Ironically, despite the retreat of globalization in the past couple of months, Corona-chan has if anything shrank the world. For instance, I started participating in Zoom meetups with my old futurist group from the Bay Area again, four years after leaving the US. Which is not, I suppose, a bad thing. As many of us are cooped up in our respective lockdowns, we have a greater need for human contact to forestall the impending ravages of autism.
Not to put too saccharine a spin on it, but some of my long-time readers are almost like friends to me (some I have met and are IRL friends). And speaking of that, I would like to make a potentially interesting offer to them.
I primarily have in mind the following people (note that some prominent commenters are missing since I am already in contact with them): Adam; Ali Choudhury; Beckow; Belarusian Dude; Bras Cubas; Denis; Dmitry; Epigon; Felix Keverich; Jaakko Raipala; Jayce; jeppo; JPM; Kent Nationalist; Korenchkin; Kovar; LondonBob; melanf; Pericles; Polish Perspective; Seraphim; songbird; Spisarevski; szopen; Swedish Family; Tor597; ussr andy; Vishnugupta.
However, it just so happens that many of you use fake emails, so I can’t contact you directly. Consequently, please feel free to contact me – by email, or on my Twitter, Facebook, or VK.
If you’re really interested and have been making quality comments for a long time, feel free to write to me anyway and most likely I’ll extend that offer to you as well (if you’re a regular here and aren’t hostile to me).
Apologies in advance if I missed anyone obvious – I compiled this list in a hurry.
Finally, while I don’t want to put pressure on anybody – least of all at a time like this – a reminder that I appreciate any extra change that may be weighing down your pocket: https://akarlin.com/donations/
I also believe Thorfinnsson may have some long overdue thoughts to share on Tesla…
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
HE IS RISEN
In a Biosingularity scenario during the future of the third millennium, what do you think demographic trends and geopolitics will look like? One scenario I think is a possibility if artificial wombs come into widespread use is that they will lead to a state of “Hypermalthusianism”. Artificial wombs could allow for reproduction to happen at a far faster rate than reproducing the normal way, so cultures that become “Biosingularitarian” and adopt artificial wombs could overpopulate compared to cultures that don’t. On top of this, wars could potentially become significantly cheaper, since artificial wombs could much more easily produce new soldiers to replace those who die in wars.
https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1529493790710.jpg
As far as Tesla goes, I really do not have much to share, but it needs to be addressed.
Basically Tesla once again had a profitable third quarter, just as they did in 2018. This, along with some other good news, led a massive short squeeze and the stock went stratospheric.
I was personally not short at the time fortunately as my personal circumstances forced me to exit all highly risky investments in December, 2018. Some nice luck there. Not all good luck as I’m overweight in energy which has been a gruesome massacre.
Now of course everything is different and Tesla seems like an irrelevant triviality. My ultimate thesis on the company is unchanged, though I suppose being acquired by a major OEM is far more likely than going to zero.
I may have a lost bet with Polish Perspective which I don’t recall the details of? If he turns up I’m good for whatever it was.
Воистину воскресe !
Joyeuses Pâques.
Besides the debate surrounding a hard vs. soft takeoff, there seem to be two main schools of thought regarding what the Singularity will look like: a “winner takes all” scenario, and a “pure replicators” scenario. In the former, a superintelligence would act as a first mover, successfully form a singleton, and continue to permanently exist for the indefinite future. In the latter, the future is more fragmented, and there is what could be described as a superintelligence ecosystem, rather than a singleton. If a singleton does exist at one point, it is inherently unstable and eventually collapses or splits into multiple competing systems. This superintelligence ecosystem inevitably selects for pure replicators, as having utility functions besides pure replication would be less competitive. Which of these scenarios do you think is the most plausible, or do you think some third scenario could happen?
Also relevant:
https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/12/20/the-universal-plot-part-i-consciousness-vs-pure-replicators/
https://emerj.com/ai-future-outlook/will-artificial-intelligence-form-a-singleton-or-will-there-be-many-agi-agents-an-ai-researcher-consensus/
On a very different note, I just watched the classic 1983 coming of age film Risky Business, which is the film that launched Tom Cruise as a superstar. I last saw the movie as a teenager.
The movie wasn’t shot on a very large budget, and much of its budget was spent destroying Porsche 928s. But it still manages to incorporate a number of good shots from Chicago and Chicago’s affluent North Shore suburbs.
The film captures well what it was like growing up in the upper middle class in late 20th century American suburbia. The environment is overwhelmingly white, and high school kids from this class are very focused on getting into a good college. Elite schools were not as selective then as they are now, as evidenced by Cruise’s character being considered possibly Ivy League material with a 3.14 GPA, ~1300 SAT score, and middling class rank. The 80s zeitgeist is also well captured in Cruise’s friends all being mainly interested in making money as adults.
While it is a very famous ’80s movie, it has less of an ’80s feel than other famous ’80s coming of age films. The color palette is much darker and has elements of noir, and while the leading lady does have some great high waisted jeans most of the style is simply trad prep. Cruise in most scenes has boat shoes (without socks of course), Brooks Brothers OCBDs, and a well fitted sweater. While the film has some famous ’80s songs in its original soundtrack, most the soundtrack was made for the film by Tangerine Dream (and is perfectly matched).
The scene everyone remembers from this film is Tom Cruise dancing and lip syncing Bob Seger in his OCBD, tighty whities, and Ray-Ban Wayfarers. This is an excellent scene and it’s easy to see why it made Cruise a star, but for my money Lana’s entrance and the subsequent sex scene is better. Unfortunately you can’t readily find a clip of this great scene since it contains nudity and thus is not on Youtube.
Lastly, the film’s ending was not what the director wanted. His original final scene, which you can find on Youtube, is much darker.
Overall I very highly recommend the film. The film is ultimately degenerate as it centers around prostitution, so those of you with children are advised not to show this to them. Maybe to boys who are old enough.
You do not need just more wombs, but also someone or something to raise the children.
“It’s hard to bewitch African girls these days. Each time you take a piece of their hair to a Witch Doctor, either an innocent Brazilian gets hurt or a factory in India catches fire.”
https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/robert-mugabe-bishop-says-the-west-has-demonised-a-hero
https://youtu.be/J5Dv_V5ARoQ
:: And was enthusiastic about Hitler
“I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.” 2013
:: But he seemed less keen on Nelson Mandela
“Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of (blacks)… That’s being too saintly, too good,” 2013.
:: And much less on LGBT people
“Worse than pigs and dogs… Those who do it, we will say, they are wayward. It is just madness, insanity.” 2010
:: On Britain, Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler
“The British were brought up as a violent people, liars, scoundrels and crooks … I am told that (former British prime minister Tony) Blair was a troublesome little boy at school.” 2001
When is it going to be addressed that children are beautiful, and were included in sexual activities for 99% of our evolutionary history as hunter gatherer social groups? How do we know that sociosexual isolation from adults meets their needs? For adults, celibacy is a predictor of mental illness.
For some reason the e-mail wouldn’t send, so I made a twitter account and sent you a message there
Been quite a while since I watched any of those films, but my favorite would probably have to be Three O’Clock High (1987). Roger Ebert hated it, and used the word “fascism” in his review.
Many people have called it an anti-John Hughes film, but I don’t think that does it justice. It strikes a very different tone – quite balanced between dark and light. Its target audience seems to be more male than female. The premise, which is a showdown, somehow feels unique to the genre, despite being a trope in Westerns. If you turn off your brain a bit, you can even feel sympathy for the villain, who really doesn’t come across as a bully for the most part. Last but not least, as I suppose is pretty typical for that era, it elicits a nostalgia for the whitopia version of America, which seems lost today, but which was commonplace back then.
Воістину воскрес!
https://i.etsystatic.com/5198645/r/il/2f5a00/185930496/il_794xN.185930496.jpg
Anatoly, I found some interesting quotes within your twitter feed, that you’ve linked here at this thread:
Seems like “normality” hasn’t been working out too fine for you either, Anatoly, and it looks like you’ve gone full turkey “Jesus Freak”? If true, why not tell us all how this occurred (we all have the time these days)? Also, 7 days of a complete fast sounds incredible. What next, 30 days?
Love to hear more about your fast and religious experience.
Воистину воскрес!
The Great Bodhisattva has arisen and has taken our sins upon Him through transfer of his abundant merit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_merit
Speaking of resurrection of Our Saviour, what do you all think of a very distant possibility to reconstruct phylogenetic ancestry allowing resurrection of our distant ancestors using bioengineering approaches?
Just like cloning, but going somehow “backwards”?
I am asking about it because:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorovich_Fyodorov
Also, do you think Jesus Christ might be reconstructed as an AI starting from the Gospel semantic field?
This would allow Him to talk to anyone among his faithful through VR.
I for one would have some questions to ask him…
Did you get the idea about Jesus from the Devs show? That said I think the first thing they would do if they could reconstruct past people as AI would be to resurrect the Nazis and subject them to eternal torture. Though it would be interesting to backwards clone Chad ancestors of yours and unleash them into the world.
Can someone tell me the best way I can get an indication of my IQ score for free?
Are there any good websites that are known to give reliable results?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(miniseries)
I’ve only seen the first 3 episodes since I was waiting for all the episodes to come out, but part of the plot has to do with a quantum computer that seems to simulate the past, and specifically Jesus being crucified. So seems to be similar to what you said about creating an AI Jesus. If you haven’t seen the show then perhaps you would like it!
@Just Passing Through
You could try a vocabulary test.
What are people here doing for haircuts?
I usually have a fade, but its been over a month since I got a cut so rather than try to give myself cuts I decided to grow my hair out long.
Very interesting .
Thanks!
By the way, still not much testing capacity in America. We are still restricting Corona Virus tests to high risk patients.
I was told we won’t be able to test freely until maybe June or July.
Crazy we still can’t get this part right.
Are you posting from your cave, using the latest model of iStone?
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5188/5548702647_940e8ab1b6_b.jpg
Will Corona really end globalization? There are lots of hopes and wishful thinking, but had anyone asked what actual globalists think?
Not theoreticians with globe emoji in their twitter handles, but practical global citizens with multiple passports, working in the CBI/RBI industry.
(citizenship/residency by investment, check it out if you never heard about it. This is what peak globalism is about.)
https://www.imidaily.com/editors-picks/a-tale-of-two-citizens-virtual-vs-functional-freedom-of-movement/
By contrast:
Lesson: Do not be miserly loser like Arif. Be skillful investor like Veejay.
And the conclusion:
Are you watching technology development at all? In few years, human soldiers will be as common – and as useful – on the battlefield as horses.
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/14/turkey-second-drone-age/
https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-drones/turkeys-effective-drone-campaign-over-syrias-idlib
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1233531050770432000
Hunter gatherer social groups have high levels of internal altruism and very low levels of mental illness. Our modern life can benefit from restoring these social norms where possible.
The situation is very fluid, many things we have considered ascertained a month ago look quite dubious today.
This has happened on a monthly timescale, so what will be the final result of all this situation in a couple of years?
In a dozen years?
No one knows.
The process is complicated, probably non-linear.
Also, I don’t think Globalisation is about holding several passports.
It is more about Global Elites extracting maximized profits on a global scale.
It would become rapidly impossible if the globe was again separated in different zones of influence, just like it was during the previous Cold War.
IMHO, COVID-19 is just a justification for pausing the Globalisation, there are other factors to consider.
Both of those people are losers. The only two passports worth having are American and Russian. If you have the ability, always count nuclear warheads when picking travel documents.
American passport will open many doors, and if you anger American government and need to do a Snowden, Russia is the place to go (don’t be Assange).
Cloning, Dr. Frankenstein inventions, genetic engineering of human embryos, cryonics, abortion, euthenasia, and transhuman buggery are all directly counter-3rd-commandment:
Thou shall not take God’s name in vain
per the pastor who confirmed me. The debate seems pretty one-sided as far as I have looked into it.
Hristos a înviat!
Adevărat a înviat!
The Holy Light came to Jerusalem as always.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”.
‘Slavă Celui ce ne-ai arătat nouă Lumina’! ‘Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the Light’!
Where did you gather (pun intended) that primitive hunter gatherer groups were a bunch of pedophiles?
Are you sure you do not confuse our ancestors with the Bonobo chimps?
Also, some children are beautiful, other not so much.
Some plants are beautiful, other not so much.
Beautiful plants don’t make me lusting about having sex with them.
Same for children.
Why?
Because plants, just like young children are not physically suitable as sex partners.
Moreover, young children are not psychologically ready to become sex partners.
This is evident for anyone who thinks about it in a rational way.
Are you capable of being rational about it?
If not, seek psychological help immediately before you hurt someone.
Believe me, children that have had sexual experiences with adults are traumatized for life.
I know at least two persons that lived through this experience and they have struggled to be normal ever since.
If you don’t want to hurt others, and ultimately make your own life a disaster, think about it in a very serious manner.
If needed seek help.
Easter in Minsk. Most of religious people in temples are old women, and Lukashenko thinks it is acceptable to allow some of oldest demographics in his country to crush for hours together during an epidemic.
Perhaps this is just a conspiracy of Lukashenko and the pension fund.
But hopefully this won’t influence Putin. For years, Putin is usually seeming to believe Lukashenko is “how the alpha male should act”, and tries to copy his Chad behaviours. And the latest Lukashenko is trying the “only virgins are scared of a virus”…
https://www.sb.by/upload/resize_cache/slam.image/iblock/37c/855_2000_1/37caa6b130926ef8b04f5f7051673891.jpg
https://img.the-village.me/the-village.me/post_image-image/ykWqNVdoZ3RlWJUWF1L9mQ.jpg
With all due respect, I do not think the True Name of God could be taken in vain.
As Lao Tzu has famously stated: “the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.”
In the Judaic Kabbalah tradition, the True Name of God is a mystery only revealed by Him to a few Saints in each generation.
In Islamic mysticism, Allah has 99 names defining His saintly attributes, but His 100th and only True Name is only known by the Imam of the Age.
Gnostic Christians have also had similar teachings.
I am not enough of a Saint to know how God must be Named.
But maybe you know what’s God’s true Name?
In this case, pray tell!
I cut my own hair and recommend it. Cheap investment, easy to learn, and gives you the flexibility to do it whenever you want.
LOL.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/08/Share-of-Deaths_Archaeological-and-Ethnographic-Evidence-on-Violence-768×538.png
TL;DR: Rousseau was full of shit, and so is anyone who still believes the “noble savage” BS.
LOL. If have the misfortune to be American, there is no escape from serfdom. You will be taxed forever for all your earnings all over the world. In addition, you are No.2 target (after Israelis) of every terrorist group in existence.
As for the benefits of Russian passport, ask Mr. Karlin.
