2rafa
11hr ago
Every bubble has its boosters, and at a late stage they often resort to the ultimate and final bull cope:
“They won’t (and indeed can’t) allow it to crash”.
In each generation this has a different name, but in this cycle the most common is probably some variant of ‘the fed put’. Of course, if elected governments and their appointees were powerful enough to stave of a market crash, these things would never happen, given their typical electoral consequences.
2rafa
11hr ago
it could well be similar to how the dot-com investments worked out. lots of duds and even scams but on average i think the return on investing during that era was good
The overall market (the S&P 500) didn’t reach its dotcom peak again until 2007 and then promptly crashed again, not reaching it again until the 2010s. The Nasdaq didn’t hit its 2000 peak until 2015. Looking at total returns paints a slightly rosier picture but it was still a long time.
2rafa
21hr ago
The Nazis were relatively gay and not particularly trad. Limited moves to deal with the red light districts in a few major German cities were halfhearted at best. Single women were in some cases even encouraged to become single mothers, women weren’t removed from the workplace, there were forms of proto-feminism that certainly clashed with traditional Christian views of a woman’s place, even as fertility was lauded (but in a technocratic kind of way, not necessarily a trad one). Economically although heavily supported by small petit bourgeois business owners, the nsdap increased the presence of the major German corporations in the economy and was broadly supportive of the major capital markets through 1939. Exhibits on entartete kunst existed in an uneasy relationship with plenty of relatively modernist sculpture, art and especially architecture that, a few short decades earlier, would definitely have been considered degenerate and abstract by critics.
2rafa
1d ago
That’s an AI ad / promo more than a summary. Kind of like the difference between a blurb and a summary.
2rafa
2d ago
Russia is much more comfortable directing sabotage operations on European soil than American soil. Since Putin came to power he has overtly, publicly assassinated dozens in Europe, including many in Western European countries like the UK, Spain and Germany. Russia also planned assassinations of major military and defense figures like the Rheinmetall CEO. He hasn’t assassinated anyone overtly in the USA, and hasn’t even come close to assassinating US defense figures.
If they were going to escalate by blowing up a munitions factory, they would 100% do so in Europe.
2rafa
2d ago
The bulk of the peasantry and proletariat in the region would gladly throw everything at Israel. The leadership refuse because of a number of reasons; the connection between Hamas and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to overthrow the Egyptian military regime, those who would destabilize the Jordanian monarchy etc; the fact that the US supports Israel; the fact that the IDF could destroy their militaries leaving them vulnerable to domestic upheaval (see the first reason) and so on.
However, if Israel appears weak, these same governments may be unable to resist popular pressure to give in to the people and mount an invasion. This would be especially true if there was a Palestinian uprising. In addition, Egypt may well eventually fall to an Islamist government.
2rafa
2d ago
It’s more about the situation in which 3 would occur, namely near-total loss of US support, an increasingly Muslim Europe, China and Russia signing onto sanctions to appease Muslim allies like Pakistan and Iran, and then relatively quickly almost the whole world is against them, the US for residual world peace reasons forces them into this quasi peace, and then maybe Turkey or another coalition of Arab nations decide that it’s just time for the killing blow, there’s a mass Palestinian uprising of the kind that didn’t occur on October 7th etc…
2rafa
2d ago
I think Israel will change behavior if that happens and act / beg for scenario 3, but as I said, there are many routes by which that leads to scenario 2 anyway.
2rafa
3d ago
It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.
2rafa
3d ago
This conflict has continued for 70 years and will continue indefinitely until a “final resolution” occurs. Settlers continue to exercise growing power in Israeli politics; while not as fecund as the chareidim they stil have substantially higher tfr than secular Jews. Hamas is re-asserting control of Gaza and still likely has at least 10-20,000 fighters, and very high Gazan fertility rates and a large pool of existing 10-14 year old males means it will have many more in short order.
There are only 4 final resolution states:
-
Total victory of the Israelis, involving the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, followed by a subsequent peace deal with the surrounding nations that involves some kind of naturalization for Palestinian emigres as full citizens of other nations or another nation. Very unlikely.
-
Total victory of the Palestinians, involving the ethnic cleansing of Jews (either in a genocidal context or Algeria-style ‘suitcase or coffin’ emigration) from all current Israeli territory and a single Palestinian Arab state. Unlikely for now although less unlikely than scenario 1, and radically more likely if the world enters a period of sustained international upheaval.
-
A two-state solution imposed by the United States and other powers to Palestine’s benefit. America and other nations sanction Israel or threaten to until it experiences a domestic political crisis and forcibly withdraws settlers from the Palestinian Territories and agrees to a Palestinian state along either 1967 or (less likely) 1948 borders. There is a substantial chance of this turning into scenario 2, although it is theoretically possible with a ‘neutral’ international force overseeing the process. If public sentiment shifts further against Israel in America I think this is plausible in the medium term.
-
A two-state solution imposed by the United States to Israel’s benefit, which would involve one or more Muslim powers administering a semi-autonomous collection of Palestinian city states in an arrangement with Israel and possibly other global powers, principally America. This was the goal of the Israeli right but seems less likely as time goes on.
