Apologies for the lack of new posts (or really even checking the comments) in recent weeks. Temporary and unexpected confluence of various events.
An understandably slow December regardless, this year has been record breaking – almost twice as much traffic as in 2017 – and I expect acceleration to resume, now that I am fully settled in my new abode.
Health, wealth, and best of luck with all your other endeavors in 2019!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvF8mzJWwAAHliO.jpg
https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/artcurial/40/585440/H1118-L92899453.jpg
Reposting this comment from another thread, as Trump appears to be backtracking on a decision to end US occupation of Syria. It looks like Lindsay Graham convinced him that this will hurt Israel.
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1079514943152631808
Needless to say, the only way to fulfil these conditions is via permament US occupation.
There are no words to describe my contempt for the orange turd. Arguably the most laughable individual to become US president.
Trump pretty much symbolizes American Society (or at least your stereotypical middle class American) so he’s well suited to represent the US.
There tends to be a certain institutional stasis enforced by the American permanent administration across presidents.
However, Democrat presidents tend to have the full propaganda might of the American and international media in a way Republican presidents (even if they are total cucks) usually do not.
The FSB has arrested an American on charges of espionage.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/31/russia-detains-an-american-in-moscow-over-suspected-spying.html
The US might develop a new air superiority fighter to counter Russia and China.
https://fighterjetsworld.com/2018/09/03/lockheed-martin-proposed-new-air-superiority-fighter-hybrid-f-22-f-35/
This sounds a bit too good to be true. Does it seem credible or is the American military merely fearmongering to justify their high spending?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-29/russia-officially-restarts-arms-race-first-successful-test-hypersonic-missile
In related news, the President of Belarus gives Putin four sacks of potatoes and some lard as surprise New Year present.
https://twitter.com/SevaUT/status/1079155146293161986
What does it means? Calling all local conspirologists to decipher this deep coded message!
Didn’t Lukashenko used to be some kind of factory manager? And now he gives peasant gifts? Clearly Lukashenko is moving backwards as he ages forwards.
I think it’s mostly old news, except that the Russians did indeed manage to (barely) deliver as promised already this year. But it was already known long ago that the Russians are ahead of the Americans with hypersonic technology. This is one of the few areas where they are clearly ahead.
It’s the equivalent of your favorite horse’s head in your bed, except it’s not in your bed, nor is it the head of your favorite horse. It’s not very threatening either. But otherwise, it’s pretty similar.
Combustion engine car sales to hit peak demand in 2018, say analysts
An end to an era. Just remember not to take disastrous financial advice from Thorfinnsson. Oh, and happy new year everyone 🙂
Because VVP asked for potatoes and bacon in reponse to a question from Lukashenko.
First he got the bacon, now the potatoes.
Is Lindsey Graham a weathervane for Trump? I’m a bit skeptical. Trump is a consummate flatterer. He will eat dinner with a guy and complement him on the beauty of his middle-aged, dowdy wife. Graham, meanwhile, is one of the most self-interested politicians you can imagine – he is likely very susceptible and most likely preening for an audience of donors.
Why would Trump give more ground than he is willing? Congress can only defund. What will they defund? The troops in Syria? The wall? He may be using it as a bargaining chip for the wall. Graham has a nickname – Grahamnesty.
How many potatoes in each bag? Could be coordinates.
Reminds me of a time at school we filled an Irish (descended) guy’s locker with a sack of potatoes on his birthday
Or if the central government would control all of Syria and maintain the current Kurdish autonomy. Exactly the same model is in Iraq. Why is this is hard? Yes, Turks would be angry (they always are), Iranians would be disappointed, and Saudis pissed, but everyone else would be better off.
Trump has made it better, that’s all that one can expect.
With context, that seems rather cruel.
But does it solve the Iran ‘problem’ in the eyes of Israel and America? After all, Iraq still has close ties to Iran.
Taleb proving a point.
https://twitter.com/nathancofnas/status/1079748614962929665
Steven Seagal given carrots & watermelon in Belarus
Who knows? Maybe someone in the military showed him the Zapruder film to remind him. More likely he’s just a cuck, but this alternate explanation can’t be ruled out completely. Is also possible as mentioned above that Lindsey Graham, in the tradition of South Carolina politicians especially, is just bullshitting.
Frohes Neues!
He is still a close friend, unfortunately he has married a Chinese woman
Nassim Taleb increasingly proving himself to be one of our most impressive thinkers. Have not been following him lately but must begin again.
Razib Khan easily one of the most dishonest and stupidest of the HBD crowd – who used to suppress comments all the time on his blog – in a field littered with dim bulbs and nasty personalities.
He is also viscerally anti-white, which should not endear him to the crowd here.
John Gray alone, on the contemplative philosophical side as opposed to the practical epistemological side, can stand alongside Taleb.
Isn’t John Gray the guy who’s writing about the religious roots of the thought of secular progressives?
What do you find interesting about his views?
Taleb just seems like a shallow thinker, I don’t know why people even take notice of him (just because he doesn’t like obscurantist Sunni Muslims and neocons?).
Not an argument (would also serve as a response to every single one of your posts)
Taleb has outed himself as a fraud, which is not an endorsement of Razib Khan who is a censorious coward.
Taleb’s routine in a nutshell:
• Make observation which he claims is original, but (usually) isn’t
• Invent new terminology/jargon for phenomenon in order to mark his territory
• Obscure issue with mathematics
• Ridicule and bully critics
He poses as an outsider and a rebel, and this is seemingly plausible because of how belligerently rude he is. But he never takes up anything truly controversial or forbidden, because to do so would exclude him from handshake-worthy circles and thus continued remuneration for his scribblings and appearances.
To Taleb’s credit, the following ideas from him strike me as original:
• Antifragility (not the same thing as robust)
• Lindy
Someone ought to led Taleb know that few things are more Lindy than black failure.
Actually Stephen Pinker, for all of the scorn Taleb heaps upon him, is in fact a greater rebel than Taleb.
Actually Stephen Pinker, for all of the scorn Taleb heaps upon him, is in fact a greater rebel than Taleb.
Pinker’s a better writer too. Taleb is in desperate need of an editor. I suppose he’d find that intolerable.
1) Nothing backward about that, it is cargo cult countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Russia under Medvedev) that would give something “advanced” and homosexual like an iPhone to “prove” they are not backward.
2) On a more general note, SevaUT is a far left faggot.
https://twitter.com/SevaUT/status/1077645604107534336
/ Implying that champagne was a luxury good even in the late USSR.
Oh and don’t forget – Tesla will be bankrupt soon.
Or will it?
I remember that something called Sovyetkskoye Igristoye was pretty cheap around 2000 in Hungary. Now after some online searching it turns out that it was produced in Hungary after they bought some technology from the USSR in the late 1980s. It was believed to be some Russian import, and now it turns out that despite all the Cyrillic script it was a Hungarian product. Which was very cheap and low end anyway, so why did they try to deceive? (Okay, apparently the fine print on the label always made it clear, but it was pretty deceptive.)
The competition is stiff: Bush Jr and Obama were at least as ridiculous. I disagree with “laughable”, though: when clowns like that are Commanders-in-Chief of a huge nuclear-capable military, it’s no laughing matter.
Happy New Year to all! Let’s hope no clown ends the humanity in 2019.
It is hard for me to respect a guy who repeats his own titular phrase about 10x too much, each time stroking his own ego. Taleb does it so much he is in a rarefied club with Thomas Friedman – perhaps even exceeding him.
Tesla could still go under IMO
SpaceX are the ones to watch in 2019, the Raptor engine is almost finished and Musk is pushing hard to get the BFR and Starship flying
I just read some comments under the five year old story about the consumer deception case. Apparently it’s the most popular sparkling wine in Hungary. Those who like sparkling wine (I don’t) think that it’s very good for its price (very cheap), and that Russian sparkling wines have always been very good. Even under communism.
What is wrong with being on top of a horse? It is better than being underneath the horse, or, worse, behind it – as in certain countries.
When they began selling hybrid cars, there were a lot of confident predictions that within 5 years most new cars will be hybrid and in 10-15 years majority of vehicles on the road will be electric.
Note that hybrid cars first came out on the market around year 2000.
Or to declare that they are fulfilled.
Spending is the key. Pentagon contractors want to steal more. The thing doesn’t even need to fly, as long as the taxpayers fund it.
He used to be a manager of one of the state farms. His mentality did not progress beyond that.
I don’t know if electric cars will ever get around the issue of range anxiety. It is an important issue in an increasingly diverse West, where you might have a long commute and don’t want to be stranded in some bad neighborhood. As well as to be able to go further, if things are falling apart, or the electric grid fails.
There might have been “a lot of” such predictions, but it was very far from a consensus view. For example in Europe many people – including the press and the car companies themselves – were betting that the way of the near future would be the Diesel engine. I remember having read back then how many people criticized Toyota for its “idiotic” decision to introduce hybrid vehicles.
They were also working on hydrogen cell engines, and all the fake predictions were about hydrogen cells becoming the real thing Real Soon Now. But it was not yet working, so conveniently no timeline was presented. Toyota, by the way, never believed in it.
Now it’s pretty different, because electric vehicles are already a reality, and they are already good for roughly 99% of what internal combustion engine vehicles are good for. (The 1% is very long drives, for which electric vehicles are still very inconvenient.)
So it’s way likelier that the predictions about a presently existing and spreading technology will continue to grow will turn out to be true than the old predictions (which couldn’t even command a consensus) about a nonexistent or not yet working technology would turn out to be prescient.
https://a.radikal.ru/a27/1812/40/cb255ba34298.jpg
Happy New year everyone!
Gasoline cars also have a rather limited range, which is not much improving. It’s also an illusion that if the electric grid failed, you’d be able to easily refuel your car. Electric cars are actually simpler (no transmission, way fewer moving parts, etc.), and it’s easy to imagine Mad Max generators to refuel them in Africa. Mad Max otherwise is not sustainable, without a first world elsewhere.
Gasoline cars are range limited by the preferences of motorists themselves. If motorists wanted longer range then cars would come with larger fuel tanks. In fact these were once offered as options–you could buy a C3 Corvette with a 35 gallon (133L) fuel tank if you so desired. Some super-duty pickups still offer second fuel tanks as options.
With no government intervention, I could see electric cars ultimately making up somewhere between 50-80% of the car fleet (say by 2040).
But realistically, most countries are going to ban or at least heavily tax gasoline powered cars. Just witness the current holy war against diesel.
There is no such thing as solving the ‘Iran problem’, they are there, they will always be there. The goal is to prevent an escalation and to have a stable situation. That is the case in Iraq, and the same can be done in Syria.
The key is that West no longer even mentions removing Assad. They lost the war, this is just consequence management. We will never read anywhere in the West the obvious fact that ‘we lost the war in Syria‘; that says a lot about the unhealthy psychological state the West is in.
Yea, that’s standard American strategy: make a pile of shit instead of whatever was there before (often not very good, but still countries), declare victory, and leave.
https://twitter.com/liangweihan4/status/1079780141423824897
What is going to be the power source?
There is no Iran problem. It’s all in Netanyahoo’s imagination.
French fries for dinner?
Blwyddyn Newydd dda
There wouldn’t be Iranian problem if Israel were content to exist as a normal country. There is a problem for anyone trying to be an Empire and requiring others to bend to it: Iran, like China and Russia, won’t bend neither to the US Empire, nor to the Little Devil in the ME.
It is coded plan for the long awaited surprise Russian invasion of Europe.
Four bags of potatoes mean four army groups ready to attack and lard symbolizes nuclear weapons. Lukashenko is saying he is ready, are you?
With John McCain dead, Graham is the senior US elected foreign policy neocon. From the same state as Nikki Haley
https://www.eurasiareview.com/12042017-latest-bump-in-us-russian-relations-analysis/
Excerpt –
Graham reminds me a bit of the actor James Hampton, who played Caretaker in the original (and better) version of The Longest Yard .
On par with pennies for Jews, watermelons or bananas for Blacks, and garlic for Italians. For the PC pr!icks, not stated as an endorsement. That said, I’m a big fan of All In The Family, which served to mimic (not endorse) bigoted behavior.
Right after Trump’s announced withdrawal, the neocons and neolibs were gah gah over what might happen to the Syrian Kurds. My immediate reply (before what transpired) was the suggestion that an agreement can be reached with the Syrian, Russian and Iranian governments guaranteeing Turkish security from Syrian Kurdish inhabited territory under Syrian government control, as an autonomous part of Syria.
In terms of practicality, this is arguably the best route to take and one that the EuroAtlantic big power chauvinists can’t be too happy with.
In addition, propping Bershidsky has limits, as evidenced by how that thread soon went to other and more interesting topics.
Kurdish autonomy is a simple solution that also (coincidentally) fits what West refers to as ‘their values’. The same should apply to Kurds in Turkey, Russians in Ukraine, or any sizeable, compact ethnic-cultural group.
The crazy thing is that this is literally the core of what the West is preaching. And yet, they have become so hypocritical with the absurd some deserve their rights, some don’t that the whole concept has become a joke. That’s what happens when morons politicise everything.
QED: Assad won. It was a good ‘kick in the ass’ to the likes of Graham or that Indian lady.
What could be a pretty good game is about to start:
https://www.tsn.ca/canada-ready-to-write-new-chapter-in-historic-russia-rivalry-1.1234230
https://www.thestar.com/sports/breakaway_blog/2018/12/31/canada-prepares-for-showdown-with-russia-at-world-juniors.html
What some consider to be the best new year’s eve game ever played:
On the most recently aired CrossTalk, Dmitry Babich notes that the Syrian government was invited to appear at an Arab League meeting.
Graham and Haley were wrong from the get go on Syria:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/10/09/answering-russia-critics-on-syria.html
https://www.eurasiareview.com/19042018-confronting-russia-in-syria-analysis/
Taleb should exercise his own, quite sensible, principle of skin in the game regarding IQ to show those dumb IYIs who’s right: He should find a surgeon who tests 1 SD or more lower than the white American mean on an IQ test to operate on him the next time he needs surgery.
Since IQ is a totally useless pseudo-metric that only predicts conformity and success as a no-skin in the game academic/bureaucrat/journalist, this shouldn’t be too hard, right?
With gas, you can refill in 5 min, so a single station can service many cars. Quickcharging takes a long time, so it creates bottlenecks. There doesn’t seem to be any practical way around this, unless supercapacitors can be developed to have higher energy density. I can see other problems too. How do you tax it to pay for the roads? I wouldn’t want the government tracking my car – thougb I suppose they already do to a certain extent.
I do agree that there will be much wider adoption. I just don’t think they can replace 99% of cars.
Always liked Lukashenko, he’s got a good sense of humour and seems to genuinely care about the people of his memelet-state-cum-personal-fief.
I still wonder if he could have made a superior alternative to Putin sometimes.
He is too dumb for that. Running a state farm is the limit of his abilities. He is a good low-level manager, though.
A quick deal with Assad was more or less instantly in the works the day after the Trump tweet. The Kurds got too ambitious after their period of autonomy when Assad had to leave them alone, but they were always going to do a deal with Assad. Syrian government troops have already shown up in Kurdish areas.
Lost in this narrative is the fact that the US was and is backing Rebels, and those Rebels are Islamic Sunnis–the same people we are fighting in Iraq.
In addition, Assad has won. The US is just delaying the final arrangements by protecting rebels.
Never mind that there were never any ‘moderate’ rebels. There is no reason to back rebels in a war that was lost.
As disgusted as I am with Trumps lack of resolve, the US military will need a plan to leave, and also will never again be able to pretend to be surprised by Trumps policy.
Finally…Trump is going to start loudly blame the military for any problems in Syria and Afghanistan. No one wants responsibility for these failures. The military tried to make them Trump’s problem, but now they own them.
Bonne Année to you too!
http://ekladata.com/kaA8RhDj8DS_6cxyoW3VwPhxWgM.jpg
Christcuck celebrate the day of the holy bastard circumcision as New year lol.
You got catholic going on about how Joseph so cool holding his wife’s son
It’s so pathetic that Islam really does deserve the clean sweep of Europe it’s building up to
Not to be forgotten is that adult in the room
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/01/on-trumps-syrian-pullout/
Excerpt –
The hacks conveniently forget that Obama had demoted Mattis. A counter to the uncritical support of Mattis:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/12/13/spinning-against-russia-and-reality.html
Excerpt –
For the time being, if I had the dough and the inclination I’d look at a car with hybrid technology (kind of the best of both worlds). I had some time to kill yesterday while my car was being serviced (a 1992 Chevrolet Lumina with 110k actual miles), and went across the street to look at some brand new cars. Although the top of the line Mitsubishi looked very similar from the outside as the comparable Volvo, that’s where the similarity ended. The Volvo S-90 felt and looked very luxurious. From the eye catching wood embellishments in the interior to the standard leather seating, and the fancy stereo radio system was really impressive. A starting salary of 60k and a 400 hp engine. I was quite impressed. Next time I go, I’m going to test drive it (it was cold and rainy yesterday) so that I can feel the special ‘air’ suspension system that’s supposed to be smooth as ‘tits’…A Swedish bombshell! 🙂
(42 mpg).
Anyone have any predictions?
Here’s all I got at the moment:
1.) US will beat China for total orbital launches in 2019.
2.) Warren will be the Dem frontrunner in 2020.
I am pretty surprised things haven’t precipitated in Saudi Arabia yet. Usually, when you see that sort of media push, it results in action. Does MbS stay in power in 2019? Right now, I’m wondering what his travel plans look like. Classic move is to wait for a guy to travel away from the power centers – but having so many relatives in power might make that impossible. Plus, there are better communications now.
The MBS palaver was about Trump. Almost all foreign policy disagreements are about hammering your domestic opponents. Indeed almost all domestic policy disagreements are about hammering your domestic opponents. Looking for some sort of grand strategy rhyme or reason is missing what is right in front of your nose.
Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Politico-Pajama Boy! What is best in life?
Politico-Pajama Boy: To own the libs/cons, to win elections and get the sweet jobs and feel smug and self-satisfied that you’re the smart one.
Mongol General: WTF!?!.
Predicting the future usually fails (just ask Nostradamus). But here are my two cents for 2019:
1. KSA starts selling some of its oil for yuan, making talking heads in the US furious.
2. Then the CIA tries to depose MbS in KSA (the probability of success is ~50%).
3. The US does not withdraw its troops from Syria. Their support for ISIS and similar scum becomes more overt. Their position there becomes even more tenuous.
4. Iraqi government asks the US to withdraw its troops from the country, but the US does not comply, remaining there illegally, like in Syria.
5. No changes in Afghanistan: the US and other NATO troops remain cooped up within their fortified bases, puppet Afghan “government” loses control of even more territory, but the US and NATO keep pretending that those clowns are government.
6. Porky fails to cancel the elections in Ukraine, so there is going to be a change of scum “in power”. The new scum will be as afraid of LDNR as the old scum, so there won’t be any major offensive despite the US prodding. Downward spiral of that failed country continues.
7. The forces that will eventually become real government in Libya consolidate. The Libyan “government” remains in control of the chairs their asses are parked in, but the US and sidekicks keep pretending that it is legitimate.
8. Failed US attempts to push China out of South China Sea and curb its influence in NK continue and remain failed.
9. Putin keeps playing the savior of Russia; continuing clumsy moves by the US and its vassals keep playing right into his hands.
10. Empty talk by MIC hired talking heads in the US continues, the Pentagon budget increases even more, but no major war is on the cards.
As far as Warren goes, she has a chance of a snowflake in Hell in Dem primaries (she is not corrupt enough) and the same chance in general elections (she disgraced herself by supporting corrupt mad witch in 2016). Dems likely nominate non-white LGBT cuck in 2020, who is going to lose the election for being what it is. Reps are stuck with Trump (unless he dies or gets murdered by we know who).
