domain:science.org
This is why I feel like environmentalist parties are not serious. Every single one inevitably ends up falling victim to the SJW, and care more about those issues than things like the environment. These days hear them all saying "climate justice" because more important than climate change itself is how it affects minorities and lgbt. I'd imagine if the roles were switched and whitey lived in the hardest hit areas, the SJW would be sneering with glee at their misfortune.
I actually wonder if the advent of electric cars and cheap solar will spur the development of an environmentalist faction of the right wing. Since the cost of pumping guzzoline into their monster trucks is the most salient reason why normies despise decarbonization efforts.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
16m ago
Or, there never was any national security threat from TikTok, the ban was just classic bipartisanship in the "evil and stupid" sense, and Trump keeps kicking the ball down the road because he thinks doing so gives him some leverage in trade negotiations.
Lizzardspawn
27m ago
Come to the black sea resorts and try to figure out who is who.
Skulldrinker
32m ago
I had to stop reading Stross too, quality fell off.
JarJarJedi
34m ago
You have a dangerous line of thought.
Thank you, I guess? Usually the ideas that can be endangered by thinking aren't the worthy ones.
You're almost downplaying the problem of police brutality and similar abuses of power.
I didn't "downplay" anything, I didn't discuss this topic at all. I think you are projecting some kind of bias on me which is not related to what I have said.
Predators seek out vulnerability in the victim and the opportunity to get away with the crime
Not sure what you mean here.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
The second is a general distrust of the profit motive. Several of my (mostly male) friends who are much more successful than me (managing-your-own-company or high-tier BigCorp middle-manager successful) have had more than enough personal experience of engaging in what they perceive as anti-social behaviour just to keep their company/section afloat
I've seen a lot of this too. It's pretty simply a lack of awareness about the last 50+ years of the political-economics of employment law and state regulation. I've written about this before.
The champagne liberals who engage with the "capitalism - but nice!" fantasy fail to see that many of the market dislocations that result in a race to the anti-social bottom have been created by well-intentioned but economically illiterate federal and state policy. "The road to hell..." and all that.
One of the more effective coups of the left has been to make the term "deregulation" associated with Enron and Lehmann Brothers scale fiascos in the popular conscious. When, in reality, deregulation means more, cheaper, and better houses in the places that need them most. Or, as my self-linked comment outlines, a much lower friction coefficient in hiring. Or making it possible to cut women's hair without demonstrating you can shave a man with a straight razor. (I'll admit that the "licensing to become a barber" meme is a but of a trope at this point.)
But change is scary and real meritocracy might mean you aren't quite as sharp as you think you are. Credentialism is the soft mattress of the careerist - so long as they/them have the right master's degree from the right university, they can probably secure a coastal sinecure for between $150,000 - $250,000 depending on level of technical rigor and direct connection to revenue generation. These people who want "capitalism - but nice!" sure are excited about changing the marketplace, so long as their jobs aren't effected. "No, you see, I am an enabler for my team. I remove obstacles for them so they can do the really cool work! I'm just so thankful I get to be around such amazing people," says the functionary who will later fire one of their staff for being a "bad culture fit."
When you throw in a disproportionate fixation on egalitarianism, it gets even worse. That's trading both sides of the distribution curve for the fat middle and stasis. If we deregulated at scale, yes, there would be even more giga-billionaries. But the wage floor for those who can simply work full time would shoot up as well. Those who would suffer? That sliver between about 80 - 90th percentile who are the poster children for bullshit jobs; HR managers, compliance (literally a regulation created job), some level of accounting, lots of legal-ish jobs, tons and tons of "report A into slot b" information processing jobs. And that's the sliver that contains enough people with enough extra time and extra income that their votes and organizing matter. And that's the sliver that, over the last 50 years, has zoomed to the left.
I'm not anywhere near the 'sperg level of Elon to say whatever he said about compassion being the worst virtue ever. In fact, as an LARPing practicing Catholic, I try to live virtues like that daily. But I do it of my own accord in my private life. I am against trying to turn personal, emotional relationships with virtue and metaphysical ethics into a political platform or party. Because, if you do that, you give yourself license to ruin a whole lot of materially important policy.
magicalkittycat
1hr ago
The US refuses to even take on the national security threat propagandizing our children despite a literal ban passed on the books because we're too scared to actually enforce it. Either we're cowards or the Chinese propaganda is so powerful and entrenched that the security threat is even greater than we realized (and thus all the more reason we need to ban it now). And yet we aren't.
The only shows of military strength are bombing nations like Iran which are basically toddlers compared to China, when we're up against another adult we can't even do a fraction of what they do without backing down.
We have lost, we will not make any sacrifice even as they brainwash our youth. We will not stand up to them in a literal war either in the region.
magicalkittycat
1hr ago
but it’s a rather different situation than South Korea or Taiwan.
