domain:npr.org
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
17hr ago
You could at least pretend to display some performative scepticism towards a Guardian article on immigration before uncritically accepting the narrative wholesale. Obvious baitpost.
aldomilyar
17hr ago
I live in Malaysia, my wife's family is a good study in that roughly half of her uncles and aunties are Singaporean and the other half are Malaysian Chinese. In my experience, the Malaysian family is first-language Chinese with passable English and Malay plus some dialect (albeit essentially a sliding scale of dialect versus English with each ensuing generation). The Singaporean family is about the same at the generation of my wife's parents, though for context they were about 18-19 at the time of Singapore leaving the federation and the younger generations are 90% English with some spoken Chinese but functionally illiterate.
According to them, the main difference is that in Malaysia the schooling system allows for private schools to be conducted in Chinese which is the only practical way to get literate in Chinese since even the majority of ethnic Chinese Malaysians will be functionally illiterate in Chinese characters. Also there's been a pretty large divergence between Malaysian Chinese (Largely spun off of southern Hokkien/Teochew/Cantonese/Hakka speakers who have remained in touch with mainland trends via the cultural sinosphere) and Mainland-Chinese, even when speaking Mandarin. Malay's an afterthought used for interacting with the government as it's essentially been replaced as lingua franca in Malaysia by English for anybody under the age of 30.
My wife's grandmother is in her mid 70s, she's illiterate despite being a fairly successful small business owner who's since retired to be a landlady and only speaks Hokkien (Possibly Malay but there's also a cultural distaste amongst Chinese when it comes to speaking the language outside of purely utilitarian purposes). Yet understands spoken Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay. Cantonese since it was dominant culturally in entertainment for a few decades, Mandarin though it only really entered Malaysia by the time she was middle-aged and Malay since one must occasionally acknowledge the landlords.
FtSoA
17hr ago
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
We have the USN and USAF and a nuclear triad ready for a full-scale confrontation with North Korea and/or China on any given day and have for decades. We can and should do more on that, but it's not like we don't have a lot of combat power in the region.
Resolve, on the other hand, is trickier. 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.
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society.
I'd say we need to do both to maximize the chance of deterrence. In the US, we do not democratically launch nuclear weapons. Trump has lost his "madman" edge with respect to China, I think. Not that he couldn't get it back in short order.
But this is why, yes, I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits and it's obvious to everyone what cards are on the table and who's bluffing. 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.
But risk it all for Taiwan? For South Korea, in comparison, we have treaty obligations and troops deployed that will act as a tripwire.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17hr ago
He said the interview included discussion of "niche online communities," which it does appear to include. That is nominally "places like TheMotte," but you're right that the actual discussion is quite non-specific.
Turniper
18hr ago
I look like a half irish half mexican man in his early thirties wearing a gigantic grey leather witch hat drinking from a glass gourd. I assume all the other posters are roughly this level of eccentric.
Ukraine is not a NATO country and more deeply integrated into the Russian culture and economy than any other country. The strategic situation is quite different and there is enough delta between the ease with which Russia could take and rule Eastern Ukraine and anywhere else that I don’t find the slippery slope arguments convincing.
Many people in Eastern Ukraine are interested in joining the western bloc for greater economic opportunity. But if they are conquered by Russia and NATO-Russia relations eventually normalize, they will learn to say mnohaja leta instead of mnohaja leeta and get on with their lives.
It would take an immense investment of manpower for Russia to occupy any other Baltic state and crush the resistance. But a good chunk of Ukraine is not just Slavic but also descended from the Rus, with a long and recent history of being ruled by Moscow. If Russia can take it, they will keep it without much trouble
Ukraine was ruled by Russia for 300 years before independence. Eastern Ukraine and Russia are both Rus-descended cultures with a shared heritage. The invasion itself has given nationalism a shot in the arm, but it’s a rather different situation than South Korea or Taiwan.
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.
popocatepetl
18hr ago
Just reminded of why I cannot play video games (at all). Whole weekend and part of this morning were taken up by civ, when I should have been doing other things.
In an ideal world, video game ratings would not cover violence but addictive content.
On the surface level, it's hard to tell the difference. Mario Kart is harmless. Civilization is risky. World of Warcraft is potentially life destroying. Only after you fall into a few traps yourself can you spot the difference from a distance.
It's worth... well, there's nothing to forgive, so no fairness needed from me since no offense was taken. I am not making a critique about the interview in any sense, merely raising an eyebrow at the pitch / appeal to the audience. Which is not suspected of being Tracing's responsibility in any way.