It is inevitable electric cars will totally dominate in the future, because of physics. (This is in addition to a motive to introduce electric cars to improve public health by moving exhaust emissions away from peoples’ lungs).
Electric cars are far more efficient. Even petrol electricity generation, being then stored and transported, and converted in the electric motor of a car, is still calculated as far more efficient than using the same petrol in the petrol car (even petrol electricity generation plants are so much more efficient than the engine in a car).
Probably by the beginning of the second half of the 21st century, it will be already unusual to buy a new petrol or diesel car.
This would have economic implications in oil demand. Oil demand could peak as early as the 2030s. If electric cars become more numerous, it is inevitable a return to oil price environment similar to the 1990s.
Up to 50% of the budget in Russia in recent years is from oil revenue. Therefore, understanding in which year or decade the transition to electric cars will begin, and investing in economic alternatives should be the top priority if there are responsible adults working (not idiots like Sechin, who can lose billions of credit in Venezuela ) .
Maybe we can predict people will begin commonly buying new electric cars sometime in the 2030s. Average age of (for example) the US car is 12 years. So if new car sales become electric in a significant proportion from 2035. There will be a delay of a few years before significant impact on oil demand (so maybe oil demand is effected by the beginning of the 2040s).
Oil is energy. As long as battery technology for energy storage doesn’t improve demand for oil will keep growing as energy consumption increases.
I think I would just buy a Subaru Impreza, Toyota Camry or Honda Accord – for half of the price.
If you live in an area with dangerous roads – it could be rational to buy a new car. Cars have become quite a bit more safe in comparison to the 1990s.
Back to the future!
https://www.britannica.com/technology/electric-automobile
Most of the (high) price of oil is derived from its unique qualities in the transportation sector.
If you remove a significant part of the transportation market (which is the car), a large proportion of demand will fall, and prices of oil will fall very low. Sure, eventually prices might fall enough that it becomes much more competitive in other uses.
But for those other purposes like electricity generation, oil has more desirable substitutes – natural gas is much more desirable for electricity generation (it is far cheaper and burning it generates far less problematic air pollution).
So oil prices would have to fall very low to become competitive with gas prices. And, even then, gas would be likely more highly valued in long term than oil, for purposes like electricity generation.
Additionally taxes in Russia are still very low despite the VAT increase so the Russian Government could still increase significantly increase non oil revenues.
In the 20th century, it was impractical because of technological barriers of the epoch (battery technology). However we can already see (in this decade) those previous technological problems are beginning to be solved now in some slow but steadily incremental way.
In the 2030s or 2040s, total cost of ownership of electric cars (assuming driving some tens of thousands of kilometers) will be inevitably becoming a lot lower for electric cars than for petrol/diesel cars. Even without government intervention, they will start dominating in sales.
We can say the controversy around this domination of sales is “when” (what decade) it will begin (but not “if”).
You shouldn’t write about things you have no idea about.
Battery cars and especially battery trucks are an ecological nightmare and idiocy. The ores and raw materials they utilize are produced with extremely “dirty” processes (for electronics and batteries), the electricity they store is now made from fossil fuels and if 50% of vehicles transfer to electricity it will mean new Thermopower plants because hydro sites are already utilized, photo and wind are bullshit, and nuclear scares off green retards that like EVs in the first place.
The “physics” and “science” you “quote” as proof of superiority of battery vehicles compared to internal combustion ones disproves your nonsense: energy density of fuels is 1-2 orders of magnitude bigger than that of batteries.
Anyone claiming that electrochemical reactions can compete with oxydation reactions is an ignorant quack.
This is especially true for people comparing electric motors and heat engines.
If SpaceX have a good year the US will beat China, but the most interesting thing is what SpaceX are building in Texas, that sucker looks YUGE, and it looks like it will do hover tests in March
Which “problematic” “air pollution” do modern oil-fired TEPs produce compared to gas-fired ones?
I expect electric vehicles to replace gasoline vehicles eventually, but not within the first half of the current century.
It is not only a matter of physics and tech, but also of costs.
Greater demand for electric vehicles means greater demand for electricity and resources necessary for battery production.
https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1069969576912404480
The point of EVs is shifting pollution to Third World.
There, the raw resources will be mined in open pits and strip mines with little environmental concern, extractred and processed through polluting chemical processes.
When the electronics and batteries are spent, they will be deposited there as well. EVs are bullshit of the same level as “global warming” “global climate change” “CO2 tax nonsense”.
Half of the world’s cobalt reserves are in the DRC.
You may shift pollution there, but you are also going to pay a lot for that.
An ideal modern vehicle would have a gas turbine or a turbodiesel that would operate at nominal load coupled with a generator and be a fraction of the installed power of electric motors. The vehicle would have an intermediate battery pack – capable of fulfilling the daily city transit on its own without needing the heat engine.
If anyone had seen the time diagram of car power output, it would immediately become apparent that the max power is needed only a tiny fraction of time, and electric motors are actually good in these transient demands as opposed to internal combustion ones, and they have huge torque output needed for acceleration.
For example – 50 kW heat engine, 250 kW electric motors, 20 kWh batteries. Regenerative breaking is the added bonus.
Nah, there is cobalt elsewhere but it is cheapest to produce in DRC – cobalt was historically part of waste produced during copper and nickel production.
The “threefold price increase” is still pure exploitation and neocolonial principle of resource concessions – the Third worlders get crumbs and scraps.
Look up Katanga and Union Miniere.
New US plane developments make it look like Russia is doing nothing, at least according to the clickbait title.
https://fighterjetsworld.com/2018/09/17/modern-u-s-military-technologies-revelation/
https://twitter.com/Arborsierra77/status/1077602715914498048
Half the worlds KNOWN cobalt reserves are in the DRC, also its not going to be lithium ion batteries for ever, new better batteries will take over in the next ten years
@ Epigon, spent EV batteries won’t be sent to the turd world, they will end up being used as stationary storage or recycled into a new battery packs
What kind of new batteries are you talking about?
If I knew the answer to that I’d be pretty rich, a while back Toyota were talking about solid state batteries other companies will make other bets, so who knows how it will play out, but we can be pretty sure that lithium-ion is not the final battery tech. Also its possible to make lithium-ion cells with zero cobalt
The anti EV people started off obsessing about a lithium shortage, they then switched to a cobalt shortage, who knows what metal the would will run out of next
How is this relevant to the conversation?
Explain what is the relevance of “energy density of fuels” compared to batteries, to what I have stated above.
Yes of course energy originates in fossil fuels.
Electric cars + modern power stations together are far more efficient at converting energy in fossil fuels than a car engine. This means motor is (vastly) more efficient at converting electrical energy to mechanical energy, than internal combustion engine is at conversion of the chemical energy in hydrocarbon, into thermal energy, into mechanical energy.
Sure, electrical energy itself has to be produced (and transported and stored).
But typical natural gas, coal, fuel oil, and petroleum power station generators are vastly more efficient than any car engines.
So that (to repeat) “even petrol electricity generation, being then stored and transported, and converted in the electric motor of a car, is still calculated as greatly more efficient than using same petrol in the petrol car (even petrol electricity generation plants are so much more efficient than the engine in a car).”
If we can add the source Karlin posted last:
https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
There’s no “point of shifting pollution”.
Electric cars (combined with modern countries’ electricity infrastructure) are far more efficient than petrol/diesel cars (and their associated fueling).
This is inevitable, because in car engine is only a fraction of chemical energy in the fuel converting to mechanical energy, while a large modern power station turbine is far more efficient than a small, inexpensive car engine (and electricity generation also has access to far more diverse fuel sources, including a mix of often more local sources which don’t necessarily have to be carried in boats around the world).
This will be expressed in free market terms, when total cost of ownership of electric cars (including some tens of thousands of kilometers driving) will inevitably fall lower than of petrol/diesel cars.
At that point, great efficiency difference means they will outsell petrol/diesel cars, as people mainly respond to incentives of cost.
Currently there are technology and infrastructure barriers, and as a result electric cars are too inconvenient to drive. But once these barriers are solved (which is happening in the 2030s or 2040s), there is no doubt they will dominate petrol/diesel cars. And people should be preparing for consequences of this now while there is some time.
You’re delusional.
Every step of conversion and storage has associated losses.
And turbodiesels operate at higher efficiency than thermal power plants.
To make things easier and more understandable to you: 1. Thermal power plant / oil / coal – 33% heat to generator output electricity 2. Step-up generator block transformer 99% – 3. Electric (U)HV grid transformer 99.5% – 4. step down transformers 99.5% 5. Distribution transformers 99% 6. Power electronics based chargers 82-92% 7. Battery discharging 98-99% 8. Electric motors 90-95% And batteries degrade over time.
Turbodiesel efficiency – 35-45% but lower during transient operation.
People comparing the efficiency of a heat engine that utilizes heat to produce exergy in form of mechanical work to electrical motor that transforms one form of exergy (electricity) to another form (mechanical work) are imbeciles.
Which power cycle installed in which plant can match truck and marine diesels efficiency-wise?
You’re a diletante.
You have this stupid belief that “technology” and “science” will “somehow” make electrochemical reactions more energy-dense than oxydation of fuels “by 2040”. It is patently obvious your grasp of physics is lacking.
It’s amazing that in the field that pretty much everything can be calculated and measured with practically zero uncertainty there is so much disinformation that people are unable to agree. The estimate of efficiencies of different types of engines or motors or generators differ a lot depending on which camp they come from. I am pretty sure that in each camp they do have right numbers but they do not really matter because what they calculate is not efficiencies in terms of energy but in terms of dollars.
The latter is true, the former not so much.
They would outsell gasoline cars because the era of cheap oil is ending and the infrastructure for electic cars will be established.
The largest steam turbines in the world don’t come close to diesel efficiency – I am talking about heat to shaft output power, not CCG obfuscation. Around 37% for 1200 MW turbines, as opposed to 50+% for marine diesels.
Efficiency isn’t the selling point of turbines – scalability is.
Try building a 1600-1750 MW diesel engine, and there are installed turbines of this size.
You would think that Germans and everyone else back then were not stupid when they opted for diesels on their submarines as opposed to marine turbopropulsion, or that the inherent higher efficiency of diesels made them better for Panzerschiffe raiders.
Batteries don’t really need to match liquid fuel in energy density, they just need to keep dropping in price, I think that’s your main mistake
EV has huge lobbies and propaganda campaigns, in addition to ignorant true believer proponents. My reaction is the same as when I was first confronted by “green” anti-nuclear activists.
If European countries started charging the electricity at market prices, and stopped taxing the fuels to such ridiculous levels, the “EV revolution” would go nowhere.
The same is true for recycling: once it becomes cheaper/more effective to recycle something as opposed to producing it anew, everyone will start recycling.
How will they drastically drop in price if the energy density doesn’t improve?
Will the materials they are made from drop in price as the demand grows?
What are your estimates of necessary battery power storage in kWh for an average car?
They are buying the F-15 as a stopgap measure. It says nothing about new planes coming online by the end of the next decade.
Just something interesting. Russia is developing the Su-57 fifth generation fighter jet. On the other hand, it has now upgraded the Su-27 into a much more potent fighter jet, the Su-35, which is theoretically in serial production. However, Russia is still producing the less developed Su-27SM3, which is basically the same as the modernized Su-27SM version of the early Su-27, but is newly produced and is inferior to the Su-35. Why are they producing the inferior Su-27SM3, when the better Su-35 is already in serial production, and the Su-57 is claimed to be the best fighter jet in the world? If you think that neither the Su-57 nor the Su-35 is junk, then I guess you could believe that the Americans are buying the newest version of the F-15 while they are working on extremely developed new designs.
“So that (to repeat) “even petrol electricity generation, being then stored and transported, and converted in the electric motor of a car, is still calculated as greatly more efficient than using same petrol in the petrol car (even petrol electricity generation plants are so much more efficient than the engine in a car).””
Hush silly.
No sane person would use petrol to generate electricity to power electric cars.
First,you need to transport crude to refineries, refine it and then transport the refined fuel to power plants (and we are discussing huge quantities here). For all that you must use energy. There is a reason why coal power plants are built next to coal mines.
Thermal efficiency of a modern coal power plant is around 33% – 35%. Add electric transmission losses that can be anywhere between 8% to 15% (assume 8%) and add mechanical losses in the electric vehicles (assume 5%).
On aggregate, total efficiency of an electric vehicles relative to chemical energy stored in coal would be 0,350,920,95=0,30. This only matches the efficiency of the internal combustion engine.
Only natural gas power plants have positive advantage, due to their considerably higher thermal efficiency.
I don’t mind if you keep breathing diesel fumes, but I’d like to keep them far away from the cities where I live and work. I also don’t care how much pollution it causes at mining sites in third world countries like the Congo. Neither do you, it’s just concern trolling on your part.
In other words – trains, trams, metro and even electric buses for downtown areas, historical cores and short routes where tracks are impractical.
Moving internal combustion engine vehicles from cities to remove air pollution from residential areas is not a bad idea. The execution, with subsidies, battery cars – not so good.
However, the issue of “diversity” and “minorities” in hypothetical public transportation still stands.
The problem is that a battery car is not a feasible vehicle for longer routes.
You can refuel your electric car at home, or anyone else’s home.
They can track your GPS and your cell phone, not to mention the ubiquitous CCTV cameras and similar. You can put a Chinese wall between the car movement database (which will really be just a kind of sealed mileage counter), and your safety will already be at the same level it is now. I.e. practically nonexistent.
The energy density is improving, but its at a slow rate, a few % per year
I don’t know, what is an average car ?
IMO an average driver could would be served well by a car with a 20KWh battery, but its the same as engine size, people want and buy for more than they really need, so we now see Rivian planning to build an SUV with a 180kWh battery and Tesla hope to build a car with a 200kWh pack, for me anything above 60kWh is wasteful, but maybe thats like Bill Gates and his 640K memory quote
An interesting video for all you Tesla haters, (skip to 3min) its a close up walk around of the Tesla Semi, I find it interesting because for the Semi to get the range that Musk claims I just can’t see where he plans to put the 800+kWh battery, maybe some of it is in the trailer, who knows
I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about what SpaceX are building down in Texas
In densely populated countries like Germany or the UK or Switzerland or the Netherlands (and these are very developed countries which will pay for it) much of the highway system is very close to population centers. They will simply ban internal combustion engines, at least in population centers, which will destroy the market for these vehicles. And of course a Tesla is already close to being viable for long distance trips, it’s not like you can drive 1000 kilometers without taking a half hour lunch/dinner break in the middle.
Public transport (however powered) versus cars is a totally different topic, and obviously you cannot put all traffic back to public transportation without destroying the suburbs and rural areas. (In densely populated countries suburbs are often mixed up with agricultural areas.)
99% of driving for most people is commuting, shopping, taking the kids to school etc. It’s already viable for electric cars. The only issue is that the initial investment is higher. The fuel cost is much lower (though it’s obviously not taxed), but once you won’t be able to use the ICE car in the city or town (or in some of the cities), you will just buy the more expensive vehicle anyway.
Once these vehicles constitute all of the market in the developed countries, they will no longer be producing them for Eastern Europe either. Moreover, most of the vehicle market in these countries is second hand anyway, so e.g. Hungary will just buy the used electric cars instead of the used diesels.
May God forgive you for your blasphemy, you foolish Rune Coon
Why do Americans need a stopgap measure at all?
Unlike Russia, their military did not experiece a collapse in the last decades or a lack of funding.
And F-35 serial production has already started.
Why do they need more fourth gen jets at a point when the sixth gen jets are supposed to be only one decade away from being introduced?
Looks at Marbach
Germans would do that.
Germans will do that.
In NY State they banned steam engines because of pollution or so they said but really because diesel engines were made by GE in the Upstate NY. At that time railway was still very big. Then few decades later they began to dismantle public transportation that was mostly electric in many cities and even functioned between cities like Syracuse-Buffalo. Car industry including rubber tire companies and oil companies were behind it. There was even a court case against few companies for conspiring to destroy the public transportation which they lost but they just had to pay a low fine and nothing has changed. They began to tear down big chunks of cities to build expressways. At that time all kinds of arguments were used that appealed to people. People wanted cars. Did they know why? Did they think about all costs? What about 100’s of thousands of people killed in car accidents? I wonder what is the total. Couple millions?
So do not worry. You will get your electric cars but it is not because you do not like diesel fumes or because you think this or that like that they are more efficient. Your opinion does not matter.
https://qualiacomputing.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/closed_2.png?w=1200
Here is an interesting article I found about different philosophies of identity:
https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/17/ontological-qualia-the-future-of-personal-identity/
That is another problem.
If electric cars replace gasoline cars and the formers fuel cost remains less taxed, how will the government deal with the lost tax revenues?
Modern turbines which operates already in my country – over 60% efficiency.
https://www.energy.siemens.com/co/pool/hq/power-generation/gas-turbines/SGT5-8000H/gasturbine-sgt5-8000h-h-klasse-performance.pdf
As already stated above: “Sure, electrical energy itself has to be produced (and transported and stored).
But typical natural gas, coal, fuel oil, and petroleum power station generators vastly more efficient than any car engine.”
Petroleum power station is still not uncommon, especially as peakers and backup.
In Russia, today this is mainly for peaker and backup capacity.
What would be the purpose of comparison to coal?
Coal is around three times cheaper than oil per kwh in current prices. And you can’t find a coal-powered car – so the cost advantage of coal is only obtained by electrified transport. .
As for natural gas – half the price of oil in current prices. And now obtaining over 60% efficiency in modern turbines.
1 – F-35 is dogshit
2 – Sixth generation fighters are not even vaporware at this point in time
We can know:
Theoretical efficiency is far higher for electric vehicles, and in combination with modern power generation.
But of course, it’s not fair (and wasn’t fair) to attribute 1 just to 2.
There are more reasons for 1, and 2 is not always the main one.
If you look in my comment above. Oil price varies wildly across time. Coal is currently (from last year) three times cheaper to purchase than oil (in quantity per kwh). In 2012 when oil price was higher, coal was 5 times cheaper than oil in quantity per kwh. While currently natural gas is twice cheaper than oil in quantity per kwh.
So if the electricity is from modern Siemans equipped gas power station, with over 60% efficiency – and then natural gas itself is a twice cheaper input than oil. Running cost of the electric car should be lower unless oil prices really would crash.
–
As for when electric cars will start to become popular? That’s where it would interesting to know – will it be 2030s, or will only be 2040s,
A justification for highly taxing petrol/diesel fuel is to “internalize” negative externalities of burning these fuels (i.e. effect of exhaust emissions on public health).
If electric cars removed exhaust emissions from proximity to lungs of people living in populated areas, and electricity is from power station which are nuclear or gas (not oil or coal), then government should not need to tax particularly cars’ energy sources in relation to public health.
Obviously car and drivers should still need to be taxed in some heavy extent, to at least try to recapture some of the many other costs they create for society.
As far as I recall, China has only renounced one territorial claim ever, and that was when it was a very junior partner to the USSR. Now that it has exceeded the US in PPP, I don’t expect it to renounce any.
I think Warren has a snowball’s chance in the general. But I think the most influential part of the DNC likes her. She might just be the last hurrah for white presidential candidates on the Left.
IMO, there is no point to stealth, except perhaps for special forces. (and that is arguable) Stealth fighters make no sense on a cost basis. Drones or cruise missiles are superior. They are worthless against nuclear powers. What do we want them for, to invade 3rd world? Pass! Anyways B-52s are generally superior for that.
A lot of people drive when they go on vacation. I see a lot plates I probably would not see if they were EVs.
