domain:worksinprogress.co
felis-parenthesis
29d ago
That is a bad comment. You are replying to a comment that claims there have been twenty-four years of disasters and laments that people are not learning. Have there been twenty-four years of disaster? Does past performance predict future performance? Is this time different? There is plenty to engage with. But your comment is negative, low effort, and unresponsive.
SSCReader
29d ago
If CO2 emissions really as as catastrophically dangerous as they are made out to be, then nuclear is the obvious, guaranteed-to-work, 100% solution that would completely have already solved this problem by now
Unless the same people also fear nuclear power to roughly the same extent. And unfortunately many people who drive environmental concerns grew up in an era where fear of nuclear power was rampant. The Cuban Missile crisis, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. In other words if you think A will be a catastrophe and can be solved by B, which will also be a catastrophe then it becomes easy to see why people look for options C through F.
The real test is once those people die/retire/age out of leadership roles will the movement reorient itself.
Same as generals still fighting the last type of war instead of the next one.
Notably, they can of course be wrong about how catastrophic A or B might be, but from direct exposure to very many high level "climate alarmists" it is my opinion they are absolutely sincere in being worried about the climate. They are just also worried about nuclear catastrophes. And a whole bunch of other things. In fact I would say the thing that connects them (or most of them), is they worry way too much about a lot of things.
After all if this fear of climate change is driven by hysteria, what makes you think their other fears are going to be rationally evaluated against climate change in order to solve climate change?
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
29d ago
There are women out there, credentialed academics, holding positions of power, that hate my group so much they celebrate its ultimate demise.
If it makes you feel any better, these women, and women as a group, are being absolutely bodied on all fronts by men in dresses.
2rafa
29d ago
Not necessarily. The Bannon plan only called for Republicans to win 40% of Hispanics. In time limited assimilation converts some Hispanics to the ‘white’ category, so as long as the GOP wins increasing voteshare among whites demographics isn’t necessarily guaranteed to go against them.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
29d ago
The right of self-determination of Ukrainians is first and foremost not to be sent into a meatgrinder by conscription officers.
Pic unrelated?
laxam
29d ago
Either way I think the most important development in all of this is that post-internet, nationalism cannot really be a thing.
Someone has never run into a bunch of people from different Balkan countries online.
PierreMenard
29d ago
PierreMenard
29d ago
Are they at war or just LARPing online?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
29d ago
I don’t believe we’ve modded anyone for the reverse sentiment, though it’s possible I missed something.
PierreMenard
29d ago
It not only can, but is. Splinternets have been a thing for quite awhile now and all countries (including the US) engage in this sort of cyber balkanization.
Yes, so Ukraine does not qualify as a country (therefore Ukrainian nationalism is an oxymoron) by that definition, as its citizens are either living in the Western memeplex of the EU/US or of Russia's.
what makes you think their other fears are going to be rationally evaluated against climate change in order to solve climate change?
Or perhaps more generally, what makes you think they're even capable of rationally evaluating fears in the first place?
it is my opinion they are absolutely sincere in being worried about the climate
Well, that's the good-faith answer. Yet, it concerns me that the things they appear to be genuinely afraid of also happen to be things that it is in their personal or class interest to be genuinely afraid of, and afraid in such a way that their opponents' good-faith efforts are never good enough for them.
If climate change sheds its master morality baggage and actually threatens to improve life for a change, maybe we'd start accomplishing those goals. Tesla did it, look how successful they are. (Of course, the most statistically worried about climate change also excuse themselves from buying a Tesla because they don't like what Elon says on the Internet- a good faith view of that is hyperconservative fear paralysis... which is why it's odd we consider progressives to be on the left when they're fundamentally an ultraconservative rightist movement specifically because fear dominates their reasoning.)
So what, exactly, are our leaders thinking?
I've said it before, I'll say it again: bleeding Russia is on sale right at an amazing discount right now, so we're buying a bit.
"But [list of reasons why long term Ukraine is screwed, won't be able to get back lost territory, etc, etc]." Yeah, sure. Also Russia is exhausting itself at a very small cost to the American taxpayer.
If Russia spends years grinding away to a standstill in Ukraine, then they won't have the ability to attack any further anytime soon.
And very optimistically, it serves as a warning to other countries wanting to invade their neighbors. If they badly desire a drawn out conflict that drains their resources for no obvious gain, we'll give it to them.
PierreMenard
29d ago
our system would have outperformed your system is a particularly good way to do so.
I don't see how your system would have outperformed. I don't really get the end-goal of the muslim emigrants. They're just leaving a poor shithole (muslim-majority country) to a wealthier country (formerly white-majority country), and their descendants are gradually becoming Westernized. Then they acquire a quite Jewish ideological flexibility: oppressed minority in the streets, islamic conqueror in the sheets... That can't be good psychologically.
So what's the point? Coloring the map?
If more people thought like me, it's entirely possible that this war would not have happened.
How do you mean? I expect Russia would have more incentive to invade, not less, if they foresaw no Western opposition.
blank check
If we were talking about Patriot Acts and boots on the ground, maybe. But spending money on munitions is like…our comparative advantage. It’s making a slightly larger fraction of GDP go towards geopolitical goals. I think we’re still getting a decent return on investment.
Yes, more people are dying than would if we washed our hands of it, and I wish they weren’t. But how much of the culpability falls on us rather than on the conscriptors, let alone the invaders?
I would take your “Mistakes were Made” bet, because I don’t expect this to escalate in the ways you’re thinking. Russia is probably going to win out as Ukraine collapses. I will admit that I was wrong—and lobby my Congressman against it, etc.—if America considers more direct intervention.
