This week’s Open Thread.
@ak
More notable posts since the last Open Thread in case you missed any of them.
- “Assange Should Have Picked the Russian Embassy.” But He Did.
- Navalny’s No.2 Leonid Volkov Gloats About Assange’s Arrest
- HBD Bloggers Are Autists Who Can’t Win Any Culture and Civilization Wars
Featured
- MUELLERGATE
- Patrick Armstrong: Putin Derangement Syndrome After Mueller
- Greenwald: Robert Mueller Did Not Merely Reject the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories. He Obliterated Them.
- Bryan MacDonald: “Ha! In late 2016, while much of US media was claiming Trump was under Putin’s direct control, the Russian President told a billionaire Moscow banker that he didn’t know how to get in touch with Trump’s team & didn’t know who to formally speak to. So, while CNN, MSNBC, New York Times etc. were pushing line that Trump was Putin’s puppet, or the Kremlin’s man, the Russian business elite were secretly trying to find lobbyists in Washington to help stop Trump imposing harsher sanctions against Russian interests!“
- Philip Weiss: Mueller Report says ‘multiple members’ of Trump transition approached foreign officials to stop UN resolution against Israeli settlements
- Trump campaign (tried to) collude with Russia… To promote Israeli interests. Plainly calls for more Russia sanctions.
- Michael Tracey: “Mueller confirms that George Papadopoulos was investigated for being an unregistered agent not of Russia, but Israel”
- US demands Turkey choose between F-35 and S-400
Russia
- Shipping capacity of Russian Arctic sea route to top 80 million tons in five years
- Putin arrived at new Mercedes-Benz in Moscow region… in an Aurus
- *Based Putlerreich*: A first for Russia: Trans woman rehired and compensated $30K for workplace discrimination
World
- US declares IRGC is a terrorist organization, Iran reciprocates designating CENTCOM as same. More rhetoric, or are we again trending towards wars for freedumb (and flagging approval ratings)?
- Andrew Yang’s op-ed on CNN
- Audacious Epigone: Support for Eugenics, by Race
- Peter Frost: They really are smart … and other surprises
- Expects large scale African migration into demographically weakening China later this century. I can see this happening. As spandrell says, Chinese HBD realism is folksy, not “scientific”. Flimsy foundations against the Poz storm.
Science & Culture
- Philip Lemoine has a better index of Twitter influence
- Guillaume Durocher:
- Nature: Brazil’s government freezes nearly half of its science spending
- James Thompson: World IQ 82
- Latest iteration of David Becker’s database. My main concerns here.
- Emil Kirkegaard:
- Death by affirmative action: race quotas in medicine. This is a very good summary.
- Before PISA and Binet
- Zach Goldberg: US liberals would rather be thought liars than racists. Telling.
Humor & Powerful Takes
- *gamers* Ubisoft is offering Assassin’s Creed: Unity (the one which features Notre-Dame during the French Revolution) for free until April 25.
- Insomniac Resurrected: Czechia’s premier Russiagate grifter Jakub Janda was expelled from university for plagiarism
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey does ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting
- Maybe that’s why he dropped the SPLC as a partner?
- What is it with this Pope and kissing black people’s feet? We are approaching the point where it’s obviously some kind of fetish he has.
- Ron Unz: Banned by Amazon and Purged by the Neocons
Kissing the feet of Africans is probably a good way to get hookworm, but it is not a sufficient position of humility – really the leaders of the West should lie prone while the incoming Africans walk over them.
It’s better than kissing other male parts as many priests are want to do.
Regarding Brazil:
This is quite interesting. Of course, their inflation is higher, but on this issue they seem technically superior to the US. The US possibly would have been a far better country than it is if it had not become so war-prone.
American elites self-destruct over who will go to prison over ever more stupid non-crimes like talking to foreigners or lying to authorities, Britain drags a cat-loving nonconformist from a banana republic embassy, and Pope kisses black feet, again and again. That’s the state of the West.
On the other hand, Russia has just opened the biggest Mercedes factory outside Germany, North Stream II is almost done, and Kiev is talking about a ‘compromise’ deal with Moscow since they are losing $20 billion in exports they used to send to Russia (see an interesting trial balloon in Reuters). And the long hot summers highlight the geographic reality that further up north will be better in the future.
One of our top right-wing politicians (in Slovakia) went on a long TV rant about how Germany is busily trading with Russia, re-routing gas to its territory, and then Merkel tells everyone else in EU to keep their mouth shut and keep the sanctions on Russia, killing our exports. He attacked Merkel because he doesn’t have the balls to say anything about Washington.
What we have in Europe are layers of fear and dysfunction, when I saw the Notre Dame fire my first thought was that Macron stored weapons there against the yellow vests. My second thought was that maybe Putin did it, somebody will for sure look into it.
It has been a long way up for the current Western elite, they lied, cheated and bombed their way up for the last 20 years, and they also delivered some good stuff. Now it is inevitable that we will retrace all the glory on the way down, every painful step of the way. That’s why hysteria, clowns and cult-like behaviors are everywhere: it helps to numb the pain.
Will POTUS and very devout American “Christian” Pete Buttplug wage war against Conservative Christian Russia? Who will the Catholic Pope in a pink sequin gown with glittering rhinestones side with?
Does Putin always take his overcoat off so dramatically? That must have taken years of practice.
Well, I swallowed my cynicism for a moment and tried reading it.
Yuck.
How anyone could take this guy seriously is amazing to me when he openly admits he’ll do nothing to change our disastrous immigration regime.
At least Trump lied about it.
I’d rather be lied to than told honestly that nothing will change.
A man’s gotta have a dream, after all.
I read an interesting comment somewhere (maybe here?) re: immigration that I think bears repeating:
Suppose that the majority (80-90%) of undocumented immigrants/asylum seekers in a given Western country are young unmarried unaccompanied women – how does that change the posture of the intelligentsia towards immigration?
My guess, at least in the US, is that in this scenario immigration is severely restricted, but indirectly under the guise of “combating sex trafficking.” Would be interested in other opinions.
The same J-left media that subverted and mocked Christianity for decades will make an abrupt U-turn and declare that anyone criticizing the faith of “Pious Pete” is a bigot.
Trump’s adultery and divorces do the Right no favors, a sizeable number of people are alienated by his disgusting personal life. Unless Pete is “mongamish”, he will look borderline “chaste” by comparison.
The Dems eliminated superdelegates for this round of primaries, so the convention could be brokered with the large number of candidates.
The utility of Yang is in dragging out the process, and introducing techno-skepticism into a party owned by Big Tech. Dissident Right voters don’t have much of a reason to vote in the GOP primary, as no challenger is going to emerge to his right. So their most effective action is to register as a Democrat, and vote for Yang.
I don’t suggest volunteering for his camapaign, unless you are stuck on a college campus. Nor should anything other than a nominal donation be given.
As an added benefit, if Yang overperforms in Iowa/NH, the internal contradictions of the Dems will be exposed. Expect a “know your place” attitude towards Asian voters from the other PeeOhCee. That could mean dividends for the GOP in the fall, keeping PA/FL in the GOP column, reclaiming lost House seats in CA, and potentially flipping VA.
Yang is the kind of candidate the GOP wants straight out of central casting.
Yes. They’ve already done this U-turn in Lutheran countries where the churches got fully pozzed and turned into another LBGT pro-migrant multiculti organization. I remember when I was young the left here used to actually oppose blasphemy laws and demand church and state separation but now the church is theirs and the left wants blasphemy laws and the state church.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/468/752/99b.jpg
His jibber jabber about robots is largely bullshit…..Robots can’t vote us into a White Racial Minority within the borders of America…Yang’s fellow Han are doing it in real time….Robots are Scab Labor I like…Chinese LEGAL IMMIGRANTS are Scab Labor I don’t like and don’t want in America……..Brad Griffith gotta be mentally ill…
1,000= the new opium wars….
I have decided a useful metric of functional intelligence on a societal level is the performance of effective maintenance. All industrial technology requires maintenance for proper function. Societies that fail to perform such maintenance demonstrate the inability of their people to comprehend this basic reality.
Yeah I think you read it here somewhere, but what occurs to me is that there are a large number of ‘unaccompanied’ young women back in the third-world hellholes our ‘migrants’ come from. It’s almost as if they’re asking for ‘sex tourism’.
In an unrelated note, does anyone here know women who aren’t either doing keto or gluten-free or (most commonly) both?
Depends if they could work in chicken packaging plants, pick grapes, etc.
What if they were beautiful, traditional women, who were antagonistic to feminism and big government, married local, and had high fertility? They would probably lose the black lesbian vote. Actually, more likely, all Dem support.
And in Ukraine:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ukrainian-catholic-patriarch-responds-to-accusation-that-he-is-liberal-on-h
The Patriarch declined to classify his views as liberal or conservative but responded, in Ukrainian, “In accordance with the teaching of the Church, homosexual behavior is a grave sin, which calls to Heaven for vengeance.”
The designation of grave sins includes “willful murder.”
“In terms of gravity, the sin of homosexuality is comparable to that of murder,” he said. “Therefore, if we are talking today about the right to have a homosexual ‘relationship,’ then we must also talk about the right to murder.”
That makes no sense, he’s an ethnic Chinaman. Maybe you’re making some obscure point about Jews again?
In Most-Persecuted-Group-in-History news,
Good Friday 2019 has come and gone on the Western church’s calendar; Potatus, who claims to be a Christian, tweeted “Happy Passover” to all his friends “in America and Israel” — but no tweet of any kind about Good Friday.
Working theory: Any reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is tweet-vetoed by Kushner.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4jzDKGW4AAjgC-.jpg
America 2019-beyond 2019=OPEN SEWER…..
Robert Mueller, Putin puppet.
Good droll piece by Masha Gessen on the Mueller Report. Her reading was basically that all the “collusion” amounted to puffery by a bunch of grifters (Russian and American, I think there was a Ukrainian in there as well) who overstated their own importance and access.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-hustlers-and-swindlers-of-the-mueller-report
I read recently that there was a Russian language forum where some guy (the website was apparently taken down and the guy arrested in late 2017) uploaded all (?) flight tests of the Su-57 fighter jet. Apparently by adding up the total flight hours it totaled just 1600 flight hours by late 2017, and the rate wasn’t even increasing in 2016-17 (while they were increasing the fleet from five to ten – currently there are just nine or fewer flyable prototypes, because one of the early prototypes is now only used for ground testing, with many of the vital parts, like engines, removed), so the program really seemed to be stalling at that point. What I read elsewhere is that a minimal flight test program of a new fighter jet usually takes 20,000 flight hours or more – so the Su-57 is nowhere near serial production level. The minimal numbers produced (maybe one this year, another one next year…) seem to support it. They also don’t yet have the new engine ready for production – despite only producing one plane per year, those are still produced with the old engine. (It’s a slightly stronger version of the Su-35S engine, basically stronger only because they simply loosened temperature limitations, greatly reducing the longevity of the engine.)
I don’t think it can be considered good news that globohomo is now producing hundreds of F-35s (besides the already existing 170+ F-22s), with hundreds of thousands of flight hours accrued to it. Contrary to claims of its detractors, the F-35 is actually superior to the F-16 even in WVR combat (its aerodynamics is superior while loaded with weapons, and its engine is stronger relative to the loaded weight), even in a machine gun dogfight it is its equal. Apparently until very recently the plane’s performance was limited by its software.
Russia, get your shit together!
It’s better than kissing other male parts as many priests are wont to do.
Not only priests, alas . . .
OMG
Good Friday isn’t a big deal in America.
If there’s no Happy Easter tweet tomorrow you might be onto something.
Probably the Russians aren’t allocating enough money to the program. Despite tensions with America I get the impression that Russia doesn’t feel its military security is seriously threatened. It’s not like the Russian economy can’t support a larger defense budget.
I’m deeply skeptical of the claim that the F-35 is superior to the F-16 in WVR combat.
F-35A (loaded weight) thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.87
F-16C Block 50 (loaded weight) thrust-to-weight ratio: 1.07
Published specs also note that with 50% fuel the respective thrust-to-weight ratios are 1.07 and 1.24 respectively. So an F-35A with half of its internal fuel has the same thrust-to-weight ratio as a fully loaded F-16C.
F-35A (loaded weight) wing loading: 107.5 lb/ft²
F-16C Block 50 (loaded weight): 88.3 lb/ft²
I can’t find the published specifications for drag area, but it’s quite obvious that the F-35 has a considerably larger drag area than the F-16. And the airframe doesn’t appear to offer any advantage in body lift either. Probably the opposite is true–the F-16 offers more wing-body blending since its airframe has no compromises needed for stealth shaping.
Maximum g-loading for both aircraft is claimed to be the same, 9 g. But there are a lot of reports of the F-16 being capable of pulling 12 g, which I’ve never heard claimed of the F-35. Since it’s a larger aircraft it’s unlikely too.
So based on published specifications the F-16 by definition has superior acceleration, climb, and turn performance. The F-35 would only be superior in a dive since it’s heavier and has more thrust. Given that NATO air forces generally do not operate below 15,000 feet that is valuable.
The F-35 does has a superior cannon to the F-16, though it’s still worse than what all non-American fighter aircraft offer. This continues a grand Air Force tradition of having inferior guns dating back to 1940. It might have superior situational awareness thanks to its Elbit helmet and EODAS (six distributed infrared sensors), though the F-16 has far superior visibility for the pilot from the cockpit.
It’s also worth pointing out that in its normal “stealth” configuration the F-35 would take longer to launch its infrared missiles since they are carried internally.
Any claims that the F-35 offers superior or even equal WVR performance to the F-16 cannot be taken seriously.
I don’t know how current it is – not something I actively track – but Alexander Mercouris had a seemingly well informed article on this a couple of years ago: http://theduran.com/russias-new-su-t-50-fifth-generation-fighter-gets-new-engine-new-name/
Incidentally, a pity that he seems to have stopped blogging.
In a related note, what the evidence that keto diet does something to your benefit? Has anyone seen it improve physical or mental abilities in a RCT? Did it prevent or cure any disease?
And if not, what does it say about people who use the K word in a non-ironic way?
OT: I am sorry for changing names too often, but I won’t be bothered with providing personal info, and it seems that any handle I use gets registered and used by others.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13554794.2012.690421
Keto successfully treats bipolar disorder in women.
Follow Dennis Mangan on Twitter (@mangan150) and read his website (www.roguehealthandfitness.com).
No physical benefits – it is cultural signalling. By doing keto you signal to others that you are interested in masculinity. You probably also lift weights. You would have liked to be a caveman.
It is common for religious sects to have unusual or eccentric diets, and food taboos in general. Forbidding certain foods is one of the clearest ways to strengthen your identity and separate yourself from others.
Keto is more associated with masculinity than other restrictive diets (e.g. vegetarianism and veganism), but I wouldn’t consider it masculine signalling.
The diet was largely popularized by Nina Teicholz after all.
The biggest popularizer of the pseudo-keto “paleo” diet is Mark Sisson. Mark Sisson is a masculine man, but he’s adept at propagandizing femoids.
Even the CARNIVORE diet is mostly popularized by Jordan Peterson’s daughter.
I will say that women in our community do seem to struggle a lot more with avoiding carbohydrates and are always looking for excuses to add them to the diet. They’re always the ones fussing around with nonsense like tapioca and arrowroot.
Perhaps this testifies to a genuine physical need for carbohydrates in women.
The physical benefits are substantial and well attested to in research and more importantly my ongoing n = 1 RCT.
This is high quality evidence I will accept.
I am actually going out now to buy lots of delicious, fatty beef short ribs which I will barbecue. I will dream of cavemen as I consume them.
The past few days, not intentionally, I ate almost entirely vegetarian. Eggs were my main protein. You would be disgusted.
Men were hunters, women were gatherers. Seems there are good evolutionary reasons for keto/IMF to be relatively more adaptive for men.
Not very up to date:
As we all know, somewhat fewer (12 fewer) than the projected number (12) were delivered last year.
Possible, but questionable, in light of what has transpired since: one Su-57 is supposed to be produced this year, and another one next year. The idea that the new engine is going to be ready for serial production by 2025 (this is the new date, not the 2021 mentioned by Mercouris) is in any event not something to be taken seriously: something that far out is basically so far from being ready that likely no one has any idea how much time is needed to solve the numerous issues, nor how many issues it’s going to have until the projected date. It’s just a guess, or a deadline, which they are hoping to keep, not something you can rely on.
This is highly questionable. In the 1980s the Su-27 and the MiG-29 were both pressed into service with numerous issues and with some of the projected weapons not yet ready. The final version of the Su-27 was to be the Su-27M, which was renamed Su-35 in the 1990s for marketing reasons. (The current Su-35 is an improved version of this Su-27M/Su-35, but still, the current Su-35 is probably closer to what was envisioned in the early 1980s than the initial Su-27.)
It actually makes sense to produce relatively large numbers of an imperfect new system (whether a fighter jet or a battle tank), so that you can test it on a large scale, while training lots of your pilots and service personnel for it, and you can work out the appropriate tactics etc. Also, the factory producing it is also going to accumulate production experience, so that by the time you reach the full potential, production will already be streamlined. Of course all this is only great provided you have the money. So Mercouris is just putting a spin on it.
I don’t really like this kind of communication. I know it’s a cultural thing, but I like it when I don’t have to do lots of guesswork with these announcements, and instead they tell us the problems they have upfront. Yes, I know that the American projects are also often delayed, but the PAK FA started in 2003, and after 16 years we’re still here with a few technology demonstrators, or at best prototypes, (a true prototype would have the same engine as the serial production), compared to the delays in the F-35 (which were constantly thrashed in the press) these are significantly longer.
I like eggs and vegetables.
Eggs are a nearly perfect food from a nutritional standpoint, dirt cheap, and exceptionally versatile.
The health benefits of vegetables are dramatically oversold, but they are tasty and almost harmless.
Coffee and tea, the closest things to “superfoods” that actually exist, are both concentrated plant products.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. For that reason I never advise pregnant women to go carnivore.
Though there are carnivorous women who report good results. Jordan Peterson’s daughter gets all the attention for it because of her famous father, but the best example I can think of is Charlene Andersen: https://meatheals.com/2018/02/04/charlene-andersen/
https://i2.wp.com/meatheals.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/charlene-andersen.jpg?w=830&ssl=1
She’s 44 years old!
Compare to noted vegetable enthusiast Chelsea “Clinton” (her real father is former Arkansas Attorney General Webster Hubbell) at age 39:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4ddKoCWkAU8wKC.jpg
As Twitter impresario Weihan Zhang would say, I am vomit NOT allow.
I think the F-35 has a higher range despite being heavier and not carrying much more fuel, so I’m not sure the 50% fuel numbers paint an entirely accurate picture. But in any event, it can carry over twice as heavy weapons, so the big question is if we should care for the fully loaded numbers.
The thrust of the F-35 is 1.57 times higher, while its weight carrying 50% of its fuel and the same amount of weapons (2.5 tons) as the F-16 could carry is just 1.27 times higher: that points to a better thrust-to-weight ratio.
I’m not an aerodynamics expert, but I’ve recently seen some aerobatic performance from the F-35 which was impressive, and so I now tend to believe the F-35 marketing to a much larger extent than was the case just a few months ago.
I’d like to wish a very happy 130th birthday to the still-living-in-Buenos Aires Adolf Hitler.
The H-man deserves much better defenders than the moronic “revisionist” commenters of the Unz Review who come out of the woodwork every time Ron Unz makes a groundbreaking historical discovery.
I agree with all of this.
I like vegetables cooked in some good fat, when they are delicious, but the health benefits are definitely oversold.
In parts of the world that still eat traditionally, few veggies are eaten I notice. Mostly meat, carbs, and fat, with some veggie garnish. This 5 servings of veggies, recently upgraded to what, 8 or 10? is insane, and I am curious as to what’s really driving it. I wonder.
Coffee and tea are both great. Didn’t know they were so healthy. Good to know I drunk tons.
The F-35 program started in 1993.
PAK-FA progress has been reasonable, especially in light of the limited resources allocated to the project.
Eggs and veggies are good, so no harm eating those for a short while.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. As I said I don’t actively follow this, so have no strong opinion of my own.
Speculation: Perhaps they are unwilling to commit to 5th gen mass fighter production in general – it’s expensive, after all, and Russia does not, presumably, plan to fight a large-scale conventional war with the US. And by the time it comes online in enough numbers to make a difference, there’s a good chance that drones will rule the skies anyway.
The F-35A can carry 18,480 pounds of internal fuel compared to 7,000 for the F-16C.
The F135 is also a newer technology engine and thus presumably has lower thrust-specific fuel consumption compared to F110 and F100 engines (F-16 offers two engine choices unlike the F-35).
This is simple math using specifications available on Wikipedia.
F-35A:
Maximum thrust: 43,000 pound feet
Loaded weight: 49,441 pounds
F-16C:
Maximum thrust: 28,600 pounds
Loaded weight: 26,000 pounds
Divide the first number by the second. An orangutan can see that the F-16 has a superior thrust-to-weight ratio than the F-35. This earns it the dubious distinction of being the first ever American fighter aircraft to have a lower thrust-to-weight ratio than its predecessor (unless you count the Super Hornet as a new fighter).
I suppose if you really want to lawyer the issue you could cite the F-106 replacing the F-104 back when the US Air Force actually defended American airspace. But these were interceptors not intended for air combat against other fighters.
It is possible that the F-35 has superior instantaneous acceleration to the F-16 if its engine can develop full afterburner thrust faster than the F-16. I don’t know enough about jet engines to say whether that’s the case.
It’s still a fighter aircraft so of course it can maneuver.
Did you know that the US Navy’s famous Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron once operated the F-4 Phantom II? The F-4 was infamous among fighter pilots for its poor maneuverability, which led to serious combat losses in North Vietnam against supposedly inferior Soviet fighters like the MiG-21 and even the purportedly obsolete MiG-17 subsonic fighter.
A (relatively) small aircraft with a high thrust-to-weight ratio and (relatively) low wing-loading in the hands of skilled pilot will look very impressive in aerobatic maneuvers even if it’s inferior in aerobatic performance compared to other fighters.
If you want to see some bad maneuvers look up some Youtube videos of B-52 aerobatic flights. The geniuses in the Strategic Air Command felt left out by the fighter jocks in the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds having all the fun and came up with the brilliant idea of performing aerobatic maneuvers with heavy bombers and tanker aircraft at airshows. The flight team was disbanded after too many planes crashed and killed their crews.
I think the vegetable nonsense stems from three factors:
• In the past fresh vegetables were farm more available in the countryside than the cities, and rural dwellers were healthier than urban dwellers until the late 20th century
• Ancel Keys, the lipid hypothesis, the cholesterol delusion, etc. leading to the demonization of animal fat and meat generally
• Marketing by BIG VEGETABLE
It’s completely absurd from an evolutionary or historical point of view. Humans are apex predators and evolved eating large quantities of meat. And historically fruits and vegetables were not even available most of the time.
The meat industry did once market meat as being healthy, but this was abandoned after public health authorities started demonizing meat. The only health claims you see about meat now is nonsense about “balanced diets” (everyone who recommends “moderation” should be shot) and ostensibly “healthier” lower in fat stemming from the destruction of traditional porcine breeds and the substitution of completely inferior chicken for aristocratic beef (the true king of the table).
https://farm1.static.flickr.com/99/300547668_5b8366a587_o.jpg
Robert Gates might be to “blame”.
Thanks to his very big-brained decision to cancel F-22 production (using the logic that obviously Russians and Chinese just aren’t smart enough to develop fifth generation fighters) the Chair Force only has 187 operational F-22s. Prior to that the Chair Force planned to ultimately have 750 F-22s.
The PAK-FA was specifically developed to hunt and defeat the F-22. Without large numbers of F-22s in service, there’s no particular reason to field large numbers of Su-57s. Gen 4++ Russian fighters like the Su-35 and MiG-35 are adequate against evolved American teen-series fighters and Eurocanards.
I don’t imagine the RuAF considers the F-35 a serious threat except to the existence NATO airpower.
Another possibility is that the RuAF isn’t very impressed with the Su-57. It’s obviously not as stealthy as the F-22 after all. Supposedly that was a deliberate design choice, but it might have more to do with Russia’s limited resources (particularly early in the 20th century when Russia was much poorer).
The real problem with the glacial pace of the Su-57 program might be ceding the commercial market for high-end stealth fighters to the Chinese.
My point was that the F-35 loaded weight is way higher than its empty weight: almost 20,000 lbs higher. Whereas with the F-16 you have a difference of just less than 8000 lbs between the empty and loaded weight. I assumed that the difference is the amount of weapons it can carry.
I don’t think it’s a fair comparison to compare the F-35 carrying weapons weighing 19,400 lbs against an F-16 carrying just 7,600 lbs of weapons. A fair comparison would be them carrying a similar amount of weapons. Or, since both are American fighters using the same weapons, they should carry the exact same weapons.
I also think that the F-35 with its internal weapons bay is probably experiencing less aerodynamic drag than the F-16, despite being larger. Or at worst it’s the same.
I have no doubt meat is healthy…..in moderation 🙂
Seriously, though, in traditional cultures, restrictions on meat eating are lifted if required for health. This seems to me to implicitly recognize that meat can be uniquely healthy, and that invalids might even need its life giving properties.
Yes, another super annoying thing is that the less tasty meats are being pushed. Lean meat, my ass. In Asia, they don’t even eat chicken breast, but only the fatty, tasty, thigh meat. And fatty pork belly is maybe their favourite pork cut.
But yes, nothing compares to beef, the king of meat. Although lamb can be great.
I really think behind all this lurks the Puritan instinct – it seems the more delicious the food, the worse they “find” it is for you. Were gonna end up eating only bitter vegetables.