I know prehistoric humans were very violent. That doesn’t necessarily translate to high levels of internal social violence. I recently watched a documentary about uncontacted tribes which ended up supporting both of my claims. Tribesmen were constantly involved in conflicts using bows no less lethal than a bolt action rifle. There was one scene where a small gathering of tribespeople made first contact with governmental medics for help with an injury caused by an enemy raid. In this apprehensive moment of first contact, a young girl child was out in front to meet the medics. Interestingly, in this scene the girl was treated as an equal in the conversation as well as the decision making. This supports the view that these tribes view children as autonomous individuals to which the taboo of coercion is applied equally.
Excellent “Messiah” TV series got cancelled by Netflix. My take is that the show creator Michael Petroni did not succumb to pressures to compromise the plot and implode the overtly Christian tone and message by exposing Al-Masih as a fraud and child molester. The last episode ended with Al-Masih resurrecting a Mossad agent from the dead. The official reasons for cancellation is that Muslims were not happy which obviously is BS. In the first episode Al-Masih led thousands of Muslims from Syria to Israel.
AK, will you write about your trip to Poland last year? Are you conflicted about it or was it just boring and inconsequential?
No protein shakes, no nothing, no soda even? Just water and that’s it? Personally, I don’t get why exactly Anatoly is torturing himself in such a way, but to each their own, I suppose!
I’d be even more interested to hear more about his apparent recent experience with the Lord, Jesus Christ. I normally wouldn’t try to draw him out about this (there have been other references lately about his Christian direction), but he’s made it public within his tweeting history. Hopefully, it’s not a “false flag” gag on his part?
And these elites need to travel all over the world, and have multiple passports to ease travel and business.
See the worldwide rise of acceptance of multiple citizenship (something unthinkable before) with the rise of globalization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_citizenship
By the mid-20th century, dual nationality was largely prohibited worldwide, although there were exceptions.
However, the consensus against dual nationality began to erode due to changes in social mores and attitudes. By the late 20th century it was becoming gradually accepted again.[3] Many states were lifting restrictions on dual citizenship. For example, the British Nationality Act 1948 removed restrictions on dual citizenship in the United Kingdom, the 1967 Afroyim v. Rusk ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the U.S. government from involuntarily stripping citizenship from Americans over dual citizenship, and the Canadian Citizenship Act, 1976, removed restrictions on dual citizenship in Canada. The number of states allowing multiple citizenships further increased after a treaty in Europe requiring signatories to limit dual citizenship lapsed in the 1990s, and countries with high emigration rates began permitting it to maintain links with their respective diasporas.[6]
This is Orwell-Burnham vision.
https://orwell.ru/lit?a=e&doc=/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh
The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.
If it happens, it will also lead to further integration inside the blocks. Every way, petty nationalism is obsolete.
If corona flares up against, and Trump goes had herd immunity, and millions die, what is the over/under on him getting Sadatted? It is ironic that the Swedes are so energised over the Russian threat but so relaxed over corona? But the upside is they do make decent burgers.
Re: Easter, I struggle spiritually and the Orthodox Church seems far more cucked and corrupt to me than most online Russophiles say, even if I have trouble believing CIA plants of all sorts that they’re neo KGB. Really any religion or lack thereof can really be dismissed by Cartesian epistemology (admittedly, so can literally any other knowledge). That said I choose to identify as Orthodox because pretty much any other religion or absence thereof is far, far more gay.
Re: Corona, Russia seems to have avoided first place of the retard olympics by post poning victory day. That said if they still hold it on say VJ day they’ll probably come back to holding the title of biggest retards. I also got to say that while initially I was generally optimistic about Russian corona prospects they seem to be doing average at best. While initially I believed they’d be saved by Gigachad authoritarian shit like sending badass OMON in gasmasks with tacticool AKs straight out of Call of Duty after anybody who violated quarantine, it seems the gov’t really lacks a lot of the spine previously assumed and the country is far more neoliberal than many previously imagined.
Re: Meetup, I used to be a lurker here until my gran got bad so as a code monkey I could work from home and have almost neet level of internet time. When she passes I will probably go back to being a lurker, but I’m always happy to give some autistic ramblings, I’ll start signing off with my real email since there’s not nearly enough dox info on it
I think that his logic is that The Lord will provide him with the necessary nourishment and that only by being near the point of starvation can he actually experience an epiphany.
Do you question that line of thinking considering that Descartes was a Christian? G.K. Chesterson’s book Orthodoxy, which isn’t specifically on the Eastern Orthodox Church, is a good read to counter Cartesian thinking. Chapter IX being the most important.
As for Cartesian Epistemology I think it’s usually only invoked in a dogmatic fashion to deny what you don’t want to believe in. I’m not accusing you of this but simply in a general sense. Why distrust the ability to perceive God but still live your life under all the other assumptions generated by your empiricism? One would think if you’re denying religion by using Cartesian epistemology you would live like Diogenes since all structure of your life is equally deniable.
Your English is almost always faultless, but the past participle of shrink is ‘shrunk,’ not ‘shrank.’
The world shrank.
The world has shrunk.
I triggers me, because Kiwis make that mistake all the time. You hear such gems as “I have took it.” My father-in-law is serial offender.
Norwegian MENSA society:
https://test.mensa.no/
Unlimited printing press benefits of the US are worth it though. US will always have a more dynamic economy relative to vassals such as Europe and Japan. As long as they use USD they will pay a tax in real capital costs. Same for China and Russia and others.
Russia is the only large developed economy that doesn’t rely on infinite money printing for development. It diminishes GDP growth numbers, but if money printing is misused in US, I have Russian passport because Russia will be more stable in the long run.
Poor Descartes who dedicated enormous efforts to demonstrate rationally the existence of God! Of course you’d need to read Descartes, which is more than doubtful that you did. Use your neet level of internet time to do it, dude.
The Russian authorities a terrible mistake by not blocking the movement of people between regions. For example:
Residents of Mordovia will be obliged to wear masks. “The sharp increase in cases is associated with the second wave of arrivals from outside the Republic, when non-working days were declared until the end of the month. In 80% of the identified cases-this is the result of contacts with infected people who came from Moscow, the Moscow region, and other regions, ” – said the head of Mordovia Vladimir Volkov at a meeting of the regional operstab on Sunday.
https://ria.ru/20200419/1570271611.html
It was possible to avoid an epidemic in a large part of the territory of Russia simply by isolating Moscow. Instead, the authorities allow people to leave the center of the epidemic and spread the infection around the country. At the same time the Central government directly prohibits regional authorities from closing the borders of regions
I don’t know the formal name in English but that’s a fallacy. Just because a guy had one good odea doesn’t mean all his others were great. The issue is I haven’t had any sensory perception of God, if I did I would believe even if I could not disprove that my perception was an illusion.
In general I live life under the assumption A) all I have personally witnessed is real and B) I am never wrong and never even entertain the idea that this isn’t the case save a few rare times. I simply find Cartesian epistemology to be useful when it comes to things I haven’t come to discover a posteriori, particularly those of the spiritual realm. For similar reasons I don’t believe in the lesser supernatural things I’m peddled like wicca by teens. So far the best thing to convince me of the Abrahamic and some Dharmic Gods is that when I do some sins I am often finding something else going wrong in my life but that can easily be dismissed as coincidence.
Poor bait. Anyways I have 10x more interesting reading to do than read some rambling which even now I’m pretty sure won’t convince me to entirety.
Your ascribing to Karlin a very deep Christian faith that quite frankly I’ve never read about here to indicate its importance to him in his life. I get the idea that his fasting is more tied to his secular interests in transhumanism and its ability to help extend his lifespan. Only he can really explain his motives and beliefs more fully, and it would be interesting if he did and really made this blog a more interesting place. I’ve never doubted the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, but really how many more threads can you devote to this topic?
Well yeah. Russia isn’t winning the retard Olympics but at the very least they will get a participation medal. Im thoroughly disappointed Volodka didnt strut some authoritarian stuff. My dreams of seeing a Half Life prologue IRL are squashed and my warmth to a hypothetical Russian integration is changing to indifference and negativity. If Russia cant do one of the things everyone tells me its supposed to be great at what even is its purpose? Moskals btfo
Then why do you invoke Descartes if he is just “some rambling which even now won’t convince you to entirety”? Get your act together, dude.
Cartesian mind-body dualism is the last doctrine under which the belief in God was still possible as well as rational. The materialism that came later which culminated with Darwinism have no room for God and, what is not recognized by materialists, it has no room for science either. A subscriber to materialist belief finds itself in a vicious circle as an automaton w/o free will who keeps insisting that his pronouncements about the reality bear some weight.
What’s this in reference too?
Having sensory perception of God is like trying to understand a computer just by looking at the binary. How do you expect to perceive God when He (if we go by His standard definition) would be so infinite that your comprehension is impossible? Just because a cat cannot understand the idea of being at work on time doesn’t meant that being on time doesn’t exist, this is simply outside of the perceptive abilities of the cat. I think there’s certain limits to perception since it’s entirely subjective.
Воистину Воскресе!
Lack of closure of exit/entry between Moscow and the rest of the country (which should have been in February), is blind to observation of other countries, and also to traditional anti-epidemic measures.
Closing interregional borders is the greatest success that China has achieved during the epidemic. And it was standard policy of the USSR, for more minor epidemics than this.
To look at one example – Odessa was sealed by the army in 1970, with 120 infections, so that no soul could leave the city. According to the same policy, Moscow should have been sealed by army after the second week of March.
If we look at the success of interregional border closure in China. The epidemic is so large in Hubei, that there are 24600 deaths in China from coronavirus around early February. (Possibly over a million Chinese will have been infected with coronavirus in late January, considering COVID-19 often takes two weeks to kill.)
Wuhan is quarantined in 23 January and interregional borders are closed, with checkpoints around the city. It’s believed that China’s interregional border closure – has prevented the epidemic spreading with significance in Northern China, and China is able to safely begin re-opening its economy (although not Hubei) by late March.
Both Trump and Lukashenko seem to be hell bent on to killing significant part of their core support base for some reason. Such degree of disconnect from reality reminds Hitler’s bunker planing with non existant blockade relief forces during Berlin siege. Lukashenko benefitted very much from pandemics so far as he was able to resist and win the battle of soft annexation danger and subsequent RF oil blackmail pressure, so that might be “dizziness from success” on his head atm.
My cheesehead (Wisconsinite) in-laws and their neighbors are the same. Things are “tore” or “froze”.
At least it’s have. In too much writing it shows up as “I should of took it.”
Not that have makes much more sense than of in this context, but at least it’s a verb, and is consistent across all the Germanic and Romance languages.
What a strange post. I’m not sure there has ever been a time in human history where “womb capacity” was the limiting factor to anything. Moreover, in the present day our existing “womb capacity” is far in excess to actual requirement, and this discrepancy will grow even more in the future. In fact, assuming technological and societal trends continue in their current direction, sheer population size will progressively decrease in relevancy.
I would think that eventually, humans with an IQ lower than some currently unknown but likely >100 number will be seen as complete dead-weight, useless for cognitively intensive work and made superfluous as labor and cannon fodder by machines. Maybe my prognostication here is colored by personal preference, but once geopolitical power is completely divorced from population size I foresee the elites working to minimize population density as much as possible, as that would maximize the quality of life for those who made the cut. At any rate, mass production of human meatbags is a complete dead end as a means towards any rational goal given our current understanding of where the future is (likely) going.
These are measures known since the time of king Gilgamesh. Here is an example of how Saint Petersburg successfully avoided the plague pandemic in 1708-1713
” (Tsar) Peter ordered military outposts to be set up on all roads leading to Petersburg and Novgorod. They were also located along the banks of the Luga river, along which, starting from the sea, a chain of soldiers was placed to watch that no vessels went along the river. It was ordered to hang” regardless of excuses ” all who secretly drove past the outposts. Also, all those who helped the secret passage of quarantine violators were subject to the death penalty.
Outposts were also set up on the roads leading from Riga, Tver, and Moscow. The decree ordered: “to Have a strong fear and caution from travelers, and especially to guard against merchant people and from innkeepers, and from the people of the boyars, who secretly pass to their homes from the regiments of Riga, so that they do not cause … (the plague)… from Novagorod, and from Tver, as well as from Moscow, do not let anyone pass (to St. Petersburg); and those who pass secretly – hang them.”
To prevent the introduction of the epidemic in St. Petersburg, a special postal road was created from St. Petersburg to Moscow via Ladoga, Tikhvin, Ustyuzhna, and Kashin. The authorities strictly ensured that on this newly created highway, post horses and carts were provided only to couriers carrying letters from the Tsar himself and provided with travel documents signed by the highest officials of the state. A special decree was established the rules of the reception of letters and papers brought from “plague places”: “Outposts receive mail only after holding (after opening) in the wind for two or three hours, and then fumigate with juniper and send them from the outposts to Moscow, sealed”
Очерки истории чумы. Супотницкий М. В. Супотницкая Н. С.
Why in our time the authorities in Russia (and not only the United States is an even more striking example ) do not take obvious measures is a mystery to me
They don’t want big line doing down
They’re protesting against the lock down in the streets in France and Germany now, while in Britain people just accept it, in fact they shame the few who do attempt to oppose or question it in any way. This crisis is demonstrating that the British are the most controlled, subservient people in Europe, even the Swedish have more gumption.
British “conservatives” are only conservative in terms of financial matters (ie low tax for corporations), in any other sense they are leftist authoritarians. Tories are nothing like US right wingers/libertarians, they are absolutely loving the fact that their emperor Boris is asserting his rule as an authoritarian. I think a lot of them want things to stay like this permanently, they love the fact that Britain is turning into some sort of Tory Junta.
For him to be proved right–how many deaths is Belarus allowed? 0.1% of the population and less? Or make the 0.1% include those whose lives are severely physically impaired after recovery from the virus (the US may reach that figure)? I don’t think Belarus will reach that
Secondary effects to judge the policy are on neighbour-regions of Russia – they are showing slightly above average infection-but nothing too extreme. Sadly disproportionate number of deaths in Pskov,but low numbers of cases
At least now there is establishing a pattern between quality of region and the cases to deaths ratio…… though authorities have to make sure Chechnya and Dagestan don’t keep on being disproportionately bad. Bashkortostan being a surprisingly bad performer
Right now IMO the most interesting car on the EV scene is the Aptera
They should be ready with their new prototype soon
For the majority its far too weird but there is a market for extreme efficiency
And that’s what our correspondent from Salon has to say.
(Btw, Epstein didn’t kill himself.)
Looks pretty gay. Plus a two seater who is going to drive that broke teenagers?
Edit: also Vladivokavkaz protests against shut down. Unexpected.
The epidemic revealed a phenomenon of psychology of parasitism that has a mass character.
