domain:betonit.substack.com
No_one
14m ago
And one technique is simply having the Europeans give their existing hardware to the Ukrainians ASAP. Gotta prime the defense industrial complex pump.
The entire European inventory of air defence would sustain Ukraine for.. a few months. Maybe a year if they were purposefully ignoring all the Geran drones and staying off the front lines, exclusively defending the rear.
There's maybe 200 modern self-propelled guns left to give. What should they give ? Tanks? Storm Shadows aren't coming. There's the 500 Taurus missiles, which are air launched (so can't salvo), I'm not even sure how many launch platforms Ukraine has and which Russia can likely pick off using their few AWACS planes. And in addition, they don't range far enough either, just about capable of hitting Moscow.
in that Ukraine has been taking on Russia quite successfully for years now
Ukrainians have suffered drastically higher casualties than Russians (because they have less artillery(src, Syrski) and fewer drones(src: Sukharevsky interview in Economist)) for the last two years at least, have lost strategic initiative and are now falling back at an ever increasing pace? Putin, ever the reptile, cares more to end the way predictably and with maximum loss of life for Ukrainian fighting men, as that's going to make the occupation of everything east of the Dniepr less of a problem.
You seem to take ISW and Ukrainian numbers (we kill 1500 Russians a day) at face value. It's not like that. The article you posted is typical. Ukraine's mediazona count got only to 120k, not 250k. Maybe it goes up to 180k if you count in the prisoners.
Meanwhile, the growth in cemeteries in Ukraine indicates war deaths of well north of 500k. Data on amputees, until they stopped publishing it likewise - north of 300k dead, easily.
Even though looking at satellite photos of cemeteries is quite simple, no one seems motivated to perform this calculation when it comes to Ukraine. They did so for Russia, but strangely, they neglected top apply the same methodology for Ukraine. Why? I mean, if they were sure Ukrainian government was telling the truth, or even just bending it by 2x, so ~100k dead, that's less than 0.3% of Ukrainian population. In short, there shouldn't be that many new graves.
You should read this article by retired US officer, not some 'international relations' pukes. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-battlefield/
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
18m ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
That's pretty dramatic hyperbole if you ask me. You can optimise the fun out of any game. Chess and go grandmasters often burn out, as do many esports players, when they reach the skill ceiling and their motivation becomes extrinsic instead of intrinsic. Esports players bitch all the time about how playing professionally has impacted playing for fun because they can't help but optimise for success, they can't just relax and fuck around like they used to. Fighting games are great for meta because of the reasons you mention, but even they have ceilings.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
20m ago
I’m one who at this point doesn’t care much. Unless you’re really going to perp-walk whatever celebrities are on the list as well as anyone who provided the girls or the money — which isn’t going to happen— the list is academic. It’s pointless to waste mental bandwidth on guessing who is on the list, what they did, who paid for it, and what they’re getting out of it when none of it will change anything. Game of Thrones happens all through the political systems of every country that has ever existed or ever will exist. Stuff like this is what elites do.
As far a China — I’ve no doubt that most elites or potential elites are on very similar lists.
jake
22m ago
When I was in high school I spent a couple summers lifeguarding for my city's public pools. My parents suggested it but they didn't require it, and it was largely my mother's doing. I've always loved swimming, I never did it competitively but all the time recreationally, and my mom also loved swimming, and I think she recommended it because she had a sense about these things, obvious as it is, that her teenage son would enjoy getting paid to spend summers at the pool.
I did. I never thought of it as work, I still don't. It's very funny to me how it does not parse at all in my memories as a job. I was hanging out with people my age, or girls just a bit older than me who were all thin and attractive and in skintight lifeguard suits. It was also a nice pool and this was the 00s so most people going were thin, other than the classic fat dad or chubby mom. It's lifeguarding so it built responsibility, and I think I'm a better person for it, for all of it. As far as summer activity options for high schoolers, lifeguarding must be high on the stack for socialization and peer esteem. I'll fully recommend this to my kids, but as with my parents, not require it, and for the same reason as I suspect from my mom. Work ethic, get in touch with the working class? The pocket money is nice, but nah. Hang out at the pool, socialize, exercise, flirt with girls. That's just a good summer.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
25m ago
Not quite. His attorney got ahold of the items somehow, but then turned them over to the FBI when asked for them. You can rest assured that they were the same items the FBI initially found, and speculating otherwise is being a conspiracy theorist.
Also, during that search:
On the first floor, agents also found a plastic bin tucked under a bookshelf in an office. The bin was filled with hard drives.
The hard drives all had tamper-proof "evidence" tape on them when the FBI found them, Maguire testified.
Nothing suspicious about that.
At the very least, an itemized list of images found on those hard drives and CDs would constitute "the Epstein files" that could be released.