So its the end of 2018, and here are some of my takes on Russia’s future for the next decade, especially Post-Trump with an unhinged Democrat president, and a EU that will by then have to. have to actively control its nationalist contingent. All based off of this article:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/punishing-putler/
Step up Support for Ukraine: Unlikely. Ukraine will pivot into Georgia 2.0 but 10x the size next decade. LDNR will become an Abkhazia-like permanent frozen conflict zone, while Ukraine proper will largely restore most of its economic ties, including direct flights and visa free access with Russia, while continuing to cooperate with the US in defense and selling weapons to China. Individual harsh sanctions on Russia probably continues locally in Galicia.
Designate Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism: 100% certain
Cut Russia off SWIFT: Likely, not 100% certain. Chances are financial sanctions will ramp up to the point that doing business with or investing in Russia in 2028 for a Westerner would be about as difficult as doing so with Iran in 2018.
Export Controls on Tech: Almost certain, see #4. Extend this to large-scale divestment of Western joint ventures in Russia (e.g. John Deere).
Confiscate Russian Oligarchs Assets in the West: Unlikely, but the West can make life for anyone with a Russian passport or even Russian-American citizens with strong ties to the homeland so difficult that it becomes unjustifiably painful to live in, invest in, or visit the west.
Examples: Getting a visa taking up to a year with 70% rejection rates, banned from applying to certain universities or majors within university, 100% chance of being held for questioning upon landing with high deportation rates for tourists, etc.
Cut Russia off the Internet: Russia will likely “cut” itself off from the Western internet in the not-too-distant future, Chinese/Iranian style. VPN companies will find millions of Russian customers.
Seizure of Russian Foreign Gold and Currency Reserves: US dollars or US-based assets? Highly likely. Euros or Europe-based assets? Highly unlikely.
Total Embargo: Almost certain with the Five Eyes. The EU will find doing business with Russia so difficult due to the US embargo that only the most determined businessmen or companies will do so. In a nutshell, today’s Iran’s business environment for Westerners.
Assassinate Putin: Ain’t happenin’
In a nutshell, Russia will find its Western relations largely where Iran has found itself since its Islamic Revolution.
While Russia should continue to develop its China ties, to prevent losing its independence and becoming Sinosphere’s gas station + transit hub + attack dog, focus on developing another full-scale military alliance with India, and close, high volume economic cooperation with Japan.
That’s all assuming the US keeps its clout. It is diminishing even as we speak. Within a few years too many will see that the king has no clothes.
But balancing India, Japan, South Korea, and Latin America against China is a sound advice for Russia. It did not slip away from the US domination only to get under Chinese domination.
The world moves in interesting ways, mostly indirect. When China still was a junior partner of the USSR, the USSR voluntarily returned it several Russian Imperial colonies (city-ports) on the coast, as well as the railway (Chinese Eastern Railway) built by tsarist Russia and owned by the USSR back then. This turned out to be one of the wisest things Khrushchev ever did.
I don’t think Warren has a chance in the Dem primaries. At best, she’d perform like Sanders: let herself be cheated, and than support the cheater.
Waiting until the last moment for an inspection? As for the Lumina, Ford Crown Vics have the outstanding rep for taking a licking and still ticking – noting how cabbies and cops still try to use them, with 2007 as its last model year its Mercury Grand Marquis cuz being around 2010-11.
The USSR liberated Manchuria and returned it as well.
If I correctly recall, post-Soviet Russia and China jointly renounced territorial claims on each other.
True enough. But Manchuria never was a colony of the Russian Empire, whereas Port Artur, Dalniy, and the railroad from Russia through Manchuria were.
Sounds to this non-engineer like the Volvo hybrid cars.
View on the collapse in Magnitogorsk from a gas explosion.
All floors in the section just fell down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYXImGW08sQ
I agree about the Crown Victoria, and excellent old car. The Lumina is not so bad either. It still runs, like they say, ‘like a German tank’. I was trying to elicit Thorfinnsson’s opinion about hybrid technology (he seems like big proponent of the electric cars), and also his opinion about the Volvo, a ‘Swedish’ car. He seems to be in tune with all things Scandinavian.
See my comment #73 above. The Vovo S-90 is quite impressive and with 400 hp to boot.
Russia already has a close military alliance with India transferring India Tech the west will not advanced nuclear submarines etc. and informally guaranteeing a veto in the UNSC(The USSR exercised it’s veto 5 times in support of India).
Notice how India has gone ahead with S400 purchase despite sanction threats from US.
It cannot be more blatant because at this stage of our economic development we are dependent on western export markets to pay for imports and accumulate capital..
They have a limited number of F-22 air superiority fighters. The F-35 was designed for other roles, and though the thousands of F-35s currently being produced would probably destroy any air force, it’d only do so at unacceptable (to the US) costs (in other words, with relatively high losses). They anyway have this bureaucratic idea that they need specialized air superiority fighters, and they have a lot of money to spend (and probably lots of corruption). So it all comes down to the bad decision to end the F-22 production.
It’s way more interesting why Russia is still producing a slightly modernized version of the baseline Su-27, when they already have a vastly improved version with the Su-35 (or the domestic Su-30 two-seater and the Su-34 bomber for specialized roles). They don’t have money to throw away and the “stopgap” Su-27SM3 is apparently performing exactly the same roles as the more modern planes currently also in serial production.
Neither does yours, either way.
In Hungary there are already steps taken to later tax them. Since I don’t expect the Hungarian government to be very creative, I guess it’s some EU standard.
It’ll be illegal to recharge them from a non-taxed source, and there will be a special electricity meter for the car charger. Probably you can just have the meter in your home.
A probably better method would be a special sealed mileage (kilometerage) counter in each car. That’d incidentally solve the problem of tampering with it when selling a used car (still very common in Hungary).
You could base taxes on usage of main roads (and install license plate based methods with technology currently installed on Hungarian highways), or issue a flat tax on cars based on weight.
It’s not an insoluble problem.
From the 1990s period you brought up, I still see a pretty good share of the Olds Cutlass.
Which is like a few percentage points of driving. Most people don’t go on vacations with cars (I don’t, it’s just not fun driving a full day there and another day back), and those who do, usually just do so once a year over a distance of maybe 1000-1500 kilometers (which would be maybe 6-8% of my annual driving), but anyway you normally stop a few times to have a snack or a lunch and coffee anyway. Currently people refuel, pay, then go to the parking lot to park the car, and then go to the gas station restaurant for the snack. With electric cars you can directly go to the restaurant, plug in the car, then have the snack while your car is charging.
Why does that seem like an insurmountable problem to so many commenters, when I know that electric car owners already do that? Admittedly it’s still slightly inconvenient because the infrastructure is not as developed as for ICE cars. (That infrastructure had to be built once, too. Horse carriage owners could point out the difficulty of refueling a car – you needed to search the map for the nearest gas station, and you had to plan your trip in advance accordingly.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries?wprov=sfti1
I miscalculated, a vacation at a distance of 1000 kilometers would be roughly 10% of my annual mileage. (I’d have to drive back.)
Anyway, over 90% of driving is below 200 kilometers anyway. Like we visit relatives or friends at a distance of 100 or 150 kilometers, spend there a few hours, then drive back. Possible with current battery technology, you just need the infrastructure (moderately high voltage charger installed in every home, costing maybe a few hundred € to install, though in a newly built home it’d cost maybe €100 extra or less).
Don’t they just use unrefined (or very slightly refined) crude oil? That’s what I thought. Though it’s uncommon in Europe, as far as I know.
We don’t know what would happen in a shooting war between two nuclear superpowers or near superpowers. It’s possible that they wouldn’t dare use nuclear weapons at all. It’s also impossible to know how the non-nuclear weapons would fare against each other. Currently all greater powers which have the ability to build or purchase such planes bet on stealth, so there must be something to it. Unless everyone is wrong.
One obvious point is internal weapons bays, which are beneficial from an aerodynamic perspective.
Stealthy planes are possible to detect, but difficult to shoot at from a distance. Which is a big advantage, if it works. Though maybe it doesn’t. But all greater powers currently think they do work, at least to some extent.
The third world might also get better at shooting down B-52s, or even badly used or less developed stealth planes, especially with the proliferation of S-300 systems and similars. Long term you’ll need something better.
Why is there a Christmas tree there, I thought that the Soviet government was anti religious.
Refining crude oil is not about taking out the “garbage” and leaving the fine staff behind, but rather taking out the fine staff (gasolines, diesels) out and leaving the residual garbage behind.
In fact, these residual fractions have some industrial use too, like oil #6 or “bunker oil” as they are called in US, which are used in manufacturing and processing industry primarily for heat production (hot water or steam). But their pollution levels are horrendous.
So unrefined or slightly refined crude will retain its most potent polluting substances. The environmental effect of burning unrefined or slightly refined crude on a scale needed for powering future electric vehicles would be devastating, regardless of future power plants locations.
Obviously they need to be located far from population centers. Or better yet, don’t use oil for that. There are so many good ways to produce electricity, like nuclear. My comment was a question about how they do it in the US.
Besides, renewables might have a growing niche here: if charging my car is not a priority, I could specify that I only want to use cheap electricity (whenever available), like only charging while it’s sunny on a summer day (while I’m in the office and my car spends the whole day in a parking garage). The fact that you are only charging a battery and it’s not even urgent means that unpredictable renewables are actually okay for you.
During Soviet times, New Year was essentially turned into secular Christmas.
I agree that only nuclear power plants seem like a viable large scale energy source for future electric vehicles.
Natural gas power plants are attractive too, because they offer scalability and flexibility and have acceptable pollution levels.
Natural gas power plants can be located within cities or on city outskirts and be sized to meet the demand of a single small town or even a village.
Supplying fuel to gas plants is very simple, too.
As a bonus, the waste heat can be used for other purposes like district heating or greenhouse heating.
It is a multirole fighter like the F-16.
If a more specialized fighter was needed, they could have waited, but either they made more bad decisions than just ending F-22 production or the era of their next-next gen fighters is not as close as the article claims.
Money was less of an issue than the need for new air-frames.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/43000349/
If you are refering to these ones…
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bmpd/38024980/6369962/6369962_original.jpg
They are modernized, not newly built aircraft.
Possibly the last ones.
It is not, but I expect it to delay the dominance of electric cars because it reduces the future cost advantage of electric cars.
I’d expect them to start taxing fully electric vehicles by the time they reach some 10-20% of all vehicles. By that time they will be maybe 50% of all vehicle sales, so economies of scale won’t be helping internal combustion engines that much. And I’d expect that at that point they will start utilizing the stick: more and more places will simply ban ICE vehicles, like no ICE vehicles in the downtown, or only on weekdays, etc.
I think regulators will understand that as they start taxing them, they need to increase other incentives in parallel.
And now you have demonstrated your ignorance further – you presented a GAS turbine operating in CCG when confronted with STEAM turbine efficiency. You know, the steam turbines actually turning the generators in coal, oil, nuclear power plants which produce the majority of world’s electric energy.
Fascinating.
Ex-USSR and ex-Yugoslav use mazut in the boilers.
Why are you hate-following him? Nobody’s forcing you to stay on this page and read what you don’t like. You can always find something more pleasant to do with your time. Here, let me help.
https://youtu.be/jGz-P0BJaQ4
LOL.
It’s a New Year’s Tree (Bolshevism replaced Christmas with New Year’s). The postcard says Happy New Year’s. There’s a Red (Communist) star on top of it.
This matches your knowledge of Poland, Ukraine etc. being taken over by Muslims.
The Christmas tree is said to have pagan roots. Hence, the Soviets could claim going back to the future.
I didn’t say Muslims, I said Africans. And this is an absolutely safe prediction to make in light of two very important facts.
1)The EU being run by an anti white ideology elite.
2)Near endless African population growth and migration pressure.
Knowing about arcane trivial facts does not make these two things any less true. There is only one way this can end, there is no hypothetical future that CANNOT end this way if those two things continue to exist. The Eastern Europeans are total cucks, so they will not leave the EU (because of “but what about Putler” reasons), nor can they do very much about the African population growth.
Well, most European celebrations have some kind of Pagan element.
I very much doubt this was about going back to Pagan roots, it looks more like a Soviet style equivalent of how Coca Cola commercialized Christmas and Santa Claus.
As it regards the Soviet Union, it was to politically neutralise the celebration.
In a somewhat similar manner, several of the Eastern Bloc countries would create or emphasise socialist-approved political commemorations close to days marking national resistance/independence that might be awkward for the Communist authorities.
Or, alternatively, the local government won’t need to collect recycling at taxpayers expense as gypsies/pikeys will go round in vans, collecting it for free (with or without the owners permission) as is the case with metals.
https://youtu.be/q-lIUEMn92A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War
It’s different. You don’t have the same driving culture, so you have never travelled the US highway system on Memorial Day, or really a dozen or more other days. Filling up at a restaurant would be totally impossible on such a day. You’ve never seen the common absurdity of rush hour traffic in a normal daily commute, as people seek out houses in neighborhoods that have “good schools.”
Indeed you are not deluged in millions of immigrants, using infrastructure built in the ’50s when there was room to build it, but not anymore as there are houses built right against the highway.
All I’m saying is people would have to change their habits – a lot more than 1%. Could they do it? I suppose. Some of my ancestors probably used bicycles and donkey carts, and before that their feet. But it will be a diminution of lifestyle.
People will accuse me of being Rosie, but I think there is a phrase from James Bond that explains it: “Boys with their toys.”. Also, explains certain other weapons systems .
The Volvo S-90 looks very nice, and Håkan Samuelsson has done a great job leading the company. The automotive press has nice things to say about the S-90 as well, and I have to say that Volvo now builds good looking cars routinely for the first time since the 1960s (though I am fond of the boxy 80s Volvos).
Sadly, the car is only available with four-bangers, but that’s the future. No one cares about powertrains anymore, provided the power and torque are adequate and available. Which they are in abundance after 50 years of herculean labors to overcome emissions controls.
I personally do not care for modern cars as I like manual transmissions, rear wheel drive, and inherently balanced naturally aspirated engines. These are all disappearing or have already disappeared.
Most car owners purchase more car than they need because they like having excess capabilities. It’s very common for people to purchase larger cars than necessary in order to have additional cargo and passenger room, even though these features are rarely needed and can be rented as required.
I see a similar problem with EVs. Most people don’t need to drive long distances commonly, and when the need to drive long distance arises you can simply rent a car (or put up with the insufferably slow recharging time). But it will still affect purchasing behavior.
There will also be consumer resistance from people who think EVs are gay.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dv2hWqxVYAA4qcv.jpg
That said I still expect EVs to comprise a majority of new cars sold sometime within the next 15 years, even absent government intervention and subsidies. They have many compelling advantages and also have a cool factor. Consumer behavior on long distance driving has also changed considerably in the past 20 years or so. Millennials drive long distances less commonly and are used to flying everywhere.
History and tradition are different. After WWII American infrastructure was built around and designed for the car culture (drive-thru restaurants, banks, liquor stores, drive-in theaters). Public transportation in cities was purposefully destroyed, neighborhoods were build w/o pedestrian side walks… Also the fact that population density is 3-4 times lower than in European countries is an important factor.
No country is safe unless they adopt explicit racism.
Coming from the US, it is amazing how long people can ignore a trend. Especially, if it involves anti-racism. Pat Buchanan understood the trend a long time ago. The results were the easiest thing in the world to predict, but a lot of people kept sticking their heads in the sand. When the problem started, it did not look like such a big problem. Same case in Western Europe. Eastern Europe will meet the same conclusion, unless they have different defenses.
I’m of the opinion that it is like trench warfare. Your defense can’t just be a simple straight line – it needs to evolve to meet the attack. And what they had by the end of WWI was very complicated.
It’s not enough just to maintain a border, which is like a simple line, IMO. You’ve got to be able to see a black guy in Kiev and say “What the hell is that African doing in Kiev?! Let’s follow him and call the cops, so they can get him out if here. ”
Perhaps, a better analogy is the immune system. A big part of it is barriers, like the skin – but you need internal components in the blood – antibodies, T-cells, macrophages, complement, NK cells, etc.
If you average Catholic/Protestant Christmas (Dec 25) with Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7), you get New Year. So, somebody was apparently born three times within two weeks. That’s a greater miracle than immaculate conception.
One reason why CA is so spread out, not very walkable is actually not the car but that a lot of it was built around streetcars – public transport. There was nothing there to start. Not like Boston or NYC, or so many cities in Europe, which were built around people walking.
Or just legalize killing niggers & let Scythian blood do the rest
It’s an interesting question how much of the current state of the West is explained by the signalling that comes from oppositional politics. Maybe, that explains the freezer effect in Eastern Europe, not lack of economic prosperity.
In the Cold War, the struggle for the 3rd world seemed so pointless. Some of the country pairings flipped, after a lot of resources had been invested, like Somalia and Kenya. I think the Soviets dropped about $7 Billion on Somalia. At least $55 billion has been spent on Somalia since ’91. It is still Somalia, maybe even more like Somalia than before the aid started.
That is the complication about making it expensive and ineffective to deport people. Putting it in the courts , or dropping them over the border, where they can cross it again – rinse and repeat.
Will Rogers used to say something like, “Boy, land is expensive nowadays! In the past, you could get it really cheap – all you needed was a nickel to buy a bullet to kill an Indian. ”
If the alternative is to spend a million per person and they keep coming back despite the expense, some might chose to spend the nickel.
“The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. ”
And then they started building freeways.
Nope. Biden, Sanders, Beto, and Harris are all more likely to get the nomination than Warren.
Sanders would be much better for Russia than any of the other Dems or Trump, but I’d rate his chances in the primaries at only around 25% (higher if Biden doesn’t run).
Also there is a process of re-equipping now with the most modern and efficient turbines.
In America, the same process is happening with a time lag of around a decade compared to Rssia.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/05/business/coal-power-trump/index.html
Unless you can substitute with a coal powered car, the cost benefit of coal is only available to transportation, by the electrification of transportation.
So it’s another factor that will (to the extent coal electricity generation is still significant) incentivize adoption of electric cars.
I agree that Warren will get nowhere.
But then you followed with a list of non-starters. Biden is a nonentity, through and through. That’s why he was chosen as puppet’s VP and that’s why he did not even try in 2016. Sanders was cheated and then supported the cheater. You can’t be a greater cuck than that. Even dumbed-down and brainwashed won’t vote for him ever again. Beto just lost Texas, and he is going to lose everywhere else. Especially if he keeps funding “caravans” that would turn the US into a failed state, like the shitholes these “caravaners” are from. Harris might win California, but that’s about it. If California were a country, she’d have a chance, but in the US she doesn’t. If Trump is still alive in 2020, the only purpose Dems might nominate any of the people you listed would be to give him an easy victory on a platter.
In America long-distance driving can be more common than in Europe.
America has:
A highly advanced road system for long distance drives (interstate system), so that long-distance driving becomes more common than in most countries, and even transcontinental drives are not uncommon.
However, there are people already pioneering long-distance driving with electric cars in America. I saw a video on YouTube where people are driving across states in a Tesla and were able to use a Tesla network to charge the car along the journey without difficulty.
So the fact this can be possible already now. In the 2030s, it will be unlikely a barrier to electric cars even for long-distance driving in the American market.
–
I believe it is inevitable electric will dominate petrol/diesel cars in the future. The interesting question is “when”. Will electric cars become popular to buy in the 2030s. Or is it something that can wait until the 2040s? I can imagine electric cars will already be popular with the mainstream population in some advanced countries in the 2030s.
Oil-fired generation was common in Europe and parts of the US (mainly the Northeast) prior to the First Energy Crisis.
Still used throughout the Caribbean and on Hawaii.