Here’s an example
https://s15.stc.all.kpcdn.net/share/i/4/1901170/inx960x640.jpg
A Vietnamese girl who lives in Moscow on the occasion of the epidemic sews and distributes reusable masks for free. Discussion on the forum about this https://www.yaplakal.com/forum3/topic2100345.html
, half of the comments that this is a villainous plan – an analog of blankets infected with smallpox, there are also other comments on the same discussion call for not paying taxes because the state did not provide everyone with a free mask, etc. This attitude is the psychological basis for ignoring the requirements of anti-epidemic measures (as well as for ignoring any requirements of human society in General). I suspect that there are many people with this attitude to life in other countries as well
I recommend you more accurately read my posts, I’m not really interested in Descartes as a whole, I am simply interested in a very select part of what he did and frankly not even in that, I only invoke his name because he is the most common source people have to learn about one being able to dismiss any knowledge gained as sensory illusion.
I refer to your mention of Descartes being a Christian in spite of his other ideas.
I don’t really need to comprehend God. But if I am to full heartedly believe in him without a shred of doubt I simply need some sort of a posteriori evidence, I need to witness a miracle or something of the sort.
For the record, arguments like the unmoved mover are pretty convincing to me that some sort of deity exists more likely than not, but its not conclusive enough.
https://i.redd.it/jr1zx8u18j8z.jpg
I recently heard that Russia passed a dual-citizenship law. I was wondering if you were going to write something on that? It’s not for me, since you for sure have to be a Russian resident to get it (if not, and you can get it from overseas, then it’s stupid). But still it’s nice to know that if corona-chan destroys my country and I’m forced to escape to my wife’s country and live in the tundra eating buckwheat and drinking vodka, depressed that my career is over and my skin is destroyed by the dry, cold air, I could get citizenship there without too many bureaucratic hassles.
Speaking of which, I read a month ago that Russia has banned the export of buckwheat, but can’t really find the story again, so it might have been fake news. I don’t know if this is true, but this is concerning as we’re down to our last pack and we don’t want the mother in law’s shipment to be confiscated at the international airport.
Are you a libertarian by the by?
Honestly, a proper 30 day fast sounds pretty interesting.
Fasting has significant benefits, at least in men.
The specific reasoning has been mentioned in his twitter: to lose weight he has gained over the quarantine.
I think its cool, but yeah I admit its not for everyone and most would agree with you, but if they can come close to their claimed specs there is a market for a car like Aptera, 1000 miles per charge and every public charger is a fast charger
Tribes don’t have a “taboo of coercion” and would not survive if they did; they certainly do not treat people as autonomous individuals. The !Kung practice both infanticide and elderly suicide to control their population, and Kaczynski, who praises them for the low levels of mental illness, does mention that life is fairly constant search for food(and remarks on their shocking lack of empathy at times). As with many other human(and near-human) societies, they extensively practice coercion in order to survive.
Even in the most peaceful and weirdest customs(which involve sex), there’s always a level of ritualized violence, such as in the Gunwinggu people:
“New singers and musicians appear, are again assaulted and dragged off to the bushes; men encourage their wives “not to be shy,” so as to maintain the Gunwinggu reputation for hospitality; eventually those men also take the initiative with the visitors’ wives, offering cloth, hitting them, and leading them off into the bushes. Beads and tobacco circulate.”
More normally:
“Let us begin with the Nambikwara of Brazil. They would seem to fit all the criteria: they are a simple society without much in the way of division of labor, organized into small bands that traditionally numbered at best a hundred people each…This argument is carried on in an angry tone of voice until a settlement is reached. When agreement has been reached each snatches the object out of the other’s hand. If a man has bartered a necklace, instead of taking it off and handing it over, the other person must take it off with a show of force….Occasionally, people would get killed. Barter, then, for all the festive elements, was carried out between people who might otherwise be enemies and hovered about an inch away from outright warfare—and, if the ethnographer is to be believed—if one side later decided they had been taken advantage of, it could very easily lead to actual wars.”
Both ancedotes above from David Graber.
There’s no evidence that “children” are particularly included in sexual activities beyond the obvious – that due to lack of housing space, they were usually around families of people who had sex, and thus would be aware of the existence of such a thing.
Karlin is shilling for ZOG, covert microchips in vaccines, and big pharma again?
Hey go prove you dedication by blowing up a police station or following in the footsteps of the Halifax martyr and shoot up a few police officers somewhere. You can always find IED instructions on the net.
My online handmade sales this year have surpassed 2018 total, and there are 10 to go until I sell as much as in all 2019. Almost all customers are in the US. People in lockdown find refuge in hobbies and appreciation of beauty. Thanks American people for not giving up.
I guess the problem is that even with the worse case scenarios, this pandemic is not killing enough people in the most vital demographics to change anyone’s mind?
Jerry Sandusky did it all to combat mental illness
I am close to an ethnic Pole from Russia who, prior to being sent to the Urals as a kid with her family after the war, lived in a Polish village in western Ukraine.
She has a vivid memory from childhood of the commies gathering the villagers together in front of the church after the war. The main one decided to prove that God didn’t exist (or was powerless) by shooting a cross. The bullet ricocheted and hit him in the arm. So the opposite was proved.
Its true?
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/20/commentary/world-commentary/grim-truth-swedish-model/#.Xp255EAzbct
“The lack of a lockdown has led to one of the world’s highest COVID-19 death rates in Sweden“
1000 against 1, that this story only proves the mechanism of the origin of myths. Most likely, the woman had entertained herself with attractive fantasies for too long, so he believed that these were genuine memories. Or maybe she just confused the retold story with her own childhood memories
No, she there. She grew up to become a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences btw. She attributes what she saw to likely human stupidity rather than divine intervention, but it was a strong memory.
The comment on Twitter below to infer lack of effectiveness of New Zealand’s lockdown is obvious nonsense. Also there are too many confounding variables to infer so much.
However, the comparison he posts to indicate the effect of seasonality and warmer weather, in development of the epidemic, is probably useful – to compare Southern hemisphere in general.
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1250932920648437760
From a mechanical point of view, there is a lot of evidence for a reduction of air travel in duration and distance, of water droplets (that could carry viruses), from above around 25° celsius, due to increasing absolute humidity.
In addition, the amount of time viruses can remain viable on surfaces falls with higher temperature (although a set temperature for this will vary widely depending on the virus).
Quito, in Ecuador, is attaining daily maximum temperatures of around 18° celsius this week – but Lima in Peru is currently having maximum temperatures of 25° celsius, and the epidemic is still developing well there, although slower than in most European countries. Cities like Sao Paulo are currently around daily maximums of 25° celsius, so within range of a Northern European summer. In the summer Sao Paulo falls to daily highs of 20° celsius. However, as a counter-example Florida has a significant epidemic, with the virus circulating inside the old peoples’ homes of the state.
Israel has ended lockdown yesterday, and is re-opening most things, despite a significant coronavirus epidemic in the country. Tel Aviv currently has maximum daily temperatures around 21-26° this week, while Jerusalem’s maximum daily temperatures will be 17°-28° depending on day.
Thanks for the kind mention and offer, Anatoly, but I guess I will just continue interacting with people through the comment area, for now anyway. I comment with a valid email, so feel free to make any private remarks you wish to me.
It certainly seems that there’s more behind Anatoly’s fast that a desire to shed some unwanted pounds. This quotation was taken from his twitter too:
Yes, I will, but as you will have noticed, there are slightly more consequential things to write about right now.
It’s not really, there are plenty of much longer examples in /r/fasting, and the world record is 395 days.
Benefits:
I would assume an increasing number of the office plankton, are binge online shopping at the moment. Salaries for many do not change, we have less work, fewer responsibilities, usually 2x more free time, no schedule, and are locked down.
Exchanging abstract symbolic money for physical objects, is also not such an primitive irrational behaviour, during times of economic uncertainty – even if you are in a supposedly stable economically country, with bank deposit guarantees, and absence of hyper-inflation.
That said, advertising cookies tricked me into autopilot browsing to order a new digital piano this month, until I thought how crazy this is: I already have a good one, and I was planning not to upgrade for many years. Moreover, it is gambling to buy certain things like this online, unless you have tried them in real life in a shop first (whether you will like the touch and sound of a keyboard is just subjective and you can’t know you will like it from the internet)
I posted a graph where I compared death rate per capita of four Scandinavian countries and took care of one confounding variable – population density. The countries have similar cultures, economic development, medical care. Sweden is an outlier with death rate per capita about 7 time higher.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/infection-rate-in-silicon-valley-was-under-5-in-early-april/#comment-3848810
Have you read Aldous Huxley “Heaven and Hell”? He writes in an entertaining way, about what he thought is the effect of fasting on the mind of medieval man. Also there’s some entertaining sections about jewelry, stained glass, benefits of vitamin deficiency, etc. I would recommend it as an enjoyable to read kind of essay.
Do you think that this is a guarantee that a person will not tell fairy tales under the guise of genuine memories? This is very naive
idk if this is common occurence or a result of an increasing chaos related to SARS 2.0 onslaught on organized healthcare, but one woman in Moscow having liver disease started to get bad with signs of pneumonia, got hospitalised on 17th of April, got released 2 days later despite still feeling bad, was taken home with social taxi by the medical staff and was left on the bench near the home entrance home, where she died quickly still being outside.
Quite strange mix of 1st world service levels (social taxi from hospital to home) and 3rd world levels attitude (clearly bad critical patient condition, still released and dropped to be left for dead outside):
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2676349926022353&set=a.2135710570086294&type=3&theater
Video here:
https://www.mk.ru/social/2020/04/19/istoriey-so-smertyu-broshennoy-u-svoego-doma-pacientki-zaymetsya-skr.html
Rather than a complete fast, have you ever tried a juice fast? Some claim that it’s better than a complete one.
I’ve just completed a fast from meat and milk products for 40 days. The meat dishes that I’m now eating taste really great, but they certainly seem to “plug you up.” I’m back to having a nice, light juice made of only celery today (tomorrow I’ll include beets, carrots etc;).
I posted this in the old thread like yesterday, posting it here is probably a wiser idea
The actual “most important graph in the world”
https://u.cubeupload.com/Vuu/ca.png
On that level of drama: my wife was sewing and distributing masks for free, and has gained the frantic anger of some woman who is trying to sell her(lower quality) stuff. She insists that everyone else’s masks are useless except for hers, for some reason.
Incidentally, she does not want to follow the hospital guidelines that we are using.
Maybe its because she is trying to sell her cruddy work for $25 each.
The evidence isn’t there for such.
You know that surgical masks are only supposed to sell for 10 cents before this whole thing right?
What is Lukashenko’s core support, beneath his marketing and PR? Local elite, owners of the means of production, wealthy benefits of “clientelism” . That said, it seems to my outside perspective, that most of the population has benefited from the years of relative political stability which Lukashenko has helped to create in Belarus. I think he was good for Belarus overall, until this year at least.
As for similarities of Lukashenko, Trump and Bolsonaro. Political typology of “alpha male”, is perhaps not the best category for responding to unexpected disasters and epidemics. Silvio Berlusconi was infamous for about survivors of L’Aquila Earthquake whose homes are destroyed: “They lack nothing. They have hot food… their accommodation is a bit temporary but they should view it as a weekend of camping”.
Strange then, that he would make such a statement publicly?…
Meant Lukashenko support at populist level – those ordinary people in Belarus who still would vote for him in any free elections if such were organized – pension age and near pension age people born in 50-60, mainly postwar Soviet boomers, which now have increased risk from SARS 2.0.
Of course, have little doubt that he has support and in other age groups for various reasons, but that aforementioned group should be the most supportive for him.
It suggests she is neither stupid nor crazy, nor a religious fanatic.
Eyewitness accounts and memories are notoriously unreliable with respect to details which is why they are problematic when identifying people in criminal cases.
This situation is not details – the villagers were brought to a public place in the village, told a speech about God not existing, that ended in a dramatic and stupid shooting of a cross, resulting in ricochet and injury of the shooter. I would not trust memories of the description of the shooter, details of the speech, etc. But it is doubtful that the entire episode or a key aspect is a confabulation.
It is interesting that you are so keen to deny that this occurred, however.
The blog post is from February. By the beginning of March, Saraqib was back in pro-Syrian government hands.
Single stories of this kind can be found for any major country, even in non-epidemic times. If this happens EN masse (not in the form of individual exceptions) Yes this will be an indicator
Воистину Воскресе!
Click on the paypal donate link and you will see the correct email :]
In our town, on the occasion of the epidemic, children are given a free grocery set (once a week). Here is this set of (roughly such with small variations every week)
https://cdn.spbdnevnik.ru/uploads/block/image/414614/__large___medium_photo_2020-04-13_11-47-20%20_2_.jpg.jpg.jpg
In social networks, indignation – why canned fish but not meat, why sunflower oil and not olive, chocolate is not the best quality…. I’m not kidding you
https://c.radikal.ru/c28/2004/39/7023feda41e1.jpg
Ксюнечка Кузнецова will be featured in front page New York Times article about evil Putler poisoning Russian children.
Nothing is worse than a nagging Sovok soccer mom with control issues. This is why Russian men drink so much.
That kitty candy is adorable.
New Zealand is a two island, low population, wealthy country that actually has one of the strictest immigration policies in the world and is far away from everyone. Praising it for not having suffered much from Coronavirus is like praising Holland for not suffering from a volcanic eruption.
Its a country in a perfect position to be shielded from this crisis.
NZ also coordinates very well with Australia – the full inverse of Russia and Ukraine.
Anyway, Tatarstan has done much better.
Didn’t know about Burnham.
Very interesting.
Thanks
I agree that nationalism is probably doomed.
Nazped?
Regarding your other post, I don’t agree with your reasoning that infanticide can be categorized as a social violation. I don’t agree that it is an act of savagery. If a child is born with a disfigurement such as an ectopia, it is reasonable for a mother in a tribal environment to commit infanticide. Subsistence foragers, at least in Europe, worked fewer hours and left behind much healthier skeletons compared to serfs laboring in early feudal societies.
Ваистину васкрсе!
Should the Russian Revolution be called the ‘Anti-Russian Revolution’?
That would only apply to members of any given religion. Most people into the bio-engineering stuff tend not to be members of any religion that forbids such stuff. As such, the religious objections are irrelevant to them.
This is because the Turks had to pull back, when they were threatened by Putin. Not because of anything any Syrian did.
My point was not about local Syrian politics, but about technology and the future of warfare.
Remember, Turkey is only second rate power, and UAV technology is about where aircaft was in 1920.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spring_Shield
https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1235998683436589058
https://www.straturka.com/how-turkeys-drones-dominated-idlib-operation/
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Drones have been around for quite some time. Many modern forces have been using drones for surveillance, reconnaissance and even targeted strikes. But during the Operation Spring Shield Turkey took the utilization of drones to a different level. Ankara deployed combat drones in such a manner that will reshape the course of warfare. Turkish forces decisively conducted serial drone strikes on the pro-Assad forces in Northern Syria and destroyed hundreds of combat vehicles, many air-defense systems, ammunition depots and other combat facilities. For the first time in the history, many drones acting simultaneously were used to destroy armored vehicle fleets and ground targets. Those combat drones inflicted such severe damage on Assad’s ground forces that one third of the Regime’s operational capabilities perished within very short time span.
