domain:acoup.blog
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
4hr ago
Also, ending with an "In conclusion..." paragraph will make people assume you used AI in your writing.
Ironic given the context.
Shrike
4hr ago
But also it was a very cheap military engagement as these things go.
I would just flag that it arguably cost us essentially a generation of modernization as multiple procurement programs were canceled while funds were spent to fighting the GWOT rather than preparing for conventional conflict.
It seems plausible, just to use one prominent example that would be very relevant to a Pacific conflict, that absent the GWOT the B-21 would already be in service (originally the Next Generation Bomber was scheduled for 2018, but procurement was kicked down the road due to cost concerns.)
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4hr ago
I don't think we should get in the habit of "advertising" non-CW threads in the CW thread. Yeah, it kinda sucks that other threads outside of the weekly CW get less visibility, but, that's just how it goes.
Also, ending with an "In conclusion..." paragraph will make people assume you used AI in your writing.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
4hr ago
A little offtopic, but has there been much discussion about why Marx's theory is called Materialist-Dialectic or whatever? The word "Dialectic" is almost exclusively used by (my) outgroup so I don't care much about what it means specifically -- much of its use is probably shibboleth. Why the word "Materialist?" That Marxists do not believe in God seems unimportant to me. You might as well call wokeness Materialist, or the Nurture Hypothesis also Materialist. Is it too uncharitable if my first instinct is that it is the same phenomenon as postmodern writing appropriating physics terms? That is, using the term "Materialist" makes Marxism sound descriptive and scientific? This wouldn't surprise me, especially since my read of the discussion here is that LTV seems obviously like a moral prescription.
Slightly more on-topic, I think Zagrebbi is more correct than Cofnas. We actually went over this a few weeks ago. The deleted comment in this thread originally linked to here. Perhaps the equality thesis has not been falsified already. But if it ever were, I fully expect those facts to be memory-holed.
I guess that means we should expect the actual undoing (if it should ever happen) of woke will be mocking it and making it low status (somehow? This is left as an exercise to the reader).
FtSoA
4hr ago
To call Taiwan a "rogue province" is to accept that the People's Republic of China has a claim on it which is being violated by the Republic of China. Obviously the ROC does not accept that.
This is a wonderfully pedantic stance you're taking. The PRC is viewed by everyone, except the ROC, as the One True Chinese Government. The ROC has not tried to formally define itself as a separate country (though some want to). Or give up it's claims to the mainland.
"Get back the full territory" refers to the government of China regaining control of all of Chinese territory following external invasions and civil war. I could choose a slightly different phrasing if the word "back" offends you, but it's a distinction without a difference. It's either a rogue province, or an independent country. Take your pick.
So unless you accept that the ROC is still the legitimate sovereign power of all of China, temporarily embarrassed by only controlling Taiwan, then this is all academic.
Grant_us_eyes
4hr ago
I prefer Obsidian for general organization and note-taking. It would serve well as a way to organize an electronic journal with little fuss.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
4hr ago
Apologies is self-promotion is frowned upon, but i'm posting this here for visibility and because it started as a reply to @self_made_human's post on AI Assistants from last week's culture-war thread.
Is your "AI Assistant" smarter than an Orangutan? A practical engineering assessment
AnonymousActuary
4hr ago
Rittenhouse was such a perfect little scissor...not shocking that was the first step in driving people apart
phailyoor
4hr ago
Whether or not they will be exchanged for money or handed out for free, nobody wants those widgets. They are useless crap. They are worthless.
Blueberry
4hr ago
As Zagrebbi argue here https://salafisommelier.substack.com/p/a-robin-hanson-perspective-on-the Marxism is really the Platonic Realm of wordcellery!
That little link has 6236 words and a hundred links! The post makes one interesting (novel?) idea in positioning itself against Hanania and others: Wokists are not woke because they believe in equality, but they believe in equality so that they can signal wokism (to differentiate themselves as elite from the non-elite underclass). Wokism is more viral than Marxism, because the latter was born in a homogeneous society while Wokism evolved in the multi-ethnic world we are living today and is used in credibly giving a pro-social signal to minority-elitists. Wokism is a tool in the status hierarchy. That also means we have not reached peak wokeness, as the tool will remain useful in future.
