felis-parenthesis
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User ID: 660
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
The USA blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines was an act of war against Germany.
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
I imagine that filing a lawsuit to overturn an executive order is a delicate business. If an ordinary lawyer tries it, their case will be promptly dismissed. Only the top, expensive lawyers get hearings for fancy legal theories leading to restraining orders against government actions.
Expensive lawyers. These lawsuits may become rare if the dark money from USAID and elsewhere dries up.
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
Writing in 1844, Karl Marx describes the power of money sardonically
The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet.
Time has concealed the meaning of twenty-four feet, but Marx has already quoted from Goethe's Faust
“Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.”
so we know what he is getting at. He needs young men to join his anti-capitalist revolution, so he makes it clear that Capitalism involves the young man standing in the gutter while his girlfriend rides by in a six horse carriage, being pawed by the ugly rich old man who owns it/her. Such powerful rabble rousing! Marx knew human nature and how love could be used to harness young men to his cause.
But 1844 is a long time ago. Would Marx use the same trick today? I doubt it would work. He talks to red-pilled young men and they tell Marx the received wisdom of today's youth: "She's not yours, its just your turn." In today's hook up culture, there is lust, but not love. Marx hoped that young men would die for love. But nobody dies for lust.
felis-parenthesis
2d ago
I read you article
Much of the concern centers on legislation in Congress that would remove the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups that are found to be supporting terrorist organizations.
I partly understand the concern. Legislation may be much different from how it is described. Nevertheless "tax breaks for terrorists" is bad optics. Does any-one know the story behind this? The article discusses various groups
Groups that support L.G.B.T.Q. rights, promote gender equity and champion other progressive causes have cut staffing and announced that longtime leaders are leaving.
but doesn't join the dots on how accusations of "supporting terrorist organizations" could be weaponized against the groups mentioned. Perhaps there are other groups, not mentioned, that are more at risk?
felis-parenthesis
10d ago
The top level comment is about the hostage puppy of tuberculosis treatment. Which suggests how it works. Corruption grows, shielded by hostage puppies. The puppies are very effective at shielding corruption. Corruption grows: 10% corrupt, 90% puppies; 50% corrupt, 50% puppies; 90% corrupt, 10% puppies; 99% corrupt, 1% puppies.
Eventually the anti-corruption campaigners have a vast amount of ammo; there just aren't enough hostage puppies to provide cover for all the corruption. The level of corruption at which the anti-corruption campaigners can break through is determined by how sentimental the general public is. The more sentimental they are, the better the hostage puppies work at shielding corruption, and the more complete the corruption has to be before the dam breaks.
felis-parenthesis
13d ago
felis-parenthesis
16d ago
But I see no reason that an ideological system involving uniting the elites to rule over the rest is a problem
My theory of how society works is that it depends on a competent ruling elite, but there are problems of ossification and egalitarianism, with ossification leading to the rise of egalitarianism. I'm going to make up illustrative numbers. The ruling elite is 10% of the population. Elites don't breed true, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Half the next generation of ruling elite are the children of the current ruling elite. So that is 5% accounted for. Where do the other 5% come from?
One in eighteen of the children of hoi polloi is talented. 1/18 of 90% = 5%. They are the scholarship boys, talent spotted, educated in grammar schools and inducted into the ruling elite.
My theory of how society works generates two opposing theories of how society fails. First ossification or the protection of the failson. Half the children of the ruling elite are downwardly mobile. As time passes the elite fail to change the heritability of the genetics, but they do change society to save their failchildren from social descent. The second generation of elite are 5% true elite, 5% ordinary, while the scholarship boys are locked out of upward mobility. The third generation of elite are 2.7% true elite 7.2% ordinary. (I'm assuming that the child of a failson has the usual 1/18 chance of being talented). Degeneration continues 1.8% elite, 8.2% ordinary; 1.35% elite, 8.65% ordinary. The asymptote is that the ossified elite regress to the mean and end up looking like the original society. The original society was 10% elite, 90% ordinary. Thus the end state of the ossified elite is 1% true elite 9% ordinary. Their badly governed society also has its hoi polloi. That 90% of the population spilts 9% true elite talent, locked out by the loss of social mobility and 81% ordinary. This either ends in revolution as the 9% fight for their place in society, or in collapse, because 1% true elite isn't enough talent to keep society functioning.