None of this no sense exists in normal countries like France or Japan. You eat delicious food…but in moderation 🙂
What I like about keto is that it is at least a step away from Puritanism and back towards deliciousness. A half way compromise at least. Which makes it different from most American diets.
Veganism is also closely connected to the gayest social cause (climate change activism); for instance the protestors in London have been talking about how their ‘citizens’ assembly’ might decide we need to restrict meat consumption to reach a zero-carbon economy by whenever. They probably enjoy long-distance running too.
I don’t think the Russians should be just sitting on less than a dozen not-even-test-flown Su-57s, even if the only threats to their air force were the 170+ F-22 fighters. After all, I noticed that 170>>>10, and a point could be made that with the exception of a few hundred modern fighters (Su-27SM2/3, Su-30, Su-35, maybe some MiGs like the modernized versions of the MiG-29, including the basically nonexistent MiG-35, in some roles the modernized versions of the MiG-31), their warplanes are no match for the most modern Western (especially American) fighters. Certainly not in numbers: NATO has air superiority even without the US Air Force.
Another point (and this is important regarding the F-35, too), is that people often underestimate the soft qualities of weapons. American weapons usually provide better situational awareness, and it’s especially true of the F-35. The F-35 pilot will see such a complex picture (receiving data from multiple sources), and the computer will highlight for him the most relevant data, that even if it had inferior performance otherwise, it’d be a formidable opponent. Better kinematic performance or better weapons are worthless without knowing where the enemy is, which of the enemies pose the largest danger, etc.
So I think the Russians are not very smart if they seriously believe this.
I think you have to be careful with an all-meat diet. You have to eat the right animals, the right cuts of meat in the right amounts, or you will overdose on certain vitamins and minerals..
This is a problem they come across when they try to work out the diets of neanderthals. Some previous guesses seem to be deadly, when they do the calculations on paper.
In cannibalistic tribes, women and children were given the less desirable sweetmeats, like the brain. Consequently, women may be evolved to eat more noxious tissues than prime steak.
The F-22 has a much higher loaded weight than the F-35 and also has a much higher thrust-to-weight ratio.
Loaded weight is 64,480 pounds and maximum thrust 70,000 pounds. Thrust-to-weight ratio is 1.09, which is slightly higher than the aircraft it was supposed to replace (the F-15C, ratio 1.07).
It’s true that the F-35A is a larger aircraft and can carry more weapons, but it was supposed to be a low end fighter for the Air Force and Navy per the Hi-Lo fighter mix that emerged in the 1970s. So it’s entirely fair to compare the F-35A to the F-16. Likewise comparing the F-35C to the F/A-18 Hornet is appropriate.
The program has other similarities to the F-16. It’s going to be produced in large numbers, it’s going to be the main American fighter for NATO, and there’s a lot of foreign involvement in production. F-16s are assembled in a number of foreign countries, and there’s even a Japanese F-16 derivative.
It was also supposed to be inexpensive like the F-16, which unfortunately didn’t happen.
Should also be pointed out that carrying more weapons than an F-16 requires external carriage of stores, which eliminates the frontal stealth which is the raison d’etre for the F-35 design.
An F-35A carrying two 2,000 pound bombs internally probably has less drag than an F-16 with the same warload. But I bet the F-16 has a smaller drag area in an air-to-air loadout because A2A missiles have a very small drag area.
The F-35A is also supposed to replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II which is dubious to say the least.
Let alone a Happy Palm Sunday for those observing on the old calendar.
I don’t know of any medical condition which is eliminated by consumption of vegetables other than scurvy. And curiously, scurvy doesn’t develop in carnivores. This is odd because Vitamin C, which is not produced by the human body, is thought to be essential to the development of scar tissue.
There is actually vitamin C in meat, but not much in muscle meats. And yet Joe and Charlene Andersen have been eating nothing but ribeye for more than twenty years. The carnivore popularizer Dr. Shawn Baker, another ribeye eater, has theorized that glucose and vitamin C compete for the same pathways because they are molecularly similar. Eliminate glucose from the diet and the body’s vitamin C requirements decline. Plausible.
But there are many medical conditions which are improved by eating meat. It’s also telling that in India, the world’s most pro-vegetarian traditional culture, the one caste that eats a lot of meat is the WARRIOR caste.
You’re definitely onto something with puritanism, and it has an old pedigree in North America. The inventor of Roman Meal, the Canadian physician Robert Jackson, was a health crank who wrote an absurd book claiming that eating a diet of bad-tasting, badly prepared whole grains (like, to take a perfectly random example, Roman Meal) could lead to eternal life. He routinely exaggerated his real age by decades to maintain this fiction.
France and Japan can thank their excellent cuisines from saving themselves from postwar dietary rubbish. It would be an insult to their national reputations to adopt the diets recommended by vinegar drinking puritan scolds like the American Medical Association. I always get a chuckle about physicians discussing the French “Paradox” which has been a great mystery to them now for decades.
Puritanism is also at work in the ridiculous hysteria directed against tobacco. Most smokers never develop lung cancers, yet tobacco is subject to extreme demonization and persecution. I like to joke that smokers are America’s most persecuted minority.
Offset by his videos on a regular basis at The Duran. One such example noted in this piece:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/10/rebuking-zakaria-and-goading-trump-the-right-way.html
He also gets some periodic airtime at RT.
Ruminant meat and seafood are the most nutritious muscle meats.
Organ meat is the most nutritious, but there you truly do need to exercise caution as you say lest you suffer retinol poisoning.
Hard boiled eggs are a good convenient food that will fill you up, but not out. The key is to put them under running cold water right after boiling, so that the shells come off easier. Hard boiled eggs also serve the purpose of better eliminating the food poisoning that has been associated with eating eggs.
A big decaf green tea drinker myself. Two tall glasses a day. Brew it with turmeric, ginger, lemon juice and just a little sugar. I drink it cold.
You can buy peeled hard boiled eggs in the grocery store now. There are ten packs of Eggland’s Best peeled hard boiled eggs at my local Kroger. Very convenient if you’re a big consumer of hard boiled eggs.
https://www.egglandsbest.com/product/hard-cooked-peeled-eggs/
Situation of the Su-57 program, is that they are possibly waiting for completion of work on new type 30 engines, and these engines will be available from 2023-2025.
In the intervening time, they are beginning serial production slowly – they have ordered 2 planes to be purchased to 2020.
Beyond these public facts – it just is interpretation. It’s possible everything is going fine, and they are just going slowly until the engines are ready. It’s also possible they are only ordering such low numbers, because they are becoming more interested in developing the 6th generation.
I think I remember there were some vague suggestion of early research into the 6th generation, when I watched a television interview with the program head. (But this was last year, when I was answering the same question from you before).
Anyway, the air force is being modernized in a steady way, with production of the Su-35 at around 1 plane every 5 weeks.
They are recently installing the software upgrade in F-35, which will unlock more of its capability. For example, F-35 were software limited until this year to 7gs. And with the next block of software, they are being unlocked, to operate up to 9gs.
One disadvantage, relative to Su-57, will be lack of thrust-vectoring in the F-35. However, the need for thrust-vectoring, and low-speed supermaneuverability, may also be reduced by introduction of greater “off-boresight missiles”, compared to the 1980s.
To copypaste my earlier comment below:
I watched a documentary last year about the Eurofighter vs MiG-29.
In the documentary, the pilot explains the importance of supermaneuverability at low speed, and consequent superiority of MiG-29.
At 9:30 – 11:30 in the documentary, pilot explains what was the importance of these maneuvers – angular maneuvering was essential for missiles to target the opponent.
New planes and missiles since the 1990s have more “high off-boresight” capacity, allowing missiles to target at wider angles (reducing the amount of angular turn required to target the opponent), so low-speed supermaneuverability may have become less important than in the 1980s.
Still from the aesthetic viewpoint, there is no American equivalent.
I wish my local Perekrestok carried them. I am too lazy to boil them for 15 mins when I can instead fry them in 2 mins in my beef bacon fat.
Hard boiled egg is the least tasty variant. The best is soft boiled, then fried, poached, scrambled… hard boiled is only good if you want to put it on a sandwich. Or if you overcooked a soft boiled one.
I gots a вопрос for you Russians: I’m visiting Russia this summer and am hoping to get a non ZOGed notebook. Can anyone confirm that the Intel Managment Engine is disabled on Russian machines? I’ve seen this claimed but never anything authoritative. Alternatively, what’s the state of Russian’s domestic CPUs? Can one buy a laptop with a Baikal or Elbrus CPU that can run normal GNU/Linux? Please respond.
Obviously the technology of the F-35 is much more advanced than the F-16.
But that does not mean it is a superior dogfighter.
The F-35 has compromised aerodynamics, weight, and cockpit visibility owing to the VTOL requirements requested by the Marine Corps and Royal Navy. The “stealth” requirement also contributes to these problems, though at least stealth is a defensible design priority since it offers benefits.
Or it would if the F-35 were actually stealthy…
The improved performance of A2A missiles actually increases the importance of maneuvering performance in fighters, because maneuvering is the last line of defense in defeating an incoming A2A missile shot.
If A2A missiles ever get sufficiently good that they cannot be defeated by maneuvering at all, then it will be time to abandon fighter aircraft entirely. The best choice would simply be modified wide body airliners carrying hundreds or even thousands of missiles.
I’m of the opinion that the F-35 should simply be canceled. In the short-term F-22 production should be restarted (and exported) and more teen series fighters ordered. Perhaps we can even order Eurocanards. After all, the Chair Force did once order the English Electric Canberra bomber (produced in America as the Martin B-57 Canberra). The P-51 Mustang also famously had a license-built Rolls Royce Merlin V-12 engine because General Motors refused to develop an appropriate supercharged variant of its Allison V-12.
The Dassault Rafale would be an excellent fighter for both the Navy and the Air Force. The Rafale could also be re-engined with a superior American engine like the General Electric F414. The Marines for their part don’t need fighters and need to be told to go pound sand. The Royal Navy of course should put catapults in their stupid Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers since VTOL aircraft are dogshit.
Long-term entirely new fighters are needed of course. In the intermediate term the teen series fighters could be evolved like what Sukhoi has done with the Su-27. The Japanese have an evolved F-16 variant, and there was an interesting F-16 experiment in the 80s called the F-16XL.
I agree, but they’re useful on the go.
Some gas stations also sell peeled hard boiled eggs in America, though the packages usually only have two eggs.
If you want Mercouris content, you can listen to the Duran youtube videos. He does them with Kristoforu and sometimes Peter Lavell a few times a week.
Easily solved by dipping in deviled sauce (perfectly keto), or even something really lazy like sprikling with salt and black pepper (will make most anything perfectly edible).
No idea, sorry. I am a PC person, esp. after the misadventures with my laptop. The Lenovo Thinkpad E480 I got does have an Intel Management Engine.
Without being a pilot or an engineer I want to have some humility evaluating the F-35 question. From what I can see, it is the disaster many claim. Here’s how I arrive at this:
The Russians aren’t too worried about it. Russia has the SU 57 project, but they are taking their time. I wonder if the SU 57 isn’t more an effort to understand the properties of a stealthy, internal weapons bay fighter, in order to develop asymmetrical responses to it.
The Turks would rather have S-400s than F-35s. Turkey has a modern air force, they certainly can evaluate these planes. They’ve concluded the S-400 is more important for them than the F-35
The USAF is buying modernized F-15s and the F-21 (sooped up F-16) project, on offer to India, might also be an indication that Lockheed sees a potential market for an upgraded F-16 in other countries.
F-35 is a plane designed by committee to show off technology and run up big bills. Its main advantage is its supposed stealth and information sharing across planes. As soon as non-gay countries figure out how to reliably see it on radar (and maybe they have already) the F-35 becomes merely a slow jet with stumpy wings, high maintenance needs and small payload. In the chaos of war against a competent opponent, all this PR spin about the benefits of sharing info might be out the window.
Soft American pilots will be shitting their pants and wishing they were at a winebar with their henpecking wives the moment they start losing planes to cheap Russian and Chinese made SAMs in the event of a dust up. The future belongs to drones, SAMs and computer controlled AAA.
I’m curious to know how many eggs to you normally eat per day, per week? I know that eating eggs is very good for you, but don’t know whether there’s really any ceiling on the amount recommended? BTW, I love eggs, just about any way I get them, and my friends say that my ‘omelettes’ (modified Denver) are a big hit. With hard boiled eggs, if I have the time, I try and make an egg salad with plenty of onions thrown into the mix and some jalapeno too (also, no complaints). 🙂
i was wondering that – testosterone gone up maybe.
i think they’re trying to get things in place for an attack hence
– crushing the shia along the coast beforehand to stop suicide attacks on oil tankers
– trying to get control of venezuela’s oil so they can pump more if middle east supplies are disrupted
– not pulling out of syria/afghan
– getting Trump leashed (personally believe Mueller will have got blackmail dirt on Trump).
i don’t know if it will get as far as an actual attack on Iran but i no longer think it matters – i think the shenanigans that will be involved in preparing for an attack will likely lead to some kind of military or economic catastrophe anyway.
Are the extra $2-$3 bucks more per carton of eggs for ‘organic eggs’ really worth it? I’m sure that you have a well reasoned opinion about this…
I have about two dozen eggs a week. I don’t think there’s any reason to limit egg consumption.
On egg salad watch out for the mayo. Unfortunately it’s probably made with “vegetable” oil.
The nutritional composition of eggs is unfortunately impacted by what chickens eat.
If you’re looking for healthier eggs what you’re after isn’t organic eggs per se, but rather pastured eggs.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/pastured-vs-omega-3-vs-conventional-eggs#section3
https://i0.wp.com/www.healthline.com/hlcmsresource/images/AN_images/HL128080-graph-01.jpg?h=191
i think YangGang was a stage in grieving for Trump’s surrender and 2020 will turn out to be the year of intersectional trolling to get all the Dem factions at war with each other and peel off the last few remaining hetero white dudes.
I remember learning in animals shows in TV as a kid that wolves eat the digestive organs of their prey first to get the half-digested plants. Also great apes are mostly vegetarian, eating every fruit they can get.
Concerning beef: I like it, too, but I avoid raw beef, because of the studies of the nobel-prize winner zur Hausen (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_Meat_and_Milk_Factors).
(sample of one)
fixed my sleep problems
haven’t had a cold since i started (but that’s probably the eggs rather than keto per se)
eggs are primo keto
Yes, they’re totally worth it: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/animals/
Thanks to Thorfinnsson for hunting down that chart. I remember seeing it somewhere (Sisson?) but couldn’t find it for that post.
I also agree with him on not limiting egg consumption. Dietary cholestorol (main boogeyman for eggs) has zilch to do with bodily cholesterol.
i feel like a hippy buying the fancy eggs but gotta do it.
I try to cut down on the ‘mayo’ (actually miracle whip, please forgive me, you’re probably a purist) by substituting sour cream. Perhaps, a two to one ratio. The onions and jalapeno help all around with the flavoring, as does a pinch of salt and black pepper. To make it taste even more exotic, sometimes I throw in a small spoonful of Turmeric.
But I can see that there’s really a big difference in nutritional value between the caged and free range chicken eggs! I’m sure that you’re not getting the free range ones at the gas station, but how about at home?…Thanks for the chart.
The number of Africans studying in China has grown by a lot. There are now 60,000 African (including North African) students. It’s pretty hard to graduate and stay in China due to tough visa restrictions so most African students go back at graduation. There’s the possibility anything can happen including the student route becoming the means for large scale African immigration to China. But it’s hard to see how opinion changes in China to allow for large scale African immigration. The labor force has been shrinking for 5 years and immigration laws are only getting tougher.
India is also attracting a lot of African students. Currently the population is at 25,000. I expect India to overtake China eventually in numbers because of the lower cost and higher quality of English language education. Chinese universities catering to low end foreign students have a bad reputation for not providing much of any education. China is now a relatively costly place in the developing world. The main factor that attracts developing country students to China might actually be soft power.
This might be a problem for Mr. Karlin’s idea of uplifting them and putting them on assembly lines. That is the reason why gorillas are barrel-chested – vegetarian diet, mainly shoots and leaves – larger stomach – even needs more ribs to protect it, 26 compared to 24. They spend a lot more time eating, and would probably not be great workers.
But maybe, you could adapt them to meat, since some gorillas eat termites, and some chimps eat monkeys.
I think it is amazing to think that many of the acts of aggression of chimps are largely predicated on defending fruit trees. And they are our closest living relatives. Possibly an indication that there is something wrong with the kumbaya sentiment of liberals who invite invasion.
The whole “organic” concept including “free range” is just a gimmick that preys on liberal sensibilities, to increase profit. The whole world would starve, if it had to eat everything “organic.”
I have had fresh eggs. They look slightly different – the yolk is more orange – but taste exactly the same, just as do the eggs of other bird species.
Two things to keep in mind with “free-range”: 1.) it is often just a label that they put on the outside of chicken warehouses. 2.) the practice is objectively evil.
Why point #2? Well, it is simple – you will be the cause of the next super-flu pandemic, easily surpassing the kill count of the most venerated communist dictators, like Stalin and Mao. The 1918 outbreak killed 100+ million, and the world is much more connected now.
Free-range chickens can interact with other animals like pigs, until they get their flu strains evolve to acquire the right H and N proteins for maximum killing-power. This is not a problem for warehoused chickens.
Thanks for the follow-up. I’m aware of that option.
Boiling eggs isn’t as bad as preparing rice the traditional way, which is why I do the boil in the bag route, which I’ve been told isn’t the healthier route.
Good discussion about the Su-57 and F-35.
Firstly: I’m not an aerodynamics expert either. And while the Su-57 program has certainly not gone 100% according to plan, those forum posts are probably BS for the most part.
The truth regarding the F-35 is probably somewhere between the two extremes as well, as usual. On the one hand, it’s most likely not this perfect symbol of AngloZionist Empire’s decay, nor is the F-35 literally inferior to Sopwith Camel from WW1 (as suggested by alt-media commenters), but on the other hand, it’s not the master of all trades either.
I’ll just quote Spacebattles.com user TR1, who seems to be a real expert on the Russian military. This was posted in 2019:
When it comes to vs. NATO comparisons, Russia’s very modern IADS must be taken into account as well. Not to mention that by the end 2020 Russia will technically have more than a “few” hundred modern fighters. My calculations, roughly:
12 (or is it 2?) Su-57, 100 Su-35, 160 Su-30, 100+ upgraded Su-27, 60 (?) MiG 29K/SMT/MiG-35, 120 MiG-31BM, 150 Su-34. That’s more than 700 aircraft, and it doesn’t include some MiG-31Ks or Su-33s (to be upgraded).
Even without the IADS, that would clearly be the 3rd strongest air force in the world. Russophile triggering: “3RD STRONGEST!?!? IT’S ONLY THE AMERICANS AND US! IT’S FOREVER 2008 IN THE CHINESE AIR FORCE! MUH ENCLOSED TECHNOLOGICAL CYCLES.” (Anyone who gets the reference, that debate between Karlin and Martyanov was hilarious, I only read it a few days ago.) Now to be fair, one could still plausibly rank Russia above China in 2020, after all Russia’s IADS and bomber fleet remain superior, but the overall conclusion would objectively be far from obvious.
I do agree that they better get their shit together with the Su-57 procurement by the mid-2020s, but overall you can’t ask for much more than that, all things considered.
These are commercial/industrial products, that are produced for businesses.
With a little work, you could use it for a desktop to run Linux products – , it’s just MIPS processors.
From an import substitution point of view, they are not extremely local. Architecture are designs they license from MIPS Technologies, and they are produced in Taiwan.
This is my initial gut feeling about the topic too, however, both Thorfinnsson and Karlin, both of whom I usually trust in scienttific matters (well, maybe not so much with the ‘uplift’ of animals routine that Karlin recently posted) both recommend the ‘free range’ eggs that indicate a much higher nutritional value than the normal, warehoused variety. However, your admonition regarding bacterial infections being perhaps more prominent with the free range variety is a head scratcher? I watched a documentary yesterday on the local science station, and there’s definitely something there with birds being excellent carriers of very harmful bacteria?……..
Sprey has the advantage of debating a moron. It’s worth noting that his opponent is a retired Lieutenant Colonel who retired after twenty-three years of service.
Twenty years of service is when you become eligible for the gold-plated US military pension.
The next upgrade comes with thirty years of service.
Retiring at 23 years as a Lieutenant Colonel, an officer rank which almost anyone can attain, strongly suggests he was passed over twice for promotion to full bird Colonel and thus cashiered from the service.
Not hard to see why since he can’t argue…at all. He argued against dog fights and even…wing loading. And of course he tried to hide behind his uniform which military dweebs love to do. It’s their version of, “Are you a DOCTOR????!”
Sprey has many good ideas and arguments, but he’s something of a charlatan. He genuinely thinks BVR combat is completely useless and that fighters shouldn’t even be designed for it. Sprey has suggested that America’s primary fighter should not have a radar. He also claims the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun is still the best A2A weapon ever fielded (it wasn’t even the best A2A weapon, or even best heavy machine gun, of WW2).
See Fred Reed on this: https://fredoneverything.org/the-fighter-mafia-of-odle-oops-and-error/
No one can accuse me of being an F-35 apologist, but it isn’t as bad as Sprey and those of his ilk claim. Its WVR performance is almost certainly worse than any of the premier Gen 4 fighters (US teen series, Eurocanards, Su-27 family, MiG-29 family), but it’s still good. Better than the F-4 for instance, which is still in service in some countries. And it is almost certainly the best BVR fighter of its size class in the world (or will be soon).
The F-35 is costly, but America is a rich country as are our allies. The latest production contract for the F-35A drops the unit price to $80m. This is only $10m more than the Super Hornet (granted, this is a navalized aircraft and the F-35C will cost more than the F-35A). That’s also a lower price than the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Su-57 is quite clearly designed to hunt F-22 Raptors. That’s why it’s designed for super maneuverability and has L-band cheek radars. Probably the Russians also intend to use it for differential training so “legacy” fighter pilots get an idea of how to fight stealth fighters, but the Su-57 is less stealthy than the F-22. On the other hand it may be around as stealthy than the F-35, which makes it useful for training against the F-35 in BVR combat.
The reason for low-speed supermaneuverability is to be able to target opposing plane, while maneuvering. It’s this superior ability to change the angle of the plane at low speed, is why NATO was so scared of the MiG-29 (and later designs like the Ss-35 have amazing capacities in this area). .
For a maneuver to avoid missiles, plane needs to turn fast – in which case, I have read, they are limited by the pilot’s resistance to g forces, more than a mechanical limitation. This is a limit at 9g, when pilot’s can reach without losing consciousness.
I can’t find much information on the topic? They argue here from a visual analysis:
http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/JCM/Vol%204_1_9.pdf
The biggest single danger – we are talking globally – is the flu, which is a virus. Outside birds are effectively connected to other species that get the flu – could be other farm animals like pigs, or even wild birds or bats. Sometimes strains from different species come together in the same animal. This can in theory, provide the right formula for infecting people with a virus that is not evolved to play nicely in people. One that has a much greater mortality rate than normal flu.
My grandmother’s sister died of the flu in 1918 – she was quite young. In the 1960’s my father got a flu which caused him to cough up bloody mucous.
Some people contend that the 1918 outbreak which killed millions of young people – probably over a 100 million when you consider places like India and China – only happened because of special circumstances of WWI – thousands of men dying together from their wounds. But that is a bit of a debate, by one traditional narrative (with deaths in America), it was the Yanks who brought it to Europe, and who had caught it from Chinese.
Most of the eggs in China come from warehouses now – this decreases the danger. But there is Africa and now there is this yuppy free-ranging tendency which I see as regressive. Of course, in such a case, you would most likely catch the flu from another person, but funding the practice of free-ranging increases the danger.
In terms of bacteria, I would say the danger is slight, unless you like raw eggs. As long as every part of the egg is heated to about 170 degrees F or so, you are okay. That is one of the remarkable things about eggs – their ability to keep for so long – in many countries they are not refrigerated. This is due partly to the natural antibacterial properties of the egg whites – definitely would not eat them raw though.
This ballet wasn’t designed to entertain people at aviation shows, it is re-assuring to hear.
The rapid and perfectly controlled low-speed change in the angle of the plane (while maintaining same direction of flight) allows it align into the correct position to target an enemy plane which is maneuvering around it. (The topic is explained a lot in the documentary I linked above).
To avoid a missile the plane has to turn its direction of flight as rapidly as possible, which is limited a lot by pilot’s tolerance to g-forces.
i don’t know where chickens get the vitamin D they put in eggs but for now i assume it’s from the sun.
It’s not just an issue at low speed. In the Vietnam War an F-4E Phantom II of the USAF scored a supersonic gun kill over a MiG-19:
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/how-a-usaf-f-4e-flying-at-mach-1-2-gun-killed-a-north-vietnamese-mig-19-scoring-the-worlds-only-supersonic-gun-kill/
An aircraft flying at 500 knots turning at 9g can defeat a missile flying at mach 4 turning at 40g.
There are also new flight suits in development which are supposed to raise the g limit to 13-14g. Of course that would require new aircraft to take advantage of.
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-01.html#mozTocId79584
http://www.ausairpower.net/XIMG/JSF-RCS-Qualitative-A-XLVHF.png
That’s right – the sun or feed.
My man, 15 min of boiling is overcooking it.
The key to hard-boiled eggs is to get them out just as the yolk is soldifying or just after that. This way the yolk is still a little gooey and a dark orange. They will have a much better flavor than overcooked ones which become a light yellow and are quite crumbly.
For me it takes about 4.5 or 5 min to get them this way, but you may have to experiment & adjust according to egg size.
https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/the-secrets-to-peeling-hard-boiled-eggs.html
https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/other-fun-food-recipes/how-boil-egg
https://www.norprowebstore.com/norpro-egg-rite-timer-carded-5902c.html
But I can see that there’s really a big difference in nutritional value between the caged and free range chicken eggs!