Tree
28m ago
It’s always been weird, because rafa would lose enormous amounts of status in such a system. Right now the PMC, doctors bankers lawyers are at the top of the status pyramid because it’s their bourgeois regime. Replace it with rigid generational classes, and rafa’s title and status would be downgraded to ‘banking clerk‘. Just like it was in the good old days. And rafa works like 60 hours a week or something, which is huge, but most people do not feel this pressure, and they don't need to be "liberated" from it/re-enslaved in a guild by the revolution.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
29m ago
I’m sort of torn here because some of the things you learn on a job are things that will very helpful once you pass through all the testing and actually get to college. Things like showing up to work on time, doing tasks as instructed, going to work even though your friends have something more fun in mind, time management. Now what happens with a lot of kids is that the6 got used to the handholding that happens in high school where the teachers basically walk everyone through that big paper or assignment with every step checked off and multiple reminders about when the thing is due. And the6 start college where the midterm paper is in the syllabus but never mentioned, or maybe mentioned once or twice in passing— until the TA is collecting them. A kid who never learned to do the work will probably forget until the last minute.
I don’t think that con only happen at work. Sports teams can do the same. Maybe math camps? I never went to one.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
30m ago
Yeah sure, the firefighters say there wasn't a fire. Also they said to me there was a huge inferno five minutes ago. Be it Trump or the DOJ itself.
I'm not stepping in the gaslight chamber. There are four lights.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
35m ago
Wait, you're telling me a criminal destroyed evidence?
Sounds pretty normal actually.
Gaashk
40m ago
Some people I know have been trying to foster and/or adopt, because they're unable to have biological kids, and it is super difficult and uncertain. The system will often find a relative after several years, then spend a long time placing the child with that relative, sometimes a sibling when they come of age, and sometimes the teen just absconds because they don't like being parented all that much.
Maybe you should do it, good foster parents are great, but don't go into it assuming that you'll get a kid who will choose to stay with you until they're 22, or will listen to your good advice, and follow your sensible rules.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
41m ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
Cries even worse in DOTA2...
Cries in League of Legends...
Tree
44m ago
An 11% (or 30%, depending on how you calculate) difference is not much. Plus the fact that most of the effort of courtship is still expected of men (granted, it’s not that much in the modern world). But it’s easy to imagine those 11% men ‘would be open’ to a relationship with a woman who showed up all baked and ready to go at their door, but aren’t willing to text various women for weeks/face rejection.
Plus the general tendency of women to undercount their sex partners and men to overcount them. That is, men are supposed to want it, women aren’t supposed to want it. If you abandon the chase as a man, you're a loser, and if you're mancrazy as a woman, you could be a slut or a bad feminist. That alone, the shy loser and the shy slut, could explain the discrepancy.
Grant_us_eyes
48m ago
I've never experienced this directly, but it was depressing as hell watching a friend of mine trying to find someone to marry; here was a guy extremely fit, handsome, very well off, retired before 40, with a hobby list as long as my arm, and he still struggled to find a long-term partner.
I couldn't help but watch all this in action and left helplessly thinking, 'Christ, if HE'S having problems, what chance do I have?'
He did eventually get married to a wonderful woman, however, but he's still had to make a number of quiet sacrifices. Nothing technically major, but still...
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
50m ago
I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.
I do. If they didn't lash out while they were younger and hot-blooded, why would they do it in older, lower-T age? And it's not like all of them are going to have the fuck you money to just drop out of productive labor.
birb_cromble
52m ago
would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections
One of the parties implicated in this affair recently blew the dicks, assholes, and/or parinea clean off 3,000 people in multiple countries with devices the targets willingly put on their own bodies.
Given that display of competence and coordination, it feels like your assessment of what is or is not possible in this case may be overly conservative.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
53m ago
What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't. Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
53m ago
I'm strongly suspect that Obama claimed to be foreign born in his application to Columbia, and I would guess he was accepted in part because of that status. I'm quite certain that Liz Warren got significant advantages in her school and early career because of her claimed native heritage, and we know Mondani claimed African heritage in his own school career.
For me burtherism was making the people who cheated the system eat the consequences of their claimed advantages from being anything other than their actual heritage to disqualify them from anything later. I'd still like to see all the fruit of their lies taken away.
Goodguy
58m ago
Not sure if you're being serious but if you are, it's kind of funny to see a Jewish person like you advocate in favor of just the sort of anti-meritocratic policies that would have locked many of your European ancestors out of social advancement 200 years ago.
hydroacetylene
59m ago
Probably. I have noticed that whites in certain fields(especially restaurant trades- cook, manager, stuff like that. Not the jobs students/kids do.) have mostly learnt Spanish, that there are self-segregated mostly-black kitchens and groceries, and that bosses expect to have to translate between different kinds of entry-level workers in certain places- construction in particular, but also sometimes warehouses.