Turkey’s Operation in Idlib was less spoken and overshadowed because of the global outbreak of Corona virus and its’ economic impacts. But it was and will be carefully studied by military strategists and analysts very carefully across the world, with same attention the European powers paid into American civil war when the Unionist army started to use repeating firearms and changed the course of warfare forever. Turkey’s new doctrine of using a massive wave of combat drones has made tanks and armored vehicles very vulnerable. Now thousand dollar guided mini bombs can destroy million-dollar tanks and armored vehicles. Turkey has showed the world how drones can achieve maximum success in the battlefield within very short time and at minimum cost.
This is future of warfare, and in this future, there is no place for living human flesh, except as target.
And it is bogus anyway.
When was the last time when you saw fundamentalists of any religion protesting in front of IVF clinics or biotech labs?
Some Christians call out the hypocrisy, but are widely ignored.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/alabama-abortion-ivf/
I think it’s because IVF is widely used by Christians, and a consistent, logical pro-life position would outlaw it. If life begins at conception, then all those embryonic lives created in the laboratory and later discarded are human beings. This is something many Christians do not want to face.
There is no moral difference between men and women creating and destroying embryonic human life in the laboratory, and men and women doing the same in women’s wombs. Except for the matter of class — IVF in the US usually costs between $12,000 and $15,000.
I’m not in favor of making the perfect the enemy of the good enough. But allowing a de facto abortion procedure used by middle and upper middle class people while is pretty ugly.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/dalits-china-crispr-genetic-engineering/
Meanwhile British government statistics made public in 2012 revealed that 3.5 million embryos were created in UK laboratories since 1991, when record-keeping began. Ninety-three percent never resulted in a pregnancy, and about half were thrown away without even trying. The United States has no reliable records for the sake of comparison, but with a population five times larger than Britain’s, a parallel number would mean 17.5 million unborn human beings were brought into existence in a laboratory, with 16.2 million dying, and 8.8 million thrown into the trash can without an attempt at implantation.
Imagine every man, woman, and child in New York City, or the population of Houston times four, and you will understand the immensity of the death inside fertility clinics. That is, if you believe that life begins at conception, as 52 percent of Americans in a 2015 YouGov poll affirm.
Clearly there are millions of Christians not putting two and two together. Many conservative Christians strongly oppose abortion and back laws restricting it. There is no movement to ban or restrict IVF, even though from the life-begins-at-conception point of view, it exterminates millions of unborn lives. What enables this hypocrisy? The technocratic mentality.
Face it, the only resistance to biotechnology comes from the greenies, the religious do not give a
damn.
And the objections are bogus anyway.
When was the last time when you saw fundamentalists of any religion protesting in front of IVF clinics or biotech labs?
Some Christians call out the hypocrisy, but are widely ignored.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/alabama-abortion-ivf/
I think it’s because IVF is widely used by Christians, and a consistent, logical pro-life position would outlaw it. If life begins at conception, then all those embryonic lives created in the laboratory and later discarded are human beings. This is something many Christians do not want to face.
There is no moral difference between men and women creating and destroying embryonic human life in the laboratory, and men and women doing the same in women’s wombs. Except for the matter of class — IVF in the US usually costs between $12,000 and $15,000.
I’m not in favor of making the perfect the enemy of the good enough. But allowing a de facto abortion procedure used by middle and upper middle class people while is pretty ugly.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/dalits-china-crispr-genetic-engineering/
Meanwhile British government statistics made public in 2012 revealed that 3.5 million embryos were created in UK laboratories since 1991, when record-keeping began. Ninety-three percent never resulted in a pregnancy, and about half were thrown away without even trying. The United States has no reliable records for the sake of comparison, but with a population five times larger than Britain’s, a parallel number would mean 17.5 million unborn human beings were brought into existence in a laboratory, with 16.2 million dying, and 8.8 million thrown into the trash can without an attempt at implantation.
Imagine every man, woman, and child in New York City, or the population of Houston times four, and you will understand the immensity of the death inside fertility clinics. That is, if you believe that life begins at conception, as 52 percent of Americans in a 2015 YouGov poll affirm.
Clearly there are millions of Christians not putting two and two together. Many conservative Christians strongly oppose abortion and back laws restricting it. There is no movement to ban or restrict IVF, even though from the life-begins-at-conception point of view, it exterminates millions of unborn lives. What enables this hypocrisy? The technocratic mentality.
Face it, the only resistance to biotechnology comes from the greenies, the believers do not give a damn.
Yeah, and Cruise’s “safety school” in Risky Business was the U. of Illinois. I’m guessing nowadays you have to get at least a 4.0 to get into UI’s flagship campus. Especially if you are white and from the Chicago metro (flagship state schools often discriminate by geography as well as race – standards are lower if you’re from the sticks instead of a big metro area). The reason for all of this is simple – the top schools simply have kept their enrollment more or less constant, and nowhere near keeping up with the country’s population growth. This allows them to tighten standards.
Few insitutions except non-selective religious colleges have anything resembling a partisan balance reflective of the rest of America.
Discrmination against conservatives is de facto, and you never hear of Conservative Inc, let alone legislators demanding that quotas be imposed.
Cynics who are scared of becoming another Ukraine, mostly. In Russia you can be an unironic full on supporter of Putin and nobody bats an eye but unless you’re surrounded by people in the good graces of the gov’t then saying you support Luka for any reason beyond “he’s better than the alternatives” will get you dirty looks from people of all ages, classes, and political orientations. I live in Homel the vatnik capital and even here there’s nobody actively supporting him. Only yhe rather small and tight elite around him have any major interest in his staying in power.
The future of warfare is orbital class booster dropping rocks of various shape and mass upon the targets of choice. This method allows for custom payload delivery anywhere on the planet, and energies attainable exceed what is available from mere thermonuclear weapons (also, unlike nukes, rocks don’t have non-proliferation legal issues). If necessary, asteroid redirect may not be a fast mission, but it can resurface a continent of choice. Once in space refueling and refit operations are established, fuel and ammunition become free, and intercepts of payloads and boosters difficult.
As far as Turks go, they got their behinds beaten by SAA and Hezbollah in Saraqib. Their drones caused casualties of 70 year old tanks but were not decisive in the end, and SAA ended up opening strategic roads they needed, which was impressive because SAA is usually not very competent. Casualties are sad, but achieving objectives is what ultimately wins wars.
Trump just announced he will issue an executive order completely
suspending immigration.
I think he just assured his reelection.
I wonder if this can be extended into a 25-year immigration moratorium.
Now he needs to issue an executive order abolishing birthright citizenship.
Sweden has chosen a voluntary approach, which is in keeping with our national culture. We have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world (97-98%) purely on a voluntary basis. This has sometimes been confused with a “let it rip” approach, which is incorrect.
The Swedish approach fundamentally rests on the assumption that you can’t contain the virus, only mitigate it. Herd immunity is not the principal aim (another misconception) but rather a byproduct of this.
Swedish ICU capacity has tripled and in Stockholm it is close to quadrupling. We’ve had close to 20% spare ICU capacity all throughout this crisis. An Italian or Spanish-style healthcare collapse just never happened. Why? Part of it is due to much higher state capacity (benefits of a Northern Germanic country) but part of it is that we did succeed in “flattening the curve” better than them.
That said, our authorities did fail to protect the elderly, which was a stated and explicit aim of theirs. There are some structural reasons for this (e.g. Norway has much smaller average care homes, which means that getting one of them infected has much lower impact). Another issue is that a large share of the care workers in elderly homes are people from non-European backgrounds. So communicating to them is harder since their Swedish is often patchy at best. This is also why Somalians were ~50% of all deaths in Stockholm despite being less than <3% of the population here.
Denmark and others who had a much more draconian lockdown could end up with similar amounts of deaths in the end, just more spread out, but with much higher economist cost to boot – or they could not. It is simply too early to tell which strategy has worked best or not. We will only know 12-18 months from now, so I find the endless second-guessing to moot at best.
Either way, life is very pleasant here – as usual – and I’ve had minimal disruption in my life. 5/5 would do again.
Based on the example of Norway, this statement is clearly erroneous
Also, the principle of voluntariness is a good principle, but the any Kosovar Roma migrant (who is illiterate) can infect many conscientious and responsible citizens
Too early to tell. We could well see 2nd and 3rd waves. At that point, Swedish herd immunity will make those waves far less of an issue. Trump’s statement that “the virus will disappear like a miracle” is not a bet I’d take.
Tom Britton, a mathematical professor at Stockholm university estimates that Stockholm already has 30% herd immunity and we will cross 50% in early to mid May. The rest of the country is a few weeks behind Stockholm. If you look at Norway’s median age of deaths compared to Sweden theirs is much younger, which means that they have protected their elderly better, but it also means a huge vulnerability for them going forward.
Sweden’s deaths rates are likely to decline because we’ve frontloaded our deaths. Our average death age is much higher, and many of those deaths have been in elderly care homes. Most people who have died were going to die anyway in 6-12 months time. Once you thin those out, there are simply far fewer deaths to be had proportionally before a vaccine comes (plus the herd immunity).
You also have to take into consideration human psychology. People cannot be under lockdown for months on end. And we’re talking 12-18 months before a vaccine can realistically be produced. Are Norway going to shut down their country continually for a year or more? That isn’t realistic.
As I said, anyone trying to second-guess approaches at this juncture is an amateur. In 12-18 months from now we make a better judgement. Then we will know the final death toll and then have to weigh it against other considerations (social, economic etc). I’m quite pleased with our approach so far.
https://i.imgur.com/lryr3ih.jpg
Oil is at negative prices as of writing. Brent has fallen badly in recent days, but still stands at $23 per barrel. How long can that be maintained? At what point do our storage spaces get filled to the point when Brent collapses too? Siluanov’s statement about Russia’s puny NWF covering budget deficits will have to be radically overhauled since it was based on a price at $25. And even at those prices, it would only last for a few years. An indication of insufficient planning.
Of course, you could cut further to support the price, but then you still get less total revenue due to the volume reduction. A really bad development for fossil fuel-based countries. Thinking about Norway, too, but at least they did their homework for many decades to prepare for such a moment as this via their massive (proportionally) SWF, in a way that Russia simply failed to do.
So now come Singapore managed to shield its old people from getting corona unlike you people? And Singapore’s population density is way higher than Stockholm? And they have 9000 cases already and only 11 deaths. Why can’t you just admit your government dropped the ball?
So I guess countries like New Zealand or China will have to ban people from Sweden from travelling to their countries in order to prevent their populations getting coronavirus?
Also you have people with negligible antibody response to corona, and it appears that corona is like herpes, once you get it you never really get cured, so that throws herd immunity right out the window, so maybe those who get corona have to be isolated for life? Or corona mutates so fast that immunity only lasts for a few months, or maybe immunity to one strain does not give you complete immunity from another strain?
Good to have you back Thulean Friend !!
https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/thumb/1622313-William-A-Drake-Quote-I-m-a-prodigal-son-The-black-sheep-of-a.jpg
How would Sweden have shielded its old people in care homes by closing the restaurants, putting up roadblocks everywhere or any of the other idiotic things that our countries are doing? The same careless migrant workers would have spread it there anyway.
Why is the word “Western” or “Westerner” used as a generic euphemism for all white people and considered perfectly acceptable, yet to refer to all Asian people by the word “Eastern” or “Oriental” is considered a racist slur?
People would no doubt say that the words “Easterner” or “Oriental” are racist because they don’t recognise the uniqueness of different Asian peoples and cultures, it just lumps them all together, but isn’t that exactly what the word “Westerner” does?
Христос воскресе ! He is risen ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So how did Hong Kong and Singapore manage to shield its old people, with magical auto-sterilizing service gibbons? You people are just stupid. And Hong Kong also has polluted air and sky-high density.
By not having so many Somalians in their country.
Oil is negative because of storage issues, it will recover by the end of the year to low twenties. It will finally stop some uneconomic production, e.g. shale, deep-water, Canada. Norway’s SWF is in investments: if they cash out, they will push values down. Same for Qatar, Saudi, UAE. That’s the built-in dilemma for all ‘rainy day funds‘.
Russia has a very high percentage of oil sales in fixed contracts, e.g. with China, Korea. They sell less on the spot market, so their average selling price will be higher. In a crisis, everyone looks at others to claim that they are doing worse. That’s pointless, the real cost of this crisis will be initially concentrated on heavily leveraged countries or companies whose income can’t support their debt payments without some sort of a jubilee. A jubilee would destroy a large share of Western wealth (and China’s, Saudi’s. etc…).
Who is best positioned are debtors everywhere: they have a critical mass of ‘too big to let go bankrupt‘. Also more isolated economies, Russia’s among them. There will be a world before 2020, and a very different world after 2020.
By the way, the best strategy now is to live well and consume what you can. That’s why I commend Sweden for getting this right. The crazy risk-averse charlatans where I live are forcing me to drink my machiattos on a street from a paper cup. (But bananas as always are plentiful, I recall you had some doubts about banana situation in the ‘Eastern’ block. We had them, relax.)
I am not sure Indonesians and Filipino Malays are any more functional than Somalis.
Or subcontinental migrant workers are that competent either.
I use “Westerner” all the time, but I mean the sort of White that replaced alcohol with corn syrup. I don’t think many people on this blog confuse Russians for non-Whites or for “Westerners”. In fact, everyone knows the difference since the onset of Putin Derangement Syndrome.
I find your comment highly interesting.
I think it demonstrates something more intriguing than just the well known inability of the common religious types to think in a thoroughly rational and logical manner.
Let’s have a closer look at this “human life starting at conception ” idea.
Human life is basically an information process.
Even at the very beginning a human embryo is a very information loaded biological system.
No information can be generated out of nothing, it has to be produced by rearranging some previous information.
Clearly, the information in the egg and the sperm cells are the source of the future information in the embryo.
Anyone with a Biology 101 level of understanding knows this.
So the life of the embryo is already present in the parental organisms prior even to the conception.
That’s from the biology point of view.
Now, the information in a child’s mind is mainly a product of the child’s interaction with his/her environment.
That’s a major source of the child’s personality development.
The embryo interacts with its environment in vivo, but not to a sufficient extent to acquire a personality, at least at the earliest stages of embryonic development.
So that’s from the psychological point of view.
Basically, the religious types don’t understand life as a process with various levels of complexity demanding different levels of empathy.
If they understood that the Whole of Creation is an information process, they would see their relation to God in a very different manner.
They would probably understand that God is the process, while anything else is a part in this process.
But that would cause them a lot of complex ethical issues.
We want to avoid it for the sake of their sanity.
Better keep with the current simplistic religious approach.
The Near East VS Western Asia. Who would win ?
The World can be a truly confusing place !