Caveat emptor:
https://cdn.thepennyhoarder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/12165504/EGG-GRAPHIC-TEST-02-03-01.jpg
https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/food/cage-free-vs-free-range-vs-pastured-eggs/
I’m not sure my point came across.
The F-35 is theoretically capable of carrying almost triple the weapons load as the F-16. This is only fully used in strike missions with zero danger of enemy air force or air defense activity. This is a big advantage for countries which often fight third world tribesmen like Afghanis (the US is one such country), because it’s much cheaper to deliver the same amount of weapons in one mission than it is to carry them in three separate missions.
In an air to air fighter configuration the F-35 carries exactly the same amount of weapons as the F-16. I assert that for this reason, when comparing dogfighting abilities, the fully loaded number is only somewhat meaningful for the F-16 (because it’s fully loaded already in an air to air configuration), but totally meaningless for the F-35. This number punishes the F-35 for its extra ability to cheaply bomb Afghani or Somali tribesmen, when in fact it’s irrelevant to dogfighting.
Now in a dogfight the most realistic is actually a lightly loaded number for the F-16 with just a couple short range missiles (theoretically the BVR missiles had already been shot), but dogfighting could come as a surprise while carrying BVR weapons (maybe against enemy stealth planes), so maybe the full air to air configuration makes sense.
I don’t understand why this simple point (that they should be compared with the same weapons, and not punish the F-35 for its extra ability to cheaply bomb third worlders) is so difficult to accept.
By the way the celebrated Chinese 5th gen fighters have zero dogfighting abilities, because they don’t even have machine guns.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/problem-chinas-j-20-stealth-fighter-doesnt-have-gun-40402
I was unsure if I should count the MiG-31s and Su-34s, because I was more thinking in terms of air superiority roles – what can Russia field against NATO air forces if there was a danger of conflict?
I think the danger of nuclear war exists mostly because Western politicians (and to a large extent generals) don’t take Russian conventional abilities seriously. Now with Westerners fielding several hundreds of F-35s annually (I don’t know if you followed the discussion, but in my opinion it’s obvious that the F-35 is very good in BVR combat and, at least when it has numerical superiority, probably can hold its own in WVR combat, too), in addition to the already formidable and numerically superior existing fleet of modern fighters and the purchases of some additional 4th gen fighters in many countries (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, now Poland is buying something, though it could easily be F-35, Hungary is likely to expand its air force, though, again, it could easily be the F-35), and it’s pretty obvious that the people advocating for brinkmanship do have a point: NATO will have overwhelming air superiority.
Regarding China (I don’t know which debate of Karlin and Martyanov you’re referring to), are you aware that the Chinese 5th generation fighters have no cannons?
American pilots have on average still more flight hours under their belts than Russian (though maybe not Chinese?) pilots, so I don’t think this is more than just wishful thinking on the part of someone who dislikes the Globohomo Empire and wishes that it was weak.
The F-35 is the most heavily computerized airplane to date. For a long time it was extremely difficult to fix its software because of this. Full computer control will be a still way harder nut to crack. And it’s not like Russia is at the cutting edge of drone development either. Regarding SAMs, I’m still somewhat underwhelmed by their performance to date. Though obviously we haven’t seen the most modern SAMs operated by the most competent personnel against the most modern aircraft operated by equally competent personnel, so we don’t know.
I don’t think it’s so easy to just skip a full generation. For example those supersonic drones (I think they are currently as slow as Great War biplanes…) will also need to be even more stealthy than current planes, and how can they be if you have skipped decades of experience designing, producing and operating such planes? It takes lots of money and time to catch up with this kind of experience.
But anyway, as I wrote, currently existing drones are so slow (and require human control from nearby anyway), that it’s very likely that the next generation of aircraft will still be flown by human pilots.
The F-35’s technology demonstrator, the X-35 first flew in 2001, 8 years after the start of the program. That’d be December 2010 for the Su-57. The first F-35 up to serial production standards flew in late 2006, so only five years after the first flight of the X-35. Yet the Russians, over eight years after the first flight of their technology demonstrator, have still failed to create a real working prototype of the final version of their plane with the same engine, avionics, weapons, everything.
It’s also worth noting that the F-35 program was way more complex, because it was the simultaneous development of three planes, and the program had to take into account the requirements of all three. (I agree with you that it probably won’t be able to replace the A-10 Warthog, but those requirements probably slowed down production still further.) Its software was also complex to an unprecedented degree, which is obviously not the case with the Su-57, and this caused most of the problems with it.
I just read an explanation, though. The new Russian defense plan is intended to focus on deficiencies in other areas: they would like to improve their tanker fleet (a weakness already in Soviet times), AEW&C (A-100, “Russian AWACS”, this time probably similar to E3 abilities), and transportation capabilities. Probably all three are important.
The one thing I don’t understand is the development of the bomber fleet (Tu-160M2), but it might be an asymmetrical response to Western air superiority: perhaps their role would be to destroy or disable the airports (including carriers?) with standoff weapons.
very useful, ty
Do you recommend them to abandon their bomber fleet?
No, but I thought that because they are more offensive weapons, the development of air superiority fighters should take precedence over the production of new bombers.
The utility of building the Tu-160M2 (as opposed to upgrading the existing fleet) is questionable anyway in my opinion. It’s arguably not a very modern delivery platform anyway, but it’s still horribly expensive, and even technically difficult. They also have several dozens or even hundreds of unmodernized Tu-22M strategic bombers, some in service, many many more in reserve, which could be modernized, too, if there really is a need for more bombers.
So why prioritize the Tu-160M2 production (which will be a slow program fraught with difficulties anyway) over either modernization of the existing bomber fleet or finally finishing the currently largely on hold Su-57 program?
thing is the artificial vitamin D they put in supplements (and i assume feed) is made from mushrooms and they say it works exactly the same but i haven’t tested that myself.
My problem is that there often doesn’t seem to be any forward thinking or a development strategy, instead they keep starting ever newer grandiose programs, but then usually fail to finish them. Maybe the Tu-160M2 program is better or more useful than the Su-57 (I fail to see why, though), but then why didn’t they prioritize it ten years ago, before they sank untold billions into the PAK FA project? I remember having read already around 2007-8 about restarting the production of the Tu-160, and then they finally finished an unfinished airframe left from Soviet times last year.
It appears to me that Russian defense procurement is driven by a combination of lobbies and the idiotic and constantly changing ideas of politicians lacking minimal foresight or expertise.
Cost per flying hour of the F-35A is 2-3x higher than the F-16.
http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21776/f-35-cheaper/
The F-35’s frontal stealth and internal weapons carriage are intended to briefly penetrate defended airspace, bomb a target, and withdraw. The ability to carry external stores is good of course, but the aircraft isn’t a bomb truck for colonial wars (though it might get a lot of use in that mission). Bear in mind that the JSF project was launched before America launched its stupid Forever War.
The US also already has the F-15E for this role. The F-15E can carry more weapons than an F-35A. This aircraft has also been exported to South Korea and Singapore (with various upgrades), so it’s not a US-only type. And the Chair Force is now proposing to order more F-15Es with their F-15X proposal.
A better choice in permissive environments is a heavy bomber.
The B-1B and B-52H cost only 50% more per hour than the F-35A to fly as you can see. A fully loaded out B-1B (including external stores) can carry sixty tons of bombs.
I’ve suggested before that we make use of wide body airliners for missions like this. A very large order should be placed with Boeing for a large fleet of 777s for transport, tanker, AEWR, ELINT, maritime patrol, and bomber missions.
http://what2fly.com/manufacturer/operating_cost/Boeing/777/1697
This doesn’t include depreciation costs of course but point being mass produced wide body airliners have very economical operating costs. And a bomber configuration of a 777 would be able to carry over 100 tons of bombs.
If operations research suggest the 777 is too large for my proposal then the 787 would be an excellent choice.
No 737 MAX bombers please!
That’s a fair point and not one that it was clear to me you were making.
So then we would want to use the A2A weight of both types. I don’t have data for this but I’ll bet that thrust-to-weight is then similar. Wing loading would still be worse for the F-35A, but I see that Lockheed Martin does claim the F-35’s fuselage provides more lift than the F-16 (also supplied by LMCO).
So perhaps the F-35A in an A2A role is actually aerodynamically comparable to an F-16C, which isn’t bad at all. And if the promised “sensor fusion” works the pilot would have superior situational awareness despite the inferior cockpit visibility. Cockpit visibility matters, but it obviously isn’t everything as evidenced by Luftwaffe aces racking up hundreds of kills in the Me-109. LMCO and the Chair Force would no doubt point out that the EODAS in the F-35 makes a surprise “bounce” from the rear unlikely.
A dubious design decision, but it doesn’t mean zero dogfighting abilities. During the Vietnam War American pilots got into dogfights without guns (and quickly learned that they needed guns, but they still fought). Modern missiles are a lot better than ones from the 1960s (something Pierre Sprey never learned), so some people think guns can be deleted again. The RAF also ordered its Eurofighter Typhoons without guns (though it now equips Typhoons with them for A2G missions).
A pet peeve of mine is the US’ habit of equipping its fighters with inferior guns going back to 1940. The gun is the most technologically mature and reliable A2A weapon, so it’s not like an excellent gun couldn’t be designed at a reasonable cost. Or one could be selected from Europe like the GIAT 30/M791 or the Oerlikon KCA.
In the end I agree with you that the F-35 is fine and not a “turkey”, but I consider it to be a waste of resources to develop a new fighter which doesn’t appear to offer improvements over our “legacy” fighters. Perhaps for our NATO allies who can only afford one combat aircraft type the F-35 is a nice choice since it offers both adequate A2A performance and substantial A2G warloads in an economical (by Western standards) aircraft.
It’s also not suitable for our Pacific allies as Air Power Australia showed.
Ron made some comment on another thread that had me thinking. He was talking about the potential bad influence of America on China and how the Chinese had had the foresight to limit it with movie quotas and blocking the internet.
This made me wonder, since many of the Chinese I have known seem to have been pretty familiar with Hollywood cultural outputs, including some old movies and some old American TV shows. I even recall some years ago, hearing some English teacher saying he had Chinese students that spoke like the Dukes of Hazard (some TV old show, set in the South). Maybe, these are not typical Chinese.
Not to mention, the quota movies can sometimes be diversitarian – so it seems like they are blocking mostly on economics, not politics.
So I wonder, how much of Hollywood makes it into China, beyond the movie theater quotas? Like, how much would be on normal TV? And how much of it would be in English, if any? How would Chinese be familiar with old american TV shows – is this just DVD and internet piracy, or did they play on TV?
A major weapon Russia would use against Western airpower would be its theater ballistic missiles like the Iskander. NATO airfields all over Central and Eastern Europe would probably be bombarded with missiles almost immediately after war began.
Russia’s extensive IADS would make deep penetration of its airspace very difficult for even high performance aircraft, and it would keep NATO tankers and AEWR planes far from contested airspace.
Russia’s fighters would in turn probably fight like the Luftwaffe did after it lost air superiority. Try to keep the force in tact and engage with superior Western forces only when they think they have a local advantage or a critical target might be attacked.
A big question would be how well America’s high-end stealth aircraft (B-2, F-22) would perform in defended Russian airspace. Will Russia’s new counter-VLO radars allow them to effectively engage these aircraft?
Existing drones are slow because they’re intended for use in permissive environments.
There’s no reason you can’t built a high performance drone. The Air Force is currently developing a new heavy bomber which reportedly will feature “optional manning”. That is to say it will be a manned combat aircraft which can fly autonomously.
During the Cold War US SR-71s could launch a Mach 3 drone (they were called Remotely Piloted Vehicles or RPVs then) reconnaissance aircraft called the Lockheed D-21.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21#Specifications_(D-21)
The Soviet Buran space shuttle was also capable of autonomous flight.
And if you think about it guided missiles are drones. They just don’t return to base. The Swedish word for a guided missile is in fact “robot”.
The issue with combat drones is that obviously remote-controlled combat aircraft would be useless against Russia or any other modern country. The communications links would simply be jammed. This was observed already in the Second World War when the Anglo-Americans responded to German guided anti-shipping bombs with radio jamming.
Effective combat drones would need to be able to autonomously replace a human pilot. The challenge here is in “artificial intelligence” research, which historically has always promised more than it delivers. If self-driving cars reach a high level of maturity then we can expect autonomous combat aircraft (and other weapons) as realistic.
The F-35 program was launched with “concurrence”. Production began before the aircraft was ready, with problems to be fixed in service. The F-35 that flies today has many differences from the F-35 that flew in 2006 or even just a few years ago. The Russians didn’t pursue concurrence because that’s a scam intended to enrich contractors which you should only pursue in wartime.
If you want to see a very humorous example of concurrence gone wrong take a look at the disastrous M247 Sergeant York program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M247_Sergeant_York
The biggest problem with the Su-57 program appears to be developing the next generation jet engine. Jet engines are extremely expensive and difficult to develop, and Russia lags the West in jet engine technology. Russia also lags in fighter radars, which is why the Su-35 for instance has a passively scanned electronic array rather than an actively scanned one. These were first fielded in the West (or actually, Japan) on fighter aircraft in the 1990s.
The F-35 obviously isn’t a replacement for the A-10 at all and claims that it is are transparently ridiculous. The Air Force has simply always resented the A-10 for various reasons, though they’re probably right about the A-10’s survivability for its original mission being questionable. The remaining A-10s should simply be transferred to the Army, Marine Corps, and Air National Guard.
The Tu-160 is a strategic bomber. Its mission is to launch long-range supersonic nuclear armed cruise missiles from standoff range.
Russia has also used it in the conventional bombing role in Syria.
It’s not equipped or trained for an anti-shipping mission, but I bet they’re considering that. The Su-34 after all is.
The Russians are also reportedly developing a replacement called the PAK-DA. This is supposed to be a supersonic stealth bomber.
Russia prioritizes its strategic forces over everything else. Hence why they continually introduced new and improved ICBMs even when they were dirt poor. They also introduced a new boomer sub.
The Tu-160 is the highest performance bomber ever designed. It carries a massive warload and is extremely difficult to intercept.
The Su-57 can hunt F-22s. The Tu-160 can hunt cities.
PGMs have also made heavy bombers very useful in the tactical role as demonstrated by American B-1Bs in Afghanistan.
That said, I’m sure non-military reasons come into play. The Tu-160 is prestigious and awe inspiring, and probably they want to support the Tupolev Bureau.
Flying is much easier than driving, so one of the things I never understood is why isn’t flight AI so much more advanced than driving AI (which can already reliably navigate congested city streets).
So you’re saying Russian defense procurement is driven by the same political pressures as defense procurement in all other countries?
Being American I can tick off a massive list of cartoonish procurement failures. The Army hasn’t produced a good infantry rifle since the 1930s. Our new aircraft carrier can’t even launch or recover aircraft.
Even during WW2 there were procurement fiascos in nearly all belligerent countries. Heinkel for instance was upset about being forced to produce Ju-88 wings and slow walked production until the RLM allowed them to instead produce the unreliable He-177. The US Navy equipped its submarines with dysfunctional torpedoes and punished officers who complained. Japan had bizarre rivalry between its navy and air force (except, oddly, on radar development) who refused to use each other’s weapons. The USSR had the then useless MiG bureau turning out unsuitable fighters.
Britain actually comes out looking good here as I can’t really think of any British wartime procurement debacles (but perhaps our British commenters can).
I see a lot of future potential in drones:
Without much AI, you could program them ahead of time. They could navigate like birds even without GPS, or secure communications. Their targets would be pre-selected – easy to do with the kind of spy sats that exist now.
Their instructions would be basic, mathematical – destroy all planes and hangers on airbase – destroy all ships that look like X, Y , or Z in zone 25. Even unarmed ones could potentially seriously change the amount of intel gathered.
There are so many potential strengths. They could accelerate faster than pilots, require shorter runways. Information is duplicative, so they would not need to be trained, only built. They would be cheaper. There could be swarms of them. You could really minimize the factor of unit cost and steamroll your enemies with shear numbers.
I think the main hurdles are political. It is the same with the deployment of non-deadly weapons.
China pursues the Joe Goebbels strategy of forcing Hollywood to make any films it permits in its market conform to Chinese ideological requirements. Unsure about TV production, but Chinese TV budgets are huge so I doubt they import that much foreign TV content.
A big problem for China now is that Japanese anime is conquering the hearts of their youth: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/23/super-patriotic-anime-youth-wars-china-japan-pop-culture/
Jack Dorsey may be aiming for maximum mental performance. However, if he thinks he will last a long time like that he is mistaken. In all cases stick as close to what it would be in nature as you can. Over a year you have meat and the dark long nights to sleep, and in summer you can gorge on sugar and stay up late. This cheat days stuff puts the changes of a year into a week, and is a recipe for dysregulating your metabolism. To age slowly, low to moderate protein intake is key. Of course feeling good and aging slowly are not the same thing and there is every reason to believe that one diet cannot do both.
The first aircraft autopilot was fielded in 1912. Planes can takeoff, fly, and land themselves. Western pilots claim that Third World airliner pilots are inadequately trained and rely on autopilot too much.
And I’m not sure flying is actually easier than driving. Consider takeoff, landing, inclement weather, turbulence, etc. And how does an autopilot deal with adapting to an aircraft that suffers critical component failures in flight? By “modeling” all such failures in advance? Certainly it’s a lot easier to get a driver license than a pilot’s license. In the US you need 20 hours of flying time just to get a sport pilot license.
Then there are regulations. A revenue flight (i.e. one carrying passengers) needs a pilot and a copilot in all modern countries. Pilots are also fairly powerful. Any airline expressing an interest in replacing pilots would find that its pilots would go on strike, leaving the airline to pay its very expensive debt service while taking in no revenue from passengers.
Turbulence is a nothingburger. Unsettling, but pose no real risks; like speed bumps on a road, but without the chance that it will swerve you into a ditch. I don’t think a single passenger aircraft has been lost to turbulence in the entire history of aviation. Landing and takeoff are indeed the single challenging aspects about it, since – for a brief time – one needs to contend with the full set of spatial dimensions.
From my (very limited) experience of flying it is indeed very easy, was allowed to land on my third try. In the UK, they let children do it (with an instructor), whereas you can only get a driver’s license when you’re 16. In contrast, it took me ages before I could drive a car to follow the markings on the road accurately.
I suspect that the mass of regulations around flying arose out of the inherent and understandable phobia around flying (which ofc has had the effect of making flying extremely safe per mile, much more so than any other transport option apart from railways). Ergo the need for not just one but two pilots is also I suspect largely a product of social psychology. I would probably compare it to atomophobia. Nuclear power is inherently very safe, and the phobia around it has made it even safer.
Targets move.
The trajectory of spy satellites is known.
Reconnaissance drones are nothing new and have been used for over 50 years.
Target identification is a sticky problem. Planes can be moved, camouflaged, etc.
A high performance UCAV would still have giant engines, a big radar, lots of internal fuel, many weapons stations, etc. It would be a big, heavy, expensive aircraft.
Some size and expense would of course be saved by deleting the cockpit and life support systems, but not that much. Just look at a photo of an F-22 and see how small the cockpit is relative to the rest of the aircraft.
There are real personnel savings here, but that’s somewhat illusory too. A UCAV still requires maintenance crews, squadron commanders, engineering support, etc. A bigger advantage is that UCAVs could go to war right off the production line without also getting a pilot through flight school which takes hundreds of hours (and requires instructors, trainer aircraft, more maintenance personnel, more bases, etc.).
I’m a proponent of “optionally-manned” combat aircraft. If AI technology ever matures to the level its proponents claim it will, then you just cashier the pilots or switch them to desk duty. If it fails to, you still have your pilots. The AI capability would also be useful in the event pilots are incapacitated in combat or you need to send warplanes on some kind of suicide mission.
Yes, and there are also labor problems. Pilots themselves object to being replaced, and pilots run most air forces.
How old are the air frames of the heavy bombers and how long would the VKS wait for new ones if the state would not invest right now into the production of new air frames?
http://tass.com/defense/1051231
http://tass.com/defense/1038351
Drone fighters can basically ignore g. That alone would appear to make them ultracompetitive vs. human pilots, not just today but at least a decade or two ago already.
Other advantages:
* Don’t care about own life/survival, can act completely “altruistically” in combat
* Near instantaneous networking with allied assets
* Much greater information integration, and capacity to act on it (AI can already beat the best humans at complex games without full information, so I am sure they can trounce the best fighter aces even without the above advantages)
While I am certainly no military expert, I can’t help but think that institutional inertia explains much or most of the reasons that they have not been widely fielded yet.
Turbulence isn’t a problem (except for passengers), but weather fronts with a large amount of electric energy are. So too are certain types of precipitation as well as aircraft icing. Pilots not only know how to deal with these problems, but can deal with novel problems (hopefully…).
Negative problems in aviation tend to be much more unexpected than those on roads, and they occur at high altitude and at high speed. Nassim Taleb would describe aviation safety problems as belonging to Extremistan.
Delta Airlines has invested in extremely expensive supercomputing to try to ensure its customers never experience bad turbulence or scary weather. It still happens routinely. Automated flying is applying that approach to the whole thing.
Children can drive cars just fine. Lots of hoodlums steal cars when they’re 14 for instance. 16 is an arbitrary limit.
You’re the opposite of me in that I’ve always found driving to be very easy. The only real challenge was mastering a manual transmission. Driving on the race track is also challenging, though that’s expected.
Flying isn’t hard, but I find it more challenging than driving (disclaimer: only have 14 flying hours, and none recently). While you don’t have to deal with other traffic (mostly) or objects in the way, the machine itself has many more variables you need to be aware of. Certainly nothing like elevator trim based on your fuel load ever comes up in a car (granted, a problem which was first successfully automated in the 1940s on the Fw-190).
The social psychology thing is obviously true. It wasn’t until 1980 that twin-engine airliners were permitted to fly Transatlantic routes, even though Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in a single-engine aircraft in 1927. Mathematically any “rational” person can understand that the benefit of cheaper Transatlantic flights outweighs the very marginally increased risks of ditching over water. But that kind of thinking horrifies ordinary people.
Another argument against fully-AI passenger aviation is a similar to one against fully automated trucking, which is that pilots do a lot more than just fly the plane. They also engage in crew management (pilots are called first officers on airlines), customer relations, maintenance, and law enforcement. And without pilots the world’s bars would suffer greatly.
Drone fighters can’t ignore g because aircraft are still subject to the laws of physics. You can design a drone aircraft to handle much higher g loads, but this isn’t “free”. The aircraft structure necessarily becomes heavier, which penalizes range, payload, acceleration, and turn performance.
Maneuvers that can generate extremely high g forces in turn would require greater aerodynamic lift (more drag and more weight) and/or more thrust vectoring (more weight). Combat aircraft already have very high wing loading compared to early fighters because the drag penalties are not worth the increase in turning performance.
If new developments in flight suits work out then human pilots will be able to pull 14g soon, more than any fighter aircraft has ever been designed for.
Manned aircraft are already capable of instantaneous networking–this is one of the core features of the F-35.
The other advantages are true, and I’m sure inertia and pilot resistance play a role. Though I’m not so sure about the AI advantage over humans. Games have rules. Combat doesn’t. Fortunately this is the kind of thing that can be war gamed (with real aircraft–not just computer simulations) and improved over time.
Yeah, but both are multirole aircraft with decent BVR-capabilities at least. It of course means that F-15Es etc. should be counted as well.
Yes. Although I’m not sure that’s actually confirmed. By the way, those sources and authors are questionable, to say the least. I wouldn’t take people like David Axe and Alex Lockie seriously at all.
For one thing, if I remember correctly, Andreas Rupprecht (aka Deino) has complained several times how he is constantly quoted out of context by these idiots, in order to fit into their “Chinese military is actually weak” narrative. So it probably happened again here.
Karlin vs. Martyanov. Very entertaining, but off-topic: https://www.unz.com/article/vladimir-the-savior/#comment-2258131
After quick browsing, this comment sounds plausible:
And:
Even this is better than most articles on National Interest or Business Insider (lmao):
https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/advanced-helmet-pl-10-missile-ensure-j-20s-killing-of-f-35-f-22/
So basically his argument is that J-20’s advanced helmet + the short-range PL-10 missile is the winning combo.
In any case, the “Chinese 5th gen fighters have zero dogfighting abilities” clickbait is obviously total nonsense.
You have good points, and some people take their wishful thinking regarding the F-35 a little too far, but I think you are too pessimistic. I really don’t think the F-35 is a silver bullet, no matter how many hundreds are churned out annually. And some F-35 critics argue that while the plane itself isn’t that expensive anymore, its maintenance requirements in general are so demanding and costly that the sortie and availability rates are… bad. There’s probably at least some truth to that, especially when we are talking about smaller countries and air forces.
That said, with the current and planned production rates, if we assume the F-35 is anywhere near as good as advertised, it would basically mean that the US is becoming militarily and technologically more dominant, even vs. China. (One major caveat: their very vulnerable basing? But that’s it? They would actually be dominant once in the air?) But that is not supported by almost any other indicator or military program. Or is it? There’s one that comes close, though. It’s the “China can’t into nuclear subs, EVER” meme, but it’s even more obviously false, in my opinion.
And if that’s the case, China (and even the US? Or Russia) wouldn’t still be procuring very large numbers of 4.5th gen fighters. Interestingly, it would also mean that in a hypothetical conflict between the UK and France (near equals), for example, the latter would be at a massive disadvantage, as only a few F-35 would wipe the floor with 4.5th gen Rafales (at least theoretically, as long as the F-35s wouldn’t run out of missiles). That makes no sense. Now there are probably better examples, and you could argue that the comparison is stupid because France is not attempting to challenge “The Empire” and is in many ways just a vassal, so it doesn’t count, but still.
