johnfabian
8d ago
There were a spate of these kind of terror attacks in Europe in the mid-2010s. ISIS-inspired, invariably; some 2nd generation disaffected Arab rents a U-Haul and drives it into a crowd on some holiday. The first one was the Nice truck attack in 2016; there were a bunch of copycats and as a result pretty much every major public square in Europe now has bollards to prevent people from getting vehicles into them during busy times.
There are a couple of other similar cases elsewhere; here in Toronto in 2018 an incel hired a van and killed a bunch of people with it.
Terror attacks very much seem to follow specific trends, and it seems to take certain people to think of novel ways to go about it. No one thought of using airliners as weapons until Al-Qaeda did it. Using a truck rental as a weapon wasn't a thing until that Nice attack. I'm not sure why this is, but it certainly seems like people who commit terrorist attacks want it to be recognizeable as such; or alternatively are just generally uncreative.
johnfabian
10d ago
Are you talking about analysis of historical accounts? Because this is the bread and butter of history as a social science. This is a very big subject but I can give you a simple outline. This is the kind of stuff that would be covered in a classic "History of the Roman Republic" first-year university class. You get assigned a reading and in the tutorial sections you would ask questions like:
- What is the author's purpose?
- What "side" is the author on?
- What is the social background of the author?
- When did the author write this?
- What might cause him to portray events this way?
- Was he present at these events, or is he hearing this second-hand? If so, who were his sources?
- Is there any information he might be leaving out?
- Are there things which seem exaggerated, or maybe false?
- How would the author have known about this specific detail?
- Does this text match what we know from archaeological evidence?
- Does this text agree with other things written about this event? If not, why might that be?
- Do you think this text would be flattering to the author's patron?
- Does the author seem to care strictly about accuracy, or are there other elements he prioritizes?
etc. etc. Basic textual analysis. Use what you know about the period and the situation and the author to expand upon what is written and try to think about all the different influences that might have transformed the narrative from what happened in reality to how it reads on the page.
If you want to read history books that go into this kind of stuff, the ideal subjects are periods where there are limited historical sources: I used classical Rome as an example and it's a great one. Historians in these books will often tell you very directly how they are analyzing accounts and what inferences they are making from them and the other historical evidence available to them.
johnfabian
10d ago
The amount of votes you need to form a representative sample is smaller than a lot of people think. So once you have the first few thousand votes counted in any given county, you have a very very good sense of how the rest of that vote in the county will be distributed with a relatively small margin of error. Based on that, after a certain number of counties start reporting results, you can often quickly reach a point in some of the more lopsided states where regardless of the distribution of votes in future counties the vote is already effectively decided. And on closer states like the swing states once all the areas are reporting and have a large enough sample of results, even what seem like relatively small margins (like 51% to 48%) can give you the confidence to call a final result on the more-or-less ironclad assumption that the rest of the votes to be counted will have very similar distribution.
It's really only on the very very close races that it might take more than a day, or multiple days, to arrive at a result.
johnfabian
12d ago
this was still a nail-biter of an election.
It wasn't as close as 2020 in terms of the number of votes, but it was still a margin of ~300k in the key swing states between a Trump win and a Harris victory.
johnfabian
12d ago
Depends on where you live; varying with the source tap water can be awful or quite tasty. The tap water in Toronto is delicious, in my opinion.
johnfabian
15d ago
It looks like turnout was the major factor. Trump more or less repeated his 2020 performance whereas Harris is down 15 million from Biden's numbers. There's been some coalition shuffling but I can't imagine it changed things all that much for Trump; I would presume he alienated and attracted in roughly even numbers. But it's hard not to look at Harris's results and see anything besides a deeply uninspiring campaign and candidate. Democratic voters simply did not turn out; not just in swing states but across the board.
johnfabian
15d ago
johnfabian
16d ago
My gut impression, with very little in terms of analysis to back this up:
- Comfortable victory in the popular vote for Harris, maybe 6-8% margin
- Superficially large spread in EC votes in favour of Harris; like maybe in the 310s or 20s
- Actual margins will still be very close with fewer than 200,000 votes being the difference across the swing states between a Harris victory and a Trump victory
johnfabian
18d ago
So a pollster colluded with Democrats and released an absurd “momentum shifting” poll 3 days before the election, but your default response is to take it at face value? I have a bridge to sell you, man.
Well, we've got three days to see. I'm willing to eat crow if I'm wrong.
