domain:mattlakeman.org
China doesn't care which tribe runs the ports, only that the trade flows.
Neither did the British at first, but eventually you have no choice but to care, because the other side might ally with someone else or extort you for more.
could exterminate every Pakistani but as long Gwardar port remains open for COSCO it doesn't matter.
Sure, but in a regional total war a key revenue-generating asset like that is getting bombed to nothing on day one, so the practical outcome is that they are invested in that kind of conflict. Comparative trifles in Burma (which are a little more complex than ‘supporting both sides’ I’d say, though my understanding is far from comprehensive) don’t suggest otherwise. Agree mostly on Taiwan, though one can’t discount face.
In the cascading list of great satans the dispossessed third world wants dead, China ranks relatively distantly.
I think the chance that China emerges unscathed from nuclear war involving all the largest powers on its border is very, very low. Involvement in several forms would be inevitable, and at that point the likelihood of getting nuked increases significantly. As for the Islamist threat, ‘rogue nuke’ is very 1990s; it is possible but I suspect the next major attack will have another format. China is less safe than you think; vigorous imprisonment and surveillance of the kind unimaginable in the West have reduced the number of domestic attacks, but I wouldn’t discount the very substantial number of jihadists now in Central Asia and elsewhere with a very strong grudge to bear. Russian collapse doesn’t mean that nukes will fall into the hands of Islamists who want to nuke the USA or Israel either, in fact given the locations of key sites and the personnel and staffing structure of the relevant agencies that is relatively unlikely.
Pakistan falling would see India or Israel get nuked by jihadis, Russia falling would probably see Israel or USA get the brunt of it.
More specifically, state failure doesn’t happen overnight and the respective officials with knowledge of all devices and sites will gladly trade that information to the Americans and/or Chinese in exchange for money and safe passage to a life in Gulf exile a week before the storming of the presidential palace.
Then they go on to talk about Pogacar being maybe the GOAT, surpassing Merckx or Indurain, with no mention of Armstrong.
Even following your philosophy of just taking the result at the very second itvwas achieved at face value, Armstrong has to claim to being spoken in the same breath as Merckx.
Arnstrong cared only about adoration of normies, by focusing on the one race normies know. This is in total opposition to the old masters, who would race all year.
prestigelisten.dk follows your philosophy in treating Armstrong as a 7 Tour winner, and even according to it, he is merely 9th in the All-time list.
Edit: Armstrong is just the most-familiar-to-American-casual-fans-of-cycling of their memories of the moment of victory, not matching official records. Even the GOAT won his 3rd Il Lombardia on 13th October 1973, only to have it yanked from him on 8th of November 1973 when doping was discovered. Would have made it 20 total Monument wins, but nobody assigns him this win today.
If you want to apply your philosophy consistently, contemporeneous coverage cycling is key, not picking and chosing when to trust official results and when one's memory.
But examining primary sources is hard, thus Armstrong won 7 Tours (primacy of lived experience over post facto investigation), and Merckx merely 19 Monuments (few Americans today can say they saw Merckx win the 1973 Il Lombardia as it happened, thus they defer to edited results).
sohois
1hr ago
Death Valley is sparsely populated: by your logic, we can assume it's a good place to live.
Plus, I daresay that many Indians would in fact like to live in Mumbai, more than are currently there
sohois
1hr ago
The examples we have of liberalised planning, both historical and current, are far superior to the examples we have of drug legalisation/decriminalisation, so it seems unlikely
Ademonera
1hr ago
Remember when we were all so concerned about suicides at Foxconn in china 15 years ago? Apple helped china become even more proficient at manufacturing because they gave them the best regulatory deals possible.