Lastly, we have Turkey’s S-400 deal. It’s almost as if Turkey chose the S-400 over the F-35 + Patriot? I don’t think it’s necessarily that simple (or rather, it obviously isn’t), but such a conclusion wouldn’t be too ludicrous at all. Or how dumb are the Turks?
Almost forgot the bombers. Russia is not only “prioritizing” the Tu-160 over the Su-57 program (I’m not sure it’s actually true though, hence the “”) , but as I pointed out in my previous post, Russia has prioritized multirole Su-30s (which are replacing some of the remaining Su-24s) and fighter bombers Su-34 over the air-to-air focused Su-35s as well. And yes, they are planning to deeply modernize some Tu-22Ms and even Su-25s too. The Russian military must have good reasons for that?
Low to moderate protein intake as a percentage of overall calories? Or in terms of absolute calories?
Ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting mainly work by lowering overall caloric intake. Keto diets have lots of fat that sate you quickly. It’s hard to stop keep on eating a bag of chips or french fries, but you can’t eat much of a stick of butter without starting to feel queasy. This coupled with reduced carb intake means none of the glucose spikes from carbs that give you hunger pangs and brain fog regularly just a few hours after a carb heavy meal.
The keto/fasting protocol is supposed to try to mimic paleolithic patterns of feast and famine, though it’s unclear how accurate it is, and whether it’s even optimal anyway.
Counterdominance deathsquad
https://youtu.be/acOZT240bTA?t=993
The late Henry Harpending, who had lived among the Bushmen, talked about this. He did not suggest it as a cause of homosexuality or increased learning ability though.
AK: Random anons don’t get to advertise their websites here.
Movies are censored in China, in the Hangover the part with the naked Asian guy in the car boot if cut out of the film, so even those approved are then edited. The Chinese are right that the film and TV industry are a real danger.
The reason why AI in combat aircraft hasn’t taken off is likely because the stakes are higher. If the AI goes rogue or there is a mistake and it crashes, the costs involved are simply much greater than a single civilian passanger car getting into a crash. Combat drones are usually deployed over very poor countries which can’t fight back and even they are by and large remote-controlled by humans.
Fighter jets are often used to mark against other states, often competitors/rivals. If a large part of a state’s jets were automated and there was a concerted malfunction, a war would not be unthinkable. The stakes are simply dramatically higher.
Narrow AI is almost certainly safer than humans at any rate, but the psychology behind this reluctance is understandable from a psychological point of view, though still irrational at its root.
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The pattern was annual with phases months long . Trying to fit the seasons of the year into a week and repeating 50 times a year while thinking that you are doing something evolution has fitted you for is wrong in principle, and likely to have unpleasant consequences.
The A10 was supposed to be replaced by the F35, but the US decided to keep the A10s.
The USAF have always hated the A10, which was designed for the Army. Think Aldo Ray (Aldo is the name of Brad Pitt’s character in Inglourious Basterds)
Obviously, they won’t allow anything that depicts the PRC as the villain or questions regime’s dogma on sensitive historical or territorial questions (although this is not so much of a problem for them now that Hollywood is dependent on the large Chinese market).
However, for ordinary films, they will mostly censor scenes within a film or TV series if it contains what they deem to be too much violence or sexuality (both straight and the LGBT variant).
Some diversitarian films in the cinemas I can recall acquaintances discussing are the We wuz kangs version of The Nutcracker, various SJW-ised American superhero films and, I think, Wakanda.
Now, I have less familiarity with what’s show on TV than I have even on cinema, however, I have the impression the foreign material that is shown is not so much, however what is shown is mostly Chinese-dubbed versions of classic innocuous Japanese (Detective Conan, Doraemon) and American (Tom and Jerry) cartoons.
However, many foreign films and TV shows, including some old ones (ex. it seems Dukes of Hazzard are available on both iQiyi and Youku, albeit with VIP subscriptions), are available on streaming services like iQiyi, Youku (like YouTube) and Bilibili (mostly East Asian cartoons but also some American ones) that are either free or charge a small subscription fee to access VIP material.
Then there is also old-fashioned plain piracy.
That doesn’t mean the authorities don’t shut down specific films or series sometimes, but overall it seems to be rather few restrictions beyond what I mentioned.
Of course, many people will also have VPN, bypassing restrictions completely.
Apparently there are still some holdover regulations on the media from the Cultural Revolution; for example, movies that depict supernatural entities such as ghosts are prohibited, I guess in an effort to eradicate rural superstition. The all-female Ghostbusters remake a few years ago was blocked from release in China on the pretense that it violated this rule.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ghostbusters-denied-release-china-910563
I have heard that they have a lot of war programs on TV, with Japan naturally as the villain. I have always been a bit mystified by this. I ask myself, is this just historical political legacy – something from the Mao era that just continues? Or does it reflect a still current and existential fear for the CCP – that Chinese will become enamored of the large, homogeneous, Asian democracy on their doorstep?
I don’t know, but it seems wrong-headed to me. All their villains should be gay, black Muslims and trannies, IMO, except for the ones that are white Americans who seek to promote diversity. But from what I have read of their current guidelines, such programming would be impossible. And even if it didn’t go against the current rules, there would be political/economic reasons that would probably create a hard official response against such.
And this, of course, is a great shame, because China may be the only market that has a chance of beating Hollywood in the propaganda war against globalism.
I have always thought that it was TV and not movies that was the key to subversion. Not many people will see an art-house movie. And big budget means big financial risk – traditionally producers would often balk at controversy. But TV is episodic, it amortizes the risk, or can wait until there is an audience, without the reviews that would potentially destroy a movie – or at least that is how it used to work.
The volume of consumable product on TV is much greater. It encourages the desire to differentiate by pushing boundaries, both in film and TV, while simultaneously weakening the ability to protest. IMO, TV effectively destroyed the Hays Code, many years before it was even officially done away with.
There used to be only about 4 networks in the US, when they starting pushing out the message. And China is already in the age of streaming, or so-called peak TV.
I suppose that even old American TV in China has its censors, and they probably don’t show something like All in the Family, which at the time was really about pushing the Overton window. I am not sure if they show The Dukes of Hazzard on American TV anymore, but what is funny is that they have effectively banned the merchandise from Amazon and Ebay because of the General Lee (the car on the show that had the Confederate flag.) But maybe, I am worrying for nothing and trashy leftist American TV doesn’t have any cachet there.
The idea of a paleo diet seems pretty crazy. Firstly, because it is impossible to reconstruct accurately. Secondly, since there are so many sweeps associated with digestive genes, along with general genetic changes since paleolithic times. I think Chinese have an intestine which is at least half again as long – that is a pretty big change.
If you were trying to target the optimal diet, based on the theory that what your body is most adapted to is best, you would probably have to try to target what the majority of your ancestors were eating in about 1492 AD.
In my case, I’m not even sure what that was, other than sour-milk and probably butter. Big pass on the first one, which was probably their main source of protein, so looks like the ancestor diet is out of the question for me.
The Type 45 destroyers came in over budget, and the number of ships was cut in half.
The new QE class carriers don’t have enough funding for the full complement of F-35s that could potentially be carried. The less effective B-model is used instead of the more expensive C-model.
Britain doesn’t have an independent nuke deterrent, France does (The French carrier was even more of a disaster).
The British Army rifle the L85, is inferior to the Steyr AUG that Australia uses. The SAS uses the M4 carbine. Thanks to hating the civilian population, the UK has no capacity to build its own rifles, and will probably buy the HK 416 as its replacement.
They also have a lot that feature the Nationalists. I saw bits of one where the Nationalists were dressed very snazzily, which to me seemed like it might defeat the point.
Part of it is perhaps just inertia – Mao features on every note*, they also still teach atheism in schools and some bookstores have works by Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and modern “capitalist” economics books on the same floor.
But the important parts of the civil war (the Long March and the struggle against the Nationalists and the Japanese) are also the foundational myth of the CCP and their Great Patriotic War equivalent. They wouldn’t really be able to relinquish that while still claiming continuity, which is the formal justification for their reign.
*(There are some old notes below 1 yuan (1 and 5 Jiao) that are still in circulation that feature ethnic minorities instead but are not printed any more.)
Africans are treated as backwards people in need of uplifting by their Chinese benevolent comrades.
Vague Westerners are sometimes depicted as villains in contrast to Chinese heroes – ironically they are very Hollywood-style action films.
There is one transexual on TV – Jin Xing:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jiv9p8qdPMk
This video has a Tencent Video mark, I don’t know how representative it is though:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDZnpT8Zw0
there must have been a lot of different ancestral paleo diets as people ate what was locally available but it’s probably true the more northern your ancestors were the more meat and fat they ate and the less plants and vice versa for more southerly.
otherwise i agree (relatively) recent ancestry may be just as or more important.
Just like in the West. The fascists stay absolute evil and the winners absolute good, only the details change.
China claims that the Communist Party defeated the Japanese, and West teaches that LGBT women of color defeated the Germans.
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2017/25/7/1498405805-airborne1.jpg
Another advantage is that drones can be smaller. But one objection to them may be a fear that they could be hacked and turned against those who deployed them.
Tapioca is tasty stuff! My wife made some just yesterday. But she’s a toughie…not afraid of gluten even. In our house we keep politics and food separate.
Who were you before? I lost my credentials too but it’s been months since I posted before today and I can’t even remember what my handle was.
I’m not into fad diets of any kind, though I try to moderate fat and sugar intake. But anything which might help tubby yanks lose some weight is absolutely o.k. with me.
But most cases of lung cancer are the result of smoking. Now, I don’t think that the occasional cigar or bowl of aromatic tobaccos is a great health risk, but it’s the incessant cigarette smoking patterns developed in the early-mid part of the 20th century that caused the necessary uproar. I remember my father who religiously smoked 3 packs of camel straights every day for decades. This habit screwed up his blood circulation and caused some serious problems in his legs. I also strongly suspect that his smoking contributed greatly to him having several cardiac arrests. He’s lucky that he gave it all up in his forties, whereas he wouldn’t have made it to his fifties. Deep inhalation of tobacco is bad for the heart.
AK: Could you please include sentence-ending periods within the blockquote tags? Thanks.
BTW, could you elaborate on why exactly you consider coffee a ‘superfood‘ if you haven’t already? I enjoy drinking coffee and have read some pretty glowing reports of the health benefits of coffee, of at all places, on some Ukie websites. Just curious what you know about the topic that I don’t?
To be clear I’m not recommending that people take up smoking or that smoking is healthy. In additional to cigarette smoking being carcinogenic and poor for the circulatory system, it’s immunosuppressive. It also makes you ugly.
I just think that anti-tobacco puritanism is ridiculous in light of what else we allow without comment.
For instance many offices are constantly putting out candy bowls and celebrating a birthday every week with cake.
Alcohol consumption has soared this century.
And we know that’s puritanism because the tobacco haters also go after safer forms of tobacco. There’s currently a ridiculous hysteria about vaping for instance, which is probably the safest way to consume tobacco. If anything we should be promoting vaping to existing smokers, but instead there are wild calls to ban it.
Pretty much what you say. For instance a recent study found that coffee consumption in a fasted state increased ketone production. Research frequently finds such lovely effects from coffee (and tea).
Coffee and tea, being concentrated plant products, also provide the healthy compounds (in the appropriate doses) like flavonoids and phytochemicals from plants that do not exist in animal foods.
Bit disappointed no one here thinks that Wrangham’s lynching theory of self domestication is worthy of discussion. It occurs to me that as being bullied as a child is the biggest behavioural indicator of later developing schizophrenia, pro-active communal killing of troublemakers may explain even more than Wrangham suggests. The part of his lecture where he talks about adults suckliing at the breast is pretty startling.
We need to be promoting cocaine. Weed users should be summarily shot. LSD needs to be allowed but only if dropped off in deep caves, primeval forests, or the summits of very high mountains.
I have noticed this about Western villains, and always thought it was kind of funny. It was also true of HK cinema to a certain extent. I think it probably has something to do with the Century of Humiliation – though there was a time when Hollywood did like foreign (white) villains, often with fake Eastern European accents.
In the Bruce Lee film “Fist of Fury”, he sees white people walking into the park, but an Indian at the gate stops him and points to the sign “No Chinese and no dogs allowed.” I suppose the Japanese still come off as worse – telling him to bark like a dog. But HK cinema was trying to make inroads into the West.
I think the above is very interesting scene. If I recall, there was about one park in the whole of China that Chinese were no allowed to go into, and, of course, it had no such sign, and may have been motivated by rational security fears. I find the whole Chinese experience and reaction in amazing contrast to what has happened to the West and the reaction of Europeans. I don’t think there was even 20,000 foreigners in China when the Boxer Rebellion happened – and it was quite violent.
South Korea almost seems to have a similar flavor of white villains. I’m not overly familiar with their cinema, but it is possible it may specifically be anti-American.
You can get rid of the nasty weed users by getting them to try LSD (not hard to do, since the effects have some similarities), and then ‘drop them off’ on the summits of very high mountains. You’re too young to remember, but during its heyday during the sixties, many LSD trips were recorded where the imbibers thought that they could fly…unfortunately though, that wasn’t the case.
BTW, your buddy the Mad Bohemian Budvar, used to be a big proponent of the weed. He even posted some weed reviews within ‘High Times’. I suspect he still imbibes, so he probably wouldn’t take too kindly to your sentiments. 🙂
significant chance everyone here already agrees with it
This I would also do. There is no sensible reason for male nudity in movies.
I found the article I had in mind and have translated it for you into English:
There are numerous studies confirming both positive and negative properties of coffee:
1. Antioxidants . Coffee is rich in antioxidants, such as chlorogenic acids and melanoidodines. Antioxidants help prevent oxidation – a process that causes the destruction of cells and aging. Melanoid dishes of roasted coffee have antioxidant effect.
Parkinson’s disease . Regular coffee intake reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease. A number of studies have shown that people who regularly use caffeine have significantly less chance of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Diabetes. The use of coffee can protect against the development of two types of diabetes. According to the study, moderate consumption of coffee, both with and without caffeine, reduces the risk of developing two types of diabetes in young and middle-aged women.
Cirrhosis of the liver . The use of coffee protects against liver cirrhosis, especially from alcoholic liver cirrhosis.
Gall bladder disease . There is plenty of evidence that coffee protects both men and women from gallstone disease.
Stones in the kidneys . Coffee consumption reduces the probability of stomach formation in the kidneys. Coffee increases the amount of urine, preventing crystallization of calcium oxalate – the main component of urinary stones.
Improvement of mental activity. Caffeine, which is contained in coffee, is a well-known stimulant. Coffee improves vigilance, attention and cheer. Coffee also accelerates the processing of information.
Alzheimer’s Disease . Regular use of coffee protects against Alzheimer’s disease. Recent studies have shown that caffeine consumption, equivalent to five cups of coffee a day, reduces the accumulation of destructive plaques in the brain.
Asthma . Caffeine, which is contained in coffee, is associated with theophylline, an old asthma medicine. Caffeine can improve respiratory function.
Safety of caffeine . In 1958, caffeine was added to the list of safe substances
http://www.aratta-ukraine.com/news_ua.php?id=4359
It’s certainly an old idea the concept of self-domestication; first put forward by Naz…, sorry, German physical anthropologist Egon F. von Eickstedt in the early 30s. Carlton Coon talked about the reduced bone density of domesticated animals, and in humans “reduction” in the massive cranial size found in the Bronze age Corded ect. Konrad Lorenz, especially in his Waning Of Humaneness, wrote extensively about domestication in relation to shortening of the long bones, extremities and base of the skull, lack of discrimination in mating and quantity and quantity of food, loosened connective tissue, and promiscuous mating. Coon did say the older men among primitive people would get together and put an end to danger menin the night, which may well explain why there is so much fascination with fictional and real life murderers in popular culture and documentaries. Anyway none of the aforementioned thinkers explicitly made Wrangham’s jump to individually harmless people indulging in proactively aggressive homicide on dangerous individuals as having been the cause of domestication.
True, but there is always first strike advantage. I think of the devastating attack on Clarke Air Base. Plus, it is harder to move infrastructure, like hangers and fuel tanks. Navy ships would likely be easily identifiable. If you ask me, air power is more concentrated nowadays, after many base closings. An attack on Edwards would potentially be devastating.
Also, quite true, but the equation potentially changes a lot, if you think of something like a carrier. Drones need not all be long range – they can be short range, but carried to the battlefield by other drones, maybe ships or subs. In such a case, they don’t need living quarters or food.
Drones can also be their own missiles, which is another savings of weight.
If our pessimistic traditionalist Aussie friend D for DOOM is reading have a look at this: https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/smart-money/financial-literacy/
This article is a good example of why HBD should be promoted even outside of our typical political concerns.
To seemingly every social problem the solution is always the same–more EDUCATION.
It needs to be strongly put out there that some problems simply cannot be solved. Horse to water and all that.
Acknowledgement of the reality of HBD would encourage a discussion about cognitive oppression, usury, and the immoral exploitation of the dull and the poor.
Immovable infrastructure known in advance owing to photographic reconnaissance can already be attacked. Drones change little here, especially since such bases are usually heavily defended and thus attacked with standoff weapons like cruise missiles and theater ballistic missiles.
Reducing size is quite obviously an advantage, but UAV proponents oversell this advantage (except when it comes to micro-drones). Our aircraft carriers for instance currently embark far fewer aircraft than they’re capable of carrying to begin with because of budgetary reasons.
Is this its only use? I am asking this, because it means we should safely assume that any keto “user” is a bipolar, and a woman, or something else trapped in the brain of a woman.
No, really, please stop referring to it as if it’s anything more than a fad, on a par with paleo (or perhaps they are the same?), or the zodiac. A calorie is a calorie, and a gram of sodium is a gram of sodium. Anything else is secondary for healthy people. For example, a gram of cholesterol is the boogeyman of a long-gone generation of Jewish doctors in cahoots with the US corn industry.
Also, the body can, and does, alter its pH mainly as a side effect of proper breathing (acidity indicating to the brain you are not breathing). pH is also a side show in regulation of body potassium and body nitrogen. Measuring your pee’s pH is going to show only results of regulation of other three things, more important for the body, and quite distinct from each other.
I started as Dacian Soros, but i got rejected by the comments system about one month ago. I went for Dacian Julien Soros, and it got taken. Next, I was Dacia’ n Soros. I think only the first one is registered by someone else, but WordPress decided that the other ones are in use.
I am trying to make it clear, from the name, that I am going to comment from a Romanian perspective, so that people who don’t care would PgDown more easily 🙂
I assume you are responding to me since you mentioned BPD.
I shared that study because it was the first study related to keto available on a Twitter account focused on health that I follow.
The diet was originally developed to treat epilepsy. It’s useful for other conditions like diabetes, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer (warning: do not take this as an endorsement to refuse chemo).
It’s untrue that a calorie is a calorie in the human body as different calories are metabolized with different levels of losses. They furthermore provide different levels of satiety and result in different physiological impacts on things such as blood sugar, insulin production, mTOR activation, etc.
If you’re referring to those weirdos who obsess over pissing on keto stix I agree that’s weird and stupid. All humans go into ketosis on occasion, and unless perhaps you have epilepsy it’s not desirable to be in ketosis all the time since insulin is anabolic and required for many functions in the body.
I use “keto” interchangeably with LCHF (low carb high fat).
The paleo diet is usually LCHF (and its #1 popularizer, Mark Sisson, is an LCHF and keto proponent) but isn’t always. It stresses avoiding grains and sugar. Sometimes they rehabilitate foods they had previously excommunicated (legumes and potatoes were once verboten but are now permitted).
How US went from telecoms leader to 5G also-ran without challenger to China’s Huawei
The US is remarkably weak in the core technology hardware space underlying 5G and what’s coming after that. The story details how that happened (it was far from inevitable). The lesson here is that all deregulation is not necessarily a good thing. State-led capitalism is sometimes a help and just letting markets rip can be an ideological blind alley, as the US has discovered.
Parenthetically, Huawei’s 2019 Q1 revenue went up by almost 40%.
I hope you are all using this blessed 22nd April to celebrate the life and memory of St. Stephen Lawrence of Lewisham (PBUH).
In the wake of the fire at Notre Dame, some Weibo users apparently brought up the destruction of Yuanming Yuan by the French and British in 1860.
I mean, not that I endorse it and some other destruction that happened later during the Boxer Rebellion, but it seems pretty funny for multiple reasons (though maybe it is a fringe viewpoint). 1.) The Palace wasn’t that old at the time. 2.) It was an act in retaliation to barbaric diplomatic killings. 3.) It pales in comparison to the destruction carried out by the Chinese themselves during the Cultural Revolution.
Though, if I am honest, I rather admire the Chinese ability to hold a grudge.
Your egg series sorely needs a side column of bears getting worse and worse outfits.
Chicken do not have emotions, and even people struggle with happiness. Talking about the happy chick makes me unhappy. I am losing faith in humanity.
A large majority of the planet already has all the required nutrients in their usual food. Maybe someone in a remote Afghan village doesn’t, but did you or anyone you ever met have scurvy or ricketts?
Finally, people here doubt the words of the US government, and believe that hundreds of thousands of employees are engaged in conspiracies to fake Moon landing, JFK murder, or 9/11. But we should believe a for-profit, privately-help corp., which MUST move the eggs from the chicken’s ass to the packaging machine?
In 2013, multiple UK and Dutch businesses labeled Romanian mustang meat as French beef, a lie that was easily denied by a one-hour, 5-dollar DNA test – and yet it went on for a year. What would prevent chicken eggs from being mislabeled as “kosher-free”, or whatever else Peterson’s daughter says you must have?
fair enough – i expect “torches and pitchforks” was one method, getting together to find a suitable volunteer sheriff to do the deed would be another (a common trope in westerns) and imo the main one: a gang of dangerous individuals making themselves the ruling elite and getting rid of rival dangerous individuals.
interesting now i think of it – westerns being so resonant because the “wild west” was ancient history repeated (the formation of complex societies from scratch).
i don’t know if the vitamin D in eggs requires sunlight – maybe chickens make it some other way and / or the artificial kind of vitamin D works the same – plus eggs have a lot of other nutrition apart from vitamin D so it’s not the sole reason for eating lots of eggs but…
keeping your vitamin D levels high somehow or other during the winter is a big deal.
“don’t worry guys we can off-shore the manufacturing and keep the high tech research”
signed
The Economist 1982
wishful thinking maybe but it might even lead to forcing wannabe politicians to take a basic numeracy test which i think would be the single most useful political change you could make.
or even more recently than that – thinking about this some more my grand-parent’s diet in modern “macro” terms would be:
moderate carbs, moderate protein, moderate fat
and the anti-fat campaign turned that into:
high carbs, moderate protein, low fat
so in a way all paleo and keto do is push you back towards what was the standard diet (for northern euros) less than a century ago and after a year or so of doing that and then slacking off a bit you’ll pretty much be back with your grand-parent’s diet again (with less bread and much less sugar).
I have a theory Americans are fat because diets are deliberately designed to have too few calories, so Americans can’t stick to them. They then give up on any restraint and just pig away – because why not, if it’s impossible to eat the recommended amount?
And I’m convinced that this is done on purpose by large food companies. I read somewhere our GDP would drop by a ridiculous amount if we just ate 30% less.
Americans dieters are frequently told to eat 1,200 or 1,600 calories, and a “normal” (non-dieting) calorie intake is set at 2,000.
How did they get this 2,000 figure? Well, they had at the time several studies showing it was way too low for average people, and only suitable for post-menopausal women and children. But they made that the standard recommendation anyways to discourage overeating.
But no normal man can eat that little, and its too little for many if not most normal women also.
For instance, Japan, the thinnest country in the developed world, has an average daily caloric intake of 2,800 calories. In Japan, female BMI has actually been declining in the past two decades, and the only countries with similar BMIs are Sudan, and places that deal with starvation.
The Minnesotta Starvation experiment, carried out in the 40s I think, fed its participants 1,600 calories per day – a fairly standard American diet recommendation today, even a bit on the mid to high range. The men in this study all suffered serious mental and emotional issues, one cutting off his fingers, were obsessed by food, and lost tons of weight. They were all traumatized for years after.
And it’s worth noting that the researchers knew enough enough at the time to consider 1,600 daily calories as starvation level.
I personally have had my abs showing eating what I now calculate to be about 2,800 calories (at the time I never thought in terms of calories).
So paradoxically, I conclude that Americans need to feel they are allowed to eat more, in order to be motivated to eat less.
All these weird fad diets that pop up in America are a desperate attempt to deal with a tragic situation, the result of science trying to supplant tradition. In fact, science knows very little about nutrition, it is a young science. But it pretends otherwise, of course, as in so many other areas, like intelligence research.
The best thing for any American to do is structure a meal plan based on traditional eating habits that lasted till the 70s, which would require some research. Then adjust based on hunger. The key thing is moderation. Too much hunger is as bad as too much satiety.
Just read this.
I think what Martyanov means by “enclosed technological cycles” is the ability to to manufacture final goods without needing to import raw materials, intermediate goods, and capital goods.
This has the benefit of reducing a state’s dependence on foreign trade, but it generally comes at the cost of reduced economic efficiency. Martyanov is a Sovok who dismisses “bourgeois economics” as pseudoscience, so he would either deny the penalty exists or dismiss it as irrelevant.
He says something interesting in another comment in that thread:
His first sentence is simply Sovokism (and actually beyond that–more on that later), but then he gets to the core of his economic doctrine.
Martyanov actually has an economic worldview somewhat similar to Adolf Hitler, who considered dependence on trade to be dangerous to the state’s self-sufficiency and military power. If a state doesn’t have overwhelming military control of its trade routes (which Germany lacked, as does Russia today) that’s obviously true.