Second, egalitarianism. Meritocracy gets rejected. I like the way that @cjet79 puts it here "A job is work to be done" versus "A job is a ceremonial position". Jobs get redistributed to ensure fairness, ending the elites' lock on the best jobs. The 10% of prestige jobs get filled, effectively at random. 1% true elite, 9% ordinary people. There are too few talented people in the top jobs leading to collapse. It could be worse. Maybe, post-revolution the children of the previous elite are locked out of the top jobs. Of the 10% filling the top jobs, only 1 in 18 is talented = 0.55%. That is less than the 1% of a completely ossified society. Dysfunction and collapse come quickly.
The two tendencies, ossification and egalitarianism play off each other. In a partially ossified society, hoi polloi look at the elite, and compare the official story with what they see. Officially a job is work to be done and the 10% top jobs are filled on merit. But many of the elite are ordinary, and their jobs are ceremonial (except that sometimes a failson has a real job that he lacks the skill for, which is even worse). As the generations turn and ossification gets worse, every-one can see that many top jobs are ceremonial. Ordinary people resent that their children are largely locked out of these top jobs. Meritocracy is seen to be a sham for two reasons. Society is functioning poorly (due too little genuine talent in the ossified elite) which undermines the official position that jobs are given to the best candidates. Some jobs are all to obviously ceremonial and merit doesn't even apply. This boosts belief in egalitarianism until DEI seems reasonable.
felis-parenthesis
16d ago
I assume that covert influence operations are structured
90% food, medicine and infrastructure
10% subversion
and that looking inside the 90% food, medicine and infrastructure, it is actually 60% food, medicine and infrastructure 30% corruption and pay-offs.
Who's going to let USAID back into their country after that?
The locals who benefit from the 30% corruption and pay-offs would be keen to let USAID back in, and either don't care about the 10% subversion, or consider it acceptable if it means that they get their cut.
felis-parenthesis
26d ago
uranium only has around 100 years of proven reserves,
That is a big part of your answer right there. There is an important distinction between reserves and resources.
Reserves are uranium ore that it is profitable to mine and process at current market prices with today's technology. Some reserves are being mined as I type; they are really there, with absolute certainty. Other reserves as less certain. One might want to drill a shaft and get some samples to check. Proven reserves meet a threshold for certainty set down by the financial regulators. Thinking of investing in a mining company? Reading about the proven reserves that they own? Proven is a term of art for investment grade certainty.
Resources are a guess about the amount of uranium that is actually there. In some sense. It needs to be possible to mine it and refine it, but it doesn't have to be profitable today. The guess work can include some guesses about technological advances in extracting Uranium.
It is the same for natural resources generally. The case of oil is notorious. Yes, back in 1920 we only have 30 years of oil reserves. (I've not checked the history, but it is well know that we have many times run off the end of oil reserves) Prospecting for oil is expensive. If an oil company wants to borrow money from a bank to build an oil refinery, the bankers will ask: will the oil run out. If the oil company only has 25 years of reserves on its books, it may be worthwhile prospecting for more. The bankers will take a risk, but for a price. How does the cost of prospecting compare with the price of risk? Bankers rarely look more than 30 years ahead. If the oil company has thirty years of reserves, paying prospectors to find more, and increasing that to 35 years, will not get the oil company a cheaper loan. It is not worth the money.
We only have thirty years of reserves because it is not worth looking for more, so we don't bother. Notice that the results of prospecting include discovering bodies of ore that fall a little short of what it is currently worth extracting. They count towards the resource. But not towards the reserve. However, prices can rise. If the electricity price rises, prices for oil and uranium to fuel power stations are likely pulled up. Now some of the resource becomes reserves. It is routine for reserves to fluctuate due to price changes elsewhere in the economy, independent of consumption and discovery.
You can build an argument for collapse around the idea that there are only 100 years of uranium resources. The logic of the argument is (maybe) valid, but since the premise is false the conclusion does not follow.
You can build an argument for collapse around the idea that there are only 100 years of proven reserves of uranium. Now the premise true, but the logic of the argument is invalid, and the conclusion still doesn't follow.
The equivocation between reserves and resources has been going on all my life, and I find most discussions of social collapse tainted by this.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
Rename Martin Luther King Boulevard to Martin Luther Boulevard :-)
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
you can't compete without employing illegal immigrants.