As a side note: some Russian nationalists bemoan that USSR-Marxism developed wokist elements (promoting the minority out-group). For example Ukraine getting Crimea under Khrushchev instead of Russification like under the Zars.
Tiber727
4hr ago
My whole point is that we should be talking about fewer laws.
I could tell by context that that's what you believe, and I am contesting that.
When you use legislation and regulation on a case-by-case basis as you described, you're playing whack-a-mole without ever looking up at the bigger picture.
My thesis is that sometimes moles should be whacked, otherwise your yard turns to shit. You state that bad case of having too many laws, and I state the bad case that the rules are being created to attempt to stop a bad thing, so without them you have the bad thing. An example that was brought up was rotating interns baited by promises of full-time work. You might claim that it is a symptom of overcomplicated hiring laws, and I might claim what I see as a simpler explanation - they wanted cheap labor but felt bad about it.
Complexity is the enemy, especially when refactoring of the system is slow or difficult. Congress likes to pass laws, but it very, very rarely retracts previous legislation.
I have a suggestion on that that I think should be followed regardless of my feeling of being more big government. The government should have an agency or committee dedicated periodic review of laws to see which laws can be retired, or if multiple overlapping laws can be combined for clarity and brevity.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4hr ago
I am not a scholar of Marxist thought by any means but I come across it often enough as a leftist more generally. My impression is that what Marxists of all kinds agree with, and find value in, is Marx's critique of capitalism and his particular methods (dialectical materialism) for doing so. Where they often diverge is how we will get from our present system to a communist (moneyless, classless, stateless) one. Each of these different branches thinks of themselves as "real" communists in a way the others aren't. You also get the "communism has never been tried" discussions because there have always been (and likely will always be) deviations from an ideal theoretical implementation when actually implementing them, which allows those adherents to continue believing that the correct outcomes would be achieved if only they had been closer to theory (this is not unique to Marxism).
As to wokism's advantage, I think it is simpler. To the extent wokism encompasses things like non-discrimination laws it fits firmly in the liberal (in the political philosophy sense) tradition that American elites have always considered themselves inspired by. Certainly in a way that the more common varieties of communism (like Marxism-Leninism) do not.
FtSoA
4hr ago
Fewer deaths overall, and I don't see how it makes Russia so much stronger that U.S. hegemony is threatened (more than it already is).
Focus less on "U.S. hegemony" and more on "Russian domination of its neighbors." Most of the time, successful conquerors like to run up the score, not just find satisfaction.
If the 'norm' for 'support against aggression' is to just pump money and weapons into any force fighting against someone we don't like, I'd be able to offhand point out like half a dozen examples of where we did that and it directly backfired or blew over into unforeseen, possibly worse consequences.
Easy to ignore the counterfactuals of not doing that.
Afghanistan, of course, being one of those, that instantly folded as soon as we removed our presence.
Afghanistan was an ongoing occupation. We had, as you point out, a presence. It has almost nothing in common with our support to Ukraine.
Its a very ill defined way to run things, outside of explicit treaty agreements like NATO. "If the U.S. State Department thinks you're aggressing against your neighbor they will pump said neighbor's combat capabilities up to even out the odds, but otherwise won't intervene" is
Come on. You think the State Department is what matters here??? Also, there are plenty of conflicts where we do not intervene in material ways.
We're STILL not officially at war with Russia, so on the political level, it is genuinely unclear what our true objective for participating in this conflict is
Do you know anything about the Cold War? Were we ever at officially with war with Russia?
The true objective is helping the Ukrainians defend themselves to impose costs on Russia and support the security of the region. Simple.
But if its really such a great moral and strategic goal, its strange that the U.S., with the least to lose in this situation, is the one that is continuing to make the largest investments.
"Largest" "investments"? Of what kind? Have you adjusted for per capita at all?
What's strange is that we and the Europeans didn't give Ukraine way more support way faster. Embarrassing how much it took to convince some countries that actually Russia is a threat.
I guess it depends on which one you view as the 'worse' issue. As stated, I see demographic collapse as likely to trigger more and more conflicts going forward.