It’s curious to me that we lost our edge with goods but became way better with services. Maybe that’s the ideal state if your citizens are mostly knowledge workers, but China is a huge adversary and we willingly let them usurp our chemical and commodities manufacturing strengths.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
I probably could've told the difference between nitroglycerine and nitromethane when I was 10, but it's not that big of a mistake to make.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1hr ago
Chuck Marohn (of Strong Towns)'s recent big thing (and more or less the topic of his most recent book Escaping The Housing Trap) is that a major problem with YIMBYs is that simply legalizing housing isn't enough, since the financing for housing is also broken. He's cagey about offering solutions but generally thinks federal level support for 30-year mortgages is a problem and that funding should be at the local level instead.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
2hr ago
I have not one but multiple stores within 2 minute walking distance.
The overall argument he makes is that while WW3 would indeed be horrible, the destruction may lead to a renewal down the road whereas the antichrist would lead to a permanent stagnation and total surveillance state, which could perpetuate unfathomably long amounts of time or perhaps eternally.
That certainly sounds like the palantir project, the irony must surely be deliberate at this point.
remzem
3hr ago
Mumbai is crowded. Would you like to live there? Libs worried about rogue ai paperciip maximizers destroying humanity but it turns out they were the paperclip maximizers all along.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
Evidence in favor of Thiel being sane: He can't resist getting in a dig in on Andreesen.
Evidence against: Everything else
Yeah, dude's losing it.
I think Scott raised a very valid point on Antichrist ID 101: They're supposed to have "Antichrist" literally spelled out on their forehead. Do we really know why Yudkowsky always wears his fedora? On the other hand, Andreesen and Greta have fiveheads, but in 2025, cosmetic surgery or makeup can do wonders.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Come on man. It's fine to say "I'm right about it", it's just silly to say "I'm so right about it that the other side is like phlogiston".
Get off it.
Isn't that literally what you did when you dimissed hydroacetylene point about viewpoint discrimination in therapy by pointing out that medical professionals discriminate against viewpoints like "disease is caused by bad humors" and "disease is caused by spiritual rot"?
I'm not sure "inducing infertility" is a problem -- consenting adults can get their tubes tied.
The restrictions medical professionals put on adults wanting to do this are much stricter than the ones placed on children wanting to do it as part of gender affirming care.
As for the rest, I'd assume it's balanced against the putative mental health issues that come with untreated dysphoria
Except Guyatt's own research shows that there isn't really evidence that treating gender dysphoria helps anyone.
FWIW, I don't even disagree with you here, if you want to fight someone over it online I'm sure you can find someone on reddit to take the other side.
It's just an example. My argument is that your view of the medical profession is rather rosy.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4hr ago
Yeah the right understands the left better than the other way around. That might change in the near future though, because the right understand the left better out of necessity - it is more important to understand your opponent's theory of mind when you are weaker than them than when you are stronger than them.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
It would be rational if there was any evidence that paying that much gave you any meaningful increase in how good your CEO is. But I don't think there is.
veqq
4hr ago
There are barely any black people in California or Washington. I first saw one at 15. A few neighborhoods in LA don't justify San Diego's sprawl.
DiscourseMagnus
4hr ago
My personal theory is that it got to Thiel how often people accuse him of being the Antichrist and he wanted to deflect.
2D3D
4hr ago
China doesn't care which tribe runs the ports, only that the trade flows. Balochis could exterminate every Pakistani but as long Gwardar port remains open for COSCO it doesn't matter. Similarly, choking down chinese cock doesn't matter if you have something they want like the Filipinos are experiencing.
Chinese supplies both rebels and Junta in the Myanmar Civil War and Thais as well as Cambodians in that war. It aided North Vietnam and then slapped it to stop the Soviet pivot. China is friend to all and none, uninterested in eschatological ideological alignment. I'm not even convinced Taiwan is a real desired conflict as much as it is an internal justification for taking the fight against the USN outside Chinese territory.
Rogue state proliferation is a major concern and that may force expeditionary interventions but for the moment the USA is keen to take that burden for itself. Ironically the most likely rogue state China is concerned about is North Korea, and that damocles hanging over South Korea and Japan is equally aimable at China. Pakistan falling would see India or Israel get nuked by jihadis, Russia falling would probably see Israel or USA get the brunt of it. In the cascading list of great satans the dispossessed third world wants dead, China ranks relatively distantly.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4hr ago
I don't wanna go to a tiny ass overpriced bodega. I want Walmart.