The nuance here is that a small business owner cannot compete against other small businesses employing illegal immigrants without himself employing illegal immigrants. That doesn't mean that he is happy about this. He may prefer that ICE deports every-ones cheap illegals. If that actually happens, he can raise prices to fund paying "American" wages, because his rivals are also having to do this. Then demand falls, and some of the small businesses fail, but the survivors of the shakeout are no longer employing illegals. If the elasticity of demand is one, the sector employs fewer people after the shakeout but has about the same revenue. A narrow focus on money would say that it hasn't even shrunk.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
Perhaps the "fundamental logic" at issue is geography.
Think about the viability of solar power for providing electricity to power air-conditioning in Arizona. Peak generation is around noon. The air is still heating up, so I guess that peak demand is around 2 or 3 pm. A bit of a mismatch. Curing that only needs two or three hours of storage. Overprovisioning might be cheaper than storage, there is still plenty of sunshine at 3 pm. The occasional cloudy days reduce the output of solar power plants, but those days are cooler reducing the power needed. It looks to me that this will work well and cheaply, and contribute to people saying that solar power is economically viable.
But I live in Scotland. Long days and some sun shine in summer. Short days and thick dark clouds in winter. The demand for power is for space heating, not air conditioning, and is in winter. I pay attention when I see reports of exciting new technologies for grid scale energy storage, but it all seems to be half day storage; keep the electricity on over night. The resource - summer sunshine - is six months out of synchronization with the requirement. Solar power, to generate electricity to run heat pumps to keep homes warm in Scotland is beyond the reach of current technology. Suitable grid scale storage doesn't exist, and huge overprovisioning would be fabulously expensive.
I favor nuclear power for Scotland. And people in Arizona should make their own choice based on how things really are in Arizona.
The anti-nuclear power argument seems to be "solar is cheap, therefore no nuclear". Prod a bit and it seems to be just missing the geographical factor. Putting geography in unsympathetically and it becomes "solar in cheap in certain circumstances, therefore no-one may have nuclear, and people in the wrong circumstance must freeze to death in winter."
Another contender for "fundamental logic" is that many technologies have an early dangerous stage.
The medieval cathedral builders had collapses. Ship stability wasn't properly understood leading to capsizes, even of giant prestige warships. Steam engines were indirectly dangerous because their high pressure boilers would explode. Railway trains had lots of disasters before signalling got sorted out. There is also an interesting technology progression with making braking systems fail safe, with the fail safe version of vacuum breaking getting displaced by Westinghouse's fail safe version of air brakes. The Tay Bridge disaster isn't really a railway story, it is about structural engineers not knowing about wind loading. Civil aviation started off really dangerous and is now very safe.
So it is odd to give up on nuclear power when you can look at the details of accidents, such as Chernobyl, and say: we don't build them like that any more, we are past the dangerous stage. We also understand key parts of the sociology. Nuclear power was cloakatively about providing electricity to civilians, but really about creating plutonium for nuclear weapons, so corners were cut on safety in the rush to Armageddon. Today we know about gotchas such as Wigner Energy and this time around is 100% about providing electrical power. I think that the safety issues really are in the past.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
On the internet we get to chose our own celebrities
Littlewood and Hardy instead of Laurel and Hardy
Paul J. Cohen instead of Leonard Cohen
Frank Ramsey instead of Gordon Ramsey
David Moon of X3J13 instead of Keith Moon of the Who
Which raises a different question. Rather than ask whether "every celebrity is like this", we might ask "Why are we choosing these guys as our celebrities?". Or we might ponder who is choosing our celebrities? Us? Really?
Are there hidden influencers choosing our celebrities from behind a curtain, much like I'm trying to force you to celebrate Paul J. Cohen? Harvey Weinstein is a partial example; not entirely hidden, not able to make just any-one a star, but still wielding substantial covert power over which attractive young actress becomes a minor celebrity for a while.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
Old people don’t change their minds, with rare exception, they just die. Without death, there would not be change.
It is death that causes the lack of change. Will X lead to consequence Y or Z? Elon predicts Y. The years tick by. In twenty years time X will have caused either Y or Z. It is becoming easier to predict with each passing year. Eventually every-one will agree how it turned out.
