domain:traditionsofconflict.com
somethingsomething
20hr ago
I feel like your last point is basically the social safety net and pro-union wing of the left (and now right?). In that respect we already do have a lot of pushback against pure capitalism in a practical sense, and a lot of it came from socialist strains.
gattsuru
20hr ago
I'd expect a lot of capabilities to be hidden, so that we can't guess about what the actual capabilities are...
((and to be fair to Skydio, this does look like it's intended as a scout rather than a kamikaze. And the cost comparison is probably doing an invoice vs cost-of-parts comparison.))
But I'd also had hoped that the United States military did enough that the stuff it does release looks a little more impressive; if you don't present anything it's clear you're hiding something. There should at least be some hobby-level projects around, but as a hobby-level project this is the sorta thing I'd expect to see from the CtrlPew crowd on a weekend rather than a dedicated engineer on a summer.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
20hr ago
Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.
Pretty close? Is there anything closer?
You may have an answer, or you may not. It's fine to say you're not sure.
develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there.
Wouldn't this just be the sort of pursuit of pleasure/leisure that you've been criticizing? Or do you not see it that way?
As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?
I'm much more interested in the way you think about value than the way you think about Marxism.
You may not believe or understand why I wouldn't put a given act past multiple different actors. That is your limitation, not evidence of either my position or of culpability.
This sort of (inaccurate) mind-reading and incredulity of alternatives is why we disagree about who the serious people are.
No_one
20hr ago
Would you believe Russian theories about some silly yacht and I dunno, Serbians if their warships were observed lurking over a future bomb site ? No, you wouldn't. You can't expect anyone to believe these paper-thin denial and deflections.
I'm very curious on your original assertion, that Ukrainians as a class are bitter on the US forcing them into fighting Russia, when they had no hope and it has gone so badly for them - taking half a million deaths in the process, such that suggesting Ukraine is right to fight and America is right to help them would therefore earn you their hatred. To me that sounds the same probability as "I'm Johnny Walker, from Texas Oblast, and I think that the USA is stupid to provoke the mighty Russian bear" as a being a genuine statement on US citizen's views on foreign policy - that's the inglourious basterds three fingers meme right there on every level. It's just... Russian signaling all the way through. Are you sure these are Ukrainians?
But to be fair, you also asked me a question. These warhawks have been fighting, have family fighting, and broadly support conscription when I asked them, though there was some discussions about draft dodging. Maybe they are foolish or p-zombies, but I myself am British, and so there's something very impressive about people paying a price and are willing to pay it to go fuck you to a fucked up bully even as others think you're foolish (1939-41 were our best and worst years). I do note they've done a lot better than anyone expected, aren't done yet, and have proven that even Russia can really bleed, they've done magnificently. I don't think of them as sheep or conformist, possibly to a fault - one issue of cossacks is they can be like herding cats, but they certainly have a common enemy today (even if they want Zelensky out tomorrow).
Maybe sober reality will make them regret their actions, but honestly, I think the fact Ukraine made itself into a very unwelcome meal for Russia is unlikely to be regretted, and they are proud so far of what their country has done (which includes rolling over the 4th Guards tank div, which is one of the funniest things to have happened to a power that claims to be super in a very very long time, imagine if a US armored division was routed in the Gulf war and their tanks captured to a degree that the Iraqi army could restock vs pre war, the T-80U is now on the endangered species list).
Finally, and this is utterly vital to stress, they also clearly have their own agency. Ukraine chose this, for better or for worse.
I like the fuckers, it's vibes for me, and I think while this is hard pounding, they may well pound the longest. I think it would be good if they do.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
20hr ago
Is there a way to quantify "use value"? If not, this seems to be a rhetorical trick. Why would I care about a notion of value that exists simply to win arguments about communism?
Dean
Flairless
20hr ago
We strongly disagree on who serious people are, so that's not surprising.
Dean
Flairless
20hr ago
You are doing the motte-and-bailey language game again, where you make grasping claims you'll walk back when challenged. We could do that point noting what has changed in the last 75 years, or in the last year, and so on. We can do it with different types of relationships, or even what different terms for government mean.
Really, though, it just goes back to the hyperagency bias. Keep on keeping on with it.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
20hr ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
Please keep it civil, and make your points without the personal attacks.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
21hr ago
Yougov: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Worst_World_Leaders_poll_results.pdf
68% have an unfavorable view of Stalin, with only 26% undecided (a subset of which presumably have not heard of him).
Edit: stefferi beat me to it.
Arnaud
21hr ago
the ancient Christians, who steamrolled over the strength-is-beauty-is-justice pagan ethos of Rome, did not need mustache-twirling wordcels in high places berating anyone on their behalf to gain followers, nor did the French Revolution with its cries for égalité.
I'm going to take issue with both examples here, both nascent Christianity and especially the French Revolution had wordy intellectuals at the hearts of their movements. Robespierre wasn't just selling like, vibes man.
FtttG
21hr ago
My second draft is well underway. So far I've cut out 18% of the first draft, representing over 15k words - more, actually, as while cutting I've been adding in some details as I go. Would love to have the second draft ready by the end of the month, but it may not be until the end of the first week of August.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21hr ago
You know, I floated that by the wife, and she wasn't a fan. These were really for her, so she gets them how she wants them.
But man, it was fun flexing some craftmanship on those back slots. Used a spacer to make sure they were exactly 24" on center apart to match the studs they'd attach to. Outlined the brackets with a marking knife, hogged out the middle with a router, and then finished up with a freshly sharpened chisel. Was a perfect fit. Probably couldn't slide a playing card in there.
