JTarrou
10d ago
At least Israel will fight their own battles.
90% of NATO countries couldn't fight a fat kid on adderal.
JTarrou
21d ago
There is always and forever a pool of disaffected young men who want to make a splash in the world and don't mind getting attention the negative way.
How this tendency is expressed depends a lot on the sociopolitical situation, carrots and sticks etc. A hundred years ago, they'd have been Anarchists, fifty years ago they'd have been lefty terrorists, some are now school shooters, far right or muslim terrorists, trans AI doomers etc. etc.
The particular expressions are memetic, mass shootings, car attacks, arson, assassination, bombings etc.
The population is the same.
JTarrou
21d ago
When the elites will not lead the people in the direction they want to go, they will find other leaders, who will be mostly grifters, because that's who is left.
JTarrou
25d ago
Because of a treaty that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You know this stuff.
However, in this scenario it's the US invading Russia, right?
JTarrou
26d ago
1: We fund the Ukrainians until they can't fight anymore, then they get a worse deal or none at all.
2: We enter the war on the side of Ukraine, mudstomp Russia for six minutes before the nukes fly, and we all sing Kumbaya as the bombs fall.
3: We strongarm Ukraine into making a bad deal and hope it gives us time to strongarm Europe into maybe starting to think about having a military at some point in the future.
4: Pre-emptive nuclear strike which will fuck Ukraine worse than the Russians.
Any other ideas?
JTarrou
26d ago
I think the most disturbing part is how little everyone with such strong opinions knows about Ukraine, Russia, and the conflict between them.
Russia is absolutely in the wrong for invading, but let's look at the actual political and military realities when we're talking about the issue.
The eastern provinces had a strong enough Russian-aligned sector of the populace (with some surreptitious Russian help) to functionally secede from Ukraine and fight the Ukrainians to a standstill for years before the invasion. Ukraine hasn't had any real sovereignty over those territories for over a decade now.
Yes, it's a violation of their treaty for Russia to take their territory. This may shock people, but governments often violate their treaties. For instance, virtually everyone in NATO is violating that treaty.
The military situation has been fairly static for years. Neither side seems to be on the verge of winning. Both are having trouble with getting enough troops to fight, but Russia can draw from a much larger population, plus allies like North Korea. Ukraine is supplementing with mercenaries, but that's expensive.
The economic sanctions on Russia have failed to impact their economy enough. In fact, it's basically just made Russia less exposed to economic sanctions from the west, and more in hock to the Chinese, who now provide most of their consumer goods.
I support Ukraine primarily in this matter, I support funding and arming them to resist the Russian invasion. But I also think we need to be realistic about what peace will look like absent major escalations on our part. The Ukrainians haven't been capable of recapturing their lost provinces militarily. How long should they keep fighting for territories where most of the remaining population don't really want to be part of Ukraine?
Ultimately, it is the Ukrainians who have to answer these questions, not us. At the end of the day, they still live next to Russia, and we don't. I really hope this war reaches its conclusion soon, and I hope the Ukrainians don't lose anything more than necessary. But unless the military situation changes drastically, the Russians aren't just going to give back the territory. And no one can make them without risking nuclear war. That's the realpolitik situation.
JTarrou
28d ago
The entire analysis, from both you and Scott, is simply one level too tactical. Scott runs through all the psychological reasons why people will always push themselves into conflict with other people, regardless of the issues or the facts. And then says that mistake theory wins because many of the tactical positions taken by the two sides of an eternal conflict are essentially random.
Individual and group status competition is the constant. That is conflict theory, and it is objectively correct as the only reality humanity has ever known. Mistake theory requires something not yet observed.
The individual issues of politics are ridiculous, and the sides often change over time. Basing your view of human interaction on the irrationality of the issues obscures the reality that political conflict is inevitable anywhere there are three or more people.
We may be mistaken about the reasons, we may increase or decrease our level of conflict (social, political, violent etc.). We may change teams or stress different identities. But the conflict will always remain, because roughly half the power of any given society is balanced against the other half, and politics is the result.
All this business of trying to analyze individual political issues as "conflict" or "mistake" is very much missing the forest for the trees. The forest is at war, and always will be. The issues don't matter, they are only temporary battlegrounds for the political will of the population. There are plenty of mistakes in conflict.
Think of any long term relationship. There is always conflict, and it is rarely about whatever incident inspires a fight. There is conflict because it is two different people who have to live together. So it is in the home, so it is in the nation, so it is in the world. Our human nature forces us into conflict with each other, and we channel that into our lives and our politics. Because of our cognitive biases, we make a lot of mistakes, no matter how smart we are, or think we are.