Taiwan is ethnic Chinese who literally speak the same language, and lots of Taiwanese celebrities and people visit China on vacation/tours/etc. They're arguably more linked to our adversaries.
In Ukraine, we helped the anti-Russia faction gain power in 2014. Taiwan and South Korea have been die-hard against Chinese rule for generations
Nice so in 2014 we got strong allies in the region, and now because of two weak and cowardly presidents in a row we might lose it. I guess the days of America growing more powerful and influential is behind us.
Tenaz
1hr ago
I find the entire arc of a game of Civ fun, and while the late game isn't quite as good as the early game, it's still really fun to me.
Which one do you play? I find the late game of 6 to be quite a drag, and 5 isn't much better. Early-game civ is easily 10x as fun for me.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1hr ago
There's a (likely just-so) hypothesis they teach you in undergrad biochemistry, or at least there was many years ago. The first enzyme in the catabolism of glucose, phosphofructokinase, is thought to be a key regulatory step in the pathway - as downstream products build up, flux through the glycolytic pathway is decreased. Fructose has a parallel catabolic pathway that bypasses this regulatory step and thus keeps churning and is more likely to stimulate de novo lipogenesis in the liver (aka getting fat).
I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in this, or how it interacts with CICO. But I think this hypothesis trickles down in an increasingly garbled form to the public and may be a large part of the hostility towards HFCS.
The_Golem101
1hr ago
Remember these aren't civilian towns anymore, they're warzones, you're supplying soldiers in an area with enough water to survive, alongside food, ammunition, entrenching equipment etc, and taking fresh men in and the wounded etc back. If Russia could stop every truck into a given area, they would control it and quickly occupy it, it's not defensible, same for Ukraine the other way around, their effective actions around Izium mostly involved Russian units panicking as their supply lines were close to being closed and they ran for it.
For a town close to the front you use trucks, for one on the front you use MRAPs and APC/IFVs, for a fighting position on the edge of town you use runners through your trenches, but again interdiction means that you are degrading but not stopping this, which might largely happen at night, under fog etc. It's absolutely not the case that Russia can stop anything like all deliveries even to these contested areas, but it be high cost for the Ukrainians, forcing them back in the end. Here's a video (that's certainly wrong in bits, but gives you an idea) that covers one of these key town sieges: https://youtube.com/watch?v=igFrblANpQk .
Almost none of the civilian infrastructure is working, these places are wrecked, and the utility pipes are shredded. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to degrade utilities to big cities, but they can be repaired, there's some redundancy and defended by AA assets etc. If your assumption as to why Russia is moving too slowly is that they're being far too soft, that almost certainly isn't the case.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
Reading the linked Guardian story, here's a line about the Morning Call paper which broke the story and was getting fed all the heart-rending details from the family:
They noted the purported family ceased responding to their requests for clarification on Monday, and they couldn’t verify details in Guatemala.
Well, I'm sure the heart-broken family will get right back to them any day now in order to clarify what is going on!
zeke5123a
1hr ago
Ever hear of the story of the boy who cried wolf? I don’t think even Garak can salvage this one.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
And now it turns out the guy died in Chile in 2019.
Honestly if you hate the west so much why are you living in the west?
Edit: didn’t realize the OP was banned. Didn’t mean to challenge someone who couldnt respond.
Lazuli
1hr ago
I'm not a fan of deckbuilders, either, but Balatro makes the process accessible and fun. If anything, you could focus on the roguelike angle of getting to the end game.
faceh
1hr ago
I'm playing around with the idea of them basically becoming a semi-colonized nation where they sign various deals for access to their resources with enough countries, and have enough 'foreign' infrastructure built up in certain areas of their territory, (ideally nearer the Russian border) that there's now broader interest in maintaining their independence.
This would also grant more interest in providing foreign investment to rebuild. Unfortunately I probably underestimate Russia's motivation to crash such a party.
roystgnr
1hr ago
Civ 3 really overpenalized playing "wide" instead of "tall". My father was a Civ fanatic but hated that one until I edited IIRC the corruption equation values.
Did you try Civ 5 with all the DLC? If you can't get past the ridiculous "one unit per type per hex" limit, that's understandable, but other than that it became a great game.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
They genuinely feel bad about this and want to restructure society so that this isn't done anymore in the future.
Have any of them left the positions in question? This sounds a lot like rationalization for pulling the ladder up behind them.
roystgnr
1hr ago
Why the first one specifically? Civ 2 was one of the best of the series, but it was a pure improvement over Civ 1.
I'm not even nostalgic for 2 (4 was better in every way and 5 the best overall IMHO), but if you're missing the Civ 2 ruleset and don't mind a different user interface I believe that the Freeciv default settings are pretty similar and the available feature set greater.
