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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I'm actually interested to see how the mirror question of this will affect Russian population. Between white collar flight at the outbreak (see our own «» enthusiast), depending on whose numbers you use casualty rates approaching that 10% of population mark (US estimate 120k, UN population at 144mn) with a similar though not quite as bad population pyramid as the rest of the developed world, how Russia as country of Russians will come out of this win or lose will be interesting and likely different from before.

That's the flipside. But the fact that Russia has been able to hold its own despite huge aid from Western countries ($100 billion? $200 billion?) means that once the Western aid is withdrawn, it's over. Russia has 4x the population and infinite natural resources to sell to China.

It was over when the sanctions failed, IMO. Russia is having no problem selling its oil. We live in a multi-polar world now with China able to defy the US with zero consequences.

(p.s. You are off by two orders of magnitude on the casualty numbers. 0.1% not 10%).

Isn't 120k/144m more like 0.1% than 10%?

Yeah, messed that up using the comma separator as a bad indexing point.