There’s no inherent problem with it other than that pricing has been unfavorable relative to coal and natural gas since 1973 most of the time.
Gasoline obviously wouldn’t be used for stationary generation since it’s more expensive and volatile. The benefit of gasoline is that you can get more power out of a smaller engine, which obviously is irrelevant in stationary generation (and marine) applications.
Oil-fired steam turbine vs. diesel is mainly a size question.
Seeing about Bolsonaro’s inauguration as President of Brazil.
His wife is quite cute:
https://blogafonte.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Michelle-Bolsonaro.jpg
So AK has been tweeting a lot about China today, at first by replying to this tweet:
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1080314043829649413
Don’t have a Twitter account myself, so I thought I’d post my views here.
Commenters in that “thread” are surprisingly… clueless. It seems that to Sinophobes (and to Russophobes) it’s forever 2008 (2009 now?). That said, this Noah Smith is a self-described “neoliberal shill” and Bloomberg opinion writer, so I guess it’s really not surprising.
But still, It’s 2019 and these people still seriously believe that China can’t “innovate”. At the same time, they are putting their hopes in India, after all its democratic political system is apparently more stable than China’s (!). India is also now growing faster than China (barely), so it’s going to overtake those evil commies in the near future. The faith in the end of history remains strong, somehow.
The “India’s economic growth is as impressive as China’s” view is sort of an opposite of the “China’s overall potential is not larger than Japan’s” trope. It’s almost as if properly grasping concepts like population size and total and per capita GDP are beyond the abilities of most people. Of course, I assume that these posters aren’t actually as dumb as your average internet commenter, but I was again reminded of Anatoly’s “The Idiocy of the Average” article.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1080531623131648000
I too noticed this sudden (?) rise in pessimistic forecasts about China’s future economic growth just recently. They are simultaneously more optimisitc on India. According to many of these, China’s average economic growth will somehow slow down to US levels by the early 2030s, if not earlier. So China’s economy will never even reach 2x the US in PPP, despite it already being 20% larger in 2017-18! Uhh… That doesn’t sound likely, at all. But what changed? Has China’s recent growth been considerably slower than predicted 10-15 years ago? No…? Are the aging trends somehow much worse? I don’t think so…
Well, in any case it’s clear that they are really taking that “aging” meme all the way. So it’s not only that they don’t take IQs into account, which is totally unsurprising, but that they also believe economic convergence is somehow impossible with aging population, despite the fact that South Korea was already aging decades ago, with low TFR, not to mention Eastern Europe today. What do these countries have in common with China? High human capital.
So from a HBD POV, what is India’s likely long-term trajectory? Not this “India will overtake China soon after 2050” nonsense. They could realistically reach the current per capita level of Brazil (relative to the US)? So steady slowdown to below 5% growth soon after 2040, or something? Overtaking the US might actually be quite inevitable, atleast in PPP, but India won’t rise much further than that? China will be 2x bigger than the US in PPP by the mid-2030s? 3 times larger by 2050?
Chinese (like Japanese) are not as innovative per capita (in terms of science and technology, obviously culture as well) as Europeans, but they don’t need to be as there are so many of them
Xi started deleveraging the economy in 2017 after the party congress which is why growth is slowing down. The economy’s slowdown isn’t dramatic, it’s just that until recently it was growing at record rates due to stimulus. just wait for the next financial crisis and the end of the dollar. the US economy will shrink at an exponential. Not that china will emerge unscathed, but the Chinese government has much wider margins of maneuver and still has lots of cash available for stimulus.
In my opinion, Xi should cut export subsidies for mid level tech industries where China has already achieved economies of scale (machine tools, heavy industry) to reduce overcapacity and focus on increasing domestic consumption , reducing inequality ( something that already happens to a large level) and increase the quality of public services, especially in rural areas.
The crucial argument for electric cars is maintenance. They have far fewer moving parts in the drive train. Thus maintenance will be massively lower and life time far longer. The ownership model will change, in urban areas to rental as the cars will last much longer than style cycles. The wealthy, the rural and pleasure drivers (still in petrol engines) will be the main car owners. Full cycle fuel savings will not be that great but the energy can come from nukes. Overnight charging will shift the base load to make nukes take on a larger %age of the total load.
The same nukes will end most crop farming as Vertical Farming takes off.
In the UK these days, most electricity is generated by CCG turbines and nuclear. The coffin for coal is being lowered into the ground. Two (Very big) stations left, the biggest burns a biofuel mix to dodge the regulatory bullet. Trouble is we need 21 GW of nukes fast to meet base load but no one wants to pay the financial and political costs.
It looks like Karlin got China jinxed 🙂
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-02/apple-cuts-q1-revenue-guidance-blames-china-stock-halted
Modern Japanese contributed vastly more innovations as a nationality than some uninnovative European nationalities from the 20th century (e.g. Spanish have no innovations in 20th century industry, no Nobel prize in Physics or Chemistry, no Field Medal, no Turing Award… no invention of CD, VHS, and a lot of similar things).
But compared to nationalities like German or English, Japanese modern sphere of innovation is much narrower (within more limited sphere).
In the case of Chinese, it is a different topic, and would require a perspective of a century in the future to know if they will be innovative or not. There is just a mystery whether they will be innovative – as they climbed out of poverty so recently, and are untested yet as a developed country.
HMy cousin is the male actor in this Year’s Coca Cola ads. Coke didn’t invent Father Christmas who is at root a variant of Odin. Coke did standardize the exact shade of red now obligatory in the US. Coke may also have promoted German/Anglo Christmas to Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the US.
Does China have a high human capital currently though? Clearly after they become a developed country (which will be probably not so far in the future), high general level of human capital will be attainable for them. But can anyone comment here about their current education level?
I know nothing of this topic. But, as I understand, many of China’s best students today have to go to Western universities to finish their education (i.e. famous overcrowding of Chinese mathematics students filling Trinity College Cambridge) – filling of Western universities, could probably imply significant inferiority of Chinese higher education.
In terms of the Nature index (obviously a crude measure), Spain has only about a third of Japan’s score with only just over a third of the population, so they are roughly even, despite the Japanese advantage in raw IQ
It is generally the second win in elections that starts a re-alignment. Dems know it and they are deadly afraid of Trump winning in 2020 – that would start being significant. You are right about Biden/Sanders/… they are losers and not very viable unless everything changes in the next 18 months.
They are searching for an outside new face, who is also a person of color, centrist enough, and not too wimpy. It will be very hard like squaring a circle with mutually non-compatible requirements. Trump is holding 40-45% approval, that means with any opponent he is at 50% (everybody has negatives). Time for liberal dirty tricks: enter Romney, third parties, illegal voting, it will be a circus. What I don’t get is that this is clearly a fight to death, no point in holding back, nobody will give a quarter, why doesn’t Trump use his executive powers to their limit? Raid voting places for fraud, charge people, investigate, cut off funding, etc…he seems almost child-like in his inactivity.
In the light of what the Five Eyes are doing to Apple’s competitor Huawei, that is a good sign.
Unfortunately, Trump is dumb. He appears to be playing the same losing game as Obama (or Yanuk in Ukraine) – trying to pander to those who won’t ever accept him, while alienating his base. His only strength is that Dems cannot produce anyone people would trust an inch. If they come up with a palatable nominee, Trump is toast.
Weak China is trying to buy time.
https://twitter.com/yarbatman/status/1080450990447513600
For what exactly?
https://twitter.com/AleColarizi/status/1080505042782834689
Yes, that is quite likely, but we don’t know that yet for sure. All that “diversity” and scale might push China above countries like Japan in per capita comparisons. But even at Japan’s level (per capita) it will be more than good enough, yes.
I agree with your comment overall, but my main point was that the current — still very high — growth rates were quite accurately predicted a decade ago, and they were taken into account in those more optimistic forecasts. In fact, a few years ago (when the “slowdown” narrative moved into high gear) many Western “experts” estimated that China’s growth would decline to below 6% by 2018-19. That didn’t happen and China’s growth was actually higher in 2017 than it was in 2016 (or was it 2016 vs. 2015?).
It seems quite likely — and I have mentioned this several times — that China’s GDP calculation methodology is possibly outdated compared to many/most fully developed countries. So contrary to the meme that China’s GDP growth figures are “fake”, the opposite (sort of) might actually be true, in a sense that the size of the economy could currently be underestimated by 5-20% in the official statistics. Standard stuff for developing countries, so we might see some “surprising” upwards adjustments in the near future (or not).
High IQs, yes. The population overall (especially older people, for obvious reasons) are still less well educated than in developed countries. I think China is already doing well in the international university rankings, and the best ones must be competitive. Those who study abroad also often return back to China.
Spain will surely have scientific publishing output level of a developed economy. Afterall, it has the relevant number of universities with research staff, proportion of GDP on R&D is equivalent expenditure to the UK, and their institutions are integrated with all EU scientific projects (Horizon 2020, etc).
At the same time, “breakthrough” innovations – I am (perhaps ignorantly) not aware of from Spain. Whereas with Japan, there can be listed a few by even no-experts.
In the case of Nobel Prizes, Field Medals, Turing Prizes – it can perhaps be a useful to compare, because it these are “breakthroughs” in their areas.
In industry -, innovations perhaps can be judged by us as normal consumers.
In the case of culture – are often in a bit too subjective areas to judge innovation of nationalities, especially for recent cultural history (Would you believe Spain has been more innovative in “elite” cinema perhaps since the 1980s? However, Japan is exporting much more in popular culture).
I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
I’m not saying that Spain is doing badly, but atleast according to Wikipedia, Spain’s R&D spending’s (PPP) share of GDP is modest, around 1.2% (around the same as Russia’s). Interestingly, Poland is only at 1%, even Estonia is not punching above its weight (1.3%).
The UK is bit of a surprise, its R&D spending only at 1.7% of GDP, but still higher than Spain. The US: 2.7%, China 2.1%. Interestingly, China might have surpassed the US last year in overall spending (again, in PPP), certainly this year at the latest (both figures are from 2016).
By the way, Dmitry, have you bought a Nintendo Switch yet? You were considering that some time ago, if I remember correctly. I’m still out of the loop when it comes to modern gaming (only since around 2015, though), but I do like handhelds, and I might be able to afford one soon.
I still think it’s overpriced and in my opinion Nintendo is generally overrated, especially in the US, but I don’t know… I kind of want to play those “big-budget” games on the go. The Playstation Vita is one of the most underrated things ever, and it seems the Switch is overall a great “successor”. Nintendo as a company is also certainly better than all those SJWs.
I’ve heard that they are considering electrifying the Autobahn in Germany for trucks.
US political update: looks like Pelosi is the only announced candidate for Speaker. Perhaps, it would be better if they dug up the corpse of Tip O’Neill, and electrified it.
No, sadly I haven’t. Although after reading your comment, I start to regret this.
Last month I was dreaming for a few minutes about buying an antique Nintendo console, to play Mario Kart multiplayer. But then I realized I would not anyone to play with (I don’t believe my housemates are interested in video games).
Funnily, my housemates now are all Polish people. Although I am polite to talk about politics with them.
I was thinking it would be cool to buy a Nintendo 64 or a GameCube (if anyone has these?).
Super Nintendo graphics (even through RGB SCART cable) could look a bit too ridiculous for an OLED TV.
I expect Nintendo to release a N64 mini soon, depending on the games they include it might be good value, the 2D XL is also worth a look it has a large selection of games and is perfect for Mario kart and Zelda
Apparently, a new ‘Museum of Black Civilisations’ just opened in Senegal, funded by the new colonial master.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46467098
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20181230/carolyn-cooper-what-china-doing-africa
They should have gotten Bliss to explain to them how Beethoven and Shakespeare were really African.
The Chinese considered offering Bliss a director position at the museum but then they found the posts about how Confucius was a nigger.
Another topic: Where are the predictions for year 2019? How do you see the uncoming events, especially the Democratic nomination for 2020? All mankind awaits with bated breath the next season of the world’s greatest soap opera!
My bet is that Dems will go full neocon and nominate this Anime-American or someone like him/her/zir/xer. Max social justice at home, max war abroad – the winning combo!
https://twitter.com/SailorHaumea/status/1080668524715130880
twitter link here, why it does not show up?
http://twitter.com/SailorHaumea/status/1080668524715130880
I like how it is inspired by the shape of a hut.
Let’s make a deal: give them back their “art”, if they take back their Africans. We can even sweeten it by including a few prints of European art. Should also work with Arabs.
Rap music is unironically better poetry than this.
BBC reports: in 2017, >87,000 migrants entered Yemen from the Horn of Africa. Current cholera outbreak in Yemen traced to East Africa.
Let’s do it! 😀 (In all honesty though, I’m still not entirely sure.) And in my experience these things only make sense for single-player games (for 98% of the time anyway), especially in Nintendo’s case, as their online infrastructure is still hilariously bad. Though what do I know, I guess some adults make (real-life) friends while playing video games, but being a “China’s GDP is very interesting” autist, I wouldn’t know anything about that stuff anyway.
While I don’t have any direct experience with the N64, from what I’ve read and watched, it seems it’s the most “overrated” Nintendo console. It sold surprisingly well in the US for some reason (I guess the library was very US-centric and the NES nostalgia of course played a part as well), while pretty much flopping elsewhere, including in Japan (it was outsold by the Sega Saturn there!).
The games generally have poor framerates, poor image quality graphics and the controller is weird. The game library is also limited, not only in size, but it’s also very lacking in certain genres, in particular it has next to no (Japanese) RPGs, which I especially enjoy.
In addition, most of the big hitters have been re-released on other systems (both Zelda games are on the 3DS, Mario 64 on the original DS, plus of course on Virtual Console), so I’d also be ready to recommend a 3DS or a 2DS XL. The SNES is a fantastic system, but indeed probably not worth it for most people, I think the games are quite expensive nowadays and emulators for it are everywhere.
By the way, has anyone played (Old School) Runescape here? It was just released on mobile (it’s exactly the same on PC, with the same account, which is unique, I think), so I gave it a go and enjoyed it, but now I haven’t played it for a month. Very nostalgic stuff, up there with Pokemon.
https://capx.co/the-iranians-crossing-the-channel-make-me-proud-to-be-british/
When Civic Nationalism goes too far
Don’t be too tough on them. Formerly Great formerly Britain does not have many reasons to be proud of itself, and too many to be ashamed of itself.
Don’t be too tough on them. Formerly Great formerly Britain does not have many reasons to be proud of itself,
Except for a fine productive base, a fine civil services, political institutions with a 750 year-long pedigree, ancient universities, and handsome countryside, nothing at all.
https://i.imgur.com/axMBgsy.jpg
That’s past glory though. Can you tell us what exactly you are proud of about the state of Britain today? It’s a close contender (with Sweden and Germany) for the status of most pozzed, self-destructive nation in Europe today.
(and in general those national dick measuring contests – or competitions about whose national dogs are best – around here are really tiresome).
Wow, you must be writing from ~50 years ago. Where did you get the time machine?
Have you been in the UK lately? Did you manage to find anything made in the UK in the stores? Or did you see many Brits working? Last time I was in Heathrow, I saw one white face out of 10-15 employees (he was a waiter).
As to pedigree, Roman Empire would beat them, but it is dead. Quality-wise, Oxford and Cambridge do not even come close to MIT or Caltech. As to their civil services, talk to a real Brit, s/he would regale you with many stories. Countryside is still pretty, although a bit over-manicured (except for Scotland, where it is really beautiful).
‘Civic nationalism’ is just multiculturalism with make up on. It is a fake concept in the way most people utilise it, as amply proved by this piece of mush.
With the British, it is very divergent though, like many things there.
A few square metres of land of Trinity College Cambridge (e.g maybe bicycle parking area), there will be contained more modern intellectual achievement than Romania. And one of the square gardens of Trinity College Cambridge will contain more modern scientific achievement than a country like Spain.
And all attractive qualities of civilization, which British market across the world actually exist – polite people, intellectual girls with glasses in bicycles with textbooks on the basket, neat gardens of beautiful houses filled with books, etc.
But then in the train to a near unfamous city in the UK, and people in the streets more
https://www.wmj.ru/imgs/2016/12/04/22/764927/c926db3481288f8d6d306018936a9df7800dceec.jpeg
In a country like Japan, – civilization (and surely education) is more evenly distributed, across the complete population, and not varying from cities in a way so obvious to any visitor.
The Chinese workforce peaked in 2011. In that year, Xi made a major speech (to a party Congress?) saying that China would no longer emphasise growth in output but prioritize quality of products and quality of life. 12% pa is not coming back.
I was thinking more I wanted to buy a real antique Nintendo (not just Nintendo Classic Mini).
Problem is that a television like my one (I have one of the best televisions) will require something like to convert from the RGB SCART cable to the television
https://i.imgur.com/V9isudo.png?1
Hopefully this converter would not introduce some kind of perceptible time-lags?
If I had a large tropical island mansion to live in, I would have some rooms with antique CRT televisions to play classic video games. But I live in a country with a visa and one television is already enough obstacle if I have to go home…
But yes Nintendo Classic Mini is of course the better idea.
Some Nintendo games like Mario Kart, are (I think) the best ever for this…
I have not played it.
But for old video games (I played when I was younger Civilization IV), I saw Civilization VI has good reviews for Nintendo Switch. Has anyone played this?
they’re called quads, just fyi
you don’t even need to go that far, you could just pop over to East Oxford
If you are comparing against MIT and Caltech then Oxford’s place should be taken by Imperial College. Computing related IT apart it is not obvious that the track record for fundamental innovation is so much different.
Let’s forget IT, just focus on fundamental science in the last 20-30 years. I am a biochemist interested in cell signaling, so I don’t take IT into account. When you search PubMed for the Imperial College, Oxford, Cambridge, and compare the results with the search for MIT, Caltech, Yale, or Harvard, the difference is even more striking than I expected.
All the high aspects of the anglosaxon civilization are still there, however – just concentrated in the elite parts of country, enjoyed by the part of the English population that have enough money to buy it.
And intellectually, in some ways, they are even more dominant than before. When there was a discussion of Romans, I was expecting you ask us to read books of a German historical school (as a German scholar of the 19th and 20th century would) – but instead you are recommending us to read the book of an English historian.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230048/seapower-states
I saw it on the table of the bookshop (it’s selling in the bookshops this month at least) – I don’t have time (or concentration ability) to read these kinds of books. But it looks interesting.
You will submit to the descendants of the subjects of the British Empire.
You compassion demands it.
https://twitter.com/WokeCapital/status/1080886103010406400
Reminds me of that movie.
After they remove all the money from Russia which is supporting London…
There’s no torrent yet.
But on Google the early pages are available (I was almost interesting in buying it although I do not read so often):
https://books.google.com/books?id=Zn11DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=seapower+states&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjerIuq79LfAhUDSBUIHUwyCtcQ6AEIKzAA#
I joked that Russia would retaliate for Butina by targeting and arresting a random American in Russia, and predicted that he would probably and ironically be a Russophile.
Well, maybe he is a spy, I won’t discount that, there are suspicious things about him. But maybe he is actually just some guy who loves Russia:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/world/europe/us-spy-suspect-whelan-russia.html
He loved to travel around Russia by train, collected tea glass holders stamped with Russian historical scenes and maintained social media friendships with ordinary Russians, from a hairstylist to retired members of the country’s military.
Now Paul N. Whelan, a former United States Marine and current security chief for BorgWarner, an international auto parts manufacturer, has been accused of espionage by Russia and is in solitary confinement in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison — long used by the K.G.B. and its successors for Soviet dissidents and foreign spies. The United States government refused to publicly discuss Mr. Whelan’s status in detail, but former C.I.A. officers said they did not think he was a spy.