Most major powers try to balance this tradeoff by have some level of self-sufficiency for their military-industrial complex, while integrating their civilian-industrial sectors into the world trade system to increase economic efficiency.
Russia and the United States are relatively unique in having nearly completely self-sufficient military industrial complexes which can produce every class of weapon and munition without substantial foreign input.
Martyanov being a Sovok, this is the only economy that matters to him. And on a certain crude level, it’s correct. Sure, a lot of countries are more prosperous than Russia. But Russia, like Samson, can at any moment pull down the temple thanks to its ENCLOSED TECHNOLOGICAL CYCLES. So f@#$ those prosperous vassalized Kraut-dummies! Sarmat ICBMs > Mercedes-Benz cars. Russsssssia STRONK!
The error military-industrial types, especially of the Soviet variety, make is in generalizing this to the rest of the economy. It’s certainly true that Embraer doesn’t have the capability to produce aircraft without imported components. But compare the sales figures of Embraer to Sukhoi (ignoring, for the moment, that the Superjet is not the product of an enclosed Russian technological cycle) and it’s clear that the winner is Embraer.
Martyanov, like a lot of Western dissidents and foreign anti-Americans, makes the very basic error of thinking the US economy is “fake” (despite containing quite a lot of ENCLOSED TECHNOLOGICAL CYCLES). You see, banking is not part of the actual economy. Debt is evil (it’s in the Bible after all), and the US Dollar is just a worthless scrap of paper. The whole house of cards is going to collapse Real Soon Now…
Karlin demanded that Martyanov produce a way of quantifying this. It seems to be that the way of doing so would be to apply the economic complexity approach to an economy’s output of final manufactured goods and subtract all imports involved in the production of these final goods (raw materials, intermediate goods, capital goods, and intellectual property). To this one would add as well the net trade balance in final manufactured goods.
Most people regulate their eating through hunger (novel concept).
I think the main problem is the increased convenience of food consumption. Used to be people simply had 2-3 square meals a day.
Now there’s constant snacking in between meals as well as substantial consumption of caloric beverages.
There are keto/LCHF people who get excited about buying or making fun keto food products like KETO FAT BOMBS and eat them as snacks and wonder why they don’t lose weight as the diet promises. Chinese riddle for you…
LCHF obviously isn’t required to maintain a healthy bodyweight. Just visit Vietnam. Or upper class parts of the West. It just makes it easier and has other benefits (including the psychological and spiritual benefits you describe that come from discipline, taboo, separation, etc.).
Generally agree with your comment.
But Japan for instance has greater convenience of food consumption than America. Asia in general does. And while hunger is a vital part of the process in several ways, people also eat for pleasure.
In terms of weight maintenance, I’m not sure we really know what’s going on – the best thing might be to admit that, and take a step back to the last period in time we were thin. Without really understanding what’s going on, lets just do what they did. And maybe just do what people in thin countries do. (In terms of eating and food consumption).
In other words, “decision making under opacity”. Step back from the science. It hasn’t helped. Stop pretending to understand, and go back to the last point things were still working. Even without knowing why.
This would require humility, but would it not be wisdom? And yet our society would have such a hard time adopting such an approach. It would work. But we’d never do it.
As for Keto, that’s another ballgame, more experimental, with different potential benefits. There’s nothing wrong with these kinds of experiments alongside going back to a basically healthy food culture. No reason not to also experiment.
Anyways, this is just me harping on what is becoming a theme of mine – I just think as a culture we need a fresh approach to lots of things. The game is now to pretend to know – and we get into all kinds of trouble. Ancel Keys is a good example – dude did.not.know, but had to pretend he did. And how much trouble did his pretense at knowledge cause.
It’s illegal to be fat in Japan. You get fined.
In non-Japan Asia obesity is climbing as well.
China, which isn’t even rich or fully urbanized yet, for instance has a growing obesity problem now. One-twentieth of Chinese are obese, and the figure is one-fifth in the most prosperous cities.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-beauty/article/1938620/explosion-childhood-obesity-china-worst-ever-expert-says-new
Modern technology and abundance has produced an obesogenic environment that people struggle to deal with, especially when bombarded with both marketing (of delicious, affordable food products) and all manner of misinformation and quackery.
The Japanese approach to dealing with the problem is quite elegant. It doesn’t require any kind of understanding really–just penalties.
Maybe, but the fines are not huge, and only in some places, and are a recent thing anyways. I think it’s a great idea, and social penalties to fatness are an important part of it all. America also got fatter after social standards broke down in the 60s and general slovenliness was accepted.
I think a multi-factorial approach is required. Culture, psychology, social pressure, eating healthy, and tradition-proven portion control – adequate and filling but not excessive.
But such an approach is scientific, not precise – more art than science. Its what a culture is for. But here science has replaced culture and the art of life – so I don’t think we are ready yet to think the way the japanese do about food.
One twentieth obesity is negligible, and one fifth quite low for a wealthy developed nation. But I am sure as China moves away from its traditional attitude to food it will suffer. Remember, China destroyed its traditional culture and today admires America most of all the Asian countries.
I don’t buy the obesogenic environment because I have been most thin and fit in the most obesogenic environments, foodie cities in America, Europe, and Asia. I have only gained weight for short periods in American suburbs, where food is only available in supermarkets you have to drive to, and isn’t very good unless you know how to cook.
There are too many holes in that theory – Tokyo, Paris, Bangkok, Seoul, Rome, Madrid, are a thousand times more obesogenic than an American suburb, yet people are thinner there.
I am also not sure the European aristocracy did not exist in an obesogenic environment for centuries, yet were notably thin.
Marketing I agree is a huge problem – I forget his name, Freud’s nephew, basically said we needed to manipulate Americans into consuming more as caveat to win the Cold War. His basic method, after all the hype, was just getting high status people to endorse a product or activity lol. Very primitive psychology.
And the misinformation is a problem too, but can only flourish because we’ve replaced age old proven traditions with abstract approaches.
Its complex lol.
This should be self-evidently incorrect. If I give you only soda to drink as your only meal, you will have enough calories but rapidly become sickly and eventually die.
The digestive system is obviously more complex than this. I’ve linked to the biochemistry before, but it’s worth sharing again.
https://ketoschool.com/the-science-behind-fat-metabolism-60f7a3f678d0
One good relic of Sovok in Ukraine is that Ukraine retains some capability of building its own weapons. Here is an interesting article about Ukraine’s own anti-tank missiles in use:
https://medium.com/dfrlab/minskmonitor-ukraines-anti-tank-missiles-at-the-front-d08a5f3b1e7a
Larger native missile systems:
https://jamestown.org/program/ukraine-expands-its-missile-capabilities/
Not for individuals but for corporations.
https://www.jacksonville.com/reason/fact-check/2016-09-16/story/fact-check-it-illegal-japanese-residents-be-overweight
KFC is wildly popular and Pizza Hut is seen as an upmarket eating out choice. Fast food just dominates China, and then you have the spoiled only child factor. Not quite at Saudi levels, but obesity is going to be a big issue.
That is a bad example, considering how imported components caused issues for the SSJ (the problems of the “French” engines, no orders from Russian MoD and Iran possible).
It is telling that there is opposition to using engines from the same company for other Russian aircrafts.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1116447901583060995
It is rather funny my rather middle of the way initial comment – which is obviously true, Russia does have a very substantial manufacturing sector (contra that Akuleyev fellow), but it is not internationally competitive (as Martyanov claims, apparently confusing his “enclosed technological cycles” for that) – provoked such an infuriated response. I don’t even recall making any particular value judgments there, though my default position is that autarky is better to the extent it doesn’t put a major crimp on efficiency and makes one less vulnerable to sanctions (obviously a germane issue in Russia’s case, and in China’s). Ah yes, and there was also that hilarity with the distinction between industrial vs. manufacturing production.
Yes in Westerns the cowardly townspeople and corrupt sheriff being terrorised by the local big shot are a common trope. And now instead of Westerns there are police dramas in which the renegade cop who plays by his own rules is a thinly disguised vigilante. These storylines obviously satisfy something in the primordial mind. I think it could work if imposed from above by an elite as with:
However, where Wrangham’s theory gets novel is when he says it was the most peaceful and cooperative people, the ones without any kind of elite, such as the Bushmen (who are also the most primitive of course) that were coming together to publicly kill a dangerous individual. I have read that the relatively large female bonobos will bite off a finger from rowdy males (while among chimps by contrast the barrel chested dominant male and his minions in many cases take females by force).
It is also perhaps not coincidental that in schizophrenia the dread of a conspiracy against one is a prominent symptom, as is anhedonia.
My father did not eat certain foods growing up that I would miss, like pizza. They just weren’t typical American foods and hadn’t really crossed beyond the ethnic line.
My mother didn’t always have meat. When she did, it was often things like liver or tongue. She came from a big family in a relatively poor country. When they had eggs, some would not get an egg. The luckier ones would get a part of it – the top of the egg.
I think it would be hard to give up the idea of a supermarket. We eat better than the kings of old, so I think that is why the idea of a macro diet has an appeal. I’m not sure how well my American grandparents ate. I figure they probably had a lot less fruit in winter – I think that would be tough.
The idea that the diet of older generations killed them earlier might very well be fallacious. Many vaccines did not exist, and if you were exposed to something that killed a sibling, that might have taken a few years off the end of your life.
Yes, Admiral Martyanov doubling down on a very basic error was quite amusing.
His educuckery is also highly amusing. You’re not allowed to have a discussion with him until you fax him evidence of your graduate degree from the Upper Petropavlovsk Naval Institute of Military-Technical Radioelectronic Physics or something.
He should’ve been a doctor since his entire style of argument consists of questioning the credentials of his opponent.
Then there’s some sort of boomer-millennial hostility at work as well.
The theory is very doubtful.
Lots of places had high rates of death penalties, and the most aggressive men regularly died in war in large numbers.
Japanese peasants were remarkably docile and pacific, but the moment they were unleashed in war, proved rather dramatically that aggression had hardly been bred out of them. Similarly, if war comes to Japan again, only a fool or an HBDer would assume the past 7 decades of pacific docility means the Japanese are now incapable of aggression.
Similarly among the Jews, who for literally centuries were synonymous with docility and non aggression, suddenly discovered that aggression hasn’t quite been bred out of them the moment circumstances permitted.
The problem with your line of inquiries is that it is stupid – and so won’t yield an intelligent analysis. Implicit in your line of reasoning is a linear, 1 to 1 relationship between genes and behavior. Gene x codes for behavior y. Simple and linear, like a computer program. This is how a child might reason, or an HBDer, or someone too heavily into STEM.
Let me give you an example of an intelligent line of inquiry, ok? The relationship between a human trait and the expression of that human trait in the physical environment is completely non linear and incredibly complex. So gene x may code for “aggression” – but this will only express itself if conditions are very favourable. Or – and this is really mind twisting for you – gene x may code simply for the capacity for aggression – which may have to be activated by a catalyst. Or – more mind twisting – aggression may express itself in a variety of forms,
now murderous violence, now usurious practices that ruin society, now competitive hard work to secure prestige.
In other words there are no genes for murderous violence and other genes for usurious practices and other genes for extend competitive hard work – there is just aggression, which changes shape according to conditions.
Even more insanely mind twisting, there may be no gene for aggression at all – but only a gene for strategy. And what you call aggression in one context, is merely intelligent strategy in that context, and can be taken up or discontinued at will.
But do not be too dismayed at this frightening complex world this reveals – simply retreat to the comforting and simple linear world which you live in, like most HBDers. Any day now scientists will discover the polygenic score for aggression. Yes, it will happen soon.
A particularly funny thing about him is that his credentials are so very mediocre (his profile is on linkedin). He went to a second-tier military school, never got to a high rank, and soon afterward came to the USA where he worked a a math tutor for kids working on getting into college, and graphic designer (the kind of work Soviet grandpas with technical backgrounds do if they immigrate).
The genes help code the brain, which significantly influences behavior.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/03/21/mind-control-bull-fight-delgado/#.XL8dutpKg2w
Though the article doesn’t mention it directly, he also repeatedly triggered anger and irrational aggression in cats. In Heath’s experiments with deep brain stimulation, he was able to quite significantly influence human behavior.
The awareness of the ability of electric or chemical influence on the brain and behavior would necessarily and logically lead to genetic influence on the brain, often using similar mechanisms of chemical control(e.g. hormone release mediated by genetic influences). E.g. differences in dopamine reuptake would lead to different personalities.
You sometimes exhibit an inability to escape from a certain provincialism, which harms your analysis of foreign subjects – but I find this a good comment, generally.
Looks like there will be another delay in the US commercial crew program, as the Dragon capsule blew up, during a test firing of its thrusters.
Japanese peasants were remarkably docile and pacific, but the moment they were unleashed in war, proved rather dramatically that aggression had hardly been bred out of them.
It’s important to distinguish between two kinds of violence: personal violence, which is done for personal motives and on one’s own initiative, and violence done “under orders” with the backing of “authority.” The mental state is very different in the two cases.
You’ve probably heard of the Milgram experiment. Assistants are told to give a ‘subject’ progressively stronger electric shocks whenever he or she fails on a learning task. Most of the assistants—the real subjects of the experiment—obediently do as they are told, even when the pseudo-subject is visibly in pain and pleads for cessation of the shocks. (In reality, the pseudo-subject is a trained actor and no shocks are actually given). When Stanley Milgram began this research at Yale in the early 1960s, he found that 65% of his subjects kept on administering electric shocks right up to the top end of the scale. That’s the Japanese propensity for violence.
Let me give you an example of an intelligent line of inquiry, ok? The relationship between a human trait and the expression of that human trait in the physical environment is completely non linear and incredibly complex.
Uh, could you please demonstrate the “intelligence” of the above by providing references? There is a large literature on the heritability of propensities for personal violence. The following is from the latest review of the literature:
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc5794654
His credentials aren’t bad, but yes his tiresome credentialism would perhaps be less tiresome if he’d graduated from a first-rank academy and become a flag officer. I have zero idea how officer careerism worked in the Soviet Union, but if it’s anything like America then perhaps leaving the service as a lower-ranked officer could be respectable if one left because he was unwilling to participate in a dishonest system. Retired American officers like John T. Reed, David Hackworth (RIP), Carleton Meyer, etc. come to mind.
Anti-American Russian nationalism is also annoying from people who…live in America (which also includes The Faker).
It’s particularly amusing that lots of anti-American Russian nationalists who currently live in America are doomerists regarding the US economy. Obviously they live in America because the material standard of living is higher here. Yet they believe that this standard of living will in the future, perhaps even in the very near future, completely collapse.
That they choose to remain in America is fundamentally irrational and even personally dangerous according to their own sincerely held beliefs. Not even just materially dangerous, but dangerous to one’s own basic personal security. Foreign nationalists with a long record of trash talking America are unlikely to very popular in a post-collapse USA.
The entire phenomenon is bizarre, though we dissidents of right have all learned that beliefs are rarely rational.
In fairness, one such character (not Martyanov, not the Saker, but still fairly prominent) has moved back to Russia within the past year or so. I am not sure it’s public information, so I won’t specify which one.
But yes, the phenomenon is pretty amusing.
The problem with your line of inquiries is that it is stupid – and so won’t yield an intelligent analysis.
There is something very sticky and very dark about that Sean character. He likes to insinuate and plant seemingly inescapable dark solutions not only in the theory of evolution framework like in this case which was rather easy because of the ex definition tautological nature of ToE. OTOH your assumption that “Jews […] for […] centuries were synonymous with docility and non aggression”comes from Jewish PR and survival strategy of a minority that often it could not afford going on a rampage and kill all the people they dreamed of killing. This PR was internalized by Jews themselves and then repeated in the stories about themselves ad infinitum. One look at organized Jewish crime in 19 century Warsaw and Odessa should disabuse anybody from the belief in Jewish docility and non aggression. In Warsaw there were battles between Jewish gangs (see Alfonse Pogrom) like those depicted in Gangs of New York and this aggressiveness could not be bread out as Sean would impute as Russia had no death penalty for such crimes. And as far as Japanese peasants, I do not think that you or anybody here knows enough about Japanese peasants and their docility/aggression factor even if such a factor could be defined to make any statements about them. So your arguments is wrong in particular sense but I believe it is correct in general sense, i.e, the environment beats the genes. The dig Hyperborean tried to take with a veil of praise is missing a point. Then our Mowgli comes with an example that was likely to appear in a mind of somebody raised by machines. Finally comes the onanists Peter Frost with his ToE masturbations.
What point am I missing? I mainly agree with your statement here:
There was also a Jewish mob in America.
Blank slatism cannot explain why there was a gracialization of skulls that preceded sendantism – which itself interestingly preceded agriculture. The only rational explanation for this gracialization is selective pressures and genetics. Some people believe it was trade that was the important impetus.
Whatever the case, it is obvious that genes can influence behavior, and this includes propensity to violence, such as has been demonstrated by our Russian friends through the experiment with silver foxes.
It is very doubtful that selection against aggression stopped in the far distant past. Mathematically, the case is obvious that it continued, at least in certain environments. Whatever amount this must account for, it is unlikely to be anything to sneeze at.
Does it account for the whole explanation of why violence declined? Obviously not, but I don’t believe Sean, Mr. Frost, or even JayMan has made that case. Pinker’s explanation that things always just get better (though he claims he is not saying that) is really the crazy explanation.
What is also left unsaid is the fact that genes can change the culture. Take out some of the violent psychopaths, and the normies might be willing to back down more because they would be less afraid to show weakness. They might not carry weapons with them everywhere they go, which itself would result in a decline.
Soldiers are most certainly not an example of what Wrangham calls reactive aggression, which he is careful to distinguish from proactive aggression (if you had watched Wrangham’s presentation) you would know elimination of the latter and strengthening former is what we are talking about. Japanese gangsters are mainly Burakumin. The Kamikaze pilots were disproportionately from the Japanese elite.
As part of a lynch mob or army. I’m sorry, this is very like a one to one gene to trait correspondence you were just telling me does not exist. Anyway proactive ‘obeying orders’ aggression, which is socially authorised, is compatible with being a brave and effective soldier in an army or a member of a lynch mob. Indeed it might almost be said that the less individually wayward peoples are better at fighting in an organised group.Yonatan Netanyahu was the son of a professor, but also an aggressive soldier. Ehud Barak is not the most intimidating Jewish man in the world.
You are are also retreating to your own little worldview. It is what one would expect even if everyone started off similarly minded, because a bifurcation into two schools of thought is natural. There is no misunderstanding to be cleared up because it is not a problem with a solution, but rather a conflict with an outcome.
https://youtu.be/2Vmq69tNvP8?t=2589
makes sense
no (or very little) surplus e.g. Bushmen = no elite so would require the torches and pitchforks model.
yeah what i meant was my grand-parents ate what people from their background had been eating for centuries so it went back a long way (so it was recent but also very old).
will be more complicated but
a) genes for aggression
b) genes for restraint
four cases
1) aggression, no restraint (criminal)
2) aggression + restraint (cop, soldier)
3) no aggression, no restraint
4) no aggression + restraint
so the culling model doesn’t simply select against aggression it selects against the combination of aggression and lack of restraint.
Japanese would appear to fit that model particularly well.
The complexity of the problem is so great that it is intractable. But people insist on having explanations. The explanations are just-so stories that are more compelling if they go along with ideological biases people hold. The meta story of the ToE is a very powerful ideology that can weave infinite number of stories. The stories, i.e., explanations, however, can’t be really verified or tested which makes them to be just-so stories. For example how would you verify your story about taking out some psychopaths and observing the development of milder less aggressive customs in society? Your story seems to be very reasonable particularly to liberals but it is not reasonable to NRA official story which may forward the evidence that actually the immediate threat of violence promotes kinder behaviors using prisons as an example where people are very careful and cautious of not stepping on anybody’s toes or offending anybody. Some people may try to explain that American superficial and then deeply internalized custom of friendliness as opposed to some Europeans stems from the threat of strangers and the fear of escalation of minor arguments or infractions into a deadly confrontation.
The latest intentionally perverse idea:
Should Non-Citizens be Represented in Congress?
It’s almost literally an oxymoron. Isn’t to be represented in the political process the most quintessential quality of citizenship? If one is ‘represented,’ one is, in at least a sense, a citizen.
…It’s also oppressively reminiscent of the Roman Empire, which made citizenship universal — immediately before beginning the Third Century collapse.
I didn’t read a lot of Admiral Martyanov’s comments, but I thought he was interesting when he came to the forum, to the extent he was writing about what he actually knows from real life – life in USSR and Russian literature.
In general, old people commenting on the internet, have a potential to be a lot more interesting than young people, when they only talk about topics they know personally and from their real experience.
A problem for their internet comments, is that crazy oldtimers, seemed to become even more crazy, often into an angry way which is not enjoyable to read. Also, it seems in the Sailor forum, a lot of internet whining and negativity, like village women (although I’m not exactly sure “testosterone therapy” for old people, would make them become more friendly on the internet).
That said, it’s not like young people are so interesting to read on the internet. On average, it is far more interesting to read comments of people with more experience of years, and more qualifications.
According to the search engine, Saker is a Swiss blogger (pensioner?) who lives in America.
I guess he writes so much about the topic of Russia-America conflict (as well as his other topics like Israel/Palestine), because he has nostalgia for reading newspapers during the Cold War, and dreams of it to be always in at least cold war for him.
If you have tried to “read” (well, skimming) any of his articles, you can see he has no experience of this country, which shows lack of interest in a real country designated by the word “Russia”.
Anyway, people are not usually immigrating from Switzerland to Russia, so it’s not fair to criticize him for this. He probably has built a nuclear bunker in a neutral country, to save him from a nuclear apocalypse he dreams of arriving, and so hopes to be unburnt to welcome whatever is predicted for him by Islamic eschatology.
He is, IIRC, third or fourth generation descendant of White emigres, as Russian as Irish Americans from Boston are Irish and Polish Americans from Chicago are Polish.
Many upcoming officers in the USSR left the army regardless of promotion prospects during the 1990’s because they weren’t even being paid.
A lot of that resentment comes from people who were only able to emigrate to the US and not another state such as Germany, during that period because of relatives. They might have settled there but nonetheless see their futures having been stolen from them because the USSR’s collapse.
Dmitri Orlov? Though I think he released that information publicly, iirc.
it (or something very similar) has been observed (and I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been modelled game-theoretically before that)
there was a baboon troupe that took fancy to a trash heap left by holiday makers or something. every day, baboons would go there and fight over trash. the nastiest baboons won but they also succumbed to tbc, which in monkeys is acute instead of chronic.
with a fraction of a percent of the nastiest baboons taken out, the conditions in the troupe softened radically, there was a lot more cooperation, grooming etc.
I think it’s in Robert Sapolsky’s interview with Joe Rogan and I prolly messed up a few details. YouTube it
oh, and I think he said it persisted for a time after none of the original baboons were there
Britain approves Huawei’s 5G, neocon heads explode.
5g will make everyone’s head explode
The Tu-160 is capable of carrying the Kh-101 missile, which is to say, attacking airports from which the F-35 could operate. I’m not sure if it can carry anti-ship missiles, but I’m pretty sure it’d be easy to do so. I remember reading that the Kinzhal was tested with the Tu-22M3 bomber. It might not be the best for the Tu-160 (it requires the plane to reach its top speed right before launch, probably it’s a better fit with the MiG-31), but I’d think that if the Tu-22M3 could do that, the Tu-160 should be able to, too.
Russia is so much weaker than the US that I don’t think it can afford massive failures like not having adequate air superiority fighters. Though of course they could maintain their bomber fleet without new production or even major modernization for a long time, I’d think it’s more important than even having a heavy bomber force. Of course they don’t need to choose anyway.
Fear of the unknown is usually pretty adaptive. Because the unknown is usually bad.
In the case of AI, the risks are pretty simple: a bug in the system, multiplied hundreds of times. I have seen the effects of a bug which had been there for nearly two decades without a problem. AI will be way more complex, so it’ll have many more bugs, and some of those will not be transparent for a very long time. So it will be possible for them to get multiplied into all aircraft, and all of them go wrong simultaneously.
This is rather different from bugs in the human brain, numerous as they are, because they rarely go off the same time for all people, and we are used to them.
The F-35 is far from autonomous, but it’s already smart enough. During an exercise it figured out that the mock “Russian air defense” radars weren’t real, and so it simply disregarded them. Now this is actually not very dangerous: the exercise had to be postponed until the “bug” (or feature) was fixed, but otherwise no harm came out of it. But it affected each F-35: so if there’s a problem, it could easily affect the whole fleet. And I’m pretty sure not all bugs will be so innocent as this one was.
The Tu-160 entered service in 1987. Production ceased in 1992, so probably all of the airframes were built back then. Airframes should survive way longer. Especially since many of them saw no service between 1992 and 1999. One was finished in 2000, another in 2006, a third one in 2008, a fourth one in 2018. So at least these four are pretty new, and the eight delivered from Ukraine in 1999 will probably also be in better shape than the older ones.
Russia also has older Tu-95s, which should be able to remain in service until the 2040s or so. Actually, the new plan of mass producing the Tu-160 means that the Tu-95 will be retired earlier than planned. Does it make sense? Maybe. But I’m skeptical.
They cannot maintain their bomber fleet without new production/major modernization for a long time.
Air frames age, accidents happen basically every year.
In the past, they could rely on their Soviet legacy, but that is not an option in the long-run.
Correct.
Just googled up this: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2018/05/moving-to-russia.html
Air-to-air missiles are generally not very good at that, because their wings are small, and have to make all sorts of horrible compromises with speed, maneuverability, altitude, range, etc. For example if the plane quickly drops altitude, the missile has to follow it, leading to a loss of speed, after which it’s pretty difficult for it to regain either altitude or speed.
I agree that there’s some advantage, but it’s not as large as you’d think.
Modernization to the Tu-160M2 standard might be a good idea.