Bartender_Venator
1hr ago
I knew plenty of people at elite colleges who didn't do anything near tiger mom workloads in high school. There are some seats open for ultra-grinders, but really not all that many (and you have to compete with Asians). Contrary to some stereotypes, admissions officers at top schools are looking for a mix of types, and being a tiger child grinder is boxing yourself into one of the most competitive. I don't know your educational history, but I'd imagine those types are overrepresented in the finance/consulting rat race, which may give you that impression, though. Much more common archetypes:
- von Hammerstein-Equord's "smart but lazy" type, running off natural firepower and intellectual charisma, very good at playing the system to get better results for themselves than the grinders.
- The ultra-passionate about a particular topic, who don't grind for it tiger mom style but are thinking about their subject all the time and treat it as a hobby as well as work (this represented most math majors I knew, and 100% of those who stayed math majors)
- The "underrepresented major" type, think arch and anth at Oxbridge (iirc) or music at MIT (I'm guessing), who was essentially recruited to fill out a less-desired department. You can get into the best colleges in the world while being an absolute fuck-up that way, and the most elite private schools will steer their fuck-ups in that direction.
- The "little grad student" type, who is not necessarily a crazy grinder (could be a variation of any of these archetypes) but has internalized the lingo and style of academics in such a way as to present as advanced on the academic track.
If you've got a kid with the requisite IQ, I'd maintain that the best way to get them into an elite college is not to grind them as hard as possible at the same metrics everybody else is trying to fulfil, but to let them freely explore their own academic and other high-status interests and put the work into them (i.e. basically anything a smart kid wants to do except vidya and scrolling). That's what gets you the kind of intellectual individuality that stands out to admissions officers. If they haven't got the requisite IQ, start thinking about what weird major they can take, or send them to State.
faceh
1hr ago
Well broadly if you ask them, they can't find men that meet their standards.
But its broadly women who are passing on men, not the other way around. Which explains both the large number of single women AND the fact that apparently desirable men remain single.
And the fact that half of Gen Z men are just giving up.
And young women are significantly less likely to report being single.
For those that are:
Close to half (45 percent) of college-educated women say not being able to find someone who meets their expectations is a major factor, while only 28 percent of women without a college education feel the same. This education gap is slightly smaller among men. One-third (33 percent) of college-educated men claim not finding someone who meets their standards is a major factor for them, compared to 19 percent of noncollege-educated men.
DESPITE this, young single men report greater interest in dating than young single women:
There is a significant disparity in dating interest between single men and women. Nearly half (47 percent) of single men report being open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of single women. The gender gap in dating is even wider among young singles. More than half (52 percent) of young single men say they are open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of young single women.
This doesn't make sense if MEN are the ones passing on women.
So yeah.
That's been my point all along and I haven't seen a single piece of data that would refute it, yet.
Shrike
1hr ago
I am spitballing here but I have definitely wondered if places with longstanding minority groups just are able to handle integration much better than places where the very same groups are new. In other words, in this scenario, possibly you are both right and it's just that DFW, which has ~always had a significant Hispanic presence compared to Fairfax, Virginia, is much better culturally at handling the situation.
It would be odd if it were not at least somewhat that way, imho.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1hr ago
Well, "we as a culture" don't ever fully agree on anything. A hundred voices are screaming a hundred different things, and the truth is lost in the noise.
Some people are telling the truth, and some people are not. But these signals are not all received equaly. But collectively, the average socially acceptable advice given by the mainstream media and by middle aged women to their younger colleagues tends to be feminist nonsense. And then a lot of young men, seeking not to give good long term advice but instead to get an easy lay, are giving the advice that they want women who are easy and sleep with them immediately. And the women believe them and become "popular", but nobody wants to marry them and the men get bored and leave. This in turn causes them to doubt advice from me and listen more to the feminists.
The problem isn't quite as simple as men saying what they want and women spitting in their faces. The scenario is older men saying what they want, younger men saying what they want short term and pretending it's long term too, older women who've been burned by this spitting in the faces of both, and then younger women watching this exchange and then eventually following the older women, possibly after getting burned once or twice themselves.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Why are these million women single if they're desirable? Clearly men are passing on them for some reason.
Isn't there a difference here in that tennis is, to use the language of gaming, PVP? The way you put it here, tennis as a sport is validated in part because of the way that real tennis pros effortlessly destroyed Ackman. That doesn't seem the case with Musk.
It could be if he streamed himself playing a competitive game. I don't know if PoE2 or Diablo IV have active PVP scenes, but in the past Musk has claimed to be good at PVP games, like Quake. But he has not bragged about these recently. It might be one thing if Musk claimed to be fantastic at Starcraft II or League of Legends or something with a competitive pro scene, and then played against actual pro players and got crushed. That might validate the scene. But he has not done that, and has just tried to show off his supposed achievements in ways that avoid direct comparison.
(That said, I would indeed find it entertaining to watch Elon Musk play Maru in Starcraft II. Though it may not be that revealing - I feel like anybody who has any acquaintance with pro Starcraft knows that the guys who play it are unstoppable - it would at least be very funny to watch.)
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