Comments like this make me suspect anti-urbanists have no idea what dense urban areas are actually like. I live five minutes from a full-sized grocery with substantial better (and higher quality) selection than Wal Mart is going to give me. I can add about 5 min to add another two. All three deliver as well if I feel like contributing to the downfall of America, and I also have access to dozens of more specialized retailers.
10-15 minute walk is doable depending on the urban layout but that's pushing the distance where you start considering driving.
This is half of why Americans are obese. (The other half is what they buy inside). If you're driving to avoid a 10 minute walk, it better be December in Minnesota.
Come on man. It's fine to say "I'm right about it", it's just silly to say "I'm so right about it that the other side is like phlogiston".
Get off it.
unless you think he doesn't believe that inducing infertility, wrecking the endocrine system, etc., isn't hamrful.
I'm not sure "inducing infertility" is a problem -- consenting adults can get their tubes tied.
As for the rest, I'd assume it's balanced against the putative mental health issues that come with untreated dysphoria. Just like many treatments have negative aspects, you have to assess the entire thing.
FWIW, I don't even disagree with you here, if you want to fight someone over it online I'm sure you can find someone on reddit to take the other side.
anon_
4hr ago
wildly unfair to pay someone over 1000x what you pay the people who actually drive the company's ability to make money
It's not about driving the ability to make money, it's about value over replacement employee.
A bad barista can ruin a lot of customer's days, piss people off, probably cause thousands of dollars of damage before someone notices.
A bad CEO can destroy a hundred million dollars of value, maybe even a billion, before the board removes them.
At those stakes, justice is not even close to the point. It's rational to pay that much because the swing in value caused by that single person is immense. The difference between a good CEO and a bad CEO is easily $100M just by itself.
anon_
4hr ago
If you only allow some parts of the money spent outside the US to be tax deductible
Presumably the money spent offshore is spent by a foreign subsidiary.
anon_
4hr ago
Ah, but it does. If it were merely paying 2x the salary, that is something that can be budgeted for and just passed along.
Instead, you get the guy that you are paying to do the plumbing refuse to cut a hole through the floor for a shower drain because that's not in his trade specification. So you have to get someone from the carpenter's trade to come do that (for more money) while the plumber is sitting there being paid to fondle his balls. A half day later, you might have a shower drain. Or not, maybe the hole is in the wrong place (because what does a carpenter know about plumbing anyway). Everything moves at a snail's pace when someone won't do a tiny job that's blocking their progress just because it's not on a list somewhere.
A whole headquarters for Steph Curry's new outfit wasn't built in the Dogpatch because of this insanity.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
In what way is the belief "disease is caused by bad humors" dispositively proven to be harmful in a way that gender affirming care isn't?
Guyatt doesn't.
Sure he does, unless you think he doesn't believe that inducing infertility, wrecking the endocrine system, etc., isn't hamrful.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4hr ago
there's not really an event in the Olympics that has a pure test of static strength.
The clean and press is hella cool but if there's a clean in there it's not a test of static strength. And to be honest given the techniques they were using for the press it's not static strength either. Maybe someone could come up with some autistic ruleset for the press but who wants to see that? Just add a deadlift event and be done with it.
The katechon, the restrainer of the antichrist, must be both really powerful to prevent the antichrist, but that means there is also the danger that it IS the antichrist. I have a soft spot for theology and think it is fun to think about such mindbenders and finding real world examples. I guess Thiel was nerd sniped here.
The general point seems to be that Thiel would like to avoid anything which is too powerful, which is a globalist one-world-government. Which makes sense in a not-all-eggs-in-one-basket way.
I laughed about the juxtaposition of Francis Bacon and juvenile japanese Manga:
I laughed out loud about this:
I don’t know how wooey Vance is, he comes off as relatively grounded, but Thiel giving the unsolicited advice to not get too close to the pope must have been an absurd scene (and suspiciously what I would have expected the antichrist to say).
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