When will Elon change his mind? If he is old enough to die before the twenty years are up, he won't bother. He isn't going to live to see it and will not be personally embarrassed.
If instead he gets wonder rejuvenation treatment, and fifty years more life, the future becomes more real. He starts to care about where trends are leading because he anticipates seeing the eventual outcome. If Y is starting to look like a bad bet, Elon will change his mind.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
One idea of how it could work is that the points system only gives points to construction workers. Then house prices rise at first, when every-one turns up, but they get jobs building houses. Eventually, having imported too many construction workers, builders' wages fall, and construction gets cheaper. House prices fall, or houses get larger :-)
That isn't going to work for immigration from India to Canada. Even if the construction workers are genuinely qualified, the Indian construction workers know how to build houses to withstand monsoon rains, but have no clue about the high level of insulation needed to stay warm in the Canadian winter.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
The USS Vincennes shot down a scheduled passenger flight back in 1988.
Huge screw ups happen.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
I bumped into Can the working class resist “green capitalism”? earlier today, linked from Reddit's Left without edge which seems to confirm what you are saying.
In this context, mere environmentalism, that is, environmentalism without revolutionary will, does nothing more than pave the way for the chaotic management processes implemented by governments at capitalism’s service.
But then @anon_ replied with his experience of people genuinely caring about the environment for its own sake. Err, the article that I linked is full of passion, so much that there is room for its author to genuinely care about the environment. Where I get confused is that the article lacks practical answers. Ordinary people like stuff. Get rid of capitalism and advertising and ordinary people will still crave enough stuff to leave us searching for practical answers. Who will tell them "No!" ? Who will have that power?
The ecological problem we face is not essentially a technical issue, but a political conflict, and it must be treated as such. It is a problem that the people must take into their own hands and hearts.
People will take the problem into their hearts, and then what...
I foresee passion, without clarity or practicality, ending badly, whether the primary goal is revolution or ecology.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
The most scary damage is that universities have been training young people in how to do science. The replication crisis, while bad in itself, also shows that the universities have actually been training young people in how to do science wrong. How does that damage get undone?
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
The energy in the wind scales as the cube of the wind speed. It looks like it ought to be the square of the wind speed, because kinetic energy is one half m v squared. But what is the mass here? It is the mass of air passing the wind turbine, so that is proportional to the wind speed.
This makes intermittency a huge problem. When the when is blowing at half speed, you only get one eighth of the energy. Imagine planning for low winds by over provisioning by a factor of two. You have built twice as many wind turbines as you need for a day with the designed for wind strength, expecting that you will make it through low wind days without black outs. But when the wind strength dips to 79% of design nominal, you are already down to half power, taking up the entire margin provided by over provisioning. The wind drops to 78% and you have to start shedding load :-( Or at least drawing on storage.
I keep seeing critics of wind power asking "what do you do on calm days?". That is a bad question. It leads to boosters and critics both worrying about the occasional calm day when the air is still. But we need to worry about the half strength days. And those are common place days when the wind is still blowing and we expect the turbines to turn and the electricity to stay on.
A credible wind power system would have eight fold over provision, and weeks of storage. The occasional day when the wind is above design strength all day would be a cause for celebration: we have captured a weeks worth of energy in a day! And we could start feeling that we had a secure energy supply. We are nowhere near facing the challenge of intermittency nor the expense of intermittency.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
That is a destructive question. The tradeoff between profit and treatment is discussed ad nauseam. The gradual accumulation of treatments that extend life, without restoring its quality, and are expensive, is painful to think about. So we don't. But we need to, and the profit question helps us procrastinate and never get round to the uncomfortable issue :-(
I frame it with an equation life-span = health-span + grim-span. Modern medicine is extending the health-span. But for every extra year of health-span, we get three or four years more grim-span. (3? 4? I'll admit that I'm guessing wildly. I just don't want to follow my grand-mother and my parents down the care-home, dementia-unit, nursing-home, route.) Expensive grim-span.
We are well down the road of nibbling away at the quality of the health-span with taxes (or insurance premiums) to pay for expensive medical treatments. When do we say: there is a cash limit. That is a scary thing to say. Perhaps I will fall ill, find out that there is a treatment to save my life, find out the cost is over the cash limit, and get told "sorry, you'll have to die". Maybe the cash limit will be low because I decide to opt out of insurance for expensive treatments, enjoy spending the money I save, and die when my luck runs out.