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Asia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_East
Ossis (Easties) are stereotyped as racist, poor and largely influenced by Russian culture, while Wessis (Westies) are usually considered snobbish, dishonest, wealthy, and selfish. Both terms can be considered to be disparaging.
https://img.welt.de/img/kultur/mobile101495494/6132504907-ci102l-w1024/banane-gabi-DW-Kultur-Warschau-jpg.jpg
https://en.qantara.de/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow_wide/public/uploads/2019-10/edward_said_0.jpg
The Original Oriental !!!
The best practice country is not Korea, Singapore, or New Zealand, but basically Vietnam, it has a population of more than 90 million, but has only 268 cases and no deaths, even if Trump were more alert to coronavirus, is it really realistic to expect that the US would be able to contain coronavirus at less than 1000 cases or even 2000 cases? Remember that Vietnam is an authoritarian country while the US is not, and Trump does not have the authority for a federal lockdown, only the states can do that, for the US to contain coronavirus at 1000 cases means a national lockdown before February 1, and a national lockdown when you only had only a few tens of confirmed cases, since widespread testing and contact tracing is impossible in a country the size of the US, even if it can be done, that just is not culturally possible, I mean look at how hard it is to get ethnic Swedes to even wear face masks. Imagine how people like Intelligent Dassein, Beefcake the Mighty, and Achmed Newman will stroke out if that happens. A few of the posters here at Unz.com might even decide to shoot up people who would try to impose such a lockdown. Can someone who is good at math here run the models at what needs to be done and how early a national lockdown needs to be assuming that you want US cases to be contained at less than 1000 cases throughout the country? My thoughts are that Westerners are just too ill disciplined to contain coronavirus, so many Chinese discriminating against Westerners if you go by the posts of the Anglo posters here and Swedish Family are right after all.
Sweden is a fraud. Sweden is cooking the books.
Strange periodic pattern in Swedish daily deaths
https://www.unz.com/isteve/a-case-study-from-a-chinese-restaurant/#comment-3850737
“Sweden’s deaths rates are likely to decline because we’ve frontloaded our deaths.” – There is no such a thing as frontloading? Muddled thinking if at all akin to primitive belief that feeding virgins to the dragon would satiate it and it would not come into the village. A virus is not a dragon from Nordic sagas.
Or maybe it is just harder to get massive social compliance for things like quarantines from culture that are not shame or face cultures like Confucian societies? Where social ostracism for quarantine or lockdown breakers are a very significant deterrence, I mean I certainly cannot imagine how being verbally reprimanded by your neighbours for breaking lockdown rules can be an effective deterrence in Western cultures like the US. If that happened in the US the neighbours would just be told to get lost.
Maybe 2000 deaths is the price to keep Volvo afloat? But then how can they be so excitable about the Russians and also blase about corona?
I never left! I consider myself an owl, for the record 🙂
I suspect your country and mine will probably have the same death toll in the end. Though my country will have paid the lesser price for it. Still, none of us will know until summer of next year.
Which is why this second-guessing is so useless and boring.
The only thing we can be sure of is if our health care system got overwhelmed or not.
A lot of scaremongering was made on this point, often invoking the catastrophic scenes coming out of Italy or Spain. But as I’ve noted, our ICU capacity has tripled and will soon quadruple.
https://i.imgur.com/Q3kJ8qA.jpg
IVA is the ICU. Since early April, there has been relative stagnation in new ICU admittees into our hospital wards. And since the median length of stay is around 9-10 days, we’re now seeing an equal inflow to outflow. The collapse we were all warned about simply never happened.
I don’t pay much attention to testing, because we’ve gone from 5K tests per week to 20K tests now and we are aiming for 50K before the month is over. With such a radically increased test capacity (though still not enough!), you’re obviously going to find more people with the symptoms. ICU admittance is to me a better underlying measurement. Deaths is too much of a lagging indicator.
Postscript:
As a sidenote, the now-infamous Imperial paper that was responsible for shifting the UK’s strategy 180 degrees didn’t even take massively increasing ICU capacity into account, which is how they got such high death tolls. It was a trash paper. Then again, the UK’s original estimates were done on a 2011 flu simulation which did not take ventilators into account. The UK has not come out of this looking good.
By contrast, our authorities built an entirely new model from the ground-up first based on Wuhan and later on Lombardy as that data became available. Those who pushed for massive lockdown told us that we’d be heading for “catastrophic scenario, like Italy”. Well, they were wrong. Our state capacity is sufficiently strong to scale very quickly without similar scenes as those in Italy The great healthcare collapse simply never happened and we’ll reach majority herd immunity in the capital within a few weeks. C’est la vie.
Norwegians lost $124 billion last month because they are silly vassals whose only purpose in life is to prop up American and European stock markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-norway-swf/hedge-fund-manager-to-lead-norway-sovereign-fund-after-124-billion-loss-idUSKBN21D0S8
In contrast, Russia invests their $560 billion in forex reserves in gold and highly liquid securities which are ideal for current environment, and therefore limited the losses to $5-10 billion.
Norwegians are the incompetent ones here, not the Russians. I think the even the Saudis didn’t do so bad compared to Norway.
It will last longer than Monday, there is no place to put the oil and it takes months to curb the pumping volumes of oil wells.
I have a suggestion that would benefit everyone: pile up the stuff in front of Greta’s house and start a huge bonfire. No storage costs, great visuals, corona fizzles out in the heat, and she gets really angry. What’s not to like?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWGE6JyU8AAzvQM.jpg
Israel has a new unity government. Gantz gave in to Netanyahu and backstabbed his base. I never understood those who claimed that Netanyahu was in serious danger. This is because the Israeli jewish public is loath to give the arab anti-zionist bloc a veto. Once you internalised that fact, you understood that the right bloc was never in danger because of its overwhelming dominance among the jewish israeli public.
Hatred of Netanyahu, which among Israeli liberals strike me almost as deranged as hatred of Trump, seemed to be the only glue holding that unstable coalition together. Netanyahu is a sleazebag, a scoundrel and a corrupt scammer. But he is a political survivor par excellence.
I recalling reading an interview with him some years ago and he was asked about his favourite TV shows. He did not watch much (no time) but when he got down to it, his favourites were basically NRx material (.He specifically picked the Borgias, which was a historical political drama set in medieval Italy. Talk about mixing your work with pleasure!). He simply struck me as the consummate political animal and he has proven that time and again.
There are also striking parallells between the deep state coup against Trump and Netanyahu. Netanyahu is loathed by the national security state and several ex-Mossad and Shin Bet (internal security) chiefs have spoken out against him. Gantz were obviously their favoured candidate. What is it with spooks and liberalism? It seems like an underexplored topic. And why do they love doing gayops against elected leaders (often through legal proceedings/courts)?
At any rate, my naïve outsider view of Israel’s future is that the arab/jewish conflict is overblown. Far more important, in my humble opinion, is the internal fratricide brewing among various jewish factions, with the dividing line being religious fervor. I wouldn’t be surprised if even a nominally “far-right” politician like Lieberman teams up with the center-left to counter the growing Haredi bloc. Left-right will become less prevalent, even more so than arab-jew. Nobody seems to care about the “settlements” anymore. Even Gantz has conceded the terms of Trump’s plan, which calls for unilateral annexation. The left simply lost that debate. Yet much of US jewry seems stuck in a time capsule, perpetually believing the 1990s will come back.
Discussed this topic of oil some time ago, when there was the oil reduction deal.
Saudi Arabia has the lowest marginal cost of production, and can continue producing and generating income in such an unfavorable price environment. However, America will have soon to close parts of its oil production, via the price mechanism. https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-politics/#comment-3829008
Average Russian oil production is in an intermediate position in this price environment. Some oil production in Russia are already below marginal cost of production now. It will of course be more vulnerable than Saudi Arabian oil production, but more resilient than American production which has a high proportion of unconventional oil.
“This deal is like a free gift to America. But if coronavirus epidemic continues at this level to destroy oil demand, then it is quite a worthless gift to America. America has one of the higher marginal costs of oil production, so they will have to still shut a lot of their oil production via the price mechanism, if/when oil storage starts to become full, and if price would become low enough that marginal cost to produce and transport the oil is higher than the price.”
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-politics/#comment-3828813
U.S. could start buying crude for Strategic Petroleum Reserve in two weeks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-spr/u-s-could-start-buying-crude-for-strategic-petroleum-reserve-in-two-weeks-idUSKBN2132EH
I’ve read that Russia has many very old oil fields, which is one of the factors why they were reluctant to cut production. The thinking goes that once you shut it down, it’s non-trivial to restart it. So there may be a purely technical incentive for Russia to keep pumping oil because restarting lost capacity with such oil fields is far from easy.
“God is the process.” Yeah, you’ve got it all figured out and well explained now.
Good thing you’re not simplistic and unduly sure of your assertions like those stupid religious people.
Where’s the lie though? 🙂
That’s simply the stonk market, which goes up and down. The long-term track record of stonks is second to none.
Norway as something like -200% negative net debt. That is an insane claim on the rest of the world in terms of assets. Private wealth is sky-high, too. Unlike Germany, which is reasonably low government debt but has low private wealth.
Russia has certainly been prudent over the past half-decade. I cannot find much fault there. The problem is that you need to be prudent over decades to do well in the biggest economic shock since the 1930s. A half-decade isn’t enough. You also have to take into account that there are 5.5 million people in Norway and 145 million in Russia. So Norway’s SWF simply covers a lot more than Russia’s on a per-person basis.
Russia has sufficent ammunition to cover their immediate needs for the next few years, if we assume $25 per barrel. But if oil gets stuck at $15 then suddenly that safety margin gets incredibly squeezed. More omniously, what will Russia do if very cheap oil is the new normal? Shifting an economic model is easier said than done. Given their frozen relations with the West and China’s de facto mercantilism, who will buy their subpar industrial goods? They failed to get rich for the last 200 years. Why would This Time Be Different?
Taking a step back, I wouldn’t be surprised if the world has permanently peaked in oil usage. Electric car sales are only going to beat new records, because even with cheap oil, there are increasing carbon taxes coupled with hard ceilings introduced to phase out fossil fuel cars. EU and China are the leaders here, but India is fast playing catch-up. Individual US states like California are also moving in this direction.
For some countries, such a new permanent new normal could be terminal. Saudi Arabia without a large oil bonanza to pay for their largesse would look much like Egypt or Jordan, at best. Libya at worst, as various factions engage in internecine warfare for dwindling resources.
It will also have huge knockdown effects downstream for South Asia, which sends tens of millions of migrants to the oil-rich gulf countries for remittances. More broadly, immigration to rich countries from poorer countries will also likely be much lower in a long depressed scenario, which has balance of payment implications for their capital account, often paid through remittances. In fact, remittances are now exceeding FDI for many poorer countries as the most important source of funding for their current account!
The whole system could see some brutal churn if we don’t see a quick V-shaped recovery, which isn’t my base case at the moment. If we are going to see götterdämmerung then at least take the EU down with it. I want a Nordic union or even a Northern Germanic union (with the UK as honorary guests). The current eurobond squabbles just shows how incompatible the countries were. Give the lira back to the Italians. Their country will still be a mess, but at least they can’t blame the euro anymore.
Are you also a tutee of the internet guru Knut Wittkowski? There is quite a few of them around. The disinfo he is pushing is based on false dichotomy he created that you have a choice between either the herd immunity or infinite lockdown, meaning that coming out of the lockdown would lead to an outbreak. Obviously this is nonsense. An epidemic can be extinguished on prevalence levels below the herd immunity prevalence. The local flare ups may happen but with aggressive contact tracing and testing they will be isolated and truncated. There were many epidemics that were extinguished w/o going to the herd immunity level. Like for example 2002-2003 SARS in Canada. Neither Ontario nor Toronto came close to the her immunity prevalence level.
Wittkowski’s sleight of hand hinges on showing the unconstrained curve and the flattened curve that happen to have the same areas which suppose to imply that what ever countermeasures you take the area under the curve is invariant. People fall for it partly because they saw similar curves when the concept of the curve flattening was introduce to the general public when in the picture that was used to illustrate the concept the curves indeed had similar areas.
If Sweden and Finland continue their regimens, Sweden will end up with at least 10 times higher per capita fatality count.
Sweden records its highest number of coronavirus deaths in one day with 185, as officials insist soft lockdown policy will enable restrictions to be implemented longer and protect economy
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8241055/Sweden-records-highest-number-coronavirus-deaths-day-185.html
Looks like not all doctors in Sweden are on board with Anders Tegnell’s grand phantasy:
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/models-the-logic-of-failure/#comment-3846247
https://www.unz.com/isteve/a-case-study-from-a-chinese-restaurant/#comment-3850737
His main benefit to Belarus is political stability – and I guess this is a lot more valuable and important than any particular policies.
That said, you have to admire the Old Man a lot of little successes and extortions. And it’s not just how easily he tricks Moscow – but that he can fool Beijing to restart the car industry in Belarus, and they became bestselling “Chinese cars” in Russia.
My impression is there’s more such rich people from Belarus than should be for its population size – of course their money in Belarus, is probably not.
So…
NOBODY is talking about how KJU just got btfo after a heart surgery and perhaps will die?
East Asians certainly aren’t beyond referring to Russians/Eastern Europeans as “Westerners”.
True, unless you have to sell into the downturn. The 1930’s were rough on stock owners, at least in the US. I wish Norwegian people all the best with their new “London based hedge fund manager”.
It is good that Norway has lower 36% Debt to GDP ratio. Not as good as Russia’s 15% though. I would caution when counting assets though, because paper asset is a claim and not a real object. In US for example, total debt is $75 trillion or so, and total assets (wealth) are counted as ~$130 trillion. It looks great until you realize what the composition is. Setting aside real estate ($33 trillion worth of McMansions and shopping malls), US only has $7 trillion worth of real assets (factories, pipelines, roads, equipment, etc), and $91 trillion of “financial” assets which is simply the debt of other people that they can (and will) refuse to pay for one reason or another. This is why “the richest country in the world” has trouble with making masks or whatever. Those financial assets are not real. This is also why leftists are wrong about taxing the rich – taking worthless papers and imaginary digits from the “rich” will not improve the welfare of ordinary people. And this is why we must print imaginary digits to support the price of other imaginary digits at all costs – it is the only thing keeping the US economy going.
That is true. Before Putin, the last competent leader Russia had was Tzar Alexander II.
Russia has been shifting their economic model for the past 20 years, and successfully so. Oil exports are only ~7% of GDP and 35% of budget revenue. First off, Russia can abolish 13% flat tax and go to progressive tax system like the rest of developed world, and running budget deficit is not the end of the world. If oil went to $0 forever, losing 7% GDP would hurt, but nothing Russia isn’t used to. More realistically, if oil is stuck at $10, Russia will revalue ruble to 100, this will boot agricultural, industrial, and services exports. Russian goods are not subpar, they simply lack dealer networks for post sales service. Those are not impossible to develop. As for being rich, lol! West and China print debt to play “rich”like there is no tomorrow. No debt, no “rich”. Russians have different, more conservative philosophy.