I can't remember, was there this much hubbub among election nerds over one particular poll in Iowa as a bellwether as there has been/is now? When I saw this first start someone had spelled it as "Seltzer poll" and I thought that it was like the bakery "cookie polls" expect with different varieties of Alka-Seltzer or something.
I heard about this poll pre-election back in 2020. But I think its prominence has increased in the years since because of the amount and degree of polling errors the other big boys have had, which has increased since. Selzer made big outlier pro-Trump calls in 2016 and 2020 and was dead on both times. So given the track record of success combined with the increased inaccuracies of other polls the attention on this specific one has mounted considerably since 2020.
johnfabian
18d ago
It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”
A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.
We've only got a few days to wait so we'll see. But how willing are you to consider that rather than your ideological opponents willfully blinding themselves, it is perhaps you?
I've got no horse in this race; I suppose I would prefer Harris wins but it would certainly be funnier if Trump does. Seems like this pollster has a sterling track record. I'm not sure why your initial response would be blanket denial.
johnfabian
29d ago
It definitely still is in Canada. I've mentioned this before here but a major part of the reason the affluent Toronto parents I talk to frequently are swinging against the federal Liberals is because none of their kids can get the typical high school jobs (fast food, grocery store, cashier, waiting tables, etc) that they expect them to get anymore.
johnfabian
1mo ago
I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo and enjoying it a lot. It feels very much like a sort of shlocky Hollywood action movie dressed up as literature, but like in a good way. A man is wronged by his friends, imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, escapes, becomes rich and plots his elaborate revenge on his enemies? I can just imagine Dumas whispering "hell yeah" to himself constantly while writing this.
johnfabian
1mo ago
I don't think the PLA Navy is ready yet. I don't think they'll be ready for a few years. But with the ongoing rearmament of Japan and Australia as well as a growing awareness in Taiwan and the USA, there may be a threshold where China decides that future gains in readiness are not worth waiting for given the potential of increased western capabilities to resist.
But in any case I highly doubt that this war would ever go nuclear. China simply does not have the nuclear stockpile to destroy the US; we're not in a MAD situation here so neither side has the incentive to strike first, or strike at all.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Mountains also have another possible source of flash fooding: spring melt.
Yeah, I had a similar experience to you going back home last month and finding out the old hairdressing place I went to as a kid is now all Indians. And the grocery store I went to as a kid is all Indians. Etc. etc. I live in a very diverse part of Toronto so it's not like I'm easily shocked or whatever. Hell, even in my neighbourhood we're a lot different than three years ago, because the Filipinos and Chinese and African immigrants have been shunted out by Indians too. My brother-in-law who lived in Toronto for a decade was very surprised when he came back this year, and remarked how Toronto feels so much less diverse now that Indians are forming a new pseudo-majority in many neighbourhoods or employment sectors.
In my personal life I engage with a lot of well-off Torontonians, the type who have historically been among the most pro-Liberal (capital L) and pro-immigration. They have up until recently been insulated from the effects of immigration while benefiting enormously from higher property values and depressed wages. It's finally creeping up on them too: it's car thefts and the fact that their kids (like high-school, university age) can't get jobs. There are no typical student jobs left anymore. McDonalds? Grocery store? Retail? Forget it. There are a dozen people from Punjab for every Canadian kid, and they will put up with a lot more shit. These well-off Canadians are finally starting to realize they've created a country that is hostile to their children.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Yes, but Sicilian/pan pizzas are very easy at home with no specialist equipment
johnfabian
1mo ago
So people are responding with action which is great to see, but politically this is going to be the greatest ever repudiation of the left in Canada. The conservatives are polling at 47% among the young.
It will be interesting to see what the Conservatives actually do if (when) they form government. So far Poilievre has only offered the vaguest commitments to reducing inflow (saying things like he will "match immigration to rate of homebuilding").
The Conservative Party has historically been reliant on industries that take advantage of TFWs/international students. Almost half their MPs are landlords. They don't really want to slow this down anymore than the Liberals do. The swing of the youth vote towards them is in large part predicated on anti-immigration sentiment, so how do they reconcile this?
Luckily for them the Liberals have given them so much room to maneuver this is less of threading the needle and more finding your way out of an open door. Even cutting the inflow by half would leave them at roughly double the rate of the Harper years.
johnfabian
1mo ago
It would be wrong to break down the way Canadian politics operates with respect to immigration as a conservative/liberal split. It is more coherently a young vs old dynamic, and somewhat even more pointedly people who own property vs people who don't.