There are two battles. One is around opting out. If I opt out of paying for the more expensive treatments for others, and therefore (by fairness) for myself, can I change my mind when I fall ill? Obviously not. Can I still whine about it, or must I die quietly? The other battle is about the future. More expensive treatments are coming. When is the breaking point when the money runs out?
Returning to the profit question, the British National Health Service (the NHS) is funded out of general taxation and free at the point of use. Do we Britbongs escape the profit issue? We should, because the NHS is a non-profit. But it doesn't work out like that. At constant funding there is a tradeoff between the wages of doctors and nurses and treatment. At constant funding, higher pay means fewer doctors means less treatment. Alternatively there is a tradeoff between funding and taxes. The politicians in charge need to keep in touch with fluctuating public sentiment. What will get them re-elected? More taxes and more health care? Lower taxes and scandals about people dying waiting for treatment? Perhaps the warning sign of the impending breaking point is no-one can get re-elected. The low tax politicians cannot get re-elected because of the deaths. The health care spenders cannot get re-elected because of the taxes.
We need to learn to memento mori least we build a world in which we spend our lives working long hours in health care, before eventually falling ill and taking a very long time dying, kept alive by the strenuous efforts of many younger people.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
Official government webpage https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndromes/
felis-parenthesis
3mo ago
One complication is the Golden Rule and private autogynephilia. Let me start with a three way sub-classification of private autogynephilia.
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Repression It would be so easy to buy a dress on line or at a thrift shop and dress up and blush. No! That would be wrong. One makes ones mind a battle field and victory is not giving in to temptation.
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Binge and Purge One gives in to temptation, dresses, make-up, maybe even a wig. Then one gets disgusted by what one is doing, and throws them away. But a year later one does it all again.
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Limited, private indulgence One gives in to temptation. Release turns into relief, and one puts ones cross-sex items away, in a suit case or a drawer, knowing that one will be tempted again, and indulge again. But also aware that the over-all effect on ones life is negative. Without turning ones mind into a battle field, one tries to avoid temptation and leave off for months or years.
The Golden Rule is often written as
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
All three classes of private autogynephile see autogynephilia as a misfortune. It takes them away from seeking a girl friend or a wife. It takes them away from sublimating sexual impulses in other, satisfying alternatives. Yet it is so horribly unrealistic. They are a bloke, not a girl; autogynephilia involves fighting a war against reality and reality always wins. And they cannot expect any-one else to join in and humor them.
What would they have others do unto them? They hope that others will refrain from encouraging them. No "woman of the year" for a man. No "Stunning and brave" for a man. No inviting a man to use she/her pronouns. They hope to avoid cultivating and strengthening their fetish. They don't want to get outed. They don't want to have to say "please stop talking about positively about transition, because I'm both tempted and sure that it would work about badly for me." It is the same as when the ex-alcoholic is invited to go for a drink. He doesn't want to reveal his private past and he doesn't want to be cajoled.
And what then does the Golden Rule command them to do unto others? They see it as partly idiopathic and partly social contagion. They keep it private to avoid contaminating others. They oppose publicity and encouragement around transition. This is rooted in compassion for those with autogynphilia. It is a net negative for them. As best they can judge, it is a net negative for others. They wish to avoid harming others by encouraging the fetish, just as they hope that others will avoid harming them by validating and encouraging their fetish.
felis-parenthesis
3mo ago
Human social lives are vicious. Watch your back. Alice has a dishy boyfriend Bob. Carol is jealous. Carol goes 4B and tells Alice how wonderful 4B is. Alice gets persuaded to break up with Bob. Bob is back on the dating market. Carol hooks Bob while maintaining the 4B charade around Alice.
Yikes! I've swallowed too many black pills. Any-one know the antidote?
Knowing that there is a real world, out there, beyond language.
Are the moon landings a hoax? Large Language Models can say what people say, perhaps rather more fluently and persuasively. If one is open to the possibility that there is more than one kind of intelligence, then LLM's have one of those kinds of intelligence, and in greater degree than an average human. But LLM's are rather stuck on giving their own opinion of whether the moon landings are a hoax, because they don't know whether the moon is real or fictional. Nor do the know whether the Earth is real or fictional. The whole "ground truth" thing is missing.
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