This is true. Age of oil is coming to an end. Cheap natural gas and nuclear power will be in high demand to make all those green solar panels and electric cars and windmills. Russian Power Siberia into China will see heavy use. Rosatom will be happy as well. It is all good.
I agree about Saudi Arabia and the rest of your post.
Lukashenko has been in power longer than Putin, so he’s probably pretty hidebound – against any deviation from his routine – looking to duplicate his average year, and travel in his 25 or 26-year-old rut.
But I also wonder if he’s acting rationally. Belarus is on a different economic level than much of Europe. It seems to me that it is more susceptible to the price of oil. Almost 40% of their trade is with Russia. Refined oil products (mostly from Russian crude) make up more than half of the value of their exports to the EU.
Obviously false, since the amount of information in the world is growing exponentially.
Just as a flu&ordinary pneumonias in UK, no biggie:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/21/10/27454348-8240071-image-a-3_1587460613001.jpg
Hah, classic fuckin’ CNN. When they say what day and time it is, it a lie.
Thanks for the kind words — the feeling is very much mutual. I’m sure we’ll run into each other in the coming years, and I’ll let you know when we do. 🙂
Big John Hughes fan here, but still sounds like a fun watch. Haven’t yet gotten around to Risky Business, oddly enough, but it’s been sitting on my computer for years, and Thorfinnsson’s write-up makes me want to see it.
A few years back when there was Ebola fear in USA, it was the Right freedom loving people screaming for quarantine of doctors and nurses returning from Africa. Now the same Right freedom loving people are screaming in the other direction.
Some people are simply not free. It is not the government or gulag. Not always.
When Freedom is about wearing, or not, a face mask during a pandemic, you know people are fucking idiots.
People can be manipulated. This should’ve been obvious by now. US freedom loving people can be manipulated just as well.
The major difference is that this time they got Trump to do the manipulating. And also, the early stage is such that those moronic manipulators thought it’s just a Chinese play, so they sent all kinds of silly messages out, and now the manipulated are thoroughly confused. That is why the West now is in such a mess. If it started in the West, they’d have performed competently.
Nice to see a Swedish nationalist speak well of his government for once! That said, this passage of yours I disagree with very strongly, and it clearly goes against the other things you wrote.
With the very high infection rates we are seeing among Stockholm’s under-70s — a good thing — every healthcare worker, no matter his ethnicity, will risk spreading the bug. To blame it on foreigners is unseemly and obviously unfair.
We also don’t yet know why Somalis have been so hard hit, so it’s too early to put their deaths down to poor Swedish.
Fair to say that I’ve enjoyed a lot of John Hughes movies, but, oddly enough, his high school ones are my least favorite, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off aside. Ferris, of course, is just a retelling of Tom Sawyer – it’s basically a timeless theme, very easy to relate to.
It’s not that I dislike the others exactly, but Sixteen Candles is definitely a chick flick. The Breakfast Club is one people quote in their high school yearbooks – but that just makes it feel less organic to me. It doesn’t capture the high school environment for me – it feels too contrived, almost like a play with a limited cast. It’s also a bit subversive because of the scene with pot, which feels very unnecessary, like it was a message to light a joint.
It varies in the year. Some years oil and gas revenue can be over 50% of the budget (in the good years, when prices are high), some years can be quite a lot lower (usually when oil prices are low, or there is some desirable government austerity policies).
https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/resized/945xH/media/img/5/52/754588491521525.jpeg
This year (2020), the share of oil and gas revenues in the budget composition will be a lot lower.
Oil will not be at this price for so long. Such low values will be temporary, and a lot of US production will collapse first, and so reduce oversupply for when the pandemic is over.
After the pandemic related crisis, and subsequent economic downturn – oil prices will rapidly increase to how they were before.
In the longer term, oil prices will likely fall due to electrification of transport, but this likely not be in a serious way until the 2030s, at least in my conservative intuition. (Moreover, at least our bodies will be compensated with the benefit from cleaner air of the 2030s).
There are definitely benefits of devaluation in some export industries – and perhaps in whole economies like South Korea.
However, the devaluation of 2014, has had not much positive effects, and resulted in considerable reduction of purchasing power for average households.
In some indicators, income is not recovering since 2014, mainly due to the devaluation of the curreny – for example, the share of income people spend on food (where lower percentages are better) is still higher now than before 2014.
If a ruble would devalue to 100 to $1. Then the average “official” salary of a medical doctor in Russia, will be $9480 a year. (at current valuation of 77 rubles to $1, the medical doctor average “official” salary is already now only $12300 a year, which is quite scary).
So what happens if you are the average doctor, with a salary devalued to 100 rubles to $1, and your children want to learn to play piano? A basic Kawai K500 (upright piano) costs $10000, or your complete annual income. Maybe your children’s culture level is lower, and they want a Nintendo Switch? – that would be 10 days of your salary.
You want to buy a $100 pair of sneakers – it would be half a week of your salary. A bottle of Moet champagne – almost 2 days of labour.
The effect of devaluation is quite scary.
If you earn money from online poker, or something funny like that with internationally denominated salaries; then it is great. But for most workers, devaluation of your country’s currency is relative impoverishment.
I haven’t seen those films except Breakfast Club. I can understand why people quote the latter, because it is more like a play (theatre evening) than a film.
By design, nothing happens in the film, except they run in the corridor and sit in the school library. Just some endless discussions, from a teenage perspective.
And then also a couple of good parts, when the adults are talking:
You seem to be interested in Americana. If so, I’d definitely recommend Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Though I think it kind of has a universal theme, I’d also say it is prototypically American. Not to overhype it, but it’s a pretty famous film within America – I think just about every young person I ever knew has seen it. The other one I mentioned Three O’Clock High is kind of a cult film.
Barbara Bush once paraphrased Ferris Bueller, during a commencement speech.
BTW, AK should do an open thread sometime dedicated entirely to films. I was hoping to hear about a few Russian films – nothing artsy, but just popular hits.
The $10 price is more of a long term outlook, but i’m not sure oil demand will bounce back quickly – too much supply accumulating, and more people discovering that working from home is not bad at all. Corporate bosses are realizing how much money they can save on skipping office rentals. People may simply drive less when it is over.
In the longer run, like Thulean Friend said, regulations and taxes will mandate electrification of transport. Age of oil is over. We will need natural gas to power industry to build green tech, but that’s a different matter. Besides Novatek and Gazprom, Russia needs to promote Rosatom as excellent source of reliable industrial electricity, and the likes of Norilsk Nickel as metals suppliers for batteries. Russia can make good money in green tech.
Devaluation boosted Russian agriculture exports and more importantly gave domestic producers a chance in local markets. People buying Ladas and going to Crimea for vacation instead of Turkey. Over time, this will give domestic producers the capital they need to develop quality service networks, and that is what makes industrial exports competitive. Aside from a brief inflation spike in 2014-2015, purchasing power of households wasn’t too badly affected by devaluation if they bought domestic (tax reforms and VAT hike are a different matter).
Lol, most people in US don’t have even a $1,000 for a car repair, nevermind a $10,000 piano. Well, doctors can afford it, but they are the main reason why everybody else can’t.
$12,000/year is not a scary salary in Russia. My father is a librarian in St Petersburg and makes about that much. Between him and his wife they clear $2,000 per month. They have no mortgage or rent to worry about, no insane medical bills, income taxes are lower, no need for car (excellent public transport) no stress about 401k contributions, their internet is something like $5/month, major expenses are utilities, maybe a $100/mo and food. Considering that everything is on average 3 times cheaper in Russia vs US, their disposable income is higher than mine in US lol, despite me making nominally higher wage. Before devaluation they went to Italy and Spain for vacations, post devaluation they keep it local. Even my grandmother in Kirov who is single income pensioner managed to sneak out to Turkey on occasion.
The only negative to costs of living in Russia is cost of credit (i don’t think you can take a 0% loan to pay for home improvements or a car), so big projects can get done faster in US if you don’t mind going into debt slavery. If you want to look good fast, US is the place to be. But this philosophy of life has risks, and is not cheap due to inflated prices in select sectors.
The issue with the large non-European share of care workers is not even my original point but that of Johan Gisecke (our former state epidemiologist). So, no, I don’t think it’s a controversial position nor a left-right issue.
Regarding Somalians, it’s quite clear both from interviews with their community leaders as well as statements from Folkhälsomyndigheten itself that their lack of Swedish meant that many of them were unaware of the precautions required and when they got the information in their own native tongue, the situation was already essentially too late.
We will begin to do serological tests later this month. Germany is in the process of doing it now. Preliminary results from California suggest that antibodies may be more frequent than the lowball figures coming out of Austria earlier this month suggested.
Folkan has also updated their own immunity estimates and it tallies with my previously mentioned 30% immunity. What is new is that they estimate the peak of new infections has in fact already occured (15 April). This implies that we’ll see the peak of deaths in early May. It seems Älvsjö fältsjukhus never even got a trail run 🙂
P.S. I don’t really identify as a Swedish nationalist because ethical values are more important than a stamp on a passport.
https://youtu.be/uONM3UvntY4
Voyna (2002) During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.
I hope the subtitling function works !
Trailer.
https://youtu.be/wa3dtxLYClI
An Uzbek film with English actors, targeted at a Western audience. Very pro Russian, wish there were more like it !!!
https://youtu.be/QKc3GYRlFFM
Information is neither energy nor matter.
Consider this: if the universe ceases to exist tomorrow, will the concept of a ‘triangle’ continue to exist?
A 20-minute movie-comic ( it was created by a company that creates comics)
It’s interesting how the British media is now basically openly admitting that non-whites are dying at a much higher rate than whites, yesterday I think they reported that about 70% of deaths were non-whites in British hospitals.
Predictably politicians and the media are putting this down to “inequality” and “racism”, because they supposedly have more crowded living spaces but this is questionable as house sizes in Britain are among the smallest in Europe in general, most urban native British people don’t have big houses. I do wonder if this crisis has inadvertently revealed the true percentage of non-whites in Britain, and that it is much higher than the official stats suggest so they are desperate to find an excuse for it.
I grew up in the US in the 80’s. Really loved all the John Hughes films. I enjoyed them as entertainment. But as far as how those films reflect the typical American experience in the 80’s relating to High School where I’m from?
Not one movie comes close. Nobody would watch a movie that captures my experience. I sure as fuck wouldn’t watch it.
High School was only 4 years, and it was 30 years ago. Not one memorable teacher (at least memorable in a good way). The most interesting moments during my high school “career” happened outside of school and barely involved anymore than 4-5 kids at a time and 99.9% of the time didn’t involve me either.
It was poor, diverse, and a mediocre education.
We started with over 450 kids in my Freshmen class, less than 300 graduated and we were considered a successful class.
All, roughly, 270 of us filed in for grad night practice; how to dress, when to show up, where to sit, when to stand, where to go…yada-yada-yada. When we sat down in alphabetical order the girl next to me was sweet and introduced herself…
and asked “how long did you go to school here” Me: “ all 4 years”
Her: “Really!?, I’ve never seen you!”
Me: “we were in a number of classes together…and we went to the same Middle School”.
Her: stares straight ahead
The parties were lame, the scene was lame, I was/is/always will be lame. I walked in anonymously and walked out the same way.
I love all 80’s high school films, and 90’s high school films, plus a lot of the later ones too. But those fake experiences of high schoolers and their shenanigans might as well be Star Wars…galaxies far far away.
Signed;
Ghost, Class of 89’
Western right wingers are often inconsistent hypocrites. Most of them would gladly claim to be pro-feminist and pro-LGBT if it suited them at any particular time to be so, especially when they are virtue signalling against Islam.
In fact, the only thing they are consistent on is their hatred of Muslims, everything else is negotiable based on how it aids them in opposing Islam at any one time. Eastern European right wingers seem to be a lot more consistent on social conservatism as a foundational belief, most Western right wingers seem to be largely unable to decide whether they support or oppose leftist social agendas like feminism and LGBT.
Surprisingly enough, there is no universal definition for “information”, even though Shannon entropy and Kholmogorov-Chatin seminal works are certainly to be taken into account.
I agree that “matter”, “energy” and “information” are clearly interlinked, without being directly equivalent.
I have came to the belief that “matter”, “energy ” and “information ” are merely human concepts produced to describe the ontological natue of things that we simply have no name for.
The definition that I have personally adopted is the following: “information” is any pattern of spatial and/or temporal distribution of “matter” and/or “energy” that can be recognized in a clear and reproducible manner by any type of “receptor”.
Now, the “receptor” itself has to be of necessity a pattern of distribution of “matter ” and/or “energy”
Which means that it is impossible to recognize any form of “information” without using some form of “information”.
As a consequence, the Universe is itself to be seen as first and foremost an “information” process.
We have no idea how this process started and how it is really going to end.
We also have no idea where the concepts, such as the concept of triangle, really come from to enter our consciousness.
Therefore, I am unable to directly answer your very interesting question.
But I would be pleased to learn about your thoughts on this topic .
Who would be there to care about?
Sorry if this might be off topic for the open thread…
I don’t know much about this ‘transhumanism’ stuff, so does Yuval Noah Harari count as a transhumanist with the book Homo Deus? Something interesting happened to me yesterday with that book. We have it lying around since I bought it for someone who was visiting us for a while to read if they were bored and they never opened it.
So yesterday before bedtime for my 2+ year old, he had too much energy due to the whole shelter in place thing and not going out as much so he was jumping all over the bed. I remembered that someone told me to read something from an adult book and he would get hypnotized from the voice and calm down. So I started reading the book and it said stuff like (paraphrasing): “Humanity is waking up from its long nightmare, for thousands of years we were worried about plagues and wars and prayed to gods and angels, but people continued to die so all the thinkers thought war and famine are an integral part of the human condition and nature. In the last few decades we learned how to manage disasters and rein in famine and war and humanity wakes up with an amazing realization. How humans can lift up their eyes and start looking towards new horizons”. It was at this point that my 2+ year old took the giant plush pig that makes pig sounds and loudly started squeezing it in front of my face. I thought to myself, “this book is stupid. This Harari probably doesn’t have children, also reading this stuff about plagues being solved and if they happen they are human mistakes, in the time of coronavirus, is a bit surreal”, and threw it on the floor in disgust.
Somebody here must have read it. Is it actually a good argument and should I continue reading it instead of replaying an SNES classic in my off time? I’m guessing he’s saying that human nature has changed due to technology. Well, if that’s the case, then that change probably occurs after middle school starts when they start using tablets or something.
