SkoomaDentist
No bio...
User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
29d ago
So again I ask: can anyone explain to me, in specific terms, what Canada could do to reverse these tariffs?
I'm pretty sure assassinating both Trump and Vance would accomplish that. Of course pulling such a thing off without getting caught is somewhat non-trivial...
Other than that? Probably nothing.
China see itself as the "middle kingdom" that should rightfully be at the center of Asia, and ideally the world.
Now where have I seen that... I'm pretty sure it had something to do with hats making something great...
Deals with other nations are entered into not out of any sort of altruism or common ground, but as purely transactional interactions,
This is de facto US foreign policy for the next four years or possibly longer.
I wager after a decade they will learn their lesson and either return to the American fold
Why would they when the Trump administration is doing their utmost to let everyone know that US is not interested in anything other than at best a transactional relationship (with a sideline of threatening to just take what they want)? An alliance requires trust. "I've just altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it again." isn't exactly the type of message to inspire anything like that.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I can only hope that they're simply strapped for GPUs, especially for inference, and are using the bulk of their compute on the 4.0 models they're cooking.
This is somewhat unlikely. The GPUs that you need for training cost a fortune (or rather, NVidia can charge a fortune for them since they have almost zero large scale competition) while much cheaper ones can be good enough for inference.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Norway is a US treaty ally
Norway was a treaty ally until Trump signaled extremely clearly that Nato countries cannot depend on US if the push comes to shove by making threats about annexing another Nato country's territory into US and cosying up to the country Nato was founded to protect against (that's actively engaged in sabotage in Norwegian territory as well as Norways neighboring countries' territories).
If the US says "Fuck you, you're on your own now!" to a group of countries, it's no wonder when those countries say "Ok, if that's how you want it..." in response.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Is there any way I can opt out of this bloodbath?
Easily. You have no chance of being drafted into Ukraine, so all you have to do is stop following Ukraine related news and ignore every Ukraine thread here.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
as the alleged gem of the xianxia
This is clearly heresy, for there can only be one: Beware of Chicken (not least because it's a parody of the generally mindblowingly stupid genre)
Full version can be found with fairly trivial googling.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
to set precedent
My reaction every single time I read about a US court case is "boy am I glad that I live in a country with civil law system that doesn't rely on binding precedents" combined with "I hope our politicians are never crazy enough to introduce a constitutional supreme court" (thus far there have been no signs at such).
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Not sure but it does sound like it would at least disrupt worker drones trying to cast healing spells. A tactic worth trying when faced with such enemy!
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I'm thinking Agrippina the Younger or perhaps Laodice I would be more suited for him.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I’ve heard the trick is to make sure you have an area of effect anti-regeneration ward.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I've had weeks that could be accurately described as "tried to figure out why functionality X in project Y stops working on a seemingly random basis" (it turned out to be a cpu bug).
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
The "dropping dead in the streets" videos I remember (and found again in a search), but I'm not sure they need addressing. There are a lot of things that can lead to someone fainting.
Back when I finally got Covid in the summer of 2022, I made the mistake of engaging briefly in some light exercise over two weeks later. As a result I could barely get out of bed the next day. Covid was unique at least to me in having such a profound effect on my stamina for a long time compared to the actual symptoms themselves (two days of fever and a couple more of general malaise). I can easily see myself fainting if I'd had to push myself to do anything physical then. I remember that just carrying two slightly heavy bags some 20 meters a week after the initial symptoms left me completely winded.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
If anti-Trump organizations see a funding cut, they often immediately axe the programs that people want the most. They never seem to cut administration overhead, conference travel, DEI, or other frivolities.
This isn't in any way specific to "anti-Trump organizations" but how almost all such bureaucracies work. A while ago the Finnish Heritage Agency had to face some fairly minor (non-political) cost cuts. They promptly announced that this would "force" them to shut down some of the most popular museums and outdoor sites in an effort to artificially make those cuts seem worse and make them less popular instead of cutting some non-essential niche operations that the public cares little about.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Gotta be honest, I didn't have it in my bingo cards for 2025 that Europe would need to start preparing against what looks to head towards a possible US invasion.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Most everything seem to come down to the college degree bubble.
You can't blame this on college degree bubble or student loans. The phenomenon is strictly driven from above where secretaries have been cut years ago in the name of "efficiency" while ignoring the basic fact that having a doctor do all the admin work is much less cost efficient than when you have someone who's both good at it, at least somewhat likes doing it and has a salary that's half or less of a full doctor's salary.
The middle and upper management boom is typical bureacracy doing its natural thing and would otherwise be a fairly minor source of inefficiency except they need to pretend to do something useful and thus disrupt actual work as well as make it appear as if the useful administration (ie. low level secretaries) wasn't already cut deep into the bone.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Honestly, it might work better with more administrators if that means that GPs don't need to spend time writing actual paper letters to refer their patients to specialists, and similar kinds of bureaucratic nonsense.
The problem in quite a few western countries seems to be that there are too many mid and upper level administrators and an order of magnitude too few low level secretaries.
Europeans become more anti-American and wrestle their governments into reducing support for US plans and military logistics
Trump's stated policy of ”we take what we want from you, no matter if you’re allies or not” is already speedrunning this with little need for anything related to the third world.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I maintain that Germans hate the freedom of others more than they love their own. Tell me it isn't so.
Ordnung muss sein.
Obviously Musk. Trump is his PR representative.
Because there’s a specific law against offering such payments before the funds have been appropriated.
Presumably that law applies also against making binding commitments to not fire those persons for that duration.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Except they can’t offer 8 months pay since there isn’t yet a budget after March.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Completely. I've known people with dyslexia for decades and they have normal or better than normal skills in verbal reasoning. They just have a specific dysfunction that causes easily problems with reading and writing that are easy to recognize and have a specific pattern to them.
The point doesn't have to fit in a single paragraph but the comment absolutely does have to get into it within a paragraph.
Or to put it another way, FFS people, stop waffling around like Scott and start with your point right away. Then you can expand around it after you've shown the reader that you're not just wasting their time.
SkoomaDentist
2mo ago
I will skip over any post that doesn't get to the point in the first two sentences.
I already do that for anything that doesn’t get to the point within the first paragraph. I strongly recommend everyone else to do the same and think this place would become much better if everyone did that.
Hundreds of years of history. Until the October revolution, Russia was for ruled for hundreds of years by a Tsar with absolute authority that was considered to rule by a divine feat. Stalin returned the country to de facto absolute rule after a brief interruption and that only ended with his death in 1953. 40 years of communism and a decade of chaos followed until Putin restored normalcy by assuming absolute rule.
Poland, Hungary and Romania didn’t have a similar centuries long tradition of absolute rule and had a history that wasn’t all that different from Central European countries until WW2 and thus had both a similar tradition and compatibility with western style society. Notably they all had a strong internal desire to join the west as soon as that became an option.
You could say both Russia and Poland / Hungary / Romania reverted to their previous trajectories after the fall of communism. It’s just that those trajectories were completely different.
More options
Context Copy link