But starting new production is pretty dubious, it’ll be plagued with delays anyway. Why not finish the unfinished fighter project first? And then, based on experience with the stealth fighter, they could perhaps move on to the PAK DA development, and skip that Tu-160M2 production phase altogether.
They have 16 operational Tu-160 airframes. Obviously accidents don’t happen every year with them.
Hungary and Serbia signed a memorandum on military-technical cooperation last week. (Maybe we manage to dump our junk MiG-29s on them?)
http://www.mod.gov.rs/eng/tekst/13832/potpisan-memorandum-o-vojnotehnickoj-saradnji-srbije-i-madjarske-13832
Now with our mighty air force taking positions in the Baltic states, our southern flank is secured through political means, so we’re basically ready for the Russian campaign. (Just one minor detail is missing, our mighty Panzerwaffe needs to be produced and delivered by the Germans.) I hope Italy doesn’t attack Greece, and there’ll be no coup in Belgrade, because that might cause a delay.
Stay tuned!
There are only 16 Tu-160 in service, half of the number of produced Tu-160.
The number of the older Tu-95 in service is five times as large.
Eleven Tu-160s were scrapped by the Ukrainians between 1996 and 1999, when Russia was unwilling to pay the price Ukraine demanded for them. In 1999 they finally managed to find the money (and the Ukrainians lowered their price as well), so eight were transferred to Russia.
So the numbers look like:
9 prototypes (any of those in service? I doubt it)
11 scrapped in Ukraine
8 transferred from Ukraine to Russia in 1999
8 serial production aircraft in Russia in 1992
4 produced (finished) later
So absent any hull losses, there should be 20 serial production aircraft in Russian inventory. Only 16 are in service, so 4 were lost. (I’m aware of at least one crash. Maybe the other three lost airworthiness for other reasons.)
I’m pretty sure that at this rate, they could keep at least a dozen in service until the mid-2020s or even 2030s. By which time the Su-57 should be ready, and they could think about the new bomber project.
They also have the Tu-22M3, dozens of which are in service and in inventory.
Look at the Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s, the bulk of the Russian heavy bomber force.
If this bomber force has to be maintained, it needs new aircrafts which means new production is necessary.
They have several dozens of those, and probably another several dozens in storage. And why should it be a problem to keep in service fifty-year-old airframes? The US hasn’t produced heavy bombers for decades, and won’t produce one until the B-21 development is ready, yet it doesn’t fear suddenly losing its heavy bomber force.
The issue is not a sudden loss of the heavy bomber force, but a steady decline.
Washington does not fear that because the B-21 is supposed to be ready fairly soon (first half of the next decade).
The Air Force wanted to procure more B-2 bombers, and it was also planned to introduce a new bomber earlier than the B-21 called the “2018 bomber”.
The Global War on Terror as well as ongoing massive procurement failures have seriously messed up America’s force planning.
Given that the F-35 is now being deployed in large numbers, the Russian fighter force is losing strength relative to US and NATO forces in Europe by the day.
So Russia now has a choice to let its fighter or bomber forces atrophy (relative to NATO, that is). I don’t know which makes more sense, but it seems like a waste to start a major project (Su-57) and then suspend it for half a decade, only to start another major project. Especially given that the Tu-160M2 project is an intermediate solution anyway, they’ll have to deploy the PAK DA by the 2040s at the latest. Given that heavy bomber airframes last for decades, it seems like a waste to produce in large numbers an already obsolete airframe, even if obsolete airframes are still good for something.
not just neocons – the ongoing betrayal of UK to China/India was a deal struck by the London banking mafia in exchange for full access to the Chinese/Indian financial sectors.
(which in the long term is a death sentence for China and India)
It makes more sense not to be obsessed with deterring NATO* with fighter aircrafts and instead focus on preventing atrophy of their own forces (in absolute terms).
*whose European members do not deploy F-35s in large numbers, anyway
The bulk of their heavy bomber airframes is already several decades old or even older and no-one knows when PAK DA will be ready.
Considering how intermediate solutions like the Su-30SM/Su-35 worked out, it is really the best solution available.
What you call reactive and proactive violence are merely differences in the level of organization and planning involved.
There is no intrinsic difference between reactive aggression or proactive aggression . Aggression is a tool biological organisms may use to secure their survival at the expense of other biological organisms. That’s all it is.
The only difference between the criminal and the soldier is that one uses violence on his own behalf (and typically a small group of confederations) and the other on behalf of the whole community.
But a thug mugging little old ladies in the street for small change is literally no different than a Japanese soldier invading Manchuria so that all of Japan can benefit. Not only that, but the behavior of Japanese soldiers in Nanking and Russian soldiers in a defeated Germany isn’t even optically different from your imaginary genetically aggressive man.
Now, it is extremely obvious that every civilized society discourages physical violence between its members and channels that aggression into economic competition and physical violence against outsiders. In fact a big reason physical aggression is discouraged is because it disrupts the smooth functioning of this competitive economic system. Lower forms of aggression are suppressed in favor of higher ones.
It is extremely obvious that the behavior of our businessmen, lawyers, and executives is an exact analogue of the “reactive” thug on the street. The businessmen have merely agreed on a more productive arena for their aggression.
So a community that has abandoned physical violence between its members – what you call reactive violence – has not changed its character, but merely adopted a different form of violence – typically economic. Such a community may return to physical violence the moment conditions so dictate.
And historically we see this is the case.
Now, unplanned spontaneous violence – reactive violence – may under certain social and economic conditions be the best strategy for securing one’s life and property. And in these conditions, adaptive behavior will develop spontaneously.
Hunan beings are highly adaptive – why else exactly did we evolve these big brains? – and personality is highly responsive to conditions.
When I was young I lived in a place where the kids were physically violent and aggressive, constantly fighting. So I was like that too. I moved to another community that wasn’t like that, and I suddenly became docile and well behaved – at least outwardly. Of course, this new community merely channeled aggression into other sanctioned forms.
No, I did not “die out” and was not replaced by another genetically different Aaron, as your theory would have it.
Then there’s the matter of your ridiculous history – during the years when all the genetically aggressive men should have been removed from European society, European men were fighting duels for imagined slights – no different than young black thugs today. In highly civilized German universities in the 19th century, the cognitive elite would savagely go at each other with swords, and a proper young man was supposed to have a scarred face, all the while science and technology and philosophy were being developed higher than ever before. And of course, Europeans were colonizing most of the world and fighting savagely again each other.
But since all the genetically aggressive men had to be eliminated before the golden age of industry and science could commence, and our own era of economic piracy, then it has to be a completely different thing.
Next we will start distinguishing between violence using a fist or a foot, a knife or a hammer, and find a gene for each lol.
I’m not entirely sure about that. It’s just one clog in a very large system, and as you also realized, it has an Achilles heel: it needs extensive maintenance in relatively well-maintained airports or carriers, which could be damaged or destroyed.
But yeah, sure, in that one respect, they are getting better than anyone else. Frequently changing strategies over such overwhelming odds is not a very smart thing, because you will not finish anything like that.
Explanation #1
The F-35 is (or would be) very difficult to use against Uncle Sam or its Best Friend(TM). It uploads its data to servers physically located in the US. So it gives you excellent capabilities against kosher enemies. But what if you felt there was a chance of a conflict with an enemy which has no kosher approval?
Explanation #2
The Turks originally wanted to buy the Patriot, but the Pentagon or the State Department didn’t let them. After a while they started threatening with buying from the Russians. It escalated into a game of chicken with the Americans, and the Americans called their bluff. Now they feel they cannot back down without a loss of face. The Americans either don’t understand it, or they want to humiliate and destroy Erdogan. Anyway, they don’t want to back down either.
Maybe there are some other explanations, and of course it could be a combination of these. Also, Russian weapons are way cheaper. It’s possible that for the same money the S-400 is better than the Patriot, or some NASAMS/Patriot/THAAD combination, or whatever.
Perhaps they are preparing for a war against an enemy with a weaker air force. I guess Ukraine. Some things start to make sense in that light. E.g. the sudden shelving of the Armata program, and instead modernizing thousands of T-72s to the latest B3M standard. Against Ukraine, it’s better to have 1000 modernized T-72B3M battle tanks than 300 Armatas. Against the US, the opposite might be true. Also, longer term, producing the Armatas might be better. But maybe they are planning for a war (or the possibility of it) in the near future.
France has been kicking butt in Africa for decades with tiny forces cos the opposition don’t maintain their equipment.
I know nothing about the F35 but if we assume
– US procurement has become at least as corrupt as their main potential opposition
– human capital in the US military is in free fall due to poz
– discipline in the US military is in free fall due to poz
i’d guess that in any kind of crisis most of those F35s won’t fly.
Good. It is time to put aside childish things and wise up.
The Armata program was not shelved.
What was shelved was the production of the T-90s for the Russian army, hence the cheaper T-72B3 as intermediate solution.
reducing impulsive interpersonal violence
->
increased capacity for cooperative group violence
Listen, Mowgli, That experiment could mean simply that the bull was confused and distracted by the radio signal, or experienced it as an unpleasant, disorienting sensation, so it stopped charging. Not that its anger specifically was manipulated.
Why are you people so simple minded? Why can you think things thorough realistically?
The fact that physical structures and chemistry can impact behavior does not tell us whether a particular behavior in a specific situation is mediated by the environment or not.
Yes, we can engineer certain highly abnormal conditions where behavior may have no obvious link to environment. And yes, pathological individuals may exhibit such behavior.
Yes, all traits are affected by the physical substratum. No one here is denying that genes play a role in all human traits and behaviors.
The theory we are discussing says aggression in humans is not linked to environment but is an invariant trait, and men who possess this trait must die off before a society can develop.
But the evidence we have suggests that aggression is not an invariant trait in normal people under conditions encountered in the world, but highly linked to environment. A brief survey of human history amply bears this out. And moreover, the evidence indicates no human trait is entirely genetic.
So again we have an extreme overreaction of the genetics people and a diagnosis that is astoundingly ignorant of history (this is fast becoming the signature trait of the genetics people), as well as a style of analysis that cannot process complexity.
I remember reading the story about the trash, TB and baboons turning into affectionate and caring… It is possible but it still just a story. One should be very careful with the stories told by primatologists or anthropologists.
Of course. As I mentioned in my reply, that is precisely why civilized societies seek to reduce interpersonal violence – so that they can better direct violence at outsiders, and also to channel aggression into economic competition, which benefits everyone more.
The process is social and cultural, not genetic. And only a fool would conclude that a pacified society cannot return to even interpersonal violence.
As recently as the 19th century, the cognitive elite of German university students savagely attacked each other with swords over imaginary insults, and only a fool would think today’s Germans couldn’t return to such behavior if conditions dictated.
A hundred years ago American whites were lynching blacks, and only a fool or an HBDer would think the pacified white population of today’s America couldn’t act like that again.
Back to the need to suppress interpersonal violence, in fact, too much suppression may make a community vulnerable – it may not be optimal. During Europe’s great age, a certain level of interpersonal violence was permitted, as mentioned above.
So far from a society needing to be fully pacified to develop, some sort of balance seems best.
Agree with you about the Sean character.
There is something “icky” about this attempt to define white people as docile and pacified, and sell them this image of themselves as scientific fact, an identity they cannot question.
Considering Sean’s other preoccupations, it’s not surprising he is on board with this.
And it also isn’t surprising that this is emerging out of the HBD movement – people need to seriously consider the kinds if mythmaking that is coming out of this movement and what’s behind it.
But it is partly genetic. If you kill murderers over hundreds of years, it will alter the genepool. There are probably even other factors like adaption to alcohol drinking, and the fact that most marriages were arranged. Still, it is probably not wholly genetic, and you bring up a good point about fencing.
Duels were actually permitted in Germany until, at least the advent of WWI. Many military men had scars on their faces.
Not many people know this, and it was, of course, about 100 years before, but Daniel O’Connell, who always later counselled peaceful political advancement of rights for the native Irish, once killed a man in a pistol duel.
But these things happened before women were given the right to vote. Men also looked a lot tougher in photographs. Whether this was deprivation – less fat in the face – or just higher testosterone is an interesting question. Men are no doubt wussier today, even if it is explained by cultural factors.
Lest it was unclear, the Turks definitely wanted to buy the Patriot PAC3, but the Americans didn’t want to sell it to them. So that much is sure. Therefore, explanation #2 is certainly true to an extent. Now the Americans finally cleared the Patriot PAC3 for Turkey, but only if they canceled the S-400 deal. And this after the Turks had already loudly and very publicly declared their intention to stick to it. So for Erdogan it’d already be a loss of face.
It’s also interesting that the Turks already tried to alleviate American concerns, for example initially it was planned that the Russians would help deploying the system in Turkey and they would train the Turkish crews there. Instead, the Turks later insisted that no Russian soldiers should arrive in Turkey, and instead the Turkish soldiers should be trained in Russia, and then they’d deploy the system in Turkey themselves. This new course was considerably longer, but the Turks thought that this would reassure the Americans. Well, it didn’t.
So now that the Americans issued an ultimatum, there’s no way out for Erdogan – he’d lose face if he backed down now. Bolton and Pompeo seem unconcerned about Turkey becoming a Russian ally as a result of this. But I think it’s inevitable that if the Americans keep pushing, the Turks cannot but move closer to the Russians, and eventually in case of a full embargo they will be forced to buy more weapons from the Russians.
Since other than the F-35 (and the Patriot PAC3, which was only cleared for them after the S-400 deal), none of the weapons were cutting edge anyway, they will not suffer too much anyway. So why do Pompeo and Bolton keep pushing? Why don’t they provide Erdogan a way out without losing his face?
Blame CIA-backed Gülen.
I have a further update on the impending Magyar world conquest.
I grew tired of coffee grounds from french press at the office, so I swallowed my pride and ordered a DeLonghi Nespresso Vertuo Plus machine.
It appears that both the Italians (DeLonghi) and Swiss (Nestle) have realized that they are biologically inferior to Magyars, as this unit is proudly manufactured in Hungary.
Magyar prowess is conquering American markets, and American manufacturers are helpless to respond.
More good news! You now have a potential ally in your righteous quest to force the evil Canuck entity into submission.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1121115599277629441
Trash to the trash land!
https://twitter.com/InezFeltscher/status/1121077324697538566
Its hard to say. I don’t think we really know how much genetics plays a role in someone becoming a murderer. Its probably more complicated than just removing people who have murdered from a society.
It could be “murderer” is an ecological niche that someone will fill. Nature abhors a vacuum. Suddenly other people will fill the role.
My point was only really to point out that aggression takes many forms, depending on context and situation, and its foolish to assume that people who have been pacific for a few generations aren’t capable of violence. And economic competition and extreme status striving are forms of aggression, which can “convert” to other forms if conditions dictate.
Do you think people look tougher in earlier generations? I used to browse painting of 17th century aristocrats, famous soldiers, and Victorian imperialists and explorers, and what struck me was how SWPL they all looked. They looked like refined and cultured gentlemen. And these people were the most aggressive in their society. Yes, they looked masculine and tough, for sure, but also refined, intelligent, and soft.
Highly successful people usually combine toughness and aggression with other traits – there is not a simple linear progression of toughness, where the tougher the stronger. At a certain point, any trait can become self defeating.
Perhaps if Slavoj Zizek was younger and not a crackhead a he seems to be now he would be able to come up with some snappy and memorable quasi explanation in the neo-Marxist post-modern terms. But my take is that the common denominator of all the myths that HBD movement can generate has the function of weakening of the spirit. It is really a blood sucking machine that turns you into a bloodless machine. Our Sean is an excellent example of the HBD neo-Dracula that comes in Zio-suprematist flavor.
Exactly! Could not have said it better.
This is why I say it is just another more subtle symptom of our decline. Just as aggression can take many forms, so can decline – in one person, self-hate manifests as leftist identity-politics, in another as HBD. White Western HBDers seem to operate under the same perverse impulse to denigrate themselves as white leftists. They cherry pick data and craft myths that put themselves down. This is really classic leftism, and its time we recognized it for what it is.
I was trying to tell this to Mowgli on the other thread.
Any person serious about social regeneration in the West will instinctively reject HBD. It is so obviously the philosophy of the exhausted in spirit – and this when it sticks to its narrative. But what really reveals it as just another leftist agenda is the anti-white cherry picking and mythmaking, which is not even supported by their data.
Precisely the opposite of what is explained by reputable scientists in the links that you have not bothered with. Modern humans have been getting steadily more childlike.
You have not bothered to understand what the evidence is on whether modern human brains are getting bigger. Brains have been shrinking since the Cro Magnons, in the last few tens of thousands of years we have lost a chunk of brain the size of a tennis ball.
Mostly portraits or photographs?
But I actually find it likely that it was the lower classes who were the hardest, although unlike the sensational newspapers of the 19th century, no more so than they were in past generations.
So this is what it’s come to then – “reputable scientists say”.
I did not think we would reach that point so fast.
I emphatically disagree we have been getting more childlike. We are certainly taller and more muscular,
Although psychologically, yes, we are definitely getting more idiotic and childlike in some ways, and intellectually too.
But what connection does that have to being docile and pacific? Children are not exactly cooperative and docile compared to adults.
Portraits of the older aristocracy ( almost all portraits of the time were of the aristocracy anyways), and mixed photos and paintings for the Victorian era.
There’s a ton of stuff online I bet. But seeing the actual men who made Europe great explodes a lot of modern myths about what “alphas” look like. They are not thuggish louts.
Its like modern movies about the Middle Ages portray it as gray, colorless, grimy, when the surviving paintings we have of that time show it as bursting with pageantry and color, whereas it is precisely the modern period that is deliberately gray and colorless.
But of course the modern myth has to be that they were dirty and savage, and not refined and civilized.
Lol AaronB and utu have converged, to both having called Daniel Chieh “Mowgli”.
In this case, I hope you are fans of writer Rudyard Kipling, and this is not a result of watching Disney films.
I actually thought it was pretty damn funny, so decided to adopt it.
Kipling is one of my favorite writers, and I love The Jungle Book. Very sad book in a way.
Tu-160 program is related to nuclear strategic deterrent, as one of the main nuclear weapons delivery systems, so this probably is why it might possibly have higher prioritization (if this is the case) than Su-57 project.
For defense of airspace above the country, there are constant purchases of Su-35S, which will continue for years. In addition there is heavy investment in radars. Airspace will be heavily defended already before Su-57 begins its larger production from the mid-2020s.
I’m not sure this is that different for USA. Projects related nuclear strategic deterrent, might have first priority in funding in America, compared to conventional weapons.
But America’s annual military budget is almost ten times higher, so there would be less conflicts of funding. It’s easy to forget today, since the end of the USSR, Russia is a “great power” (along with UK and France), while only America still has military spending of “super-power”, where it probably does not have to worry about prioritizing its nuclear strategy spending above its conventional weapons.
Hard-nosed might be a slightly better word. I’m thinking specifically of pictures of people’s male ancestors, say before 1900. I suppose people were a lot more physically active back then, so that may have been a contributing factor. There was perhaps a bit more facial hair in men too. The fashion of wearing hats might have oddly contributed to this look.
I once flipped through a military yearbook from the 1960s and was surprised by how many men looked like goofballs. I don’t know if America was soft by then, or it was just that the draft resulted in a wider dragnet than paterfamilias who had a lot of descendants.
criminal executions don’t select against violent genes; they select against the combination of violent genes and impulsive genes.
hence cop families and military families – individuals with genes for violence paired with genes for self-control.
https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/1121182127582777344
I don’t know how true this is. However, with the US labeling a part of the Iranian military a terrorist group, I can’t dismiss it off the bat.
There were frenzied rumors that UK would storm Ecuador Embassy when Assange was granted asylum in August 2012. In the event, London decided centuries of diplomatic norms supersede a globalist temper tantrum. I assume this will be the same, but who knows.
Interesting.
Yes, I don’t think a random sample of Americans would compare favourably to aristocrats and explorers etc.
I think historically a lot of the photos and portraits were of exceptional men or men in exceptional situations, leading to heavy sample bias.
What I need to decide is whether I’m an accelerationist. Because this would be making things worse. So is worse better?
I’m pretty sure both China and Russia can find an embassy of a US vassal they’d like to storm.
The only difference between the criminal and the soldier is that one uses violence on his own behalf (and typically a small group of confederations) and the other on behalf of the whole community.
You’re right if you’re talking about the behavior itself. You’re wrong if you’re talking about the mental state behind the behavior. Personal violence is much more impulsive and requires a much higher level of arousal than is the case with a soldier “doing his job.” In particular, it is associated with lower thresholds for thrill-seeking and risk-seeking behavior. Yes, there are cases of criminals who murder in cold blood to carry out a premeditated plan, but those cases account for a tiny fraction of personal violence.
What bothers me in this debate is that you present your personal opinion as self-evident and then pathologize anyone who disagrees with you. There are ways of testing hypotheses, like twin studies, MRI studies, studies on infants, etc. Even if you wish to dismiss all of those studies, how do you explain the different propensities for violence of men and women? Or young men and older men? Is that a social construct?
It doesn’t bother me at all. What do you expect from AaronB, after all?
I think what’s actually unexpected is that he (with both of his monikers) has made several good comments. So maybe it’s not bad that he’s here, after all.
It’s pretty frightening that something like that could happen. Your confused or mentally ill child is administered heavy doses of hormones without your consent (as if it wasn’t insane enough that they do that with some crazy parents’ consent), and then they forbid you from talking in public against it.
The majority of such cases exist on the movie screen. Even contract killers usually have a history of personal violence or psychopathic acts, so basically it’s just “impulsive aggressive person who has already had a long history of impulsive interpersonal violence engages in well-planned premeditated murder, because he’s already more or less an outlaw and doesn’t find the additional risk of actually killing people (for usually relatively small amounts of money) too high.”
What makes you so sure AaronB and utu are the same person?
Wasn’t the Australian Shooter in Christchurch an example par exellence of a cold-blooded, unemotional killer? In the video he quite nonchalantly makes jokes and references internet memes prior to the massacre, and afterwards; the most heated he gets is when he complains he dropped a couple of clips and didn’t use his extra time to burn the building down. At least, I don’t recall any reports of him having any past history of violence or psychotic behavior, though perhaps I’m wrong.
It turned out he even had a reasonably attractive girlfriend at one point and had ‘made friends’ in Turkey.
That way they only occupy one slot in my brain. What utility is there in wasting my finite (even if very large) brain capacity on a separate “utu” slot? It’s better to have just one AaronB slot, and then both sources of silliness are there.
Q.E.D.
He’s also a bit more like a soldier, or rather, ideological mass murderers in history, “the banality of evil” and all that stuff.
That’s what I do with Mr.Hack/AP
Ideological mass murderers can be examples of both soldier-like and criminal-like violence. Odilo Globocnik was once demoted and sent to the front as a corporal because of hoarding stolen foreign currencies or something – it looks like he wasn’t a very good person even from a thoroughly Nazi perspective.
Basically the mental state depends on whether you consider the violence as socially sanctioned violence or not. If yes, than it’s soldier-like and there will be a preponderance of people with no criminal histories, like Otto Ohlendorf , Franz Stahlecker, Arthur Nebe, or Otto Rasch, the latter of whom held two different PhD titles.
Basically it depends on how strong the ideological convictions are (in which case the opinion of nonbelievers is dismissed as irrelevant), and of course it always helps if the ideology is perceived as universally held by all members of society.
They’re pretty distinct.
AP is a Polonophile, Mr. Hack is more of a classical Ukrainian nationalist. AP is a Habsburgian, Mr. Hack is closer to Banderism (I am not saying that Mr. Hack is a Banderist). AP is more of a Russophile and a Slavophile, though Mr. Hack isn’t a Russophobe.
Yet another reason the disgusting Canuckist entity desperately needs liberation.
This is also another datapoint in favor of having large families.
I’ve always told people with small families before, “What if your only son turns out gay?”
To this we can add, “What if your daughter decides she’s a boy and the government declares you an enemy of the state for objecting?”
Start calling it “state-based eugenics”, and it would probably end pretty quickly.
Opponents already tried to put an anti-gay spin on it, but without success
You seem to miss the whole essense of AP’s political/cultural views:
Much more than a Polonophile or Russophile, AP is a Ukrainophile. This comes through very clearly when reading his comments. I think that you’ve got me pegged somewhat closely, and I forgive you for any slight representation, for I’m reinventing myself almost daily. 🙂
I don’t see how anschlusing Canada to the US would help eliminate the homo/globo agenda? Both countries are pretty close, neck and neck, heading in the same direction today.
Naturally the Gleichschaltung must precede the Canschluss.
But make no mistake, the Canschluss is a requirement for American survival. It is a festering boil poisoning the body politic of North America. Longue-Pointe must be avenged to fulfill the total eradication of the disgusting Canuckist entity from this hemisphere.
Though to be serious, in this particular case at least American first amendment protections would apply.
It’s encouraging to know that at least first amendment protections would still apply (although I’m sure that you’d have a lot of Peed offed Canucks still to deal with). But am I missing something here? Doesn’t the US pretty much dominate Canada in more ways than one already? Oh sure, Canada is nudging our ‘cultural leaders’ to move forward and legalize marijuana on a federal basis, but dang, those tax dollars rolling into the federal coffers are just so nice (and BIG) as it is, and would be severely minimized following any legalization….
Sure, an unwilling draftee has a different mental state than a voluntary criminal. But many gang members also join out of social pressure, and many soldiers are enthusiastic volunteers – especially for the most prestigious units.
Diferent forms of criminal activity obviously closely paralells the different forms of military activity.
It seems you are parsing violence very finely, and really mean a very specific kind of violence. The seemingly unfocused, disorganized, and chaoic violence sometimes seen among inner city thugs. This is a very specific type of violence, and by no means the general run of criminal activity, which is far more likely to mimic group military activity on a small scale.