I don't think this follows, but it's clearly a self-correcting problem.
oats_son
5hr ago
Trace has history. In 2020, he was bothered by posts from FCfromSSC and others for posting views that they don't want to share a country with Trace or other Blue Tribers and that Red Tribe needs to not cooperate with Blues on problems they started (rioting, along with Rittenhouse, was a big topic at the time) and then he took issue with some dehumanizing rhetoric towards criminals like robbers calling them "scum" and "rabid dogs" and eventually announced that he was starting r/TheSchism along with another user with a bunch of numbers for a name that had his own reasons. I think this post is probably relevant there, too.
Some time later, the furry crossword hoax was pulled on LibsOfTikTok by Trace, and other comment history accumulated that was used against Trace by other users here. After the David Gerard article, Trace basically flamed out. He had a successful Twitter account at that point, and he didn't really need this place anymore.
I don't like how he exited and I think this place is worse off without him and I don't really agree with much of his reasoning about this site being bad that I've seen him post elsewhere, but I will give him that it must be pretty annoying to already be left of center in a space like this and then get multiple people who link 5 year old posts at him aggressively to tell him how wrong and hypocritical he is. The rules allowed the behavior, but it was too bad. Everyone makes mistakes, missteps in rhetoric, or failures to predict, and one weak spot of forums like this is that they're perfectly preserved, forever. I've seen the same kind of digging up of old posts impact other users here in a way that I don't find helpful.
Anyway, Trace is wrong, this place is way better than Twitter. I'd guess he gets more haters on Twitter, but they're of lower quality and he can snipe back as much as he likes.
Sorry for re-igniting old drama. If I characterized this wrong, let me know in the replies.
faceh
5hr ago
But Marxists don't care about winning or losing "the argument". What they want to do is change the rules by which the argument itself is conducted. They want a wholesale reevaluation of what it means to "win" or "lose" "the argument" in the first place.
Sure.
But for being so big on "Material Conditions," they should notice that if material conditions are more favorable in the other system, that's going to supercede their clever wordplay.
"whoever is producing the most goods most efficiently is the winner"
If we're talking about a "satisfying human desires" contest, that seems pretty fair.
I think even the Hunter-Gatherers were playing that game, and could probably grasp that a tribe that was bringing home more meat and berries and could use its surpluses to make things like fur coats and better tools and weapons were 'winning' in some meaningful way.
Capitalism's great "insight" was that you didn't have to go over and raid and pillage the neighboring tribe to benefit from their bounty. Instead you can identify things you have, that they want, and trade such things for mutual gain, then use those gains to bolster your productive capacity again. At some point someone invents 'money' and its off to the races.
Not sure what Marxism's great "insight" was, or at least what insight they have that improved people's lives since it was implemented.
They want to CLAIM things like "the five day work week" or "liberation of slaves" or "unionization/collective bargaining," but I think even their own theories support the materialist interpretation that such things only ever came about because Capitalism made us productive enough to spare more resources for leisure and alleviation of suffering, and to give workers the leverage to demand better compensation for their labor.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5hr ago
Money is entirely fungible -- that is, one unit of currency is the same as another unit of the same currency -- but it is not entirely convertible into other useful items (although it's pretty good at this). The divorcing of use value from exchange value doesn't make sense for commodities or bulk manufactured goods, but it does for other things -- real estate in particular.
FtSoA
5hr ago
More of an "Iran-Iraq War" quagmire in terms of style (trenches, not jungle), but yes.
FtSoA
5hr ago
and their radar system got disabled by hackers before Israel attacked (surely a unique mistake enabled only by Israel's complete intelligence penetration of it)
Good thing the Russians were not competent at their intelligence preparation of the battlefield.
And still, from what I gather, Israel did not do manned overflights but just launched ATGMs over Iraq.
Think about what you just said. They "just" "launched" "ATGMs." How did that turn out for the IAF? For Iran?
Israel did manned overflights once they had obliterated Iran's air defenses in a matter of hours.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-air-superiority-iran-cannot-compared-russia-ukraine
Iran also had a lot more than merely four S-300 batteries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Defense_Force
Technically, we've had a commitment for decades. But also even if Ukraine loses you're failing to consider the counterfactual where Putin just took over in weeks. That would be worse.