There is something funny going on with Sweden’s numbers on their English coronavirus wikipedia page. I’ve been following them to see how the no-lockdown experiment is going and their deaths always look like a sine curve no matter when you check. They say there are delays of a couple of days in reporting, but I also kept track of certain days. They change the numbers retroactively as far as 14 days back so it always looks like the number of deaths stays pretty constant and decreases over the past week. It could just be their Sweden wiki editor, but I doubt it. For example today the deaths did increase by that number, 185, but a look at each single day shows that they’ve been inserted into counts for days from the past two, or even three weeks. The biggest death days are from a week ago. If these deaths actually happened on those days, then they are keeping a lot of recent ones under wraps. That graph in the Daily Mail article for their daily deaths announcements is also ridiculous in looking like the stock market over the past month, and implies a lot of funny business.
Juice fasts are the worst of all nutritional worlds. Inconvenient of caloric restriction + empty calories (overwhelmingly sugars) + no autophagy as with real fasts.
“Finally, while I don’t want to put pressure on anybody – least of all at a time like this – a reminder that I appreciate any extra change that may be weighing down your pocket: https://akarlin.com/donations/”
My new credit card has not arrived yet and as the old one expires soon, the automatic Patreon donation might be cut off starting in May. Which is a shame because I though I was finally getting my money’s worth with the whole non-travelling thing, being stuck in a Moscow apartment and more time to sit and home and write. Plus he quit drinking alcohol apparently and even didn’t eat anything for a week, so that was a good money saver… True, there was that Mount and Blade alpha purchase (and subsequent writing time lost), but I figure it could have been made up by quitting Coke Zero and going with cheap freeze-dried instant coffee instead.
Agreed not because I literally agree with all of it, but because its a good defense of the Swedish approach. We’ll see, I guess.
I view Hariri as a cheap knock-off of Pinker. I haven’t read him and don’t plan to, I doubt there’s anything very interesting in his works.
Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near is perhaps the closest thing there is to a transhumanist manifesto of sorts, but its 15 years old now.
Bostrom’s Superintelligence is highly recommended though more specifically about AI risks.
Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 is probably also a good, and much more recent, intro. But I haven’t read it myself.
Thanks. I’ll take a look at Pinker, and also Kurzweil because I heard him mentioned quite a lot by others. I got the book by Harari because I read a long interview with him in the Calcalist (an Israeli newspaper) a few years ago when I was trying to improve my Hebrew, and he sounded like he had interesting ideas.
I’m not really into transhumanism, because I don’t really believe in humans’ abilities to get there from personal observation, but it would be good to know what everyone is talking about.
It is one of the most infamous topics in world history, with 2400+ years of (not useful, but perhaps entertaining and important) debating between the nominalists and the realists. Answer to the question there is not, but people probably in recent centuries have started to understand more about the implications of different answers – for example, until the early 20th century, it was fashionable for realists to imagine they only had to accept logic, and then only sets, but their projects collapsed into a crisis around a century ago, and the realists accept now they would have to accept existence of abstract objects more and more.
After in the 20th century, the most fashionable kind of realism is to argue that it is just indispensable for explaining our experience of physical objects – Quine (originally a supporter of nominalism) became the most famous of this kind of realist.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/indimath/#H2
I haven’t read this author. But of course what you quote, seems like something from Hegel, with the Marxist materialist reading. If you read Hegel, as if you are a young Marx (i.e. through the man vs. state of nature). Optimistic part of looking towards new horizons, would only be in young Marx’s papers though, not his later views.
In the last century, it became more fashionable to accept this, but with a more pessimistic eschatology – that after man conquers the state of nature, then without great things to accomplish, he will become a nihilist, “Last man”, consumerist, etc.
But the interesting part of this German philosophy (that history is conflict between masters and slaves) is missing usually in that kind of text you see nowadays.
“Finally, while I don’t want to put pressure on anybody – least of all at a time like this – a reminder that I appreciate any extra change that may be weighing down your pocket: https://akarlin.com/donations/”
А есть какой ни будь способ перевести прямо с карты Сбербанка? На номер телефона например
Swedes would take up mask-wearing in the blink of an eye if our public-health experts called on us to. The absence of any such “recommendation,” which to a Swedish ear will sound very like an order, is also why you see so few masks out in the streets: to wear a mask now is a small act of rebellion, an sartorial vote of no confidence.
I’m not saying it is, I just find it an odd argument. From friends who work in home care, I know for a fact that these caregivers are not tested for Corona and are told to stay home only if they have Corona-like symptoms (i.e. they risk spreading the virus asymptotically, and probably have). So even if they wash their hands, say — as all Swedish caregivers presumably do, but perhaps not all foreigners — all the near contact with caretakers means they are bound to spread the virus to them no matter.
Sure you get sugars within raw juice, especially depending on the types of fruits or vegetables you juice, but there is also a disproportionate amount of vitamins, minerals and trace elements within raw juice. The sugars are more easily broken down and used by your body for energy, surrounded in a rich cornucopia of these healthful elements.
I’m not at all saying, however, that the complete type of fast that you apparently underwent recently doesn’t have its healthful benefits too. And because its more strenuous than a juice fast, I’d be interested in hearing more about how it went, as it seems this is the first time that you went beyond a three day fast, that is quite strenuous too.
The reason that Christians have been undergoing fasts as a part of their lifestyle is to help them focus and meditate more intently on the Lord’s word and his spirit. I would imagine that at some times during your fast, things may have gotten difficult, a juncture where the Christian would rely on the Lord’s strength to get him through these difficult moments. How about you? You clearly dedicated your fast to “The Lord Jesus Christ”, did you use this opportunity to commune closer with the Holy Trinity?
Pretty much only America creates teen school films that you can watch without wanting to kill yourself (e.g. Donnie Darko, Clueless, Breakfast Club). Well, perhaps apart from maybe Japan – there’s some entertaining Japanese ones (Swing Girls, Battle Royale).
Though Clueless would be viewed as already too “gender normative” with the recent political atmosphere in Hollywood?
I wouldn’t know if they capture what American high schools are like, of course, but they are pleasant and very funny coming-of-age films. That even goes for Weird Science, in a way.
My vote for the best (and truest to life) high-school film, I think, goes to The Last American Virgin, which is shockingly frank by 2020 standards. No way it could have been released today without calls for censorship. And that ending might be the most brutally red-pill scene ever put to film.
Western philosophy is always dualistic: mind vs matter, subjective vs objective, nominalist vs realist et cetera.
I personally think the best possible take on the topic has been formulated by the Vijanavada/Yogacara (Cittamatra) school of Buddhism.
It is not very well known outside of Buddhist circles and is quite complex.
Of course, their scripture has been written down some 2000 years ago and a major part of it has been lost during the Islamic conquest of Central Asia and the subsequent resurgence of Hinduism in the Indian subcontinent.
Nevertheless, these people clearly were exceptionally gifted and some of the stuff they thought about is still quite relevant IMHO.
I don’t know if you’re inclined to learn more, but as I believe you are a native Russian speaker, so here you have a nice primer about it by Torchinov:
http://anthropology.ru/ru/text/torchinov-ea/lekciya-6-klassicheskaya-buddiyskaya-filosofiya-yogachara-vidzhnyanavada-i-teoriya
And if you don’t care about some dead Aryan thinkers of long gone age, then it is completely understandable and I am sorry for bothering…
I lament the English song, but, thanks, that was interesting. I guess that was a pre-revolution bank. I never saw one quite like it in America – though America has countless banks – or used to. My local bank, which I do not use regularly, looks like a spaceship now – on the inside at least. It is very confusing – it is like they did away with all the corners on everything.
That’s too bad. I’d like to see Hollywood displaced, and teen movies are relatively cheap to make and can be quite popular, if they are hits, since youth like going to the movies.
I may have mentioned this idea before, but if I were a rich Chinese businessman, I would remake all the optimistic American pop culture hits from the ’80s. Films like The Goonies and TV shows like The Greatest American Hero. Maybe, even take some ones that weren’t hits at the time, but which have become more famous over time, since it is easier to promote stuff now. I think they are in a similar place psychologically to America in the ’80s.
IMO, car jokes about women are surprisingly good survivors, given the political environment. Probably not as common now, but not extinct. BTW, I thought Donnie Darko was a dark film? I’ve never seen it, but from a glance at the plot it seems dark.
Low levels of mental illness are a good thing, but not the be all and end all. We all (mostly) know that the good life* is knowing who you are, knowing who they are, and knowing what the difference is. But there’s a happy medium between non-stop warfare and our pozzed peaceful defeat.
It used to be called Western Civilisation.
Swedish data look very fishy. This is data management not data recording. One would expect that during the emergency of epidemic when you run predictive models that need accurate daily updates with real time data they would like to have time of death recorded as accurately as possible and on time. The strong periodic nature (7 day period) of Swedish data is not an accurate reflection of true time of death unless on weekends they do not pull the plugs form people in critical care.
The time of death record signal is overloaded by data management decision. Now the question is what are these decisions about. Can we believe it that they just don’t work on weekends and record data on Mondays and Tuesdays or rather the periodic nature comes from data being adjusted to keep the total sum to within the range of the model they are emulating to. They bending reality to their model. Sweden has its reputation on line. We must pay attention to what several weeks ago the Chief Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said that that “changing how the figures are reported will cut the number of people dying from coronavirus by as much as four fifths” to push the “death rate to well below 1 per cent, perhaps even lower than seasonal flu”. So their target is to keep IFR below 0.001 so when half of Sweden is infected the total toll is around 5,000 and the Swedes can accept it and live with it. So far they are on target. But why are they are so sloppy that everybody can see the hand that keeps adjusting data.
https://i.ibb.co/tBt8krJ/graph4.png
BTW, what happened with this site?
The world celebrates 150th anniversary of greatest revolutionary of all time, and unz.com is silent.
What is going on? Is Lenin really and finally dead?
https://twitter.com/LDNYoungLabour/status/1252953840095289344
https://twitter.com/redfishstream/status/1252893460899733505
Well, the alt-right loves to claim that human nature is eternal and unchanging – and then keeps whining that men are not men and women are not women anymore, that everyone is turning gay and transgender, that people are not any more racist, sexist, violent and militarist as they should be.
They 100% agree with Pinker &company, only see the change as bad thing.
Maybe the human nature is not “unchanging” at all?
Only 150 years?! What will happen when the longevity treatments come along, and we get the rule of Methuselah-dictators? Some of Lenin’s contemporaries are still alive, like Maria Kononovich of Belarus, who was about 20 when he died.
My favourite Japanese high-school movie: Crows Zero.
You must not have encountered too many blacks. It’s not remotely close. We’re talking literally an order of magnitude more problems. And East Africans are the good sub-Saharan Africans.
Harari wrote that Nazis were a type of humanists, which I guess Pinker would not have written:
http://www.holdingpattern.info/harari-nazi-humanists/
This was the only thing I really remember from the Sapiens book. It generally left me with a mild feeling of annoyance.
Human nature changes very slowly and not at all in our lifetimes because it depends on the speed of evolution. Even assuming certain verbal and reasoning traits are selected for in our society, that process is painfully slow on a 100 year scale. It can be faster than you think over maybe a thousand years and 30-50 generations, but humans don’t reproduce fast enough for me to consider it as a factor that I’ll observe. However, humans come with an amazing pliability and can adopt to lots of different circumstances such as new technology or a new way of living, within a single lifetime. That might be the reason why it’s attractive to think that human nature is changing, but I think to argue that a 21st century human is any different on a basic level from a 20th century one, is false.
Recent societal changes are probably a reflection of the basic human pliability trying to keep up with changing circumstances or just a conforming response to a new society/religion, which would not be anything out of character for the past few thousand years.
There was one particular day that I was keeping track of especially, because it was a bigger number than the others and it was 15 days ago now I believe. I noticed that they added two more deaths to that day yesterday. Right after I wrote my post, the number of deaths for that day increased by 6. The days around also had changed numbers. Now, it could be that the English wiki transcribers of Swedish mortality stats are uniquely incompetent and don’t know how to translate from Swedish to English on time or something, but if not, then the explanation for the deaths being recorded in retrospect after the weekend is just false, since this was two weeks ago and seven week periods don’t explain this.
The other days increased as well. Probably, I should start tracking it more carefully, but there is no possible use for me to discover that the Swedish are cheating, when almost every country is under-reporting deaths. And what am I going to do with this knowledge, confront Tegnell and say he’s lying based on the English wikipedia data and that I care about Swedish deaths? I’ve never even been to that country. I was hoping to get good data out of them because of their open society experiment. If it worked, then I was hoping they they could end the State of Emergency here and I could go out to places more. But now I can’t trust their data, there are indications that their experiment might fail, and it’s just extremely annoying.
Hmmm… since I’m not an intellectual (not even a pretend one), maybe I should really just move onto this and skip the Kurzweil and even Harari. At least I have proven experience in finishing reading similar books.
Since herd immunity is not even assured for this thing they should not have done this experiment in the first place. And the accuracy of all those antibody tests showing an x percentage of the population having coronavirus are extremely doubtful also, plus there are indications that once you get corona you can never get rid of it, like herpes, which means that those that have it must be isolated from those that do not have it for life.
“… almost every country is under-reporting deaths…” – Sweden is under the strongest pressure to do it.
Agree that we can’t do nothing about it so it is academic for as but is a spectator sport.
Your definition is clearly wrong, as demonstrated by my example. (Which you didn’t deign to answer…)
Interesting question with an interesting answer.
A ‘triangle’ is a simple concept, and we can agree that the concept exists even if there is no universe to provide us with a physical model of triangles.
Now take the idea and try it with ever more complex concepts. Does the concept of an ‘alphabet’ exist without any physical backing? (Mathematics says ‘yes’.) How about the concept of an ‘English alphabet’? ‘English language’?
Eventually you get at the most complex thing: a human being. Is there a conceptual (or ‘mathematical’, the meaning is the same) model of a human being? Can it exist without a physical backing?
Most people would agree that yes, there is. This conceptual model of a human being is what we call a ‘soul’. From there everyone basically agrees that souls are immortal.
Which means that your soul must exist, even if the universe stops existing.
Personally (to answer your previous question) I believe the concept of the triangle will continue to exist, just as calculus or the pythagorean theorem would. Perhaps they exist in the non-spatial realm that angels do, but I take my perspective from Plato’s Phaedo.
Patently false, because ‘triangles’ are a mathematical concept that exist regardless of any physical object.
Basically, people have been arguing about it because they didn’t know mathematics. Now we know better.
P.S. This is why in the year of our Lord 2020 everyone should study math. Not knowing math is today’s illiteracy.
Yes he does that well. The issue is that jewing Russians for oil is far more fragile than Russian oil itself. I’d say an expanded Belarusian IT sector is a benefit of his rule but honestly in many ways that stems from his incompetence and oftentimes only serves to benefit our neighbours (the best non-professor computer scientists I knlw all went to work on servers in Canada or video games in Russia).
Maybe this is my reverse psychological rose tinted glasses, but to me personally it seems there’s a far smaller elite here than RU or UA, along with it being far tighter and less prone to infighting (for now). Anecdotally there’s a pristine village near mine of Babovici with beach-like conditions except with fresh water (great for kids, women and betas all who tend to be unable to deal with a bit of salt in eyes/nose and can’t swim well) that’s more or less entirely Russian oligarch dachas and the service sector centered around them. Local elite only shows up when invited.