……
He had visited Russia since at least 2006 — the trip that year was part of a special military furlough program — and was familiar to numerous Russians who had known him or interacted with him on social media. They said he seemed to pop up every six months or so. Unusual for an occasional visitor, Mr. Whelan had an account on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, for about a decade.
He did not post often, but wrote congratulatory notes in Russian on various major holidays and occasionally voiced his opinions about American politics. “GOD SAVE PRESIDENT TRUMP!!” Mr. Whelan wrote on the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, bracketing the sentence with two American flag emojis. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, he posted a Russian cartoon suggesting that Alaska might be next, as it was once a Russian territory. “Putin can have Alaska, as long as he takes Sarah Palin, too!!” Mr. Whelan wrote.
In the first 3 days of 2019:
China became the First Nation to land a spacecraft on the Dark Side of the Moon.
Nassim Taleb launched a full frontal assault on the neo-nazi cult of IQism and sent the brainwashed multitudes of autistic HBDers reeling backwards in their computer chairs in shock and awe. None of them will be quoting Taleb ever again.
Tweeter-in-Chief Trump welcomed the New Year with a tweet calling a four-star General a “dog” and “Hillary lover”. McChrystal is what the third or fourth general he has bashed so far? This marks the definitive end of Trump’s love affair with generals.
Trump of the Tropics Bolsonaro was inaugurated President of Brazil. Now the leaders of the two largest nations in the Americas are on the same page.
Apple became a victim of the Trade War between US and China.
The most diverse House of Representatives was sworn in. The women have begun to roar. They have Trump in their sights.
Anatoly, have you considered writing about Crimea in the near future? Specifically, I want to know more about how it has fared under almost five years of Russian rule. I also want to know if Crimea has any chance of becoming Russia’s mini-Florida in the future–with rapid population growth as a result of a lot of retirees moving there.
I have an original Nintendo Entertainment System and have no issue using it on modern displays other than that Duck Hunt doesn’t work.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he is just as innocent as Butina. I also wouldn’t be surprised that if Russians keep him in solitary confinement as long as the US authorities kept Butina, he would plead guilty to being a spy for Jupiter or even neighboring galaxy.
There won’t be any mass migration of retirees to Crimea regardless how it fares. First, Russian retirees are mostly the poorer layers of the society, in contrast to middle-class American retirees. Second, retired Russian women usually help their daughters (sometimes even sons) by taking care of their children.
Crimea can become a vacation and resort place: the weather is great, the sea is warm (by Russian standards; compared to the Gulf it’s cold), and the sun is not as fierce as in the South of the US, as Crimea is located far to the North of Florida and Gulf coast. The latter is particularly important for fair-skinned Russians who do not tan easily, i.e., the majority of Slavic population, most of Ugro-Finnish peoples, and even some light-skinned Tatars.
I don’t think a darkside landing is as difficult as landing on another planet, doing a grand tour, or getting a signal from a distance further than Pluto. Still, China probably is the one to watch in the longterm.
It was some time ago that Tim Cook ostentatiously stood against the US government when it came to encryption. It was so theatrical, the whole thing was obviously scripted. If Huawei has Chinese backdoors, Apple certainly has American ones.
The diversity of Congress is a sign of its dysfunction. Each ethnic group meets in its own caucus to advance its own interests. To steal both domestically and to send some of it back to their own ethnic homeland in foreign aid. To open the US to further invasion of their own people. Every group but whites. It will not last.
Last one I played was Civ Revolution. It was unintentionally pretty funny, like an unintentional satire of globalism.
Cleopatra seemed to be black. It is kind of funny to see the American city of Detroit representing the idea of civilization. Other advisory characters seemed to be Merkel and Condi Rice. One of the goals was to acquire great people by luring them with culture. Karl Marx, Albert Schweizer (increased pop of Africa), Frederick Douglas – some of the people were very funny.
You could win by building the UN or World Bank. I guess the mechanics are probably similar in different versions.
In real life, the Zulu would always get rolled because they didn’t have the wheel.
No, and given sentences like this
I don’t intend to, because it sounds like a noxious mixture of Anglotriumphalism and multiculti propaganda, written with the intent of legitimizing and celebrating the current rotten state of Anglosphere countries. It’s probably just pure ideology, omitting any inconvenient facts (e.g. the Athenians weren’t “open and inclusive”, but had extremely restrictive citizenship laws during their golden age, granting no political rights even to long-term metics).
Have you read any ‘Western civ’ books?
It is somewhat amusing how to note many things one has to either twist or memoryhole (or even plain falsify) to craft a continuous Marx-esque linear narrative that ‘Westerners’ or ‘Europeans’ have always been whatever the degenerate ruling powers have decided we are now.
No, I suspect most of them are intellectually worthless propaganda, for the reasons you’ve mentioned.
There’s a specifically German sub-genre of this, based on the idea of a German Sonderweg , with Westernization as a German redemption story; e.g. the works of Heinrich August Winkler (Der lange Weg nach Westen, “The long road to the West”, a German history of 1806 to 1990; he’s also written a multi-volume Geschichte des Westens). Basic intention is of course to show that the federal republic is the best Germany ever, and don’t you dare question that.
The F-35 is multirole, but it’s obviously not designed to fight the battle for air superiority. It’s not very good at dogfighting, so it needs to rely on BVR combat, which is not very safe: some enemy fighters are bound to get through.
Anyway, the F-35 would probably prevail, due to superior numbers and perhaps pilot skills, but it’d probably suffer high losses. Hence the need for air superiority fighters to help the F-35s in case it comes to close combat.
I think it’s a smart idea to diversify (if you have lots of money to burn), because you don’t know what would work in real combat.
Thanks, everywhere I read about it they wrote that it was newly produced. I guess it meant “newly built from unfinished old airframes.”
Do Americans drive without lunch breaks or snack breaks 8-12 hours on end? I guess they eat in the car. Do they have bathroom breaks at least, or do they have inbuilt toilets in the cars? And forcing them to have half hour stops every, say, 4-5 hours, would diminish their lifestyle? I think it’s a case where reduction of freedom (in this case, forcing you out of the car at least for a short while) would increase your life quality.
I remember that when I had to commute on public transport for an hour a day (both ways), I spent the time reading books. When I moved closer I spent the time I gained channel surfing my TV. I felt I wasted my time and was longing for the longer commutes, but I couldn’t force myself to not watch TV when I had the freedom to do it.
I’m pretty sure it’s horribly unhealthy and uncomfortable to sit in a car for 8-12 hours nonstop, so forcing some breaks on you must be good. Anyway, I have talked to a couple people (immigrants) who often drive between Hungary and Western Europe, and they both said that they do have at least one half hour (or longer) stop after five hours of driving. Are you sure Americans don’t?
For the Americans here, are there any post-FDR Presidents that you would deem halfway decent?
I liked the movie.
I work as a financial risk manager, and antifragile just means long gamma. (Unlike finance, it’s impossible to be long the tails in real life, though even being long the tails won’t protect you from certain forms of extreme risk, like the clearing house going bust.)
I’m pretty sure I was thinking about things unrelated to finance in those terms before I read Taleb, like intelligence itself being long gamma: it benefits from constantly changing conditions, but has costs which make it disadvantaged relative to dumb specialists (short gamma) under stable circumstances. I think others thought similarly about things, like paying back your mortgage was long gamma and having debt short gamma.
But Taleb was the first to recognize it as a separate concept no one ever described and wrote a book about it. He also came up with a name (anyifragile for long gamma, fragile already existed for short gamma). These things are good, because if we have a name for it, we can think about it better and more clearly.
Good question, and while we’re at it, how about pre-FDR ones too?
In the summer of 2009 (almost a decade ago already!) I attempted to read the Black
Swan. I had never read a book authored by Taleb before and had no preconceived ideas about him.
I wrote “attempted” because I did not manage to finish the book — which very seldom happens to me. I think the last example of a book I could not finish reading was the coran but that’s not saying much.
But furthermore, Taleb’s mix of arrogance and obnoxiousness, combined with his very bad writing style, made me toss the book in the garbage. I still remember it vividly as it was the first time that I did that — and have not had the occasion to do it again since.
The fact that Taleb takes aim at other vacuous academics doesn’t make him a deep thinker indeed. In general I think that Lebanese Christians are way overrated— and I have worked with quite a few. In particular honesty is not their strong point.
Indeed.
On this topic, this is what concerns me the most in terms of the future political evolution of the USA: I would not care too much, if it were not for the nukes. What will happen to and with those, if and when the USA continues its descent into political chaos and general stupidity? It’s alreay a miracle that when the USSR collapsed, the adult in the room (Russia) gained control of the whole arsenal, hereby preventing catastrophic dissemination to entities like Kazakhstan, Bielorussia, or the Ukraine. It’s not reasonable to expect that another miracle would occur, should the USA collapse or partition.
Thorfinnsson however I am sure you have a plan ready. What is it? Should the beautiful state of Wyoming keep control of the nukes?
Not to mention making money selling poorly written books about said named concept.
This is a story that’s REAL I have to write it because it seems so ludicrous to Europeans that I am afraid many won’t believe it.
Many years ago, the father of an American acquaintance got a very severe stroke, following the formation and breakage of a clot in one of his legs, as a result of driving over 20 hours (from Alabama to the west coast iirc) without leaving the wheel (maybe once or twice to just take a leak but even of that the son was not sure).
The guy was in his 50s and of relatively moderate body shape (by US standards), and according to his son, that kind of driving behavior was not unusual.
That story notwithstanding, I do not approve of the State giving us morality lessons about when it’s right to do this or that.
James K. Polk?
I did not know anything about the guy before you mentioned his name, but the little I read in a couple of minutes is not encouraging: a freemason, he thought that annexing lands populated with Mexican savages was a great idea. See how well that’s turning out nowadays.
One good point for him however is that he did not even run for re-election. I’d put this in the plus column as it seems that Americans love to re-elect their most nefarious presidents (Obama, Bush the son, Clinton, FDR, etc.).
Eisenhower.
There are a number of factors that led to Russia retaining control of the arsenal. One of them was that all strategic troopers were Slavs. The Other was that the KGB’s 9th directorate was in charge of guarding warhead sites and the guys in Lubyanka happened to be Russians too.Finally the big button was always in the hands of the Kremlin .
I agree with everything but it still is a very fortunate conjunction of factors.
I don’t expect that the equivalent (ie whites keeping control of the arsenal) would or will
necessarily happen in the case of a USA collapse.
Canada should annex them and proclaim the UCAS, the United Canadian and American States, heir of the Anglo-American empires.
I have not been to Canada in more than two decades, but it is my understanding that it is also heavily colonized by brown and yellow peoples.
On the other hand Wyoming is still over 97% white.
I am going to do with my yearly threads and do a Stratforian decade forecast imminently.
But to address this list:
Largely agree, except that:
In general, the extent to which Euro business lobbies and basic apathy (not so much their populists!) will trump Blue Empire ideological crusade is a major question.
Seizure of Russian assets would be a massive escalation and is again something that’s only seriously touted by /r/politics basement dwellers. Everybody rational – the Treasury, business lobbies – will oppose that, even in the US.
I think Russia really needs to step up relations with South Korea.
It’s a middle sized economic power loosely on par with Italy, France, or the UK with a lot of potential for tech transfer (4th in the world by economic complexity).
India is great, but it doesn’t have tech.
It’s the only country in this category that also has good relations with Russia (even better, it also has ok relations with China, so developing Korea relations will not engender Chinese suspicions as doing so with Japan, Vietnam, India, etc. would).
Not ultimately a substitute for China in the case of total break with the West but can help prevent the relationship from becoming too lopsided.
I am skeptical about the potential of developing the Japan relationship. They will take the two islands and then say we didn’t promise anything anyway.
Hello AK
Don’t you think the next best (after Crimea) annexation would be northern Kazakhstan, more precisely: the part that is majority-Slavic, not the part that is full of actual Kazakhs or whatever?
Many people who drive long distance, perhaps most, are hell bent on arriving as quickly as possible. Partly for pride reasons, partly to get it over with. Of course people do still stop to take a leak, but this is a pretty quick process (and can be consolidated with refueling if you don’t need to go often).
Personally I like to stop at rest stops when they’re available to take a brisk stroll for circulation, fresh air and sunlight. My state has nice ones: https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/travel/road/rest-areas/default.aspx
I don’t like eating in the car either, so I stop for that as well.
A half hour stop however strikes me as a waste of time. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time.
Eisenhower, Nixon, Trump.
https://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/taleb-mishandles-fragility.html
Too many of them. And in any case it’s hard to find much fault with pre-FDR Presidents other than Wilson (aside from those involved with the Civil War) given how much worse things have gotten.
I was thinking Russia should form a strategic partnership with SK and Japan, for rocket research – in an effort to bring the cost down and maybe get nuclear tugs going.
Nixon helped create the EPA. Maybe, it wasn’t so bad then, but it got out of hand.
Interesting alternative history would be if Quebec had become independent. If an ethnostate had been carved out maybe that would have changed the future to something other than pozzed politics.
The US breaking up could be a lot more chaotic than the Soviet Union. American states, of which there are many more than there were SSRs, aren’t based on ethnic nations after all. Many of the larger states also themselves have quite prominent divisions–not much in common between New York City and the Finger Lakes region. Economic factors could also make things worse, as it’s not like the USSR had just-in-time supply chains, lean manufacturing, cold storage chains, etc.
The good news is that most of the arsenal and bomb production facilities are in red states.
The Mexican Cession was practically unpopulated at that time. Large scale Mexican immigration didn’t begin until around 1970.
The EPA does a lot of nasty stuff and needs to be seriously reformed, but there were very serious problems with the environment: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/
A lot of the SW looked like a white-topia into the 1970s. It was really immigration both legal and illegal that changed it. I don’t think the annexed Mexicans were much of a problem. Puerto Ricans on the other hand were disastrous. The US should have cut it loose along with the Phillipines.
I think he was also responsible for gas rationing. My mother had the gas siphoned out of her car once. The result of such things is that gas tanks have screens which make them difficult to drain to today, if you want to work on a fuel pump.
Still, it is hard not to like him when he talks honestly on the tapes. He was probably one of the smartest presidents.
The original EPA didn’t count CO2 as a pollutant
Why do you live in a British derived country?
Why would it have been any different to any other small, European country? As far as I know, the Révolution Tranquille was not due to Anglo influence.
I assumed he was talking about the plans to annex more of Mexico, although I believe that at that time even the Northern regions of what is now Mexico were only sparsely populated and more European-derived than the rest.
Geography matters though, luck might decide it but it creates you DNA.
Anyway island peoples are generally thought as being notoriously closed, Japan and Britain are actually pretty insular despite what might be being claimed now.
I know people who drive from Boston to Florida. They do it in a relay. One person taking the wheel, while the other rests. Such thing is common.
I really think part of your disbelief is lack of visuals. You have probably never seen someone back up from an on-ramp because the traffic was too ridiculous. Traffic for me is a proxy for how messed up the US is.
Still, I wonder if self-driving cars could not solve some of it, since perhaps they could merge more easily.
I haven’t read it but my impression is that he played on the idea that the financial crisis was some sort of unforeseeable improbable event when actually it was well known that the markets were in an unsustainable bubble within the financial markets, if not the public at large.
In July 2007, Prince told the Financial Times that global liquidity was enormous and only a significant disruptive event could create difficulty in the leveraged buyout market. “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance,” he said. “We’re still dancing.”
Coolidge is popular.
Sure the best universities are currently British and American. France and Sweden have as many, if not more, issues than either country and yet they do not have any top universities so I don’t understand your point?
Nixon was dreadful on the economy and he did nothing to stymie the PC nonsense despite his personal opinions expressed on those notorious tapes, he was relatively successful in foreign policy.
Ike was very good and I think Truman is greatly underrated, he undid most of FDR’s insane economic policies which turned a financial crisis in to a two decade slump. Reagan made a major misstep on the amnesty but was a triumph on the economy, social issues and foreign policy.
Well, we will never know, but one interesting thing is that Quebecois were an expansion population. They had a small founding pop and many descendants. People with high TFR and other traits may have been selected for.
Bilingual Canada may have been more ripe for the plucking. But perhaps, you are right – borders don’t seem to be much of a defense against ideology. What we are seeing now seems to involve regional opposition (Eastern Europe, Central vs. West). If the US is some kind of locus point for poz, from which all poz spread (I dismiss this) then Canada was probably doomed anyway.
It is crazy to do so, but the EPA is just a vast bureaucracy. It grew inevitably from the seed he planted.
Truman desegregated the military and was responsible for the Korean War.
Regarding his handling of segregation he was a Democrat, but I think his handling of the early stages of the Cold War, including fighting the Korean War, was pretty good. His management of the economy is often overlooked, I assume to continue the bizarre idea FDR handled the depression anything but catastrophically (and perhaps the idea that the war helped the economy).
The most American POTUS of the modern era
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/the-hated-richard-nixons-ancestry/
The Quebecois played an important role for the left in Canada, as is so often the case with minority population groups. both sides would have been better off with their own ethnostates.
I’d name JFK, Nixon, and Bush Jr (not necessarily in that order), especially if the bar is half-way decent, not really decent.
I don’t think that is accurate description of his argument, although I only had a few minutes with the book in the bookshop yesterday (bookshop closed after half an hour there).
If I recall his statements of his argument:
Seapower state is asymmetric strategy for inherently weaker states to achieve “great power” status by directly away from the land, where they cannot achieve dominance.
Seapowers artificially create a different identity to landpowers, and this “sea identity” consciously infused to the culture.
Seapower results with hubris when they overextend (Thucydides discussion of Athens’ failure). This results to loss of connection to the land and kind of rootlessness.
Control mechanism/strategies of sea power states: oligarchic republics, concept of “limited war”, use of navy for protecting merchant shipping, inclusiveness of mercantile class and their objectives into elite, which allows for funding of seapower.
Main legacy of this today continues in Western, liberal worldview, democracy, even as no seapowers exist today.
Also there is not very much discussion (only a few pages) about Britain from 20th century. No discussion of political philosophy or ideas – seems as an assumption military forces and trade is determining everything.
This is very different to my view – that technological and economic development determines everything.
Overall seems he has an interesting idea of describing history (through the concept of seapower).
iirc Polk wanted to annex more territory though, the peace treaty negotiated by Nicholas Trist wasn’t really what Polk had ordered Trist to to.
I don’t think with the US the main danger is disintegration. The internal mess is a danger only if someone really untrustworthy, unreasonable, and generally shitty, like corrupt mad witch, comes to power. But when the Empire feels like a cornered rat (which, seeing how things are going now, is likely to happen within 10-15 years), I won’t bet much on our survival: bullies are bad losers, and there is no telling what whoever is in power at that time will do out of desperation.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/wy
According to that it’s just 84% non-hispanic white nowadays, presumably less so among the younger age cohorts (I vaguely remember having read some time ago that many of thoses western states in the US where you wouldn’t expect it have actually quite minority-heavy demographics among the youth).
Another important factor was that at the time the newly independent states, if they wanted to turn away from Russia, could only turn to the US. The US was also reluctant to leave hand grenades in the hands of the monkeys. Hence Russia got it all. Come to think of it, that was the last wise action by the US on the international arena.
Japanese can only get those two islands in their wet dreams. The 1990-s are gone, no more traitors at the helm in Russia.
The only answer is work. The US is still the best place in the world to do academic research, even though Congress does its level best to ruin American science. The US is already losing ground in basic research. Twenty years ago, if you tell your Chinese post-doc that you will send him/her back to China, this was a serious threat. Now they return voluntarily in droves. China is also luring non-Chinese scientists: they figured that it is necessary to get people who believe that science is about finding out the truth, not about pleasing the boss. The way things are going, in less than 10 years the US might no longer be the best place to do research.