So let us be clear so far – “violent men” in general is not what had to be eliminated in order for social and technological advance to occur, and the resulting population did not have to become innately docile , childlike, and peaceful. In fact it is quite obvious that European societies were extremely good at organized violence during their technological rise. So really only the kind of man that practiced chaotic and disorganized violence had to be eliminated – which sounds like really only men too stupid or too impulsive to properly channel their violence had to be eliminated. Which sounds like really people just had to become smarter and more self-controlled for this advance to take place.
Or, a factor never considered by you people but extremely important, society had to evolve to favor self-control and intelligently directed violence – there are environments in which such behavior is not necessarily the most adaptive.
Which sounds like the interaction of traits and environment is complex, and not the simple “gene x codes for behavior y” that the simple theory says, and certainly not the “breeding of a docile” population that Sean was talking about – more like breeding a more lethally honed weapon lol.
Now as for this kind of chaotic violemce, according to you it is genetic and impulsive – in other words, not responsive to the environment, because it seems “irrational” to you. A question, then, of innate temperament.
Since its a question of temperament, such people will never change under favourable environmental circumstances, because their violence is not a response to environment.
And this, I say, is nonsense.
All forms of violence are partly genetic and partly responsive to environment, except for rare cases of pathological violence whic is a kind of insanity, although I bet that even makes sense in terms of the deranged inner psychic life of this pathological type.
The sloldier “doing his job” is killing people in order, ultimately, to secure physical beneifts for himself, his family, and his nation. He is promoting his survival at the expense of other humans.
The “chaotic” criminal, likewise, is responding to the incentives and choices in his specific environment. He sees no avenue of advancement open to him other than predatory behavior, and much of his seemingly irrational violence is honing his skills, keeping his aggression on a high level of constant readiness, building a fearsome reputation, avoiding going soft, and the simple pleasure of the hunt, in a life of few pleasures, and most importantly, the simple assertion of power, in a life defined by powerlesness.
This is all quite comprehensible and responsive to the environment.
Right now I live near a public housing developement for inner city people, and a block away from expensive apartments and fancy coffee shops. In the 90s, this would have been impossible. The people from the housing projects would have made life hell with constant violence. But now it is perfectly safe.
What happened? Partly a no nonsense police force that is out in large numbers, and partly other changes in society and the environment. But the fact is that these supposedly tempermentally violent people are now quite docile.
And yet I have no illusions, unlike the typical HBDer who would assume the aggression has been bred out of these people – if liberals run the city again, the former hellish violence will instantly leap back.
Lol, your remakrs are also just personal opinion. But really this is fine – its called interpreting the facts. We are both doing that and thats the corect way to argue.
As for pathologizing those who disagree with you – of course. That’s how every good gentleman argues. What’s wrong with you that you are not pathologizing me for disagreeing with you??? Be a flesh and blood man and stop being an abstract vampire. You might actually enjoy life more. Go into the sunlight.
But seriously, I didn’t simply pathologize those who disagreed with me. I gave a clear and well defined rationale for why these positions are pathological. Constructing a narrative that European populations are genetically docile is sinister, and I explained why, especially since the available data does not compel one to conclude this. Likewise, all the other HBD positions. When available data does not compel a certain conclusion than it is obviously selected for emotional reasons, and when those conclusions portray whites in a negative light, the emotional impulse is obviously leftist.
Are you reallys serious? What is the major difference between women and old men and young men? Physical strength, maybe?
Obviously the less good at violence you are, the less likely you will select it as a tool. Duh.
This is why I get so exasperated with you HBD and IQ people – you seem bizarrely stupid. The obvious eludes you. And yet you people can’t really be this stupid.
Women are in fact just as aggressive as young men, just in social ways, and old men are just as likely to be economically and socially aggressive as young men. They aren’t less aggressive – they just choose more suitable forms.
Again – duh. Seriously.
If you’ll recall my views on the Ukraine, the same applies to Canada but even more so.
Canadian culture is hardly distinct, and the incorporation of Canada (minus Quebec) would increase American population, economic output, military power, natural resources, territory, EEZ, etc.
It’s obviously not vital given that America, in addition to already being the global 800 pound gorilla, is 10x Canada (compared to Russia being merely 4-5x Ukraine) and the current relations with Canada are very good.
Once they got over the shock of annexation most Canadians would no doubt be delighted once they realized that there would never again be a trade dispute over softwood lumber.
An office occupied by a woman here had a whiteboard fall off the wall today.
It had been affixed to the wall with…double-sided tape.
A man would’ve used screw anchors.
That’s the difference between men and women.
So now you’ve captured my imagination (once again). Just how in the world do you foresee the coming ‘Canschluss’ or ‘Gleichschaltung’ come to fruition? This is the part where Karlin dissapears into the woodwork after I similarly queery him after he too suggests a similar sort of ‘Tiriunistic anschluss’ of Ukraine by Russia. But I have greater faith in you, coming through! 🙂
It is simple really – once the army mobilized, there would be regime change in both countries.
Only half a division or so would be needed to encircle that parliament of whores in Ottawa – probably less, with Cajun and Quebecois auxiliaries. The remainder could concentrate on DC.
The Trudeaus of the world would finally be put to good use in the diamond mines of the Arctic Archipelago.
With its newly found mineral reserves in the northern latitudes, Super America would end globohomo by coming up with a vaccine for the gay germ. Or, alternatively we could threaten the environmentalists to come to our side or face the release of gigatons of more carbon dioxide.
Now is really the perfect time to invade because China and Russia have their own territorial disputes, which can be mutually resolved to the satisfaction of each power.
Gleichschaltung–don’t really know. It requires actually taking power. A very challenging question that none of us have the answer to. After taking power it’s a simple matter of putting loyalists in the security services, taking control of the media, etc.
The Canschluss would depend on America’s global strategic posture. If we’ve chosen to dismantle our alliance system at the axial ends of Eurasia, then all we need to do is threaten to invade Canada. If the Canadians unexpectedly show some spine, then we actually invade. War would be over in 48 hours needless to say.
A less “kinetic” option would be simply to encourage separatist tendencies in Quebec, Western Canada, and the Canadian Maritimes. Official Canada is really just Ontario and a caste of bilingual civil servants, the rest of the country couldn’t care less about the confederation. If Quebec declares independence the Canadian confederation falls apart and the remaining provinces can be induced to join America one by one–starting with Alberta.
If we’re preserving our global strategic posture, a more sophisticated model is needed. It would start with ensuring that the alignment of interests of elite Canadians is with America rather than Canada. Eliminate all border controls with the Canadians, or at least the right sort of Canadians. Over time most ambitious Canadians will end up working in America or otherwise serving America.
If Canadian self-respect doesn’t permit outright annexation, an EU type model would do.
Canada would be a bunch of more Blue States. No thanks.
I think that that’s where the ‘Gleichschaltung’ comes in, where Thorfinnsson is still scratching his head. How to make everyone think in the ‘proper’ white nationalist (?) sort of way, and serve some sort of an authoritarian father figure, without any question. Eerily reminiscent to some sort of modern day version of fascism?…I can see why Thorfinnsson is scratching his head. But perhaps I’m reading more into Thorfinnsson’s vision than there is?…
Correct.
Why would we allow people to be incorrect?
The utility of elections is not in allowing people to express their political views, which stem from propaganda, but in ensuring the peaceful transfer of power.
That’s certainly desirable, but not at the expense of peacefully transferring yourself into extinction.
Thus I favor a 50-year dictatorship.
And incidentally AP, Canada has a lot more conservatives than you may realize. Note that Doug Ford was recently elected the Premier of Ontario.
Other famous leaders of wildly different political persuasions have said the same, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Qaddafi, the Shah even to some extent Bandera. What makes you so all knowing as to be the one to determine what is correct and incorrect? History has been full of such extremists, and what good has it accomplished? The founding fathers were wise in trying to separate the different branches of government and to limit terms in office to help hinder the intrinsic nature of greed and nepotism within mankind that you’re advocating, especially with a 50 year dictatorship!
Fortunately we can read here on the Unz Review about the greatness of all of these leaders, who apparently have been unfairly maligned.
The Founding Fathers confiscated the assets of their political opponents and drove them out of the country.
And their opponents were a lot more decent, sane, and yes correct than what we’re up against.
All political power ultimately derives from the barrel of a gun – anyone that believes otherwise is suffering from false consciousness.
Or abstractly, life is a constant struggle for domination and varying vectors (physical, mental, emotional, etc. ) are merely imperfect reflections of this higher truth (or, perhaps, verisimilitude).
In this sense plain Autocracy is nearer purity and honesty.
Doug Ford, whose free speech on campus initiative is very nice, would still be an old-school centrist Democrat if he were in the USA. Their Overton window is well to the left of us.
I was going to reply with some of my own impressions, until I realized that could go on for some time.
Can we quantify this?
Are there polling data comparing the views of Americans and Canadians?
74% of Canadians in 2017 and 67% of Americans in 2018 supported gay marriage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Same-sex_marriage_opinion_polls_worldwide
(given annual increases one can probably add another percentage or two to assume Canad’as 2018 % support)
68% of Canadians and 59% of Americans said immigration makes one’s country stronger in 2018:
https://www.pewglobal.org/2019/03/14/around-the-world-more-say-immigrants-are-a-strength-than-a-burden/
Religion is a good indicator of conservatism. Canada is much less religious than USA:
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/06/27/canadas-changing-religious-landscape/
In 2012, 46% of Americans but only 27% of Canadians attended religious services at least once a month.
:::::::::::::::
Canada as a concept is inherently more conservative than the USA – Canadians are the North Americans who didn’t betray their king for the sake of Enlightenment ideology. But in terms of values, Canadians are more like Western Europeans, and thus less conservative and more self-hating, than Americans.
But your impressions do interest me. They tend to be very informative.
It would probably be more accurate to say that the Continental Army met with eventual defeat in Canada, at the hands of the mostly British army (with German mercenaries.)
Not mutually exclusive facts.
You seriously think that the difference is only about whether they voluntarily joined? I hope not, cause that’d be pretty clueless.
It’s a truth only for the initiated.
The average citizen had better well believe that his invasion of his neighboring country is worlds apart from the criminal gang that preys on his neighborhood or the executive that destroyed his local industry to benefit the shareholders.
It is not a truth to be bruited abroad among the populace. So let us keep quiet about it.
All I’m trying to say is that the Continental Army had a fair number of supporters – especially the Quebecois. Some were afraid to show their support – afraid of the consequences that would befall them in what was a much harsher environment. Many were purged or escaped in the wake of the failed invasion. The British also gained Loyalists from America.
So, why is the Queen on coins? Why are there statues? (Why are they Queen Ass-Kissers?) Well, IMO, it mostly comes down to Canada being easier to control militarily. Because of geography and climate and because it had a lower population. Back then, control the St. Lawrence River and you basically control Canada. There were a lot more Rivers in the US, and it was easier to move troops North and South along the coast.
Incidentally, it may have hinged on even smaller events, like if the boats of Benedict Arnold’s expedition through Maine hadn’t used green wood. If they hadn’t lost the army’s pay. If they had set out at a more sensible time than September. If so many hadn’t turned back, or died on the way. If Arnold hadn’t been shot in Quebec. Yes, it may have hinged on a future traitor being shot and pulled back from the front line.
America actually demanded Quebec at the peace conference in Paris. The British were not willing to give it up.
Since we’re talking about the psychology of the soldiers, it’s pretty relevant what the average citizen (or soldier, or general) believes.
What you don’t seem to understand is that the psychological makeup of gang members is quite different from that of professional soldiers.
Even the bosses are quite different: apart from some national leaders (like Stalin), their psychological makeup is quite different from that of mafia bosses. (Even though President Dubya caused the death of orders of magnitudes more people than all mafia bosses put together, his psychological makeup was pretty different from that of a mafia boss.)
That you don’t understand it only shows how clueless you are.
The ‘greatness’ of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Qaddafi, the Shah even to some extent Bandera? I think you have developed a loose screw somewhere Thorfy? 🙁
Alberta was actually the first Canadian Province that caught my fancy as a wee lad for its wealth of dinosaur fossils, though now I would perceive that just as a bonus to the Athabasca Oil Sands.
Was the Shah really a bad guy for the area?
Also, Qaddafi was kind of a weirdo. I wonder how many supporters he has today. Maybe, people to whom he gave money regularly.
Canada as a concept is inherently more conservative than the USA – Canadians are the North Americans who didn’t betray their king for the sake of Enlightenment ideology.
Canada was in fact more conservative than the US right up until about 1970. The same could be said of most of Europe. On almost every issue, including the all important one of immigration, America led the way. When I attended a liberal Canadian university in the 1990s American political correctness was laughed at by professors and students alike, even those on the Left. (They didn’t see it as a threat, as I did, they just thought it was crazy and anti-intellectual). At some point though virtually all of the West became an extension of the ‘Blue Empire’. In some areas Canada is still a bit more conservative than the US. For example, up until the financial crisis all Canadian political parties were committed to a budget surplus and considered American deficit spending to be highly irresponsible. The US is also far more extreme on things like affirmative action and forced integration, though that may be changing now.
Anyway, none of that matters now. If Canada joined the US it would certainly start off as loyal to the Democrats. Also, Canadians have that little country-itis mentality towards the US. Ireland, Scotland, NZ, Wallonia, all have this mentality towards their bigger neighbour =and for whatever reason it drags them to the Left politically.
Alberta is considered Canada’s most right wing province – the Texas of Canada as some say. It’s also always angry at other Canadian provinces, particularly in the east, but more recently British Colombia too. However, it also a very rootless province. I doubt it will ever seriously consider separation the way much more rooted and culturally distinct Quebec has done.
He was from a small tribe, and his power always depended on a delicate balance between the big eastern and western Libyan tribes, where he was seen as belonging to neither (and so a kind of neutral force). His tribe of course still supports his son. But it was reported that his son intended to run in the elections, and that after people getting tired of years of civil war, a nostalgia is growing for his father’s rule, which might actually help in a fair election. Since then, the civil war only got worse, so his popularity won’t be tested anytime soon.
On the contrary – that you don’t understand that the psychology is identical merely shows that you are utterly mired in self-deception, and incapable of seeing the obvious.
(Btw, this is how an argument should be conducted. Some one fell Peter Frost).
There are criminals like Robin Hood who were more benevolent than armies, and armies that were more brutal in enforcing discipline than any mafia boss.
And yes, there have been armies that were genuinely just about legitimate defense – and criminals like Hood who were just about defense from a predatory aristocracy.
Likewise, countless armies have been merely predatory – like countless criminals.
Violence and aggression takes countless forms.
Girls don’t lack strenght compared to other girls. Do you think they are just as likely to fight among themselves as boys are?
These differences aren’t that bad, other than the immigration poll which is quite concerning given the
very rapid rate of demographic change in Canada.
I always say that America tends to be more conservative than other Western countries because as the imperial center of globohomo our domestic conservatives have a better developed immune system against globohomo than our older vassals (the new vassals in Eastern Europe are of course a different story thanks to the Soviet freezer).
As for my impressions, I’ve always felt that a lot of what passes for Canadian ideology is a superficial assertion of distinction from the United States. Canadians spend a lot of time talking about Canadian Medicare for instance for that reason.
In between British Columbia and Ontario the Canadians are much more like those of the same longitude directly south of the 49th than they are like those “Down East” (as Western Canadians refer to Ontario and Quebec). There was once a semipopular Western Canada Independence Party, and when I was last in the area I saw two small billboards on the lonely drive from Edmonton to Fort McMurray outlining the provinces of Western Canada proclaiming, “INDEPENDENCE IS THE ANSWER”.
The people of British Columbia in turn have much more in common with Washington state and Oregon to the point where people on both sides of the 49th speak of a “Cascadian” identity.
Ontario and the Maritimes however are definitely distinct. People in Ontario are quite different from Americans in the Upper Midwest, and the Maritimes are one of the oldest settled regions in North America and do not share the Puritan background of New Englanders. I suppose there is some commonality with the “swamp Yankees” of Maine and backwoods Massachusetts.
Ontario does have its populist and rural conservatives as well none the less. Ford Nation only exposed a preexisting phenomenon.
Quebec, obviously, is a distinct nation. The entire Canadian project is intended to keep Quebec in the confederation by hook or crook. de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec in 1968 certainly confirmed that. The only reason the independence referendum in 1995 failed was due to immigrant voters.
I wholeheartedly support the idea of eccentricity in politics – I see it as a metapolitical attempt to perceive possibilities beyond normies’ usual restraints.
There is a substantial amount of physical fighting among girls, but not as much as among men – simply because they are less suited to it. Their bodies can withstand it less. But don’t be deceived – girls can be extraordinarily violent.
But women don’t specialize in physical violence because even if they can beat up other girls, they can’t take on men. So it makes no sense for them to develop a skill they will always be third rate at compared to some other group.
People focus on their advantages.
Of course there is probably a psychological component to this – but let me ask you this, in a world without men, do you think women would turn to physical violence?
This is slightly disturbing because they belong in mental institutes. Although it’s greatly overblown. The article is all aflutter that this is the first case of “discrimination against a trans woman” but the basis of the discrimination seems to be that the company that fired him treated him as a female where the law is still regarding him as a man.
The headline:
The text:
As hard as they are trying to sell this as a victory against trans discrimination, the court appears to have decided that since he is a guy you can’t fire him for being a woman. IE places where you are legally allowed to discriminate against women don’t apply to men pretending to be women.
Btw, Tor, I am not trying to discredit all violence by showing soldiering is criminal – I am trying to point out that violence is just a tool. It can be morally justified or not. Some criminals are more justified than some soldiers, and vice versa. Some have similar mentalities and some don’t.
So we don’t need to “breed” nonviolent men for social advance to occur and create a docile and childlike population – we need to create environments where aggression has more productive outlets.
Americans on the whole seem to be far more into “diversity” ideology than even the most denationalized European countries like Sweden and the UK:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/12/in-views-of-diversity-many-europeans-are-less-positive-than-americans/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/14/most-americans-express-positive-views-of-countrys-growing-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/
Notably, almost 50% of Republicans in the survey agree that increasing diversity makes America a better place, with most of the rest being indifferent.
But I guess their “conservatism” finds other expressions, like love for Israel and untrammeled free market ideology.
My comment was tongue in cheek and in reference to the various “revisionist” articles and commenters on the Unz Review. Our fearless overlord himself, various unreconstructed Stalinist writers, and of course the Maozuo Godfree Roberts. I in particular make the mistake of debating with the HITLER DID NOTHING WRONG crowd on various “revisionist” articles, including the mentally ill Wally who believes that the Czechs were delighted by the German destruction of their state and that Poland had it coming.
That said the Shah wasn’t so bad aside from the fact that he got overthrown.
Gaddafi’s rule was also a lot better for Libyans than what followed. He could be described as “eccentric” and certainly doesn’t belong with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Even those three have their positive points.
Hitler could be condemned on the same grounds as the Shah, only worse since he dragged the Germans down with him. The goal he had was very nice for Germans (not so nice for everyone around the Germans).
Stalin, for his…many faults, did manage to win the Great Patriotic War. I don’t think he deserves the condemnations he usually receives for his wartime leadership either. A less paranoid leader likely would not have built up the Red Army as much as he did, which means Operation Barbarossa would’ve succeeded.
Mao was a lunatic but he did win the Civil War and ended the Century of Humiliation, and even with his nuttery the PRC experienced significant economic growth and what I believe is the fastest growth in literacy in world history.
Not to mention our AaronB’s other moniker, who also seems to not understand why Czechs had reasons to hate Germans. (I didn’t even endorse Czech anti-German violence in 1945, merely stated that neutral observers like my humble person would find it somewhat understandable that they would react so.)
#1 issue for Republican voters is now reducing immigration according to polling. Somehow I suspect that isn’t true for CDU voters (granted, Germany does not have a two-party system).
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/17/ipsos-poll-gop-voters-say-immigration-most-important-problem-in-u-s/
Expressing uncritical support for “diversity” in America is now on the same level as saying you support God, motherhood, and apple pie.
Granted, that’s still a negative development.
Love for Israel certainly isn’t good, but stems from patriotism. Since it’s not acceptable to be pro-white, this finds expression in bizarre transferred nationalism to Israel. The same phenomenon does exist in some Euronationalists as well. Katie Hopkins and Geert Wilders for instance. There’s also a strange phenomenon in Ulster of the rival sides flying Israeli and Palestinian flags, as if that has any relevance for their conflict.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss enthusiasm for free markets either. Obviously that can be pathological (and often is, especially in America), but the right starts with accepting the inevitability and desirability of hierarchy. The left doesn’t accept the outcome of market competition.
Don’t forget gun rights, the one thing the right in America has successfully defended and even expanded.
Here’s another poll – compare the values for Germany with those for the US:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/many-worldwide-oppose-more-migration-both-into-and-out-of-their-countries/ft_18-12-07_globalviewsmigration_around-world-few-immigration3/
Obviously that doesn’t mean Germany is a sane society, in fact it’s a country in the grip of total lunacy. But there does seem to be more genuine support for mass immigration in the US.
I disagree about the rest as well, and in general have little sympathy for the American right, but we’ve had the same discussion before, and repeating it is unlikely to be productive.
Personally I am somewhat skeptical of polls that don’t get validated by actual elections. 3 days out from an election the pollsters are about to be called on their BS so they have to try to be accurate to retain credibility. 18 months out from an election? Who can tell if they’re accurate?
On a “value statement” question like “do you believe diversity makes us stronger?”, it’s a bit like polling “do you believe the green grocers of the world should unite?” in the USSR. A question like that, a statement of value with no concrete meaning, practically a loyalty test, needs to be paired with actual concrete questions on policy to suss out the socially approved hypocrisy.
How many people would answer:
Does diversity make us stronger? Yes.
Is immigration good for our country? Yes.
Do you support the city issuing a permit for a mosque down the street from you? No.
Do you think refugees from Syria should be resettled in your community? No.
Do you think the community should build more Section-8 housing in your school district? No.
Is police profiling of black citizens harmful and and unfair? Yes.
Are you the one who called the cops on that black guy walking down the street? Yes.
Americans seem very partisan – they’ll support their tribal position whether it makes sense or not.
This could be useful in ensuring a certain high floor level of any potential genuine nationalist regime – but for the forseeable future it merely translates into support for the people screwing them over.
Extreme polarization of US and Spanish results both suggest civil war in the future.
I can’t opine on Spain, but that seems about right for America.
Making it a good thing that we still have our firearms.
Note that I’m not endorsing the typical American right-wing fantasy that “the people” will rise up and overthrow the government with small arms, which is patently ridiculous.
Just that the small arms will have utility in a future conflict.
German and Swedish politicians appear to be more out of touch with the electorate than in all other countries in the poll.
Broke: Both Canada and the US should exist
Woke: The US should annex Canada
Bespoke: Canada should annex the US
Tesla announced a disastrous first quarter and the stock is now down to $235.
Maria Butina sentenced to 18 months, with time served she’ll stay in prison another 9 months and then be deported.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/politics/maria-butina-sentencing/index.html
A very rare event. How many actually believe this?
I’ve lived in a mixed white/Mexican neighborhood for 20 years in Phoenix, and nothing could be further from the truth. Dang, you just reminded me how much I miss Gustavo Arellano’s old column here, (one of the best) – Unz should double his salary and get him back. Also, I’ve worked with plenty of Mexican-Americans too, even had one ‘boss’ whom I worked for – great people all around. The only bad apple in the neighborhood is a white guy who recently moved in and tried to rekindle his teenage love affair with his Harley – until I had to go outside and yell at him a bit. Since then he got a muffler for his bike, and we’re back to more of a semblance of peace and quiet.
You totally skirted my main point that:
Huh?
Who said anything about Mexicans?
The conflict in America is between two groups of diametrically opposed white people.
Non-whites only figure into this as auxiliaries and favored pets of The Enemy.
Not very willing ones at that in the case of Mexicans, who largely couldn’t care less about our feuds.
Committed liberals also usually go NIMBY on this.
Professional soldiers don’t usually have a history of interpersonal violence. I know a few guys who joined the military to become officers (one of them NCO), and they weren’t aggressive at all. Whereas mobsters often are very aggressive.
I addressed the second point by pointing out that the Founding Fathers had their political enemies robbed and driven from their homes.
The first point is addressed to me personally, which I don’t really mind, but I’m not exactly a likely fuehrer.
My own qualifications would be that I care a great deal more about being correct than what other people think and am generally quite good at figuring out what is correct.
Instead of me you could substitute other people in our political space or us collectively.
I’ve also outlined a less dictatorial “Thorfinnsson Plan” to structurally gerrymander the USA to make it impossible for the left to ever win elections ever again, which might be more to your taste.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/military-spending-in-2017/?highlight=gerrymander#comment-2317916
That’s not enough in that it truly is essential to permanently seize control of the means of propaganda and use them to properly indoctrinate the population. I support free speech, but not freedom of the press. The press should be coordinated by the state–openly. That is to say that there should be a cabinet level federal department with control over the means of propaganda, and there would be corresponding permanent committees in Congress.
It would be agreed that mass propaganda would promote HBD, patriotism, moral traditionalism, atomophilia, etc.
Obviously the line between “speech” and “propaganda” is fuzzy, and no one should ever be punished for stating what he believes, but communications channels consumed by millions should only promote correct views.
Sorry, I somehow misread “Spanish’ to mean Latino, thus ‘Mexican-Americans’ popped into my brain. I should be more careful. I’ll need a lot more time to review your second reply to me, but it does look interesting.
There is certainly too much conformism in politics.
At the very least, it would increase the entertainment factor if each pol was required to take up an odd habit, like Big Bill Thompson’s (past mayor of Chicago) constant threats to punch King George V “in the snoot.”