Up until very recently there was a very strong national pro-immigration consensus across pretty much the entire political spectrum and all demographics, with the one exception being a fringe national party (People's Party). Canada was by a decent margin the most welcoming country to new immigrants and perceptions of the immigration system in general were strongly favourable. This was I think in part a reflection that the system itself was well-designed: priority to well-off, educated immigrants who spoke either national language.
The capital "I" immigration rate has gone up, but people don't really have a problem with this. More concerning to Canadians has been the growth in other types of migrants: international students, temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers/refugees. It's these categories that have driven the massive increases in population. For example in 2023 the breakdown was 477k new immigrants (i.e., foreign nationals offered permanent residence) and ~ 1.3 million "temporary" residents.
While the federal Liberals have certainly enabled and to a large part driven the abuse of these other flows of migration, they have not been the only bad actors. Provincial conservative-run governments have absolutely followed them in this race to rebuild Punjab in Canada. Together they have in the course of about two years absolutely destroyed the national consensus on immigration.
johnfabian
2mo ago
I think there is certainly an advantage in making your enemy distrust all possible forms of communication. If they have to abandon pagers it's on to carrier pigeons next.
johnfabian
2mo ago
It's not necessarily true that green parties are progressive/leftist; the one I'm most acquainted with, Canada's federal Green party, has always been sort of derisively referred to as "Tories on bikes" for its general conservative bent. It was going through an increasingly woke/progressive phase which resulted in longtime leader Elizabeth May retiring and being replaced by Annamie Paul (the first black woman to lead a Canadian federal party, everyone was constantly reminded) but that all fell apart when she tried to force all the Green MPs to make declarations of support for Israel. Now Elizabeth May is back in charge and things are somewhat back to normal. In Ontario the Green Party is emerging as a force among centrist liberals who don't want to vote for the corrupt PCs and Liberals.
I would say as a somewhat broad generalization Green Parties tend to fairly badly fail at their central purposes (a. getting elected and b. protecting the environment) which makes them vulnerable to hijack by outside causes.
johnfabian
2mo ago
I was wrong not to buy bitcoin in 2010 (this was partly laziness and partly that I thought it was too risky, that I would end up sending money to drug dealers by accident or something and get roped into an investigation).
This isn't quite like saying "I was wrong not buy yesterday's winning lottery ticket", but I think circa 2010 it was hard to tell exactly the kind of mania/cult of enthusiasm that would grip bitcoin. You could've maybe predicted that an alternative currency would generate some buzz, but to have picked Bitcoin specifically (let alone imagine what kind of heights it would rise to) would have been to much to dream.
johnfabian
2mo ago
"War-related famine" was not exactly incidental; it was a matter of German policy.
Generally "the Holocaust" is used by historians to refer only to the murder of Jews. Some people say you should lump in other groups murdered by the Germans but I think it is fairly coherent to exclude them because as you have noted a. the Germans pursued Jews with a unique sort of intent and b. the methods and organization with which they murdered Jews was in large part distinct.
Yes, there were plenty of instances where the Germans rounded up groups of Poles, or Russians, or Serbs, or Italians, and shot them to death. But it was not done on the scale or with the deliberate forethought of the initial phases of the Holocaust where something on the order of ~2.3-2.5 million Jews were killed in mass executions.
Yes, there were other nationalities and classes who went to the gas chambers, particularly ethnic Poles and particularly at Auschwitz. But at nowhere near the numbers that Jews did; and a number of the extermination camps pretty much exclusively killed Jews.
The caveat to all of this is that the Holocaust was not going to be unique if the Germans had won. It was merely to be the first in a grand series of genocides to depopulate Eastern Europe for German settlement. As it stands if you tally the dead in history's genocides, coming in at numbers 2 and 3 on the list is the German murder of Soviet POWs and the German murder of ethnic Poles.
johnfabian
2mo ago
I can commiserate. Last week I ran my first marathon (just a pussy normal one) and it took me a day and a bit to walk like a normal human being again.
I saw this as a another riff on a marathon I want to try some time. Would be fun to do with friends.
I think it kind of smacks of desperation to take a politician changing her twitter profile as some kind of great paradigm shift. This reaction alone makes me think we have not yet reached "peak woke."
Aren't lots of high-profile people leaving twitter anyways? It might be more of a prelude to her jumping ship off the platform than anything else.
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