MathWizard
formerly hh26
29d ago
My guess, extrapolating from my own similar albeit weaker feelings, is that it's something along the lines of corruption of virtue. Taking what should be positive qualities and wasting them or subverting them. Similar to a beautiful delicious barbecued pig falling into the dirt and feeding the flies and germs instead of a person. Turning from something nourishing and healthy to people into something that only feeds rot and disease.
That is, kindness has the potential to do good things and have value and make the world a better place. But misplaced kindness that rewards bad behavior will incentivize them and make them more prevalent. The vast majority of toxic behaviors we see in society are there not because the people who do them are stupid people who can't figure out how to be kind, but because they have been systematically rewarded for those behaviors in some way or another. Being toxic works, at least on some level for some people. To the extent that toxic behaviors are analogous to disease, systematically feeding them with misplaced kindness is comparable to someone going out and feeding expensive high quality meat to a wild rat colony, or a beautiful woman allowing mosquitoes and hookworms to feast on her blood. Not only are they wasting something good, but they are actively allowing badness to reproduce for everyone else to have to deal with. It's disgusting.
I feel less scorn and revulsion for people who do this accidentally than I would for someone doing this on purpose. And less for people doing this on a social level than with literal diseases. But it's still gross in a similar way.
hydroacetylene
29d ago
and given the option, I'd expect most would rather have stayed in a peaceful Ukraine and married a Ukrainian man
I don’t think they would have; Ukraine was the top origin country of mail order brides before the war and leaving was a top goal for most of its inhabitants back then. Ukraine is an impoverished corrupt shithole and no one actually wanted to live there even before it was being razed to the ground by the Russian army.
PierreMenard
29d ago
Also Russia is exhausting itself at a very small cost to the American taxpayer.
Idk inflation is pretty high, young Americans can't afford buying houses, nobody wants to join the US military to die for Israel or for Hunter Biden's business deals, 'Democrats' apparently feel the need to prosecute their political opponents, bridges are collapsing and planes barely going up in the sky, cops and judges don't feel like prosecuting (non-political) crimes...
According to the theory that every single bad thing that happens in the US is due to Russian agents, this war is not exactly cheap.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
29d ago
If it wasn't Putin, any other Russian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Zelensky, any other Ukrainian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Biden, any other American leader would be beset by the same scenario and conditions.
Mewis
29d ago
The idea that Putin and Russia are not under threat from the US axis is I think, not on solid ground. That's been demonstrated several times over the past twenty five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya were not under threat from the US, until suddenly they were. Fundamentally, the US believes it has the right to direct the affairs of all the world, simply waiting for crisis and opportunity to strike.
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
And yet, far less so than ignoring nuclear weapons as a deterrent for invasion.
The argument that Russia was not under threat from the US axis is not made on the basis that the US wouldn't if it could beat Russia in a conventional war- not least because nothing about the Ukraine war changed the underlying reality of Russia's conventional deficit vis-a-vis the US and has only made it worse- but rather that beating Russia in a nuclear war wouldn't be worthwhile when the cost is measured not in divisions, but cities.
The Russian national security argument for invading Ukraine has always fallen to the point that it does not change the actual nuclear balance of power against the US in any conflict, and that it has been nuclear deterrence that Russia had, and all those others have not.
Dean
29d ago
And he tried exercising it to find more amicable solutions to the problem. That's what the Minsk Accords were.
The Minsk Accords were many things- including the functional erosion of national sovereignty by legislating an external power's veto by proxy- but an amicable solution they were not.
Why was the west encouraging Ukraine behind the scenes to give Russia a run around, while the west poured arms into the country to bolster its strength so the government could betray the terms of their agreement?
Why wouldn't the west encourage Ukraine not to submit to unreasonable Russian demands that the Russians knew were unreasonable and would not be accepted, while bolstering the ability to resist the military coercion that pushed the demands in the first place?
The demands were unreasonable, and were made at the end of a military intervention. Europeans, as with many other cultures, tend not to support those things against their neighbors lest it be applied to them.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
29d ago
Hmm, remind me how many people died during the School Integration Wars? And who the conscription officers were?
Gaashk
29d ago
Sure, I suppose I was mostly responding to the first two items on the list being "patriarchy, gender norms." I grew up in a conservative homeschooling community, and the families that were more serious about patriarchy and gender norms (also very heavy on "cheerful obedience") than about the other items experienced some poor results. The families that were more serious about the exposure to nature part through small agricultural operations run by the mother and children generally seemed happier.
Dean
29d ago
I'll just add that the media bouncing has also shifted over time. In the first six months of the war, the pro-peace-via-concession element was decisively in the European court, particularly Germany before the Nord Stream pipeline explosion scuttled attempts to keep the Russian gas flowing. In the last six months of the war, as the US aid holdup began, the more US-based conession voices have increased, but more belicose support from the European powers has increased due to evolving government perspectives on what Russia would do with its Cold War over-build if a peace were to emerge. At this point, the re-activated Russian stockpiles have themselves become a national security threat, as the current attrition rate has made them a use-them-or-lose-them asset for the Russians who can't credibly modernize them after a war, but could continue to use them for a near-term war if Ukraine were to capitulate shortly.
I'd go as far as to wager that even if Trump were to try and pressure Ukraine to make a deal, the Europeans would continue to back the Ukrainians and maintain the conflict, if only to give their own arms industries more time to mobilize and attrit more of the Russian stockpile. The US isn't the only party with an interest in depleting the Russian armored corps, and the strategic logic takes a life of its own with other EU-sovereignist interests are considered.
He didn’t say he was going full send in the Air Force. But he did promise more arms than they’ve gotten.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-war-b2377077.html
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