Maybe it's mentioned in the video and not caught in the text.
anti_dan
18hr ago
Indeed, and it should not. 5 years to score 600 on the LSAT English section or the boot, minimum.
wayfarer
18hr ago
I would say that it hardly counts as encirclement. Maybe encircled by standards of Youtube's "Ukrainians/Russians encircled in Whatewergrod" spam.
Dean
Flairless
18hr ago
Looks like the Count got himself banned over 100% fake news.
Something something karma and bearing false witness, I suppose. I've no intention to tease him with this if / when he returns, but I imagine this will be a poke back he should be expecting for the rest of his time on the Motte going forward.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
18hr ago
FWIW, he asked us if it would be okay to post this.
We said yes, and warned him he'd probably be getting flack from Trace-haters.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
18hr ago
Yeah, it was quite a lot - on more productive days I'd easily average more on the order of twice that. I was somehow blessed with a fairly generous metabolism, which allowed me remain slightly underweight through all that and have no problems (in terms of blood sugar levels/functioning) with suddenly going cold turkey, which I believe would suggest that my insulin/glucagon system was fine. Perhaps relatedly, I also used to easily flipflop between eating ridiculous amounts and skipping meals altogether while hyperfocusing on something.
In the end it was simple stomach irritation (enough to cause an intermittent IBS suspicion) from the US variant - and the bad ergonomics of the half-liter glass bottles that mexicoke came in - that got me to drop it (instead replacing it with a more expensive, and painful during withdrawal, coffee habit), and now that I'm back in the EU I have rebounded to maybe 1l/day.
anti_dan
18hr ago
It's as if a large portion of the American Right has entirely forgotten the lessons of Cold War diplomatic and military strategy. Or very, very obvious game theory re: bluffs and tit for tat.
Trump and his people are very much tit for tat. Look at what they've done to Iran and the Houthis.
Instead what you are ignoring is that the American Right has learned from the past 30 years that if America and/or its Allies are winning a war, the left will start calling American (or other) soldiers, generals, and political leaders war criminals and start calling for disarmament, the end of fighting etc. So until Democrats have approximately the same political power nationally as Republicans currently do in San Fransisco, war is kinda pointless.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
18hr ago
Not if he's posturing about how ancient and respectable the system is.
And frankly, I doubt he has any real respect for it beyond immediate utility to himself.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
18hr ago
Amazing. If this is the quality of the criticism on offer then it really drives home that ICE under Homan may be the most effective and accurate government agency in American history - if not world history.
Now, I'm not saying that people should look at this situation and update their priors in the direction of "pleas for pity from immigrants are bad faith lies and you should harden your heart against the sin of unworthy mercy". I'm just saying that movement in that direction would be a reasonable Bayesian response IF Burden were not a malicious troll.
wayfarer
18hr ago
Do you want to explain what you are talking about?
Dean did it better than I would do.
And why a single failure nullifies a career of generally decent reporting?
Because it was utter failure and he seems to be sliding down into rabbit hole of some kind? Also, it is one where I looked into and was really disappointed about quality of their claims. I am less familiar with their earlier work that was supposedly decent/really good.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
18hr ago
You gave an effortful and illuminating reply, so I'll do my best to answer your question.
When I say 'normalized', I suppose what I'm after boils down to two points.
-
A consensus that the SSPX is not schismatic and that attending their liturgy and receiving the Eucharist is fine and not illicit. This lets more people attend the TLM in parishes / dioceses that lack one.
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The ability (built on point number 1) for SSPX clergy to evangelize and catechize. Regardless of one's political opinions regarding the SSPX, their seminarians come out extremely well educated and theologically solid. This cannot necessarily be said about many diocesan seminarians - with the major caveat that the variance across the USA can be quite large. I don't need to recapitulate the how and why of really bad liturgies emerging in the 70s and 80s, but suffice it to say, part of the cause was sub-par seminary training and study for priests of that generation. Although it does seem like the younger generation takes it more seriously, I met a friend-of-a-friend priest in his early thirties who, beer in hand at a wedding, announced he was "really into astrology." I'm not going as far as saying he's heretical or satanic. Quite the opposite - he was "father friendly / youth pastor / acoustic guitar" levels of spiritually flaccid. I wasn't scandalized, I was disappointed that this was a fairly recent product of a seminary.