In terms of scientific quality in basic research, British Universities are not even close to American ones today. But in 10-15 years Beijing University and Fudan in Shanghai might get ahead. We’ll see how serious China is about science.
For that matter Butina seems to be a bit of an Americanphile. The US mass media (MSNBC, CNN) comparison between the two is outrageous propaganda. Having hacks like John Brennan, Bill Browder and Steve Hall regularly appear on a matter like this, without a valid counter to them is schlock journalism.
Maria Butina’s open manner isn’t indicative of a spy, thereby explaining the hypocritical talking point made against her – proclaiming that she should’ve been registered in the US as a foreign agent. Plenty of folks in the US who’re essentially acting as foreign agents, without being registered as such.
Alexandra Chalupa comes from an anti-Russian leaning Ukrainian nationalist family. She made plenty of money with the DNC, for work that included coordinating with the Kiev regime to find compromising info on Trump via Manafort. I doubt she’s a registered foreign agent. Likewise with Bret Stephens, noting his very clear going to bat for Israel.
Butina favors the US approach to the issue of guns, inclusive of seeking for that trend to be evident in Russia – which currently has a comparatively more restrictive stance. How horrible! Meantime, that bigot Julia Ioffe can get away with saying (on MSNBC) that such a stance isn’t good, given how (as she put it) Russians drink.
Butina has been subjected to 24 hours of solitary confinement and strip searches, while suggestively being told that she stands to get better treatment by saying something that the prosecutors prefer.
No at least for now. Kazakhstan plays a somewhat double game with Russia/Russians, that (when all things are considered) serves Russian interests well enough.
Not wise to do too many things (like the matters of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea) that serve as propaganda fodder for others. Crimea was reunified largely on account of the brazen manner that Ukraine’s democratically elected prez was overthrown, followed by a series of anti-Russian leaning moves by the regime that took authority away from him.
“bullies are bad losers” – Very true.
Once I did with a friend 28 h non-stop drive form Oklahoma to New York. Just stops for gas, coffee and food. It was a horrible experience. At times when my friend was sleeping I drove with only one eye open because somehow it was easier than keeping them both open.
What has the making of a good game coming up in a few hours:
https://nhl.nbcsports.com/2019/01/04/u-s-facing-russian-test-at-wjc-after-surviving-upset-filled-quarters/
Will be aired live in the US on the NHL network at 4 PM, North American eastern time.
The whiter states are all being targeted, – it is just an extension of how white countries were targeted. In New Hampshire, I have seen pregnant Africans pushing strollers in villages that had their hayday before the Civil War. Near to a place where at one time, they tied 100 Oxen to a black school (with imported blacks) that was opened by race-mixing progressives, pulled it off its foundation, dragged it into a swamp and then burnt it.
I have seen the same thing in the county village in rural Ireland where half of my ancestors went to market their farm goods. No one can fool themselves and think it is only the cities, that the countryside is safe. Nowhere is safe.
What we are seeing is a trend. I don’t think it can be arrested, just reversed. Probably that will involve war.
I agree: long drives are very unpleasant, even to just be a passenger, and stretch your legs every 2 hrs or so. If you’re in an old car that doesn’t ride smoothly – you really feel it, like riding a camel or horse.
Only weaker in manpower terms though, both Athens and Britain were very rich for other reasons, which enabled their naval dominance.
Seems very dubious to me, but I’d have to look more at the examples in the book.
Is this unique to seapower? The Spartans ended up with exactly the same problem after defeating the Athenians. France in the 18th century was much more hubristic than Britain. I guess Venice could be considered hubristic (although then only in their expansion into the Terra Firma), but I don’t think Holland or Carthage were.
In Britain (19th and especially 18th century) and Athens, the merchant classes were only ever a very minor part of the actual governing elite. The Netherlands was split, although I believe that the ‘regent’ element of the governing elite actually ended up becoming more closed and further away from involvement in actual trade as time progressed.
It seems strange to put more normal states like Athens/Britain with city states like Venice/Carthage as their cultures/social structures are very different
But Athens was a city-state too, even if one with an unusually large citizen body and territory by the standards of Greece in the 5th century BC.
And its political system (direct democracy, many offices appointed by lot; certainly not an “oligarchic republic”) was rather exceptional, I don’t think it can be called “normal”.
Agreed though that Lambert’s category of “seapower state” doesn’t sound convincing (if Dmitry is representing it correctly).
You’re right that was a silly thing to say. What I meant was that, unlike Carthage/Venice, it wasn’t traditionally based on maritime trade but on its agricultural hinterland, which I think accounts for the differences with those city-states.
I expect that the Carthaginian oligarchy ended up becoming more dependent on landowning than trade as well, since I know they started forcing the natives into becoming agricultural workers for them, but there is so little evidence about Carthage that it is hard to tell.
Whelan’s story sounds as believable as fellow ex marine Lee Harvey Oswald. How does a supposed low level grunt with a larceny conviction end up being head of security at BorgWarner. Why the unusual interest in Russia?
https://eu.hometownlife.com/story/news/local/novi/2019/01/04/cia-whelan-russia-american-held-spy/2481027002/
Good work by Bellingcat publicising that foreign intelligence services purchase information from Russian sources.
I have not read the book, so my representation could be weak – as it is from reading some pages of it before the bookshop closed.
My assumption is that the book contains a lot of interesting and detailed discussion, in quite a high level.
But that the introduction/conclusion and argument parts of the books could be stupid – but still probably in an interesting way (I haven’t read before the perspective of the navy historian, who believes seapower can explain so much world history).
And Britain was more dominated by its capital city than other major countries in western Eurasia.
I thought Yeltsin got a promise from the US to support this, and Russia inheriting the USSR’s place in the NPT and other nuclear treaties like the ABM, SALT, START etc. treaties. The other republics also had to sign up to this before their independence was recognized by Russia. Yeltsin also made sure Russia would inherit the USSR’s seat at the UNSC.
So I would say that it was the wisest action by Yeltsin.
Taleb explicitly wrote several times that the 2008 crisis was not a black swan type event.
I think France was more dominated by Paris in the 19th century than Britain was by London, and still is even up till today quite possibly. (I think the same thing applies to Portugal and Lisbon)
Never read his stuff so will take your word for it.
In the 19th and later, yes.
But overall?
What is Parisian equivalent of the City of London?
Portugal is another former sea power.
The words “wise” and “Yeltsin” do not go together. Besides, the US since then ditched its obligations under missile treaties (Trump promised that the last one will be killed soon). Considering that Israel, India, Pakistan, and NK all have nukes, nuclear non-proliferation treaty is an empty joke. As to UNSC, who else out of 15 recognized and 6 unrecognized post-Soviet countries could have inherited that seat? Can you come up with a suggestion other than Russia that won’t be laughed out of court?
Paris is 30% of the French economy, London is only about 20% of the British
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Paris
Also England was more centralised long before having any sort of naval power. And many German and Italian little states were even more centralised.
Considering that dozens (most likely, several dozens) of countries could’ve built the bomb if they were allowed to (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, Iran, just to name a few obvious ones, but probably it wouldn’t be impossible for countries like Hungary or Romania or Bulgaria either, and even Saudi Arabia could hire a few Pakistani scientists if needed), it clearly isn’t.
New START still stands, but the main point is that Yeltsin made sure he could keep all the nukes and he’d have no nuclear neighbors. He found out that it’s a very strong US policy not to allow nuclear proliferation, and so he could trust the US that they’d help him to achieve that.
That pretty much guarantees Nixon had some african and amerindian admixture. Practically all old stock Americans, especially from the South, have it. Here’s his brother Ed:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2N7JKfSglxc/hqdefault.jpg
I think it’s more a matter of whether these countries are prepared to invest enormous resources into developing and making nukes. One can steal (or buy, which is about the same thing, as you buy from people, not the governments that funded their efforts) the design, but you have to spend a pretty penny on uranium enrichment. You have to be really desperate or feel under mortal threat (NK, India, Pakistan) to do that. Alternatively, you have to be a successful parasite sucking up huge resources from the host (Israel). Among the countries you named maybe KSA and Japan can afford it without ruining their economy in the process.
Are you sure that new START will be extended? President Trump has already attacked the treaty, claiming that it favored Russia and was “one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration”. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
We already have a reactor in Hungary which could produce plutonium if we wanted to. It would’ve provided greater security at lower costs than the recent “Zrínyi 2026” armed forces development program.
I’m not sure you are aware that nuclear weapons are in general cheaper than maintaining a decent army. You seem to overestimate the costs by several orders of magnitude, hence your idea that it’d ruin the German economy, of all things.
It won’t, probably, but I haven’t heard Trump promised to ditch it.
I am not a physicist, so maybe I overestimate the costs. So, you are saying that plutonium bomb is a poor man’s army? Maybe everyone should have it, then, particularly those under immediate threat of external aggression (e.g., Iran). There would be a limited number of those bombs in the hands of puny countries, but maybe just enough to deter the enthusiasts bringing democracy onto other people’s heads in 500 kg TNT installments. An interesting concept.
So what? The Moon is just 3 days away, it takes a 100 times longer to get to Mars. It makes a lot more sense to colonize the Moon first. Right now it looks like China will be First Nation to do that:
https://www.newsweek.com/china-prepares-moon-colony-keeping-students-lunar-palace-200-days-793557
https://gbtimes.com/living-on-the-moon-a-chinese-conceptual-lunar-base
https://static.gbtimes.com/uploads/files/2017-12/15/integrated-rigid-constructed-lunar-base-conception-rendering-L-CAST.PNG
I thought about that as well, iirc trade wasn’t even that important for the emergence and maintenance of Athenian seapower (which wasn’t financed by the profits of trade or colonies, but rather by the contributions of the allies/subjects in the Delian league). There wasn’t really much of an economic rationale for it, unlike with Venice where trade or the exploitation of economically viable colonies (e.g. sugar plantations on Crete) was central.
I think Dmitry should just pirate the book on Library Genesis, read it (in one setting), and write a detailed report about its content for us.
It is the same…
…, but London’s dominance is growing.
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-eu.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe1bb426e-fe05-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e521?source=next&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700
Just like Athens and Portugal.
Small states being more centralised is not unusual.
OTOH, major countries tend to be less with more than one major center/capital city.
The growing diversity in the US, and the Anglosphere in general, is a huge advantage in the competition for leader of the world. Every country on the planet is represented in the US. That’s probably why Russia has been instigating the racists of the alt-right.
Nuclear weapons are expensive currently, in part because it’s difficult to buy things necessary for them (they will ask question like “why do you even need it?”, for which you need expensive deception schemes and the likes), but mostly because it takes years to produce the necessary materials and designs and it would be quickly discovered, and your country would be put under sanctions. As Iran experienced. (Even though they were merely building something like “weapon building capability,” so they didn’t actually want to build the bomb.) In short, because of the NPT.
So that’s why no one is building nukes except those who have them.
We wuz Nixon! Wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt black, too, by any chance? Thomas Jefferson?
I think no one should be fawning about Obama as “the first black president.” It was clearly George Washington.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81L-3Tl0aKL._UX679_.jpg
The Duke of Wellington, the scourge of Napoleon, called his army “the scum of the cities and the scoutings of the shores”. The professional British Army has always been lower working class.
Yes, the initial seapower that was used to establish the empire was funded by the silver mines at Laurium.
It did make them money (at least in peace time) some of which was used to finance the Parthenon, but mostly I think via crude coercion.
There was also a strategic rationale to controlling access to the Black Sea through Byzantium, since without it the Athenians could be cut off from grain supplies (as they in fact were at the end of the Peloponnesian War).
I think it would be interesting to compare Corinth, which was much more of a genuine trading city-state, but unfortunately I don’t know enough about it. In Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World however, St Croix denies that any Greek city-state was dominated by its mercantile class.
Israel and South Africa, both small countries, developed atomic bombs. Israel even has the delivery triad (though it lacks global reach).
Sweden, another small country, designed a bomb as well and was ready to move to underground testing. The government however cancelled the program on grounds of cost (not that the cost would ruin the economy, but they had the ambitious goal of building one million new homes in a short period of time).
Now if you want a MASSIVE deterrent like the USA and USSR during the Cold War…yes, that gets very expensive. Not only do you need tens of thousands of warheads but you also need lots of missiles, bombers, submarines, bases, satellites, early warning systems, command and control equipment, etc.
Regarding your earlier comment–the French equivalent of The City would be La Defense. There are more Global 500 companies headquartered there than in New York City.
Yes, it was just exploitation of their allies and using their contributions (supposedly for the common defense) for Athenian purposes. iirc Athenian klerouchies were also established mostly for strategical-military reasons (control of strategic points, intimidation of restive allies etc.), not for genuinely economic reasons (apart from providing for Athenian citizens).
iirc this was also a major issue during the conflict with Philip of Macedon (who was able to block the straits) in the 4th century.
Neither do I. I suppose sources for it could be problematic (though probably much less so than for Carthage), and of course the general focus on Athens and Sparta (both rather atypical communities) and the classical era doesn’t help either.
Last time I checked Japan lost WWII. So did that other champion of homogeneity, Germany, which was crushed by the mongrels of the Soviet Union whose Founder was Lenin, whose Prophet was Marx and whose King was Stalin:
http://www.bolshevik.info/images/cache/234835bdef7ffd6d97e5ab1291affac2_w537_h634.jpg
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/young-Marx.jpg
https://s.s-bol.com/imgbase0/imagebase3/large/FC/0/2/9/1/1001004005631920.jpg
They will upload it but there is not torrent yet.
I would prefer to read in the bookshop (where there are two cafes). On the other hand, I am not a professional, trained historian, so do not read history texts in a critical way.
Secret testing of nuclear warheads would be another barrier, for the Hungarian nuclear weapons program. Underground nuclear testing would be probably their direction, but this can be apparent in seismic detection.
For Israel- South Africa, they also tested in the oceans near Antarctica. And even when a test was discovered by American satellites, it seems that America has tried to hide the story as politically inconvenient.
On the other hand, Hungary probably does not have enough American friends (at least in Washington) who would ignore the satellite or seismic data of their nuclear testing. Maybe if Hungarian-Americans had donated sufficiently to the Trump electoral campaign, there could have been an opportunity for this kind of “friendly ignoring” of data indicating nuclear tests.
The Waffen-SS was quite diverse by the end of the war, e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeri_SS_Volunteer_Formations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Handschar_(1st_Croatian)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Skanderbeg
Also various foreign forces, e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Arabian_Legion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Legion
And how did being ruled by all of these vibrant individuals work out for actual Russians?
…..and whose Poet Laureate was the part-African Pushkin. The Soviet worship of this son of Africa probably gave them a leg up in that continent during the Cold War competition for hearts and minds around the world, and forced America to pass the Civil Rights Act and open its doors to non-European immigrants.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BBNFBY/pushkin-alexander-661799-1021837-russian-author-writer-poet-portrait-BBNFBY.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B9PWGX/yaroslav-manukhin-portrait-of-alexander-pushkin-sketch-B9PWGX.jpg
https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2017/02/14/pushkin-soviet-god_701618
In place of nationless Marxism that rejected culture, national spirit, traditional statehood, and spirituality, Stalin decided to present the world with an almost classical culture-centric empire that had Pushkin at its heart.
Starting in 1922, annual official memorial services marked the anniversary of Pushkin’s death where he was described as a “Russian spring, Russian morning, Russian Adam,” and also compared to Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe.
Pushkin’s cult was promoted on an unprecedented level. Preparations for the anniversary involved everyone – academics, writers, composers, politicians and public figures, publishing houses, cinema companies, theaters, factories, as well as collective and state farms. Every single person in the country was to know that Pushkin is great! Pushkin is sacred!
New monuments to Pushkin were unveiled in Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. New streets, squares, schools, parks, subway stations, train stations, collective and state farms were either renamed after Pushkin or built in his honor. Artists painted giant canvases dedicated to Pushkin, composers wrote music singing his praises, and the leading theaters of Moscow and Leningrad competed in a race to make productions of Pushkin’s works.
On Feb. 10, 1937, the very day of the anniversary, an official gathering was held at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to mark the centenary of the death of Russia’s greatest poet. The entire Communist Party elite, including Stalin, were present.
The event was broadcast to the nation, and at the opening Andrei Bubnov, the People’s Commissar of Education and Chairman of the Pushkin Committee, exclaimed: “Pushkin is ours! It is only in a country of socialist culture that the name of the immortal genius is surrounded with ardent love; it is only in our country that Pushkin’s works have become a treasure for all the people.”
The glorification of Pushkin was complete, and the poet’s cult established. In the words of the philosopher Antonio Gramsci, the cult of Pushkin “cemented the popular forces,” uniting a multi-ethnic country in a common cultural space and thus becoming a most powerful imperial unifying force.
Too little, too late.
For the racist Nazis, the joy of victory:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5601/15402205166_86db693ab4_b.jpg
Turned into the agony of defeat, in a few short years:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4qcWRGIcYrY/UHPPatuk60I/AAAAAAAAAv4/B6fC9cW6wt8/s1600/brutal-american-soldiers-german-pow.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51LN3AB6WeL._SX345_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
I guess that guy Adelbert Holl did not particularly like being a POW for seven years. If you read this book, please tell me: did it ever occur to him that nobody actually invited him to Stalingrad? That no local was happy to see him there?
Just so everyone knows, Bliss’ pathetic inability to cope with the reality of black Americans’ limits by faking foreign examples is nothing new.
We Wuz Kangs from more than a century and a half ago:
https://ia802800.us.archive.org/12/items/acoloredmanround55759gut/55759-8.txt
It may be a better place to test technology. Low gravity can be an advantage for launch, and it has more solar potential. But I doubt it can really be colonized. It is unlikely 1/6 G is enough to prevent bones and muscles from wasting. It is almost certainly not enough for normal human development. Mars gravity might not be enough, but at least it is more substantial.
”B-but muh Ummah!”
https://www.amren.com/news/2019/01/syrians-celebrating-new-year-at-istanbuls-taksim-square-sparks-outrage/
Bliss, even if there were any intellectual basis to your kooky Afrocentrism, practical experience the world over demonstrates that it’s still handily defeated by colorism. Any one with access to the mulatto escape hatch doesn’t hesitate to take it. It may take some time, but the same thing is bound to occur in N. America. Blacks on bottom is just the way the gods wanted it.
My point was that Hungary could build a few nukes if it was allowed to. It is not allowed – it’d be sanctioned immediately if it started to build nukes. Without the NPT and the serious effort to prevent proliferation, Hungary could test its nukes openly.
I was replying to AnonFromTN’s comment that the NPT was supposedly a joke because India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel had nukes outside of it. Well, true, but without the NPT and the very serious efforts to keep it alive and strong we could have several dozens of nuclear powers. We don’t, because of the NPT.
A Russian cosmonaut lived in zero Gravity for over 14 months without losing his ability to walk unaided on Earth immediately upon landing. Therefore it is likely that humans can live on the Moon for years as long as they stay active which would be a helluva lot easier (and fun) to do on the surface of the Moon than in the Space Station.
Besides, Earth is only 3 days away….
Greg Cochran also weighed in the Taleb Question:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/taleb/
I have personally backed off from an on-ramp in Hungary to avoid a traffic jam.
I still don’t understand why it’s good to drive without breaks.
It’s probably also dangerous, because you arrive in a heavy traffic area dead tired. But the issue here is not really very long distance driving, but rather very long distance driving without half hour breaks.