If you want to solve a problem, you have to find ways of extricating your issue from the conflict. This can be done, in the manner Scott describes. But the conflict will go on, using different issues. Many issues that were important long ago are gone from our political conflict, but that has never stopped the politics. Once an issue is "solved" it is no longer useful. Humans are never short of things to disagree about.
JTarrou
1mo ago
Some amount of the variance must necessarily be the heightened definitions of bad behavior when your dating pool is feminists and other man-haters.
"Sexual assault" is one of those fun terms that depending on strict definitions may be literally any behavior.
Probably easier to get caught "sinning" when you're banging nuns.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Yeah, it's a fun feeling, but I don't generally want surprise to be in the mix when my gun works properly.
Now imagine you loaded your carry piece a month ago, you've been riding through the west since then, and you need to use it. What are the odds of that first cylinder going off, you think?
I imagine most gunfights were decided by who found a working load first, rather than speed of draw.
JTarrou
2mo ago
I love you guy, and I get the appeal. Did a bit of trapper-convention cap and ball a few times. But fundamentally, it's a long time to load the thing, not much to empty it and an hour to clean it.
There is something to it, but it's not how I approach and think about firearms. You know, different people are into different cars for different reasons. Classic collectors and rat rodders want different things out of their machines. Guns to me are just the gear of a martial art. I do appreciate guns aesthetically as functional machines, and a lot of those old guns are pretty. In fact, those old .44 Armys of mine might be my prettiest guns. Everything else is basic bitch ARs and Glocks, plus a couple hunting guns.
If you like taking your time and shoot for sentimental reasons, you might take OP up on it. Some other positives, it's relatively cheap, recoil is generally mild (unless you're getting into buffalo guns), and those old guns are surprisingly accurate and some have quite good triggers. Cons, they're heavy, awkward, messy to load, ergonomics suck, sights are appalling, wildly unreliable by modern standards. It feels just a touch like alchemy getting the whole contraption to go off. 2/10, haven't shot my .44s in years. And just wait until you get to adjust the rear sight!
But, if we're using the car metaphor, I'm an amateur competitive driver, not a classic collector or a hot rodder.
JTarrou
2mo ago
My grandfather used to say that there's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care about getting the credit.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Alternate headline "Meta renames its DEI program". No one will be fired, they will all be moved to new departments with boring names that continue to do the exact same thing. They'll be working hard to use technology, algorithms and AI to advantage/disadvantage whatever group their slack channel demands for the rest of their careers.
JTarrou
2mo ago
He's a censorious worm in league with the intelligence agencies.
Now that the vibe shift is making that seem like less of a good thing, he's backpedaling.
Your charity runs dangerously close to gullibility.
JTarrou
2mo ago
No, I'm not. And no, they're not.
The red wolf's taxonomic classification as being a separate species has been contentious for nearly a century, being classified either as a subspecies of the gray wolf Canis lupus rufus,[9][10] or a coywolf (a genetic admixture of wolf and coyote)
JTarrou
2mo ago
Anyone remember Red Wolves?
Pepperidge Farm remembers! Critically endangered, then died out, then reappeared because it's just what happens when a wolf fucks a coyote.
I was terrified as a kid when Ranger Rick magazine lead me to believe that their impending extinction would extend to all life on earth via the acid rain!
Yes, I get that.
But he isn't paying people what the market will bear for those skills. The only way he can keep workers is if they're legally tied to his company after they are trained.
So he isn't paying market rate for those jobs. That's how people can leave for more money. If he were paying the going rate, his newly trained ungrateful american workers would have nowhere to go.
Those other companies apparently value those workers much higher than OP does.
JTarrou
2mo ago
But how can they just leave if they're being paid market wage for those skills?
Wouldn't it be difficult to find work at a significantly higher wage?
JTarrou
2mo ago
Now they've released some of his statements, he referred to the plan as a "stunt".
I'm feeling good about the guess.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Nah mate. He just bought high-grade fireworks. Any cheese-dick E-4 could have rigged a better IED. Reads like a protest immolation more than a terrorist attack.
The "inferior substitutes available to civilians" include gunpowder. And rigging ad hoc explosives really is Green Beret bread and butter.
Was that the tacit agreement?
If so, it makes a certain limited and temporary sense for Germany and Japan.
It makes no sense at all for the rest of Europe. The US is just going to project power across the continent permanently so none of these countries need a functional military?
And we're going to do that based on a "tacit agreement"?
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