society is structured around school taking care of the kids for the majority of the workday. Forcing the kid out of school likely means the family has to take care of it, and a lot of parents simply won't be able to do this while also holding down a job. There just aren't enough hours in the day.
Bombadil
12d ago
If it really is just alarmism, it just seems so irresponsible to me. I understand that the incentive of a capitalist society is to profit at any cost. But I also believe that journalists have a duty to accurately inform the population and not poke at their anxieties for no good reason. If they go too far into sensationalism and making baseless claim, they lose their purpose and reason for existing. The value they provide to society will degrade until it is completely gone.
If AI is actually going to significantly reduce people's job prospects, then what is called for is better social safety nets. In this scenario, we are entering a world in which there are many more people than jobs, but the amount of available resources are unchanged. If so, it only seems fair that the people who would have otherwise attained jobs but now cannot due to factors outside their control, would still receive enough resources to build a life for themselves. Maybe this is UBI. Maybe it is jobs in the military. Maybe it is more social programs to ensure that large groups of the population do not fall into complete poverty. We might also see even stronger anti-migration stances, as the jobs currently held by immigrants become competitive even amongst college graduates.
If AI does not do this, if it actually is just a tool, then the hype will eventually die down and life continues. Current tech students are uniquely positioned to learn the ins and outs of this new tool and use it to enrich themselves by creating further technological progress. We will see some industries die out and be replaced by others. There will be less demand for artists, and tech grunts who would have formerly been doing janitorial work on websites will either have to skill up or change career paths. But new jobs will turn up to replace them and the crisis is limited to specific fields.
That said, I understand the feelings of being lied to. You grow up taught to expect an easy life if only you study well and do as you are told, only to get the carpet ripped out from under you and saddled with debt. And my own stand on AI is pretty negative. I personally think the money spent on it would have been much better used on improving the school and medical sectors, or on improving social services. While the current models are vastly superior to those of 2024, they are still not at a level where I believe they have justified their costs. All the tasks LLM's can complete, could have also been completed by using the investment money to hire professionals to do them instead. Even if we do one day achieve AGI, it seems like all the spoils will go to individuals who could not care less about humanity and would happily let the rest of us burn if it meant enriching themselves.
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