By the way apparently newer batteries and chargers will be much better. Apparently the fastest charger prototype is roughly three times faster than the Tesla Supercharger, and they are working on batteries with several times larger batteries than the current ones. So probably range will increase to your average ICE range with just fifteen minutes of charging. (You can charge a very large battery only 50% using those very fast chargers and then take fifteen minute bathroom breaks every three hours. It’s much easier to charge a battery while it’s nearly empty, so the first fifteen minutes might take you two thirds of the way a half hour charge would take you. So it’s, say, half an hour to charge from 20% to 80%, then fifteen minutes will take you to 60% already. And if the battery range allows you to drive eight hours on the highway nonstop, then you can drive over three hours between 60 and 20%, with 15 minute breaks in between the three hour drives. Admittedly, this will likely only be available to luxury car buyers within the next 1-2 decades, but maybe it won’t take longer than that.)
The whole infrastructure of driving is built by the government anyway. It already mandates what types of emissions your car is allowed to make. I don’t see the issue here.
I’d take issue with the idea that antifragile doesn’t exist because those things are simply fragile to too much care or something. Humans require things like (within limits) often being exposed to extreme cold and heat which at the very least is perceived as mishandling. It’s also very different to be fragile to not being kept within narrow limits of temperature (like a cigar) or being fragile to being kept within too narrow limits (like a human who benefits both from regular sauna and winter swimming in cold water). It’s two different things, because one requires a dynamic approach and the other a static one.
Another issue is the children with mental illness part. It seems pretty obvious that children are overmedicated for personality traits and overall normal behaviors. It’s better to err on the side of less intervention. Not to mention “transgender” children, where twelve-year-olds are administered strong hormones.
Overall, on most points, this criticism of Taleb is correct, though.
Some people think it will be possible to build trains that go around in a circle at an incline, adding to the natural gravity to bring it up to 1 G. The idea is that pregnant women and kids aged 0-18 would live on these trains, while others might only have to spend regular short periods on them.
One benefit about rushing Mars is that one could establish better claim to it, since nobody ever landed anything but robots on it, though I think in the end, possession will be 9/10s the law, and Mars has a land area greater than earth, which might make it difficult to control.
I wonder how related the average Turk and Syrian are. I’d guess it is like the Germans and Dutch or something.
Funny how so many were virtue-signalling that Germany should take them in and not Turkey which had an empire which included Syria and has a similar culture. Though I believe Atatürk did purge a lot of the Arabic words.
Rather something like the Germans and the Greeks. The Syrians consist of several different ethnic groups and tribes, Syria is a multicultural paradise where they are pretty unrelated to each other, let alone the Turks.
Fun little story about EU ideology and Holocaust cult from Germany/Austria:
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/themen/robert-menasse-hat-auschwitzer-hallstein-rede-erfunden-15967837.html
Jewish-Austrian novelist Robert Menasse has written a novel “Die Hauptstadt” (“The capital” = Brussels) whose heroes are several EU commissars; it was awarded the Deutscher Buchpreis in 2017.
Menasse celebrates the EU as a project for overcoming nationalism by dissolving nation states, and claims that the first president of the European commission Walter Hallstein held a speech in Auschwitz in 1958 where he expressed that view (“Abolishing nations is the European idea”).
Menasse also treated this alleged speech as a fact in several interviews and newspaper articles, so he can’t claim it’s just a fictional device.
But of course it’s completely made up, there never was a Hallstein speech in Auschwitz in 1958 (which would have been completely impossible at the time, given the Cold war and the unresolved issues about Germany’s lost eastern territories).
It’s quite telling that this obvious absurdity was uncovered only after some time, shows the power of mythology over the supposedly educated classes.
If the European idea is to abolish nations, then giving the speech at Auschwitz only makes sense.
After all, wasn’t the objective of Auschwitz to abolish the Jewish nation?
https://cdn130.picsart.com/260832909030212.png
Apparently Menasse’s pro-EU novel features a Polish self-styled “soldier of Christ” (with connections to Polish clergy) who commits terroristic murders.
Lol, I suppose that means Poland is top of the list of nations to be abolished. How surprising.
Turkomans are Turks, Kurds on both sides of the border are Kurds. They do hate each other, for centuries now. The other citizens of Syria are not related to anyone in Turkey.
These people totally lack self-awareness.
Surely, Germans and Greeks are too far apart, if we are talking DNA. Syria and Turkey were both early farming regions, their DNA must be quite similar. Though I believe it gets a bit hotter in Syria – they may average smaller heads.
Turkey is quite diverse overall, probably moreso than Syria, if you take into account its full geography, but most of the conflict in Syria I would classify as tribal or religious, rather than truly ethnic.
The idea that Turks would not welcome their neighbors into their own country probably reflects rather poorly on the longterm consequences of bringing Syrians into Germany – where they are no doubt already forming political coalitions with the Turks there against the natives.
Menasse is even more extreme than I had thought:
https://www.welt.de/print/welt_kompakt/print_literatur/article168235899/Meine-Idee-ist-eine-europaeische-Hauptstadt-Auschwitz.html
He’d like to turn Auschwitz into the capital of Europe, so that it becomes a negative, anti-national foundation myth forever. Of course he claims that he views the Holocaust merely as the worst expression of the more general phenomena nationalism and racism (I suppose that’s meant to assure us his views aren’t colored by petty Jewish ethnocentrism).
He’d also like Israel and all Mediterranean countries (e.g. the Maghreb states) to join the EU.
It’s depressing that such madness is applauded by a large part of Germany’s political and media class.
Sometimes you hear very elderly Jews who lived in Germany assert that they were all loyal Germans until Hitler – though they quickly seemed to relish the idea of bombing German cities and using their language skills to help the Allies. By now, I think the idea is (at least in the aggregate – and in an active sense) quite silly. There isn’t a single country on earth, composed of other people that they were loyal to. Not Poland, not Russia, not America. Not the UK.
Perhaps, that is the problem of any minority – I don’t know. Or maybe, it is in the nature of politics that active attack is much more successful and visible than passive loyalty.
I don’t think so. Chinese in Southeast Asia are high-IQ, control much of the economy, and occasionally have been pogromed, but they don’t seem to try to shape public debate in the ways Jews often do in gentile nations.
Some people really hate Poland
https://archive.vn/20120716134323/http://thejc.thejc.com/articles/coren-launches-his-own-assault-poland
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/aug/08/pressandpublishing.thetimes
I’d like to see someone do an in depth analysis of the post-war profusion of the Holocaust – monuments, political transcripts, newspapers, books. How it compares to other monuments of mass deaths – I’m thinking most specifically of WWI, which seems to have a lot of war memorials. But also many other things – the Armenian Genocide, the Potato Famine.
There would be so many factors to compare. I think there would be some similarities, but I think the differences would be quite profound.
Wouldn’t Poland be an excellent sacrifice for the European project, a great opportunity to set a warning example to all the other old nationalists?
When there’s a European army, it should be sent to Poland and put an end to Polish nationalism. As 1939-1945 has shown, nationalism means war and shouldn’t be tolerated.
I think it is interesting how gypsies are a kind of mirror Jews.
They are both rootless, share no loyalty to their host nations, engage in (partial) mimicry and live off the honest labour of their moral betters.
However, while Jews have grand ambitions of control and destruction gypsies are relatively docile and content to merely flich to fund their bizarre primitive lifestyle.
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/01/05/ap_19005445572613_wide-378ab0f05f327324c401de446980f4b7d79a4df5-s800-c85.jpg
It’s official now, Ukrainian Orthodox church gains autocephaly and the long awaited Tomos from Patriarch Bartholomew. One thing is absolutely clear: there’s no going back.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/05/682504351/ukrainian-orthodox-church-officially-gains-independence-from-russian-church
Merry Christmas!
They are not docile, just dumb. They can be very aggressive, especially if they outnumber the Gadjo.
Then once nationalists were crushed in Europe, the European defense forces could also be used to crush dictators around the world, and transport the refugees back to Europe for the victory parade. This is how we could promote peace inside and outside Europe.
Paging Guillaume Tell.
The Hungarian press (pro Orbán) reported that a former French minister, member of the Greens, has said that the developed countries should restrict their birth rates the most, because they pollute the most, and also because that would enable them to accept more refugees (or even any types of immigrants? he supposedly used the phrase “those who are knocking our doors”).
Orbán’s press is pretty incompetent, so is it true? Did he actually say that? Is he an important politician, or already retired? What are the reactions?
I think you’re wrong. Turkey consists of maybe 70% ethnic Sunni Turks, 20% Kurds, the rest Alawites. None of them have the sub-Saharan admixture of the Sunni Arabs, which pushes the latter very far from the Turks and from the non-Muslim Syrians genetically (and I think even the Shiites have some African blood), who didn’t have African concubines at all.
But because of extreme endogamy, Middle Eastern populations are pretty distant from each other, and this has nothing to do with geography. I’m not sure about the Alawites in Turkey, but I think even they are only loosely related to the Syrian Alawites.
So no, Turks are not related to Syrian Sunni Arabs much, while the Turkish government is Islamist and is hostile to the rest.
Paging Swarthy Greek.
Someone wrote somewhere that Taleb doesn’t look Greek at all. I don’t know about it, but to me it seems that he could be within the normal range of variation in Greece, though Greeks are not always swarthy at all. (And I think some of the swarthiness is environmental: they have very long summers, lots of sunshine and so have ample opportunities to get tanned.)
So, how Greek does Taleb look?
Probably it is worse in Eastern Europe. The ones I met in France and Belgium were pestering swindlers, but gypsies in Scandinavia are mostly stationary beggars.
Apparently, according to their own testimony, they make twice as much begging in Sweden as they do working (if we should grant them that dubious distinction) in Sofia.
https://youtu.be/obNbNyuF9JM
I have wondered if these earlier groups presaged the later mass migrations into Europe, and, if so, what exactly that represents. Both groups seem to have grown massively from their founding populations. Was that because Europe was a more fertile land – had a higher (even if marginally, lifestyle)? Or its people were higher trust and more susceptible? Or the divided political geography that allowed them to be kicked out of one place and into another? Or their distinctiveness which made them unassimilable.
It seems almost like an existential question. But, it is curious how there are supposedly many gypsies in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. There are also supposedly gypsies in India. And then there are Irish Travellers, who don’t seem to be related to gypsies at all, but seem to be native but endogamous – one wonders why there are not equivalents in the rest of Europe. Is it just because gypsies never got there? That the rest of these people will wipe out the white underclass or amalgamate with them?
I think there must be some lessons in these things.
I would say Greek-Americans tend to be be lighter skinned than some of their compatriots or even some of the Greeks who have moved into Northern Europe recently.
I have known many proud Greeks, but never any who claimed to be Bronze Age East Med. I think Taleb knows he is a mutt.
I try to think of what carrots could be used to get blacks to segregate. One would be the ability to write their own proud history without anyone questioning it.
Another idea is free prolefeed. We could produce heaps of entertainment for blacks at a fraction of their current social cost. Movies like “Black Panther” that promoted African utopia. Videogames patched to contain only black characters. Anime perhaps recolored by computer. All free to stream in certain places – Africa and Haiti – but blocked elsewhere.
There definitely should be a humanitarian intervention by European forces in Myanmar, to protect the Rohingya (this could also show Muslims that Europe isn’t Islamophobic, and that there’s no reason for Islamism). If we avert our eyes from evil, we haven’t truly learned the lessons of the Shoah and become complicit.
as I understand it, Alevis in Turkey and Alawites in Syria are actually distinct religious communities, I’m not sure there is much of a connection at all (apart from the fact that both are regarded as heretics by Orthodox Sunnis):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alevism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites
Well, it’s on French newssites as well:
https://fr.news.yahoo.com/prot%C3%A9ger-l-apos-environnement-l-150434579.html?guccounter=1
Apparently he even proposed that France’s natalist policies should be reversed (that is familes should get less support the more children they have).
Greens really seem to be total scum everywhere.
Have not any of you guys travelled in the Southern regions for your vacation?
Just walk around in the city when you are there, look at the colours of the native peoples.
Native peoples today are a bit of a mix of differently coloured races in most of those Southern countries (with even light and brown people together in the same family), because of obvious mixing of different races.
But you can invariably see a lot of brown people who look similar to Taleb, if you are walking around in the street of Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel/Palestine, and I guess also (I have not been to subsequent countries) in Northern Middle East (e.g. Turkey, Lebanon, Syria) and Caucasus and Iran.
–
Lighter brown appearance like Taleb usually located in the space 30 to 40 degrees latitude. And facial appearance, natively in areas about -15 to 75 degrees East longitude.
Taleb is from Lebanon where his hometown/city according to Wikipedia is 34 degrees latitude north. Probably he is exactly the best colour of brown, for 34 degrees latitude people (before the invention of sunscreen).
If you were tracking immigration of people in recent centuries, this is probably one of the easier methods just to look at their melanin. I.e. fact people in Lahore are so much blacker than light-brown ancient natives of Crete, even though Lahore is only 4 degrees South of Crete (probably because of vast immigration of Indian-originating Muslims to Lahore?)
Obviously only migration including change of latitude (such as probably explains darkness of Lahore people).
Orban, if he really was an evil genius, would still test nuclear weapons secretly.
Underground nuclear weapons testing could probably be detected by the seismic detectors of European neighbour countries.
Testing in the abandoned oceans would probably be his choice – but requires the detonation avoiding the American detection satellites which would cover the area around every 90 minutes.
I just wonder how Hungary could reach the sea to embark the ships…
Is that sarcasm, or what? There is Tomos, but no autocephaly, just direct rule from Istanbul (Bart calls himself a patriarch of Constantinople, but Constantinople does not exist for many centuries now). Anyway, retired captain of Turkish army Bart knows what he is doing: the new Church has no “Orthodox” in its name, and the money flow is prescribed to go to him. We can congratulate him with a good swindle (although, as Russian saying has it, “the most important thing in the professional thief is to run away in time”).
Listen Janissary, the next stop for you should be a Turkish mosque. Are you even a Christian?
The official, new name of the church is ‘The Orthodox Church of Ukraine’, so I don’t know where you get off stating that ‘the new church has no’Orthodox’ in its name. As to the supposed insignificance of the church in Istanbul, here is an easy primer for an ignoramus like you to watch:
https://youtu.be/K6ZXxgjKk2o
You are not dumb but you suffer from Ukraine derangement syndrome – you say really bizarre things about Ukraine.
It’s actually called Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Orthodoxy is emphasized more than nationality. As it should be.
By Orthodox doctrine, this “church” is schismatic. Schism is considered a mortal sin in Orthodoxy. Only two (out of 80+) members of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church joined it.
Not to mention that this vaunted Tomos did not actually give the Ukrainian church an autocephaly: it cannot brew its own miro (has to get it from Istanbul) and has to ask Bart to resolve any conflicts within it. Key point is, the money should go to Istanbul (Constantinople does not exist, period; Saint Sophia in Istanbul was desecrated and converted into a mosque, although there are still some Christian painting on the ceiling, now used as tourist attraction). The fools believe in autocephaly, but the fools would believe anything.
To answer another Ukie, I do not believe in any fairy tales, including Jewish ones (Old Testament) and Aramaic ones (New Testament; mostly known in Greek translation). From my perspective, there are too many gods to take them seriously.
Anyway, as Ukrainian lawyer Tetiana Montian (who also does not believe in any fairy tales) rightly asked, “did anybody’s dick get longer with this Tomos?”
Basically, the ruin of Ukraine continues: the religious war is already brewing. It was added to all other problems facing Ukraine.
Porky still hopes against hope to win the presidential elections, which his masters did not let him cancel. He now plans a tour of Ukraine with the so-called Tomos: drowning man is clutching at straws.
This is exactly what I was trying to inform our friend suffering from ‘Ukraine derangement syndrome’. Anyway, I’m sitting here listening to the Bandurist Capella sing Ukrainian Christmas carols – what a beautiful album – waiting to sit down to Christmas eve dinner. I wish everybody here, and especially you and our host Anatoly, a most glorious and peaceful Nativity season:
Speaking of derangement, if I am deranged, what do you call current Ukraine? Stark staring mad?
Your idea of Ukraine’s current situation is certainly deranged and stark staring mad.
Likewise for you!
There is such thing as history. Save your comment and look at it three years from now. Not that I hope that it would help. A lot of people in the South never understood that they’ve lost the Civil War more than 150 years ago.
Wrong, but Sovoks and atheists certainly think so.
This Church is in communion with Constantinople, the most senior of the Orthodox Churches.
This is like the claim that there was no Orthodoxy in its name.
Autocephalous Churches of Estonia, Poland and Czechoslovakia can’t do this either. Ukraine’s Church once did this and it is likely a separate Tomos can restore this.
Wrong. It can turn to Constantinople with respect to questions of dogma and canons. But the Ukrainian Church has its own Church court that decides internal matters without interference. Unlike, for example, the Autocephalous Church in Czechia and Slovakia whose courts are obligated to have supervision from its Mother Church.
LOL, where does it state this?
Spoken like a typical man of the Russian Orthodox Church. Atheist, but Orthodox atheist. I wonder if Kirill has a similar idea?
Here the derangement continues.
Indeed. Comments about Ukraine by people like you are very funny after time goes by.
Here is Saker in 2015:
“Folks in the western Ukraine are already seriously considering demanding their own special autonomy status. As for Odessa with Saakashvili in charge and the daughter of Egor Gaidar as Deputy Governor, it will inevitably explode, especially since the USA officially pays their salaries.”
Dimitri Orlov writing in 2016:
“Even a cursory look at what is happening in the Ukraine clearly shows that Stage 5 has already been reached, quite a while ago, really. What comes next is basically Somalia. But a big, really big, Somalia, with millions of assault rifles circulating in the population, with major industrial sites capable of triggering another Chernobyl-like disaster, with various death-squads (private or semi-official) freely roaming around the country and imposing their rule with armored vehicles and heavy machine guns.”
LOL.
An article which a good number of Svido’s will agree with:
https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2019/01/02/a-way-out-of-the-orthodox-churchs-present-crisis-by-antoine-arjakovsky/?fbclid=IwAR1jkAKR_RXpMjoVbjt4K-OYoHRXi_00SfGc-9M3xNDFmyq_JJuimmXJ_OU
Excerpt –
At last notice, the ROC-MP to my knowledge hasn’t taken jurisdiction in Crimea, the rebel held Donbas territories, while recognizing the Georgian Orthodox Church’s jurisdiction in South Ossetia and Abkhazia – territories recognized as independent states by Russia.
If anything, the UOC-KP and UGCC carry-on in a more politicized manner than the MP affiliated churches, whether in Russia or elsewhere. It’s a high point of hypocrisy for the author to present the Crimean issue as he did without mention to the non-condemnation of Western and some other religious bodies concerning how some support Kosovo’s separation from Serbia – “an obvious violation of international law.”
Crimea might still be part of Ukraine, were it not for the foolish manner in how Yanukovych was overthrown, inclusive of some of the antics that happened immediately thereafter on the part of a good number of those who contributed and/or supported his getting overthrown – in contradiction to the internationally brokered power sharing agreement between Yanukovych and his main opponents.
Excerpt –
The Kiev regime can’t be reasonably trusted on such a matter. It’s interference in a church matter blatantly contradicts the idea of the separation between church and state. The sheer arrogance of this author to okay a name change of a church not made by that church – rather its opponents, for the purpose of trying to further diminish it. The name change at issue puts forth the word Moscow, used by anti-Russian propagandists for a negative basis.
The UOC-MP functions quite independently of the MP, while having a tri-lingual website, much different from what has been evident at the UOC-KP, inclusive of painted religious murals in a church that positively depict the Azov militia, the trampling of a two headed eagle and the still living Filaret as a great historical figure.
For good reason, Bart’s Pope like action on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is something that isn’t supported by most of the national Orthodox churches.