If you were a Civ 2 fan, can I assume you played through SM Alpha Centauri? If not then forget about the Civ series and just fix that now.
roystgnr
2hr ago
And I can't justify spending that much time to myself.
My trick is to just focus on games with support for more than 2 players. If my video game time also counts as quality time with the wife and kids: boom, justified! (at least for a few hours a week - our multiplayer Civ games take months)
I played Disco Elysium though recently, and didn't regret it,
Heh, me too, though I regret the time sink a little bit. Not really something to share with the kids, though.
What gets me is, when I do have something single-player to share with the kids, I appear to have inadvertently implicitly taught them that only multiplayer games are worthwhile. Only one of my kids beat Portal, one of them never even tried it, and the third quit before even getting to the good part! Makes me feel like a failure of a geek father. If I can't get them into The Outer Wilds (which might work? it's good for spectating and ideal for turn-taking) I'm going to have to reevaluate entirely.
However, given that Russia, our #2 main rival, is having its military trashed pretty hard it's not like we aren't getting a pretty great ROI.
Makes you wonder why we were willing to commit so much materiel to Afghanistan for so long if we care about maintaining military strength for larger enemies.
Keeping the U.S. locked in Afghanistan gave our enemies pretty solid ROI too, and we have virtually nought to show for it now.
I dunno, seems like the actual winning move would be to encourage Europe to build up enough force to deter Russia directly. Certainly less taxing on our reserves.
Why were we concerned about Russia's military at all for such purposes? What threat did they pose to the U.S.'s interests outside of our need to reassure allies we're still top dog?
Now we've got an ongoing commitment to sustain a conflict that isn't going to pay off much for us unless the Ukrainians pull off an increasingly unlikely win.
And to the extent people expect Ukraine to functionally bounce back if peace is established, surely the same could be expected of Russia.
I guess that, unless the actual strategic objective is to bring Russia to heel and then absorb it into the larger Western Coalition that is culturally liberal and directionally opposed to China becoming a global superpower (which I'm not inherently worried about either), what exactly do we think we're doing here that's worth so many deaths.
I'm sorry but I really can't take Peter Zeihan seriously at all. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 because it views the risk of Ukraine becoming aligned with the West economically, politically, and militarily to be too serious a threat to its interests of regional dominance.
That doesn't really address the point that any invasion by Russia relies on sufficient manpower, and by absolute definition, with declining birth rates, their manpower will only decrease if they wait.
The timing is the issue, not the motivation itself.
I've yet to see anyone explain why the point that "declining demographics = economic stagnation = less globalized world = greater conflicts everywhere" doesn't follow, logically, other than us being in very uncertain times in general.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Taiwan is in reality a rogue province
Taiwan was never held by the People's Republic.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Point of order: You have your geopolitical metaphors out of whack. You're looking for "domino theory."
This isn't a point of order. Anyway, "domino theory" worked. First the Hungarian border fell, then the Berlin Wall, then the East German government, then the Soviet Union. I guess those weren't the dominos in the original theory...
Shrike
2hr ago
China won't care about escalation risk if they think we don't have the balls to put it all on the line for Taiwan.
I don't think this is true. We can actually help deter China without threatening nuclear war if we have the tools needed to fight a conventional war. Perhaps this means that China will always have "escalation dominance" over Taiwan, as Russia will have over Ukraine. But US interest in the region creates an additional deterrent effect (although it needs to be combined with Taiwanese resolve, which arguably matters much more than US resolve!)
I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits
My personal opinion is that Taiwan likely becomes harder and harder over time. Part of this is due to demographic shifts in Taiwan. Part of it is due to increased US investment in procurement programs clearly aimed at China, at US onshoring and containment efforts, and at clear and increasing bipartisan focus on China as a serious threat to US hegemony. Part of it is due to internal Chinese social and economic issues (while I don't think China is going to drop dead in 10 years due to an aging populace, it is true as I understand it that they will never have as many military-aged males as they do today – I think this is less relevant for actual force generation and more relevant for societal casualty acceptance).
The Cuban Missile Crisis was about the Soviets parking missiles way closer to the US than we were willing to accept, so we engaged in a bit of brinkmanship and it wasn't a bluff.
I think this is overstated. For all the scary "brinksmanship" the public watched, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in tit-for-tat negotiations, and the United States (secretly) agreed to withdraw its own nuclear missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. I'm not sure how the Politburo viewed it, but from a certain point of view it was a success for the Soviet Union, as its attempt to park ballistic missiles in Cuba to gain strategic parity with US missiles in Europe ended with regaining at least some of that strategic parity (by forcing the withdrawal of US missiles).
I'll take his slot.
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