Edawayac_Tosscount
21hr ago
I assent to everything you said, albeit without any of the prerequisite expertise to give me proper knowledge. In short, and I hope this does not do your piece a rhetorical disservice, I vibe with it.
I've dealt with the products of the current AI paradigm as a mere enthusiast, watching 4chan /g/ threads from about 2021 and onward, looking on with both excitement and disappointment as text and imagegen models, though both increasingly easy to deploy in reduced scope on consumer hardware and increasingly capable when developed and hosted by professionals, nonetheless retained epistemic and recollective issues that, while capable of being papered over with judicious use of the context window and ever-more training data processing power and storage, nonetheless gave me the impression that there was a fundamental kink in the underlying implementation of mainstream "AI" that would prevent that implementation from ever achieving the messianic (or demonic, or, at the very least, economic) hopes foisted onto it.
That said, I'm provisionally materialist, so barring me becoming convinced of the human soul I don't see why in principle software couldn't achieve incredible intelligence, either by your definition of it or in some more nebulous sense. I'm just thoroughly disappointed by the hopes piled onto (and consumer software & web services tainted by) the current "AI" bandwagon.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
21hr ago
Noted.
FtSoA
21hr ago
I think the ROC is a bit more deluded than the PRC at this point, lol. The PRC clearly won the civil war, just didn't quite get the chance to invade Taiwan like they did Hainan and establish 100% control over the map.
But yes, the "unresolved status of Taiwan" is a pleasantly functional fiction.
Supah_Schmendrick
21hr ago
The US Army is so far behind we're bragging about just being able to drop grenades from drones
Why assume the public-facing releases are actually the state of the force?
I've watched people I identify with (Orthodox Christians) be ethnically cleansed out of the Middle East in my lifetime. The priest who taught me chant fled to the US after having ISIS kill 6 members of his parish in Syria. The USA spent decades aiming to bring down Assad, and for what? What was so bad about Assad? Assad was not Orthodox, but neither was he a persecutor of us.
Russia wanted Syria to be stable so that Christians would be protected and so that they could earn oil profits together. The USA wanted Jihadis to overthrow the Syrian government in order to... in order to...
You know, I'm not sure what the point is. As far as I can tell, it's to line the resumé of some apparatchik in the State Department. Too bad thousands of people have to die and an ancient culture has to be wiped out for that.
I get tired of praying for my friends' family members who are in mortal peril due to US policy choices.
I'm still a bit unclear on whether you think increasingly efficient production is a good in and of itself,
I used to, but I do not anymore. Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.
However its a prerequisite to many, MANY good things. Some of those things result in less efficient use of resources, however (broadly speaking, leisure/leisure activities).
What kinds of other things?
Have they invented the wheel yet? If so, lot of things they can work on with wheel tech available.
If not, it slightly increases the odds of someone stumbling upon that invention.
That's closer to my conception (contra Hegel et. al) of how society ends up improving changing.
What if we could hypothetically assume an eternal universe? What then?
From my perspective, seems obvious: develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there. Unless we can mathematically prove that we'll eventually saturate our desire for 'fun' and novelty, and we can't augment those desires, seems like one can make good use of eternity tooling around the galaxies looking for cool stuff.
If we start talking like "the best man is the one who sires the most children", then all we've done is smuggle the same language of marketplace efficiency into a new domain.
I kind of use it in the broad sense of "there exist some people who can trace their genetic background to you (and beyond) and thus will acknowledge your existence long after you're gone."
Add in some sci-fi, and it becomes "you have descendants who might be interested enough in stuff that happened in your lifetime to run a simulation of you, assuming they can't resurrect you directly."
I dunno, I'm not trying to impose my terminal values on everyone else. To the extent people have different terminal values, increasing the amount of energy and resources available to people, and increase the efficiency with which we use them means more people can chase their preferred terminal values without stepping on each other's toes/inciting conflicts.
As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?
All the stuff I'm suggesting up there are achievable within Capitalism.
Supah_Schmendrick
21hr ago
in 2014 we got strong allies in the region
Er, I think "strong" is a bit optimistic - Ukraine was and remains a comparatively backward, deindustrializing, poor, and corrupt country with horrible demographics.
TIRM
21hr ago
My public K-12 education had 0 hours on Hitler. It had no WW2 history at all. We went over Japanese internment quite a bit. But somehow not the theaters of war or Hitler. Which seems like an obvious gap.
Ha, this reminds me of the most recent Jubilee video where Mehdi Hasan "debated" "20 Far-Right Conservatives". The kid at 22:10 has apparently been fired for proclaiming himself a fascist. I bet he wishes he was a Stalinist now!
Sure, "git gud", but the Nazis have a permanent debuff in the form of the post-WWII liberal order. The aspiring Nazi can't just go on Jubilee and plead his case in economic terms like the communist; they're saddled with rationalizing racism, deporting non-whites, anti-semitism. They have to actually sit down in front of Mehdi Hasan and tell him to his face, "You're not American (or English, whatever) and you will never be. Our countries should violently expel the third worlders and we're gonna start with you, Mr. Hasan".
On net, Jubilee is probably doing society a favor by exposing Twitter anons to the wider population. When confronted, they sputter, awkwardly fidget like Connor Estelle, and most everyone watching dismisses them. Though in fairness, the online racist community almost certainly has better representatives than these folx.
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