Svido’s are good at cherry pickling the faulty prior commentary that goes against their slant. All the more reason to be as accurate as possible:
http://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea
So much for the establishment Leonid Bershidsky and Keith Gessen props, as something different (relatively speaking) from some of the standard anti-Russian BS regularly getting the nod.
I think political divisions are an important root cause.
Both Jews and Gypsies had a tendency (generally speaking) to be expelled, killed or forcibly assimilated by Western European governments in the Middle Ages, which caused many of them to migrate eastwards, were the authorities saw them more in terms of the labour they could provide.
Traditionally, I think Gypsy groups would often pick up a lot of underclass Europeans. Probably there is some truth in the old folk stories of people joining gypsy carnivals.
I remember reading that even as late as early post-Communist Romania gypsies would take unwanted children born from the results of Ceaușescu’s expansive natal policy.
Assimilation and intermarriage would also explain the comparatively light skin tones of some of them.
The gypsies who could assimilate into mainstream European society have probably already done so long ago, so they are as a group most likely going to get worse from now on as dysgenic breeding patterns continues.
For similar reasons why the USSR did not bother annexing Communist-ruled Poland.
Having bunch of Russian nationalists in the “Ukrainian” Orthodox Church under Moscow is useful for Moscow. If this “Ukrainian” Church were to agree to join the OCU, how quickly do you think Moscow would take Crimea under its wing?
Only Moscow and the Churches under it (like the Polish one, led by a Commie snitch Sawa), and Serbia, oppose. Antioch looks to oppose also. Romania, Cyprus, Jerusalem are leaning towards Constantinople. Georgia is still unknown, it seems to be blackmailed with Abkhasia.
Why do you oppose truth in advertising? Are you opposed to warnings of health risks on certain products, also?
No need for your sour grapes Mickey. Look at the smiling faces of the parishioners and well-wishers within the historic St. Sophia Cathedral, where the first display of the historic Tomos is in full glorious view for all to see:
https://youtu.be/3Dbk1dNqM2Q
Fortunately, not any pro-Russian fifth columnist activity to mar this very happy celebration
Do not try to shrink me, Gypsy. I serious.
Getting more and more confirmations that Trump made a U-turn on Syria, again. He now claims that withdrawal of US troops is fake news, made up by New York Times!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1082289526339448832
In the US, you often see this very weird warning label: may cause cancer in California. It is an interesting commentary on the politics of that state and perhaps the future politics of the whole of America.
The label says “known to the State of California”.
It looks ridiculous, but it’s good legal writing.
And while there is a lot to bash California on, the leadership California shows on certain environmental and health issues isn’t bad.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/general-info/cancer-warning-labels-based-on-californias-proposition-65.html
See you in three years, then. If we are still alive, that is.
This only concerns Sweet-and-Low (which is saccharine, the oldest sugar substitute on the market). It sure is ridiculous, but so are many California-specific things. Then again, the US is a lawsuit culture. This warning on Sweet-and-Low is no more ridiculous that the warning on cups of McDonalds coffee that it is hot and may cause injury, which appeared after some dumbbell poured hot coffee into an unintended orifice and then sued McDonalds.
Statewide propositions are an interesting business because they give the lie to democracy. Some pass but are never implemented. California had Prop 187, defunding illegals. In 2000, Taxachusetts voted to lower the state income tax by a small amount – never happened.
The overabundance of lawyers was probably one of the earlier modern developments which showed the US is doomed. And so many pols are lawyers to start with, not to mention judges starting out the same way. The main task of lawyers often seeming to be to obscure the truth.
The overabundance of blood-sucking lawyers is not a specific US thing, it’s a general Anglo-Saxon thing. Remember Charles Dickens “Bleak House”?
I believe Pakistan averages high UV penetration. It has something to do with average cloud cover, as well as latitude. In summer, I often feel like I’m in the wrong UV zone, but to live in the right one in this hemisphere, I’d have to live in some godforsaken part of Canada, where the yearround snow on the ground would increase the UV anyway. Not to mention the crazy amount of daylight hours in summer.
The woman was actually injured by the coffee in question, which was in fact hot enough to cause third degree burns. She had to get skin grafts as a result of her injuries. The idea that this woman was simply a litigious dingbat was successful PR by McDonald’s after the fact.
https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts
As a result of this lawsuit, McDonald’s (and its competitors) now put the cream and sugar in the coffee for you before they give you the coffee. The coffee comes in an insulated cup with a securely attached lid.
Lawsuits can and do get ridiculous, but they’re the only reliable way to hold powerful institutions accountable. It’s a venue that’s available to anyone and requires no lobbying or political power. Because victory means payouts, it also means that those with modest resources have access to legal remedy as well (lawyers will take good cases on contingency).
There’s a reason that international business almost always chooses Anglo-Saxon countries (or those with Anglo-Saxon legal systems, like Singapore) as a legal venue for disputes.
I am no fan of McDonald’s, but that lawsuit was utterly ridiculous. Coffee was meant to go into the mouth, not that other orifice. I am pretty sure if you put other foods or drinks there, the results won’t be agreeable. But if you write on every piece of food and drink that it should be put into the mouth, not that other orifice, I’d think that they consider my IQ clinically low. Maybe I can even sue them for defamation. What do you think?
I like Dickens, but never read that one.
I think there was something more pernicious which appeared earlier in the US – lawfare. Racial warfare through the courts. And since there are more black criminals, there are more lawyers. The US has about 3x per capita the amount of the UK. It fed into a general culture.
It is as Tacitus said : the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
“Bleak house” is supposedly unfinished, but it is Dickens at his best. From my perspective, a lot better than Oliver Twist and other “boy stories” that remind one of Bollywood movies.
Tacitus was right, IMHO.
She spilled the coffee into her lap and it caused her third degree burns that required skin grafts. Yes, food and beverages go into your mouth. No doubt this lady was planning to drink her coffee. But, amazingly, sometimes people spill or drop things.
My position, and that of the jury, is that coffee served to you in a drive-through (or, really, anywhere) shouldn’t put you at risk of third degree burns. Furthermore, McDonald’s was aware of the issue as there had already been hundreds of other injuries yet the company chose to do nothing.
And, this episode aside, you should be a fan of McDonald’s.
FYI, vaunted Tomos is being recalled to Istanbul (apparently, Constantinople in a parallel Universe), as it will be valid only after all members of Bart’s Holy Synod sign it. When it becomes valid, the Ukrainian church it is intended to create is much less independent than Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) is now. Yet another Pyrrhic victory of the puppet regime. Most fitting, like all Porky’s achievements.
Sorry, I am not a fan of McDonald’s. Even on the road I go to other places, such as Taco Bell, Waffle House, even Dunkin Doughnuts (their coffee is much better, BTW).
However, I am a fan of common sense. If I drop a hammer and injure my toe, I think it would be my fault, not the fault of whoever made that hammer.
My common sense tells me not to serve liquids to people that cause third degree burns. Common sense is in fact the basis of Common Law.
As far as the hammers go, there’s a reason today that OSHA requires that people wear safety toe shoes in industrial workplaces.
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.136
McDonald’s coffee has gotten a lot better since that lady injured herself (in those days it was awful, but so was almost all coffee served in America). It’s now made from arabica beans and has good flavor. It’s weak, but if you get a McCafe drink (they have cappuccinos and lattes now) you can request extra espresso shots which eliminates that problem. Biggest issue with the McCafe drinks is that the cashiers are surprised when you don’t want some sickeningly sweet syrupy favor as most of their customers do.
“kill all the lawyers” is a line from Shakespeare.
So, he was not just a great playwright, but prescient, as well.
McCafe is better than McDonald’s, but it’s still a far cry from coffee. Speaking of coffee, you get better quality at any gas station in Italy than at Starbucks in the US. Much cheaper, too.
And now he is supposed to get an award from the state Rhineland-Palatinate*.
https://twitter.com/rlpNews/status/1082290888959770624
“unreserved recognition of facts is part of the foundation of values of our liberal public.”
Menasse blames his lie on trusting hearsay.
*run by people from the party of this guy:
https://twitter.com/MartinSchulz/status/938731987782832129
You’re using language that makes it sound like this was some kind of exotic substance that a normal human couldn’t be expected to know about. Wiki says that this coffee was served at between 82–88 degrees. Domestic kettles, which she would almost certainly have had experience of using, take water to 100 degrees; IMHO she should’ve known better. A big problem with common law is that the sentiment of the moment holds sway over decisions, creating precedents and there are no brakes to this process. A couple of decades earlier and that case would’ve been dismissed fast. Inflation of “duty of care” to ridiculous extremes is pernicious in Anglo countries.
Hopefully we are all alive and healthy!
Since the purpose of legislatures is making laws it is logical and correct for legislatures to be full of lawyers. Ideally they would use their professional knowledge to pass the laws that the people want and remove or fix the ones the people do not want.
The situation is different for the president, whose job involves much more than laws.
Fingers crossed.
I think it is interesting that the UK only got an ‘independent’ Supreme Court in the early 21st century. And now, even though it has only existed for a decade, it is already subversive.
Which leads me to suspect that a well-functioning society is more dependent on tacit customs than ‘proper’ institutions.
The spirit is more important than the letter.
The UK only got an ‘independent’ Sumpreme Court a decade ago, and not surprisingly, it has led to precisely the same kind of chicanery as in America.
And that UOC hasn’t broken away from the MP, despite constantly being pressured to do so. The heavy handed attempt to have its name changed is a sign of how that preference isn’t so popular. BTW, the Belarusian Orthodox Church calls itself such, while being MP affiliated.
Sivdos can have a way of contradicting themselves. On the one hand, they want respect for their territory. Had the more established UOC simply called itself the ROC from the get go, the Svidos would tap dance on how it doesn’t reflect the territory of Ukriane.
Having a bunch of Svido’s in the Poroshenko/Filaret preferred church keeps a good number of folks away from that entity, with its painted in church mural glorifying Azov and Filaret, while pouncing on a two headed eagle. In contrast, the more established UOC appears less political, while having a tri-lingual website. This UOC elects and appoints its own officials independent of the ROC-MP. This isn’t enough for the Svido extremists.
To date, most of the national Orthodox churches haven’t supported Bart’s Pope like decision.
If anything, the Svidos have served as a fifth column for the anti-Russian machinations of outside agitators. The more established UOC’s continued existence is a healthy counter to that hate mongering.
http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=879431
Of course it hasn’t. It’s an arm of Moscow, why would it?
Truth is a good thing. It is a Church under Moscow. It includes parishes in lands that are no longer Ukrainian, and not populated by Ukrainians. Calling itself a Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being dishonest. Call it what it is – Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine – and let people decide where they go knowingly.
Nor have they opposed it.
Your comments on this matter are a combo of being dishonest and idiotic. On a somewhat lighter note:
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/sergs_inf/19316140/5759749/5759749_600.jpg
Better:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DuilSRmWsAAAw11.jpg
In 2003, Massachusetts was the first state in the US to legalize gay Marriage. There was a lot of money involved, but it was initially done by the state supreme court.
What was interesting was that the chief justice was actually a woman from South Africa, who had agitated in her college days to end white rule. She had helped destroy South Africa, gotten the hell out of it, and then helped bring globohomo to the US.
Nowhere is safe from centre-left kritarchy
http://www.ansa.it/webimages/img_700/2019/1/7/b9ecc482ca82833547b318f8026dbb21.jpg
You’re absolutely correct, Mickey. After reviewing the history of the UOC (MP), it becomes absolutely evident that those dumb Ukrainians had absolutely no reason to look for any so called ‘Tomos’ outside of the brotherly unity of the Russian nation (Big, Small, White). They already received more than an adequate deal from Moscow in 1943:
https://durdom.in.ua/public/main/photos2/2019-01/photo_79200.jpg
You know that our resident ‘Independent Foreign Policy Analyst’ Mike Averko still steadfastly maintains his allegiance to the ‘legitimate’ president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych? 🙂
Unfinished novels are given a bad name in modern times. I swear, sometimes they dig up the bones of a famous author and put a pen in the skeleton’s hand. Still, I am a big fan of “The Aeneid.”
Of movies, I generally find that there is no real safe harbor from the mediocrity of Hollywood. To my mind, that is a really big branding opportunity for someone. Still, I do enjoy watching the better East Asian movies sometimes for their lack of diversity tropes. I’ve only ever seen two Bollywood movies.
“Bleak house” unfinished is better than 99% of books finished and published.
All Bollywood movies are “rugs to riches” stories, just like Dickens “boy stories”.
Hollywood used to make decent movies. Unfortunately, that was many years ago (e.g., see “Casablanca” made in 1942). Now they seem to have completely run out of imagination. That’s why they generate a lot or remakes, or even remakes of previous remakes. When I see ads for “new” movies on TV (I don’t watch it, so this happens rarely, at airports or hotels), I have a feeling that I have already seen every frame at least 10 times. Last time I went to the movie theater for 2004 (saw Fahrenheit 9/11; not that I learned a lot of things I didn’t know; besides, Moore’s direction is poor quality).
Interesting chart about Ukrainian economy:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DweHUqRX0AUVJh-.jpg
The bigger white column shows annual value of labor remittances from Ukrainians working abroad. The smaller “striped” column shows annual level of FDI in the Ukraine.
One can see how the rise in remittances was accompanied by a decline in foreign investment. FDI is set to reach record low in 2018. Apparently, even Russian businessmen are losing interest in the Ukraine.
Not at all, as Yanukovych is the wrongly overthrown past, whose comments aren’t dramatically used by the UOC, which is loosely affiliated with the MP. Ditto the other MP churches. The Thomas post with the photographed individuals, astutely mocks the cheapening of what Bart symbolically represents.
In any event, Poroshenko is likely going down. There’re sane people in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine like Ukraine’s chief rabbi whose posted comments at this thread, you’ve conveniently (in line with your warped position) have ignored.
Russia & Britain in WW I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ra6R-iPDI&feature=youtu.be English
https://yadi.sk/mail?hash=UhaL5ykQkNi%2B49cH4qmgvK40zv6Wq8beFM3wSB3oqaJteU%2BgiQfmFguMrsKuAm0Eq%2FJ6bpmRyOJonT3VoXnDag%3D%3D Russian
You’re still the only phony shedding huge crocodile tears for Vikor Yanukovych, the known mobster who spent time behind bars for petty theft and for mauling a woman. Even his own party members disowned him (something that you’re still not willing to do):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
The only one who deserves to be mocked, is you Mickey, for posting such shallow comments that reveal the true paucity of character that you possess. Why don’t you head up a ‘sympathy for the devil’ campaign and try and ressurect Yanukovych. You’ll have better luck with Skaropadsky than with Yanukovych – both relics of bygone eras. Get real Mickey!
But I’m the real deal, much unlike yourself.
Pointing out that the democratically elected Yanukovych was overthrown under coup like circumstances, as he sought the best possible deal for Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia and the West, isn’t on par with “shedding crocodile tears” for him.
While the concept of “economic complexity” has some utility, it’s hard to take that seriously when Russia is ranked 42nd, immediately after Bosnia & Herzegovina. Because:
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/rankings/country/eci/
He was voted out of office, he ran from Ukraine like the coward that he was and was responsible for giving the orders to kill over a hundred protesters on the streets of Kyiv. The only real deal is that Yanukovych was a looser and anybody who tries to defend him is an even bigger looser, and that includes you, Mickey! 🙁
Such is the spin in your convoluted Svido mind. Yanukovych was overthrown under coup like circumstances, just before he signed a power sharing agreement, which was essentially violated by the side which overthrew him.
Saying that he was then voted out of office thereafter, is on par with the kind of coups that have occurred elsewhere.
As Ivan Kachanovski has detailed, there’s good reason to surmise that the murdered protestors and government employees in Kiev was perpetuated by some seeking to overthrow Yanukovych.
It’s too bad that your only utility in life is to play the role of a Kremlin Stooge, Mickey. Another stooge like character, Paul Manafort, who was paid much more extravagantly than you to try and whitewash the reputation of Yanukovych is now languishing in a US jail. Yanukovch himself has been given the opportunity to clear hiss reputation several times, but most recently feigned a tennis injury that precluded his attending a court hearing. Yanukovych – Manafort – Averko – the pyramid reaches all the way down to the gutter.
Your utility in life is that of a svido troll, babbling pretty the same tripe over and over again.
On the subject of getting paid well, the Ukrainian nationalist US born Alexandra Chalupa, received tens of thousands from the DNC, for work that included trying to find negative info on Trump and his campaign during the 2016 US presidential election. That work included coordinating with Kiev regime tied people to find compromising info. on Trump and his campaign. To my knowledge, she isn’t a registered foreign agent, to go along with not getting arrested, or serve any jail time as a foreign agent – much different from what (to a good extent) Manafort, Butina and Flynn have faced.
Manafort was a hired hand for Yanukovych as was John Podesta’s brother, at a time when John Mueller was photographed shaking Yanukovych’s hand. If anything, Manafort advised Yanukovych to tilt in an EU direction.
I’m no fan of Chalupa’s and as far as Manafort is concerned, I don’t think that he got enough time for his tax evasion schemes.
Say, when are you finally going to get a promotion, Mickey? Nobody seems to value you enough for your Kremlin stooge antics? Working for free as a full time commentator at other people’ s blogs must get to be old hat, even for you I would think? Perhaps, your inclination to not travel or move to Russia is holding you back? It couldn’t be your monotonous and silly opinions that elicit such little interest in finding somebody to remunerate you for your efforts?
Your weak comeback is indicative by how you shift the topic to something different.
I sense I’m getting paid more than you for work not related to blog comments, but related to issues pertaining to history, foreign policy, sports and media. Not that receiving more money by default means being a greater talent. Something that would prove true if you in fact were getting paid more than me.
Let me know when you achieve something like appear under your actual name at a major to fairly major venue, as well as getting academically referenced.
Really? Great! Let’s hear more about this positive career change that you’ve undergone?…
No great change there. What about your situation?
Cheap labor is one of the main reason to invest in the Ukraine.
More Ukrainians leaving to work elsewhere = less cheap labour in the Ukraine = less reason to invest there
Nothing much, I’m still working in the financial services arena. I get absolutely no remuneration for my blogging activities, hopefully this is reflected in the lowly moniker that I chose for myself, being a hack commentator. But you?…now being paid for work related
wow! Now, that’s really interesting, and it seems like a new development in your up and down ‘career’. Tell me more about this great news, Mickey, I’m all ears?…
There is no shortage of cheap labor in Poland and Romania. And these countries are actually a part of common EU market (unlike the Ukraine), so even less reason for anybody to invest in the Ukraine.
Every time you open a newspaper or turn on TV or radio news, you hear “Putin did this”, “Russia did that”. Why don’t we hear nearly as much about Italy or Bosnia, pray? Something does not gibe, wouldn’t you say?
Cheap labor in Ukraine is a lot cheaper than in Poland. That’s why there are millions of Ukrainian semi-slaves in Poland, picking fruit and cleaning toilets. Poles do the same things in other EU countries, just like Balts. To each his own.
While lacking in knowledge and intellect, as an anonymous crank. Such is your ‘career’.
Don’t be so modest Mickey. Did RT finally award you a job to be a staff writer in the US? Your knowledge and intellect should propel you to the very top of their cadre of professional writers! Who knows where this may lead, perhaps ‘Foreign Affairs’ next? Way to go – kudos!
Other options besides RT. On the subject of that venue:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24102018-rt-russophobe-rating-challenged-oped/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/23/naming-top-anti-russian-advocates.html
https://www.eurasiareview.com/29122014-with-room-for-improvement-rt-gives-time-to-diverse-views-analysis/
Don’t you think that arguing with this hack is as nonsensical as having a heart-to-heart conversation with a lamppost? Wouldn’t your time be spent better discussing things with people, not with Ukies?