The most likely outcome of the current process is that Hamas returns to power in Gaza, the world mostly forgets about the conflict for 5-10-15 years, and then things eventually flare up once Hamas is ready for another big attack.
2rafa
3d ago
For example, why do antipsychotics increase the risk of pneumonia? Nobody knows. Why do clozapine and olanzapine cause the most weight gain (within antipsychotics)? Fuck knows. There is no logical chain that leads from the pharmacology of clozapine to it causing more weight gain than ziprasidone. We only know these things through observation. The exam questions reflect this reality. They do not ask you to model the interaction of dopamine antagonists with hypothalamic appetite centers. They ask: "Which of the following drugs is most associated with weight gain?" This is not a test of your reasoning. It is a test of your internal lookup table. You either pass the herblore skill check or you don't.
Sure, but I would classify this closer to the ‘classical’ examination than the rote legal memory check where, you FOOL, you forgot that it was actually a class 5(a)i notice and not a class 5(b)i one even though you actually! In the sense that I would imagine that smart and well-read psychiatry students would probably know that antipsychotics increase the risk of pneumonia and so on. Even moreso for Freud’s ‘nonsense’.
2rafa
3d ago
First of all, sorry to hear that and all the best with the tests.
Secondly, about:
Especially exams that require months on end of grinding and memorization, when is rather be doing anything else.
I’m curious about these medical exams and studying. Are there some candidates you’ve met that can just ace them without studying, based solely on general medical knowledge and above average recollection from both medical school and hands-on training in the years before their specialist qualification? Or is it like some legal qualifications, where even a towering intellect needs to rote memorize that the answer is a section 37 part 3 form and not a part 4 and that a certain period is 13 working days and not 12?
hallucination rates are close to negligible
This has not been the case for me, unless you count “yes, you are correct, it seems that x is actually y” follow-ups when specifically prompted as negligible, which I would not. The eternal problem of “are you sure?” almost universally lowering its previously declared confidence in any subjective answer also remains. No specific examples, just my general experience over the past few weeks.
The appropriate response to hallucination handwringing from luddites is “it doesn’t matter”, not “it’s not happening”, by the way.
2rafa
3d ago
The real disaster is that the ones who are self aware enough to know they are bad writers went from 2 line emails to paragraphs of AI slop, no doubt promoted by the same 2 lines they would have previously just sent.
2rafa
3d ago
“I will flee like a rat to the suburbs and abandon the civilization my forefathers built because getting rid of homeless psychos and dealing with violent crime seems like too much work”
Who can be surprised at 70 years of total failure on the American right when this is the common mindset? Out of sight, out of mind, and all the while you fade into irrelevance.
2rafa
3d ago
“Full sized” in terms of product volume or selection? In terms of volume of fresh, OK quality food the average Manhattan Whole Foods has more than a huge big box store in a poorer part of the Midwest. It’s bleak out there, the fact that NYC doesn’t have 37 shelves of 48-pack soda isn’t a downside.
2rafa
3d ago
I just get my food delivered when I want once a week for the in-store price plus a nominal (literally $2) delivery charge, which is viable for the store because of how dense a city is.
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.
2rafa
5d ago
The Chinese certainly have naturally isolationist tendencies but I think even they know that in the era of engineered global pandemics, nuclear weapons (whose proliferation is an inevitable consequence of the end of Pax Americana) and A(G)I, they will have no choice but to be involved, especially given their location at the edge of ongoing potential conflict zones between India and Pakistan, the Koreas etc.
The British and Dutch also started with purely mercantile aspirations, but the trouble with that is that eventually tribe #2 decides it wants to destroy tribe #1, and all your valuable ports and factories and mines are in tribe #1’s territory, so before you know it you’re a colonial power.
2rafa
5d ago
When AI kills the outsourced WITCH tech sector the consequence on the domestic middle class, consumer spending and so on in India is going to be grim, surely.
Very good points, but the small absolute volumes of REEs required means that effective transshipping will be very hard to stamp out unless all exports anywhere are curtailed, which would draw the ire of most of the regional trading partners that the CCP actually wants to continue to keep onside. The Chinese century is inevitable because western countries will descend into civil chaos due to mass immigration and for no other (major) reason.
The personal automobile (and every consequence of it, including the specifically American suburb) papers over the cracks of an unusually violent and dangerous first-world society, and has since the 1950s and 1960s.
America can transit, but that would require confronting the actual problem.
That really isn’t true. Plenty of dotcom companies like Yahoo had huge numbers of users; Yahoo had 400 million registered users at the peak in 2000 with 60 million monthly users (double the previous year’s figure). Many other dotcom companies had large user numbers too.
And if you look at the non-dotcom companies that still saw huge stock price crashes after the bust, many were businesses with big revenue, like Microsoft ($23bn in revenue in 2000, down 70%+ during the crash, didn’t recover until 2016) and Intel ($34bn in revenue in 2000, down 80%+ during the crash, didn’t recover until 2020). Both Intel and Microsoft were also extremely profitable during this period, contrary to boosters who say all tech stocks at this time lost money or whatever.
The bizarre myth that dotcom was all money into worthless internet businesses with 10 users and inflated traffic figures on zero revenue is peddled by exactly the same people trying to claim that “this time is different”.
More options
Context Copy link