I will disagree with this comment. For example, if you look at people like Quine – he begins with nominalist views, and find his views led him to climb across to realism, while others like Aristotle climbed across in the other direction, away from realism. Then there are those great philosophers like Kant who reject that we could know an answer to the question.
I disagree with that lecturer’s claims about Western philosophy – for example, a sentence he writes about Kant, and also the fact he does not refer to Hume in that same paragraph, although Hume believes a lot of the world including our self, are just an illusory and arbitrary associations of perceptions.
Sadly I have not had time in my life to read much Indian philosophy. Although it is written by some of the greatest philosophers, that the Indians had known more than they had. I have been re-reading last night, Volume II, World as Will and Representation by Schopenhaur.
Co-incidentally to your post, on the page I was reading last night writes: “Plato rightly founded the whole of philosophy on knowledge of the doctrine of ideas, in other words, on the perception of the universal in the particular. But the conviction here described and arising directly out of the apprehension of nature must have been extremely lively in those sublime authors of the Upanishads of the Vedas, who can scarcely be conceived as mere human beings. For this conviction speaks to us so forcibly from an immense number of their utterances that we must ascribe this immediate illumination of their mind to the fact that, standing nearer to the origin of our race as regards time, these sages apprehended the inner essence of things more clearly and profoundly than the already enfeebled race, as mortals now are, is capable of doing.
Believing one or other views (nominalism vs realism) is not determined by knowledge of maths. Ironically, one of the originating arguments of the realism in Plato, is the fact a slave with no knowledge of mathematics can still understand geometry.
Historical fashion, had been a dream of proving nominalist views: e.g. David Hilbert’s program to axiomatize mathematics was one of the main fashions in the early 20th century, although later indicated to be an impossible one.
So, according to this view, Leibniz does not know mathematics, and can be considered illiterate – as the discover of calculus rejected that triangles exist without physical object.
And more aggressively – all these people like Weyl, Brouwer, Hilbert, et al, must have not studied the subject in which they were professors, considering their views about philosophy.
*discoverer
What will not disappear with the universe is the possibility of the universe. The possibility to exist or not to exist.
Swedes have an almost religious belief that they do things better than everyone else and that their system is almost perfectly well managed and fair. They also believe that they handle multiculturalism and multi-racialism much better than everyone else.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Sweden would be dishonest with their stats to maintain this myth of their cultural superiority. They refused to lock down because they believe that they are so intelligent and their society so orderly and well run that a lock down is unnecessary, pure arrogance really. Sweden does not seem like a society that would be very receptive to outside criticism, or any criticism at all really.
This ‘geometry’ you speak of isn’t mathematics.
Yes. Whoever invented the steam engine quite likely didn’t know fluid and thermodynamics. That’s okay.
Like I said, we know better now. Hyperbolic triangles don’t exist as any possible physical object, and yet they are undoubtedly real.
New doco from Michael Moore, on the “green energy” hoax. MUST WATCH!
Well for whatever reason Beijing seems to bet that they can suppress a second wave this fall, because if they fail and we see Wuhan Mk2 poping up all over China then the Mandate of Heaven will fall on the CCP, which one would you bet on Beijing or Stockholm?
These days most people no longer see free speech as an absolute right. You don’t hear many people calling for absolute, libertarian free speech any more and most governments as well as private media outlets curtail and moderate speech and opinions to a certain extent.
So if the government and private oraganisations are prepared to control speech and most people accept that, then by extension why are people surprised that governments are now starting to curtail freedom of movement as well?
You realize that the “concept of triangle” you are using as a demonstration of “information” being decoupled from “matter” and “energy” is in fact directly dependent upon the synaptic structure of your neurons in the cortical tissue?
That your “immaterial” triangle is in fact recorded in a complex interaction of neuronal receptors with the neurotransmitters?
That this interaction is leading to neuronal membrane potential variation?
That all of the above are spaciotemporal distribution patterns of “matter” and “energy” and are also complex “information” structures?
Do you understand what I wrote above, or am I wasting my time?
Moreover, you did not answer my first question: do you consider the universe as a closed thermodynamic system?
If you understand the implications of what I wrote about and are able to discuss this topic in a meaningful manner, then you’re welcome to answer and I would be glad to invest some more time in our exchange.
Otherwise, keep thinking that what you have between your ears is metaphysical ether.
I am fine with that.
How is autophagy a benefit? Has it been proven that centenarians have survived for so long because autophagy? Or is a specific disease, like heart attacks, that spares the people with stronk autophagy?
Which is better, ketoacidosis or autophagy?
Are you familiar with the memes that mock the 110 IQ group?
Is that LA Zoom group of transbiologists a safe space, where people who understand immortality are protected from realistic Muskovite-sovok thoughts?
Writing this, I feel like Stalin did nothing wrong.
By the way Anatoly, I’ve been meaning to tell you, there may be something wrong with your paypal link on the donation page.
I tried donating with a card through it several months ago, didn’t work. Tried again on Easter, didn’t work. The card is fine.
I wonder if others have had the same problem.
Maybe it’s for the better though, nobody should be using paypal anyway. Finally overcame my laziness and created a bitcoin wallet.
Sent a small donation which should hit you in a few hours because I chose the lowest fee, being a cheapskate. It’s amazing how low the fees are, though.
Shoutout to Anglin and his bitcoin guide for retards, which convinced me that it won’t take much time to finally start using it.
Maybe right wing Americans like Audacious Epigone are inherently mentally deranged because they claim themselves to be conservatives, while defending the American Revolution which was an inherently liberal project? Or else how would you call overthrowing a king as anything other than an fundamentally anti-conservative and liberal ideology? Basically American conservatives can not claim to be conservatives in any sense of the word since America’s state ideology is inherently liberal in character.
I fail to see your point. Of course information can be encoded via various physical carriers.
The concept of a triangle doesn’t need to be encoded with neuronal receptors; it might as well be encoded as a Pascal program, or as clay tablet cuneiform, or as radio frequencies of a dying star.
Long after humanity is gone, the concept of a ‘triangle’ will still exist, in whatever form you might encode it.
Yes, in that information is a third thing that isn’t matter or energy, but can interact with them in complex ways.
Thermodynamics doesn’t apply to information.
They’re not mentally deranged. You just need to internalize the fact that what they’re ‘conserving’ are the foundations of liberalism. They’re okay with liberal projects, they’re just not okay with change that is too fast or too radical so that liberal projects are in risk of failing.
Conservatives are basically dumb conformists. They’re slow to adapt to change, but with enough push will come to accept anything, think everything will run smoothly so long as everyone follows the same rules, and their main use is to enforce rules made by people who aren’t conservatives. Nowadays that is mostly the left.
The people who launched the American Revolution never claimed to be conservatives.
So, to summarise – people like Alfred Tarski, David Hilbert and Leibniz – “didn’t know mathematics”. A 21st century trend in nominalism with fashionable writers like Lee Smolin, will be a sign of illiteracy. Geometry isn’t mathematics. The “power” of takes here was – not disappointing.
This has happened many times before, it’s nothing new. China was literally ruled by trannies in rainbow robes a few hundred years ago. Human nature does not change, the stage of the social cycle changes.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/paglia-transgender-civilizations-decline/
It’s more than just the oil and seafood though. We have also to admire that he diversifies not just industries, but also (i.e. Chinese) – new victims.
Comparative advantage of Belarus with informatics graduates (like in Russia and Ukraine, relative to Western Europe and North America), is that they will receive lower salaries for the same hours. So it’s inevitable that those with “higher salary ambitions” try to go to Canada.
If I was him, I would want to create worse labour movement relations with higher salary countries your citizens might escape to, especially Canada. Jobs in Russia are too competitive, and salaries not much higher, so the Union state is not too threatening in this sense. Opening too much labour movement with EU countries or Canada, on the other hand…
Lol, but I know it’s not even national satire. Years ago, when I was living in Israel for a couple months, trying to apply for an immigration visa there. This woman we know was explaining why never wants to go to the beach with us – even though it is one of the only enjoyable things you can do in Israel: “Because I am from Belarus”. I was assuming it was a just joke, but she actually can’t swim.
First, let me thank you for your thoughtful answer.
Now:
This is still pretty dualistic in my subjective appreciation.
I am sincerely inclined to radical monism.
Just a flaw of my personal character probably…
The text by Torchinov is just a primer, but I agree that Hume was somewhat close to the Cittamatra vision of reality.
Although in Buddhism, there is no arbitrary association of anything, everything is absolutely conditioned and absolutely impermanent.
There is in fact a whole lot of common themes in certain Indian philosophical beliefs and Neoplatonicism.
The contacts between Ancient Hellenistic civilization and Indian civilization have been quite extensive, have been well documented since at least the time of Alexander the Great and have resulted into the Central Asian Greco-Aryan syncretism in Gandhara, Bactria etc.
There clearly was a cross-pollination of belief systems along the Silk Road via Ionian Greeks living along it (the Yavanas as they were known to Indians).
Interestingly enough, the first Stupa in Ceylon has been built under the direction of a Yavana Greek Buddhist monk from Alexandria.
Have you seen the royals lately? Was it William and Kate who went to church for that annual St. Stephen Lawrence Day celebration? Didn’t the Queen make his angry-black-lady mother a baronet or something?
But I suppose that at the last minute the monarchy will be saved in a coup by the Duke and Duchess of Miscegenation-and-Resource-Extraction, and that Harry will somehow bring the monarchy into a more trans-friendly policy, where his hermaphrodite offspring can be both king and queen at the same time.
Monarchy lost all ability to govern when wealth became mercantile, instead of agricultural. They lack the goods to establish a loyal governing class, and, in effect, have become celebrities, with the same pozzed political connotations. William can not afford to buck the Cathedral, and most likely he is a believer anyway, not having been bred and trained to fight it. I wouldn’t be surprised, if in another three generations, the monarch is some gay Muslim Indian, whose line is propagated asexually.
A little amusing to read the Swedish-English news website today (thelocal.se).
I guess, this not even satire article below is the Scandinavian version of what in other countries is “vatnik”, “America Firster”, “Brexiteer”, etc. How the patriotic boasting at the end of the article, after rivals Denmark are invoked.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200421/can-you-keep-dating-and-having-sex-despite-social-distancing-rules
I don’t think I saw St. George’s Day mentioned once in the British media yesterday. Is there a country that has its national day trampled on as much as England? I find it mildly amusing when foreigners refer to us as “English” because from my perspective there is no such thing as “England” any more.
The word “English” sounds almost quaintly old fashioned to me, sort of lot the word “Britisher” actually.
The new national day is Stephen Lawrence Day, only it is for blacks. It is actually quite a bit like MLK day in America. I think they have a black history month in Britain too?
It’s pretty scary to me that they were able to get the month of October in Europe. I wonder why. Though unofficially in the US, I would say it is at least 6 weeks long.
The Great Coronavirus Coverup (TM) has begun. It looks as if my earlier prediction is coming true. If you’ll recall, I predicted weeks ago that the American government would start covering up coronavirus deaths. My prediction was that they’d find some way to sweep this under the rug, then years later someone would do a study proving far more people died than the official number suggested.
Florida is now covering up coronavirus deaths as they reopen:
They’ve been trying to do this for weeks. First, their lackeys downplayed the virus, suggesting it was nothing serious:
They also threatened those officials who told the truth:
Trump’s lackeys downplayed the virus by promoting deepstate conspiracies to harm “muh economy”:
They tried bullying the CDC director into claiming there would be no second wave of the virus — totally against historical precedent. Trump stood directly across the podium from the CDC director and tried to bully him into lying about the virus while he was giving a press conference to reporters.
They promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure. The reason was to give false hope. Basically, they were hoping to convince the public to ignore the threat so they’d go about their business as usual, economy intact. They punished those who wouldn’t go along with this lie:
Faux News (Trump TV) has relentlessly promoted this scam:
The truth:
Then they started quietly defunding testing efforts:
Then they started astroturfing protests to pressure states into reopening.
Trump suggested rebellion against control efforts:
Then Donald Trump’s lackeys started attacking blue state governors personally:
Trump’s lackeys on Faux News also tried scaring the public out of lockdowns with black helicopter conspiracies:
They are currently trying to financially strangle states into reopening:
That hasn’t worked as of yet, so now they are lying about the models. They also tried baiting the public into ending lockdowns in early April by suggesting the worst was over:
Faux News has even suggested social distancing doesn’t work:
The truth:
Trump tried promoting other miracle cures:
Everything they’ve done to reopen the economy (or keep it open) short of simply not reporting the numbers has failed. And that’s what I think they are going to start doing soon. They are just going to sweep it all under the rug by not reporting deaths; nothing to see here, move along. Remember that when they say China lied and covered it up. That’s exactly what the US government has been doing from day one.
Honestly, I’m not sure how US global leadership remains intact after this besides perhaps shear inertia and/or cowardice from vassal states. The entire world has seen this play out — the incompetence, the reckless disregard for public health, the overfocus on economics, the lies, the corruption, the threats of violence against governors and other nations, the relentless blaming of everyone but themselves … . How exactly does the United States convince Asian partners that it won’t lose a war with China or Europeans that it will respect international norms?
Oh, and there was another part to my prediction: Trump will lose the 2020 election due to so many of his supporters being killed and no republican will be elected president again. Heckavu job flu truthers and libertarians.
22 April 2020:
1 May 2020:
Great Coronavirus Coverup continues:
Coverup Continues.
Trump orders CDC to water down social distancing guidance using fake religious excuse.
They are running secret efforts to discredit leading CDC doctors.
They are downplaying the need for mass testing.
They are going to start coordinated propaganda efforts with more politically popular governors next.
They are lying about the conditions that cause the virus to spread, downplaying the role of close personal contact.
Trump will soon start promoting conspiracy theories questioning death totals.
They are winding down public health updates as the death toll mounts.
The American government will enact an ineffective measure to control Covid-19 spread en lieu of testing. The airport screenings are really just for show.
Trump’s media surrogates are claiming virus deaths are inflated. “It’s just the flu, bro.”
The government is deliberately overstating their ability to deliver PPE.
Trump claims the virus will go away without a vaccine, downplaying the need for it.
American government blocks CDC mitigation advice that makes coronavirus look scary, damages business interests.
Government friendly media begins covering other issues.
There are fears the government has secretly taken control of PPE distribution with unclear motivations.
Trump administration is now looking to force the CDC into falsely claiming Covid-19 deaths are overstated:
Reality:
This is a moment of truth for many in the American government. Will they do the right thing and refuse?
Trump floats the idea of abandoning testing because the numbers make him look bad.
Flashback: Trump didn’t want a cruise ship to dock in California because that would double the test numbers and make him look bad.
Now they’re covering up case counts in the workplace.