That's a matter of perspective, for sure. Fewer deaths overall, and I don't see how it makes Russia so much stronger that U.S. hegemony is threatened (more than it already is).
I do NOT like bringing back 'War of Territorial Conquest' as a feature of global diplomacy again, but Russia made that call unilaterally.
Stopping Putin from conquering his neighbors at will? Preserving norms of liberalism and Western mutual support against aggression?
If the 'norm' for 'support against aggression' is to just pump money and weapons into any force fighting against someone we don't like, I'd be able to offhand point out like half a dozen examples of where we did that and it directly backfired or blew over into unforeseen, possibly worse consequences.
Afghanistan, of course, being one of those, that instantly folded as soon as we removed our presence. Call it 'cheap' if you want, it was never sustainable, I'd straight up say almost every dollar we pumped in there (to say nothing of U.S. lives) has gone to waste.
I worry about the same here, with one of the foreseeable consequences being Ukraine's utter collapse on the population level.
Its a very ill defined way to run things, outside of explicit treaty agreements like NATO. "If the U.S. State Department thinks you're aggressing against your neighbor they will pump said neighbor's combat capabilities up to even out the odds, but otherwise won't intervene" is like "if we see someone being stabbed by a mugger, we'll toss the victim a knife (and maybe a stab-proof jacket) and cheer them on from the side."
We're STILL not officially at war with Russia, so on the political level, it is genuinely unclear what our true objective for participating in this conflict is.
You're leaving out the side of equation where Ukraine is also facing demographic challenges. It's a symmetrical problem.
Yes, and its sharpening the impact of the conflict. The people being lost each day aren't being replaced, they can't be retrieved, every loss is irreversible.
I guess it depends on which one you view as the 'worse' issue. As stated, I see demographic collapse as likely to trigger more and more conflicts going forward.
Ukraine can do what it wants with the population it has. I don't begrudge them the urge to fight off an aggressor in the least. But if its really such a great moral and strategic goal, its strange that the U.S., with the least to lose in this situation, is the one that is continuing to make the largest investments.
SkoomaDentist
5hr ago
EU telling phone manufacturers to stop making proprietary phone chargers when USB exists
Strictly speaking EU hasn't forbidden proprietary phone chargers. They've only mandated that phones must also support USB-C charging. Of course for phones this is in practise meaningless but it's quite relevant for some other devices covered under the same directive.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5hr ago
That's what "rogue" means here. In a civil war, the ChiComms won, but didn't quite get back the full territory of China.
There is no "back". The ChiComms never held Taiwan. Two groups fought for control of China, one successfully took the vast majority but the other group was able to hold a small part. To call Taiwan a "rogue province" is to accept that the People's Republic of China has a claim on it which is being violated by the Republic of China. Obviously the ROC does not accept that.
thejdizzler
5hr ago
This again assumes humans are rational actors, and fails to adequately capture the reasons for an economic booms and busts in a capitalist system and the kind of behavior you see from the ultra-rich.
thejdizzler
5hr ago
Have to agree with this. Marx's central argument is that focusing on pure production is confusing use-value for monetary value. Capitalist focus on production above all else results in commodity fetishism and the misallocation of labor and resources to goods that don't provide much use value to members of society.
I don’t know, im personally of the opinion that there are good and bad ways to achieve any goal and that there are always trade-offs that come with any of it. And for my own personal ideal state, im in favor of tge Scandinavian model where sure you aren’t going to be the biggest baddest economy or a global hegemony, but by and large the bulk of people can get along just fine. I’m not opposed to universal health care of some sort, but I understand it rations care by wait times where the American system rations by money.
I’m generally with at least tge idea that whatever the form a government takes, the most important thing is customer service— getting things done that create a healthy, thriving country full of thriving people. I’m not convinced that the money-maximizing system we’ve built in the USA delivers on that. That doesn’t mean socialism or communism or nationalism or theocracy would do better. I just want a country where the bulk of people can live a reasonable lifestyle, and where a setback isn’t fatal.
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