The SSPX, I believe, has ordained just over 1,000 priests now (USA and rest of the world). That's 1,000 theologically sound clergymen who could be used for a whole variety of projects that require a strong theological foundation.
Regarding your excellent outline of the political realities regarding the SSPX, Vatican, and various groups of bishops, it all makes sense to me and I understand exactly the odd situation of conservative American Bishops. As a country, we always kind of make whatever the 'thing' is into our own, don't we?
Online tradcaths are mostly that - online. If every rando posting DEUS VULT memes would simply go to Mass regularly, we'd probably see some real demographic change across parishes. IRL tradcaths are too busy having big families and experimenting with various levels of crunchy-ness (small scale farming, local produce, raw milk etc. etc.) The theologically rigorous folks I try to spend time with also frame TLM discussion exactly as you did; TC isn't popular and needs to be loosened, but we probably aren't going to revert to Summorum Pontificum. My bet is that we'll get to a spot where any parish that goes to the trouble of requesting approval for a TLM probably gets it from their Bishop unless there are very peculiar circumstances. This would, I hope, lead to more diocesan priests seeking training in the Extraordinary Rite.
It's an odd shill (edit- as in, advertisement/solicitation) that advertises on the Motte with a claim that the Motte is a subject of conversation, but links to an article transcript that doesn't include the word.
Why do you say failure?
https://www.themotte.org/post/2269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348794?context=8#context explains better than I would do
Who do you think blew up the pipeline?
I expect that German conclusion that pipeline was blown up by Ukrainians is correct.
I would bet on Ukrainian state - country at war with Russia, risking far less from detection/failure and far more motivated to do so. And demonstrated both capacity and willingness for some zany schemes that worked.
But I leave some space that it was someone else. But if it was USA then it was not done in way claimed by Seymour Hersh.
And Poland is still more likely than USA, if it was not Ukraine.
The last year and a half really have come across has a throughput increase (scaling up results to input increases, but roughly the same proportions as smaller inputs) rather than compounding advantage. Typically a compounding position of advantage decreases military casualties because you mitigate the ability of the enemy to retaliate. Throughput just increases output gains by increasing input costs, but if you later decrease the input rate the outputs will still correspondingly diminish rather than continue at a steady rate (i.e. coasting to continued success). It's going from spending 3 to 6 in order to receive 8 instead of 4 on the back end. Bigger is better, yeah, but normally success on overmatch would be compounding, such that spending 6 should get you 10 instead.
The Russians can grind on for months and even years yet, but as long as the Ukrainians can match that- and that is the implication of matching the throughput scaling as they have so far- it's not really an enduring advantage if your limiting factor is more economic-political than literal manpower. Given the role Russian recruitment costs have played in the budget, and the tapering factor of early mobilization advantages, Russia is more likely to run out of men it can afford to bribe to volunteer before it conquers the four provinces.
That still leaves mass conscription down the road, but whatever you think of the political costs that Putin demonstratably disliked more than the current system, the political costs will be likely be worse if low-fiscal-cost conscription is scaled after years of volunteers got paid oodles, thus denying the new recruits even the pretense of equivalent bains, and after a war-recession has gotten underway.
I am not the biggest fan of social contract stability theory, and I believe I've said in the past that Putin can shoot down a revolt, but the man is a notorious strategic procrastinator and has a history of deferring this exact sort of choice.
I'm not convinced Hersh has any particular credibility in the eyes of the public as large. There's a reason vouches for his career credibility tend to reach back 20 years or more, rather than since the Bush administration. Even the man's more ardent defenders during the Ukraine story were leaning back to the Vietnam War reputation than his post-9-11 middle east pattern.
At least on a public/policy level, Hersh got dropped like most of the Bush-era anti-war movement when it became clear he was going to make the same sort of claims and accusations against Obama and the Democrats as he did against Bush. The sort of 'we could believe it' credibility that that was leant when he was making various accusations against Bush as a warmonger, or that Reagan was the real villains for Pakistan going nuclear, dried up when he was blaming the Syrian rebels for Assad's gas attacks, and accusing Obama of fabricating the Bin Laden raid. Abu Ghraib was real, but the man made so many unfalsifiable claims, and then claimed other things false, that even his fans tend to mumble mumble over the stuff since 2004.
In a press conference Antony Blinkin stated that Ukraine wasn’t going to have elections until all its territory is recovered, including Crimea. In other words, Ukraine is never going to have elections again. My point is, Zelensky isn’t going to call elections and the US State Department isn’t going to lean on them to either.
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