Personally, I find Robert Mugabe reprehensible, but his sense of fashion is what I think is generally missing in the current big men of Africa. Idi Amin is also worth remembering for his humorous diplomatic cables.
None of them wanted to live in a tent in NYC though – that was one of Qaddafi’s inspirations.
It shames me – but there aren’t too many more recent American pols worth mentioning. Of the top of my head, I can only think of Bob Dole’s habit of saying “Bob Dole” all the time – something not very original, but well-past its expiration date, when he did it.
Let’s suppose, you merely took Europeans and set them down in America. Would they not say they loved diversity, once some nigger accosted them in the airport with the question?
Once, I was accosted with some formulation like “Sir, you don’t look racist, can I interview you as part of my college project about diversity?” Did I tell him that he was ape accosting me mere feet from where one of my ancestors died building the city that gorillas like him had invaded and defiled. That only 10% of blacks should be educated past the 6th grade? That they should all be sent back to Africa? No, I politely told him that I did not have the time, which was true enough, though I would I have told him that even if I were an old pensioner.
I don’t think that’s how Pew is conducting its surveys, presumably there is at least some anonymity in the polls.
Now to some extent people may still give the answers they’ve been conditioned into giving by media, education etc., but even if people here don’t like it, I’m absolutely convinced that Americans have internalized multiracialism and multiculturalism as positive values to a far greater degree than Europeans (even the more pozzed Europeans like Swedes or West Germans who do their best to catch up). One example of this is the bizarre fad among at least some American right-wingers for adopting non-white children (something which may actually be harmful to the children involved, transracial/transcontinental adoption seems rather dubious to me, severing those children from their roots in the most drastic way possible)…I don’t follow American politics that closely, but can think of at least three such cases (Mitt Romney, John McCain, David French), and there are probably more; clearly “transcending racism” is seen as especially virtuous among parts of the American right (it’s also part of America’s global mission for democracy or whatever).
imo white Americans are pretty much screwed as long as the present system exists, because so much of American mythology is tied up with explicit antiracism (American civil war, WW2, civil rights movement etc.; is there actually any American myth today that isn’t tied up with the antiracist universalism? The parts that don’t fit like the conquest of the West or Jacksonian democracy don’t seem to have much vitality anymore).
If you press white normies (not SJWs, but possibly conservative) on this topic they’ll state that they’re not racist and have nothing against other races but that x people should behave like y. A lot of people, especially females, will offer the unsolicited opinion that a license should be required to have children. Bringing us again back to the point that HBD is a necessary part of our political platform, contrary to what D for DOOM thinks.
They’ve also have internalized low level racist humor. The antics of other races are comedic fodder for them. In general the problems of diversity are to them like the weather–simply a part of reality. Apparently normies viewed the Great Depression as comparable to a natural disaster.
There’s certainly a problem in that the “nation of immigrants” and “Civil Rights” narratives have been placed at the heart of the American story in the past sixty years.
Until quite recently mainstream German politicians like Schmidt and Kohl would casually state that Germany was not an “immigrant country”, whereas in America the last mainstream figure to enunciate anything similar was probably Calvin Coolidge (“America must remain American”).
Correct. The goal of the neo-liberal NWO is to achieve the same in Europe. Which is the Americanization of Europe. Though w/o slavery it is much harder. That’s why immigrants have to be brought from Africa and also ME and Asia to break the natural social cohesion of mono-ethnic societies. That’s where the neo-liberals want society to be: w/o cohesion and solidarity. The Left (as useful idiots of oligarchic neo-liberalism) is assigned to do this job. At the same time the Left vilifies America for its libertarian excesses (1st amendment and 2nd amendment, redneck culture and Christianity) which in turn makes the Right to fantasize about America as the land of liberty and thus their ally and savior (which you can clearly see in Poland and Hungary). This vicious circle can be broken by the Right if it adopts an anti-American position on neo-liberal economic lines which necessitates the rejection of libertarian ideations (Libertarians are also useful idiots of oligarchic neo-liberalism) , the position against the Americanization of Europe and only then the Right may attract allies from the Left which is necessary for becoming the major political force. Populism is the answer but in order to gain a traction it must have an economic component and this component can be only taken from the Left just as it was done by Mussolini and Hitler.
I believe this more related to wealthy Christian politicians in America.
If you really believe you will be judged between Heaven and Hell, then adopting a poor child from an orphanage is probably the nicest thing you can be seen as doing in your life.
And I’ve read that in American orphanages, almost all the children are black. So the demographics of the poor children you can adopt, is not so much an issue of choice.
https://i.imgur.com/4wTvqwP.jpg
On the other hand, in Western Europe, it seems like we suddenly started to see people buying Teslas in the last few months.
In my road there is a Tesla parked now, and there is another one in a road nearby, and near offices (about a month ago, I didn’t see many Teslas in my area – even though there is a Tesla shop).
Teslas were ubiquitous in places like Norway, Switzerland, or Hong Kong already a couple years ago.
Karlin does not discuss these topics.
But it’s funny how politics between America and Russia, can have funny reversals, where most everything is imported from the West, but sometimes imported to different sides of the spectrum.
For example, Sobchak (this could be categorized as liberal opposition) reaction to Notre-Dame fire, was complaining about trade unions, high taxes, and that there are too many people called Muhammed in France.
While in America, it’s the opposite – the Democrat Party would not make these posts, but the Republican Party probably.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwSsjIygz1l/
nice plan
counter intuitive given that photo but Romney is totes homosexual.
Lunatical Evangelicals also adopt foreign children from places like Haiti and Africa. I doubt that’s merely a coincidence.
Paging German_reader: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-weber-nordstream-idUKKCN1RZ0J9
It appears America’s homo-ambassador has found his CDU (CSU in this case) cuck.
Americans are banned from adopting children from Russia.
And apart from Russia and Ukraine, I’m not sure there are many other countries, where there are large numbers of white children available for adoption in orphanages? In Western Europe, I doubt there are more children available for adoption, than number of local parents who want to adopt them.
So you don’t need to overdetermine any explanation for their adoption of black children, whether in America or the third-world.
Adopting poor children from orphanages, is pretty kindly, even if you are motivated by some idea of Heaven and Hell. That said, if it is pure compassion, it should be prioritizing adopting disabled children, children with fetal alcohol syndrome, etc.
I think “diversity” is mainly a banal repetition of rhetoric or the war cry of invading non-whites. Of course, there are true believers, but, IMO, most are shallow conformists.
America is no longer held together by a common mythos; it is held together by a base power-dynamic structure. And by the idea that it would be a personal inconvenience if it fell apart.
There is something undeniably weird about transracial adoption. It really evokes brood parasites, except for the fact that they are selected. Often, I think it is due to the lack of white war orphans, as well as a general ignorance about heritability, let alone HBD.
This is true. How do you defuse the diversity bomb, and avoid turning into something even worse than Brazil? I don’t know – maybe, if the two party system splits. But the last somewhat serious third party candidate on the national level was Perot, and even he said something like the doxology.
Weber will probably also take a hardline anti-Orbán stance. Orbán has already been suspended in the EPP, he’ll be kicked out after the election. Weber will then pursue to punish Hungary for its lack of democracy.
I agree with all that. I actually think the adoption of many of the leftist tropes by Europe are very superficial, and could easily flip. We also lack the revolutionary vanguard that you seem to get in the US.
Where I was in Moscow the boss man fired someone when he found out he was gay and then had his office disinfected.
https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Younger-Republicans-are-less-supportive-of-Israel-poll-finds-587810
Collapse in support for Israel amongst young Republicans and Democrats. Internet trumps MSM amongst the young.
Nord Stream 2 is pretty much done? Political posturing par excellence.
The seemingly unfocused, disorganized, and chaoic violence sometimes seen among inner city thugs
Lack of focus is a minor factor. In fact, violent men can be highly focused on certain things, like sex and rival males. In general, they simply have different priorities, and those priorities make sense within their frame of reference.
Violent men are characterized not by lack of focus but rather by weaker impulse control and a stronger orientation toward the present. That, too, makes sense within their frame of reference. What is the value of saving money for your old age? You might not be alive by then, and even if you are you’re in a much weaker state and can no longer attract women.
Violent men also enjoy violence, not only killing another man but also tearing him apart — “kicking out the jams.” This is something we see less often in societies that have long been pacified, not only most of Europe but also most of Asia as well. In general, the sight of blood and gore is discomforting. Yet this is not how all men see things. For that matter, all men used to see violence—and the results of violence—very positively. That was bred out of us through a long process of selection. We still see it sometimes in native Europeans, but psychiatrists assume they are dealing with pathological cases when they are confronted with men who actively seek the sight and taste of blood.
Right now I live near a public housing developement for inner city people, and a block away from expensive apartments and fancy coffee shops. In the 90s, this would have been impossible. The people from the housing projects would have made life hell with constant violence. But now it is perfectly safe. What happened?
Two factors:
Roe v. Wade (1973). Its effects have been noticeable since the mid-1990s. It has especially reduced the fertility of “cads” who impregnate one woman after another without sticking around. This is not a popular opinion, especially on a conservative site like this one, but I believe it to be true.
As for pathologizing those who disagree with you – of course. That’s how every good gentleman argues. What’s wrong with you that you are not pathologizing me for disagreeing with you???
You may simply be misinformed. Anyway, what do I gain by insulting you? It all seems rather childish to me.
Women are in fact just as aggressive as young men, just in social ways, and old men are just as likely to be economically and socially aggressive as young men.
You’re misinformed on both counts. Men exhibit not only more physical aggression, where they have a natural advantage over women, but also more verbal aggression, where they don’t. They also fantasize much more about aggression.
There is also the literature on the effects of testosterone administration. Why would an injection of testosterone increase a man’s level of aggressiveness? How can that be a social construct?
This is true of the site as a whole, but much less true of my comments section.
Could a kind person give me any help in finding pro-Russian/triune nation takes on the Ukraine and in particular the Ukrainian language’s creation/similarity to Russian?
Thank you in advance
Thank you for the detaled response. I studied in Ontario for a few years and visit Montreal several times yearly (family and friends, and it’s only a few hours drive north), and have rented a cottage in the maritimes, but have only been to BC and Alberta once.
Yes. And their healthcare system is actually inferior to the one in the USA, at least for those Americans who have health insurnace (i.e., normal working people).
Yes, and yet they are more prosperous-looking and “neater” than upper New England, particularly Maine.
My strong impression is that Canadians are more intelligent than Americans and this explains their more reasonable fiscal policies. But they are also ideologically far to the left of Americans on social and racial issues. Of course, their “visible minorities” tend to be more functional than ours.
In some respects, Canada is like what America would be if America were more like Sweden.
That is mostly true, but there is widespread satisfaction with the American healthcare system for many reasons ancillary to the actual provision of medical services.
The American medical system places, by international standards, substantial cognitive, administrative, and financial burdens on consumers.
I was surprised to discover in my role as an employer that many workers are more concerned with medical insurance than with wages. Many Americans are in fact obsessed with obtaining and maintaining employer-provided medical insurance (despite Obamacare subsidizing individual insurance plans via the exchanges, which people don’t seem to be aware of).
Of course I’m a young man of exceptional health and a strong amateur interest in health, so I have no need of medical services. The only time I’ve consumed healthcare services (other than blood work, which I do outside the normal medical system) as an adult is after physical injuries and one stint in inpatient rehab (which was mainly a criminal defense stategy).
The picture for families, women, older people, and just generally unhealthy people (fat, standard American diet, sedentary, etc.) is very different. They’re very worried.
The organization of healthcare provision into “networks”, the massive proliferation of vendors all of whom send separate invoices, and extreme confusion over what is covered all combine to make health insurance exhausting and frustrating for ordinary people. The only Americans who appear to be satisfied with their healthcare are government workers, elderly people, the indigent, veterans (sort of–the VA is a mess), union workers, and professional employees of Fortune 500 corporations.
Canadians, while largely receiving inferior and rationed healthcare, express great satisfaction with their medical system in comparison. Lesson there for politicians. The Democrats were incredibly stupid to largely preserve the existing system and merely create new sources of anger and frustration (making income tax returns more complicated) with their ACA reform.
They’ve since wisened up and are now converging on Medicare for all, which as far as I can tell is what people really want. And unlike Canada, people could still have supplementary private insurance (as most elderly people of means do in America, as do wealthy people in Western Europe).
Republicans by comparison are completely hopeless owing to their aversion to anything that smacks of SOCIALISM.
That is true, though they are in fact the poorest provinces in the Canadian confederation. They’re about 25% poorer than Maine, which in turn is one of the poorest American states. The only poorer state with a white supermajority is the highly dysfunctional West Virginia.
Moynihan’s Law of the Canadian Border at work. I’m not sure that Canadians are ideologically more left-wing than white Americans north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Canada is much more like America than it is like Sweden. Even if you ignore that they’re both Anglo-Saxon countries.
Western Europe, other than Switzerland and Ireland, largely has much more provision of government services than Canada does.
Tax revenue as a share of GDP is nearly 20% higher in Sweden than it is in Canada.
For what it’s worth, I read the debate back then, and Steve Sailer convinced me that abortions had little to do with the drop in the murder rate. Is there a reason why Steve’s arguments are wrong? Off the top of my head, he argued that the drop within the age groups was too soon (the drop started in the age groups who were born before Roe v. Wade). He also thought that the black abortions mostly affected the functional black working class, instead of the ghetto population. Interestingly he mostly attributed the decline to environmental factors: the young saw their older sisters becoming crack whores and their older brothers getting killed or disabled (or locked up for years or decades) in the crack wars in the ghetto. Suddenly, being a real gangsta appeared much less glamorous than before. (He attributed the previous murder wave to the liberal justice system and the cultural effects of gangsta hip-hop, if I recall correctly.)
New Israeli standoff weapon:
https://theaviationist.com/2019/04/24/lets-talk-about-the-israeli-rampage-stand-off-weapon-reportedly-used-in-combat-in-syria-for-the-first-time/
Poland is probably going to buy the F-35, too, 32 of them.
https://theaviationist.com/2019/04/20/looks-like-poland-wants-to-replace-its-soviet-era-mig-29-and-su-22-jets-with-the-f-35-at-any-cost/
We had a debate recently if many F-35 warplanes were to be deployed by European NATO members. Apparently the Americans are considering selling it to Greece, Romania and Spain. And Poland. It’s also getting pretty cheap.
A few reasons to prioritize it:
NATO forces are deploying altogether hundreds of the F-35 in Europe
the Israelis have it, too
not to mention the Far Eastern neighbors
Russia needs it to be able to sell to its clients: for example the Turks, if they indeed choose Russia over America
it’d be a great propaganda coup
especially since it’d be the first purely post-Soviet Russian warplane
Try to search for Oles Buzina books/publications about ukrainian history/literature.
As far as I can tell, AP is an admirer of old-school multinational empires in general–Austria-Hungary, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, et cetera. He prefers his empires to be very diverse so that no group is in a super-dominant position, though.
Steve Sailer argued that Roe v. Wade could not be a factor because the decline in the murder rate began in age groups that were born before 1973. He attributed this decline to the crack epidemic that lasted from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. The results of this epidemic, and the associated gang warfare, were devastating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States
Steve went on to argue that this devastation persuaded many young African American males to avoid a life of crime and make other life choices. This deterrence would presumably still be in effect … a quarter of a century later.
In response to Steve, I would first point out that no one is arguing that Roe v. Wade has been the only factor in the declining crime rate. There is also the aging of the American population. And, yes, there is the crack epidemic of the 1980s to early 1990s. But that last factor probably reduced the crime rate by killing off many gang leaders, either through overdoses or gang warfare. In any case, even if we accept Steve’s explanation, I don’t see how it could still apply today … a quarter of a century later. Young men today were born long after the crack epidemic. To explain a longlasting decline, you need a longlasting explanation.
I would also point out that it is wrong to believe that increased access to abortion reduced the fertility rate only in the functional Black working class. In fact, abortion rates have been consistently higher among women who are below the poverty level.
https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-income
In the meantime other environmental factors could have played a role. The most likely change could be the spread of video games. The stricter justice system might also keep black criminals in check.
Now that’s a strong argument.
An idiot killed one and wounded three Passover worshippers. These are in general bad news for us.
So now I readjusted my mental model of what happened to include the higher abortion rate among ghetto blacks. It likely plays a role.
But there’s another environmental factor: law enforcement is probably getting steadily more efficient over time. This leads to the capture of offenders at ever higher rates, and thus prevents them from committing murder later on. Three developments in particular happened since the early 1990s: the spread of cell phones makes it easier to track offenders, the ubiquity of security cameras both discourages crime and makes it easier to identify and track offenders, and DNA tests now make it relatively easier to identify at least many murderers and rapists. The more criminals are captured, the less likely they are to re-offend.
So it’s probably a lot of factors.
There are serious issues with Russian oil shipments to and through Belarus.
https://www.dw.com/en/dirty-russian-oil-fuels-anger-in-minsk/a-48490396
To all of my friends and adversaries, and expecially to the host here, Anatoly Karlin, I wish a happy and peaceful Easter. The message is simple and the gift it provides is awesome – eternity in paradise:
Христос Воскрес!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Pysanky2011.JPG/400px-Pysanky2011.JPG
Other possible causes of pacification:
• Cannabis
• Electronic entertainment (video games, cable television, streaming, Youtube, social media, etc.)
Anecdotally I’ve known many women from higher social classes who have had abortions in order to avert social shame. The typical life arc of women from higher classes now centers around credentialist careerism and sexual degeneracy until attempting to form a stable family as they approach 30. College degree, career, engagement, fancy wedding, expensive honeymoon, expensive housing, and only then children who are expensively reared. Lots of “fun” until this point is reached, and the consequences of that fun often include abortion. That’s why you see so many women in this class militantly in favor of access to abortion.
Working class women on the other hand are comfortable with pregnancy, including unplanned pregnancy. They’re also sexually degenerate, but accept pregnancy cheerfully. Not black, obviously, but point stands. And their family structures have been substantially negrized to the point where they unironically use the terms “baby daddy” and “baby mamma”.
There’s also a growing phenomenon in both sexes of simply dropping out of the sexual market since circa 2007. Appears to be related to smartphones and social media. I don’t know these people personally so can only speculate.
http://www.murderdata.org
Murder clearance rates for black homicides are declining. Not a big deal if they only kill each other, but we can’t rule out spillover effects.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K8pdDogeZ5s/XGuK_1GhgVI/AAAAAAAAAe4/G0RaqP_Pnv8BY6IF2X5OAMMFXAje5HNAACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-02-18%2Bat%2B11.22.59%2BPM.png
Not sure what’s going on, but probably perhaps growing black refusal to cooperate with the police.
I get the impression that police detectives are underfunded relative to more visible forms of policing in big cities. This is certainly a major complaint in Chicago. Obviously hard to quantify.
Not really. Abbas Milani has no love for the guy, having spent time as a prisoner of the SAVAK. But in his biography of the Shah, he’s very blunt that his regime’s human rights violations, while real, come off looking pretty tame compared to the mullahs, or to contemporaries elsewhere in the region.
Power can do funny things to your brain.
one thing about that (imo) is if you get a situation of peak psycho where they all start killing each other then during the period of their ascendancy they’ll have a lot of psycho kids.
and 20+ years later they’ll be all growed up.
so there may be counter currents in all this: abortion going in one direction and gang culture favoring psycho reproduction in the other.
one of the side-effects of allowing a gang culture to exist is gangbangers get to make a disproportionate number of babies.
Buttiplug is criticized for not doing enough for a poor neighborhood. A resident, who is black, said “ain’t s… changed.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/south-bend-poor-say-democrat-pete-buttigieg-left-them-behind.html
Воистину воскрес! Thank you.
He’s a candidate for oligarchs and beach friends, not black people
It is never enough.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/3/39/Green_Lantern_Civil_Rights_01.jpg
I just bumped into an interesting article from February. It’s written by the vice-chancellor of a reputed British university. The argument is that universities should be punished for giving lower grades to blacks than to whites, because that’s clear proof that they teach them worse (or discriminate against them).
It’s a good example of why HBD is needed: for anyone with an understanding of HBD knows how that is bullshit. But if you think blacks are exactly as intelligent as whites, then it makes a lot of sense.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/20/universities-should-be-punished-for-giving-black-students-lower-grades
Complaining about non-whites being discriminated against in universities is actually surprisingly recent.
Complaining that the system is unfair to poor people/biased in favour of the public-school educated has been going on for much longer and is equally HBD unaware. An academic did mention it, albeit a decade ago now, without getting fire.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021058/Higher-social-classes-significantly-HIGHER-IQs-working-class-claims-academic.html
Chelsea looks like a spitting image of her mother Hillary in that photo.
I also greatly admire the Russian Empire, however the ratio of Ukrainians to Russians within it was rather disadvantageous for Ukrainians so it was a mistake for them to join.
Galicia could have fixed this ratio a bit–as could have further Russian expansion into other areas. Of course, you are probably going to object to the further expansion part since, with a few exceptions (such as Mongolia), the areas that Russia could have realistically expanded to would have been mostly Muslim–correct? Still, Russian rule could have perhaps tamed these Muslims a bit over the course of several decades or more.
BTW, it’s quite interesting that the ethnic Russian percentage in the Russian Empire appears to have been no more than the ethnic Magyar (Hungarian) percentage in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary. If anything, it might have even been less. I was under the impression that, in 1914, the Russian Empire was around 45% Russian while Hungary was around 55% Magyar (or maybe around 50% Magyar if Hungarian Jews were counted as Magyars in the official figures–with this perhaps being a mistake).
Hungary was 55% Hungarian-speaking. Excluding Croatia. The census didn’t ask ethnicity, so no data about that. Jews were 5%, but probably some of them (a third? half?) were Yiddish speakers.
On the other hand, Ukrainians or Belarusians could easily assimilate into a Russian identity, and might even naturally have supported the Pravoslav Czar against external enemies, Hungarians had no such sufficiently similar minorities.
Wouldn’t some minorities in Hungary’s cities have spoken Hungarian, though? If so, couldn’t this have inflated the Hungarian percentage by a couple of points?
Anyway, though, my overall point here still stands that the position of Hungarians in pre-WWI Hungary was more dominant than the position of Russians in pre-WWI Russia–something that would have remained the case had universal suffrage (without any gerrymandering) would have been implemented in both of these countries.
What about the Slovaks and Ruthenians?
Russian Empire was 2/3 Russian.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work/Russia,_Empire_of
Everybody understands HBD, but selectively according to their own biases.
For example, take the issue of “prison reform,” now a hot topic amongst neoliberal/leftist types in America.
Blacks more likely than whites to be in prison? Structural, product of racism, in no way reflective of actual patterns of behavior (or even if it is, patterns themselves are due to structural racism, so it’s still wrong to punish black people even if they do break the law).
Men more likely than women to be in prison? Well duh, men are more violent, they commit more crimes. As a matter of fact, we need MORE men in prison for all the awful things they do to women!
I’ve made this point before, but in America–despite widespread denial–everybody acts as though they believe in HBD…and this is even more true as you move up the socio-economic ladder (wealthy, educated people spend huge sums to segregate themselves and their children from blacks and Hispanics). Did most of the people in Salem circa 1690 really believe in witches? Probably not, but witch trials were a useful way for one class of people to reassert their dominance and control within society. This vice-chancellor is just trying to score some virtue points for the sake of his own career and reputation; he would’ve been just as enthusiastic a Stalinist, Nazi or exponent of Mao Zedong Thought if he’d lived in those eras.
I still think there’s a role–a vital role–for raising awareness on these issues, but amongst the common people; in the case of powerful academic types, not so much.
This would only have added about 10% to Ukraine’s total population so it would not have made much of a difference.
2/3 if you include Belarusians and Little Russians (Ukrainians) as Russians. Otherwise about 45% Russian (Great Russian), 17% Ukrainian, 5% Belarussian.
Expansion into Muslim-majority areas could have added a lot more than that to the population of the Russian Empire, though. Then Ukrainians could have formed an internal alliance with the Muslims against the Russians.
BTW, I’ve done some calculations and if Poland would have remained a part of the Russian Empire, then Poles plus Ukrainians plus Belarusians would have had a combined ratio of 2:3 relative to Great Russians. In other words, for every three Great Russians, there would be two Poles/Ukrainians/Belarusians. That’s actually not that bad–especially if the Poles/Ukrainians/Belarusians would have allied with the Central Asians, Caucasians, and whatever other minorities the Russian Empire would have acquired. This would have also ironically been an argument in favor of having Poland stay within the Russian Empire and try to reform it as opposed to having Poland leave the Russian Empire and thus reduce ethnic minority power and influence there. With Poland being a part of the Russian Empire, it would be somewhat harder for Russians to dominate over Ukrainians, Belarusians, and other non-Russian peoples within the Russian Empire.
Yep. In other words, there would be two Russians for every one Ukrainian/Belarusian. This ratio would be even better for Ukrainians/Belarusians if Poles were included in this calculation–which ironically would have been an incentive for Poles to remain within the Russian Empire and push in favor of reforming it.
Ukrainians and Belarusians are included in the Russian figure here. What you want is the Great Russian figure–which, as AP says, was around 45% of the Russian Empire’s total population.
Instead, Poles and Ukrainians could have been part of an Intermarium where they were evenly matched to each other and wouldn’t have to try to eke out an alliance with Central Asian Muslims just to try to keep Great Russians in check.
I read somewhere a while back that eating a diet high in red meat when young helps build a bigger brain…
Could explain low IQs of people from countries which don’t have access to red meat as youngsters…iron or something in red meat (maybe B12) could expand brain growth…
Not sure…seem to be a lot of educated science people on this site who might know more…
Yep, they could have. Of course, it’s possible that Poland would have more smart fractions than Ukraine would–though it’s not guaranteed and in any case a huge part of the smart fractions in both countries would have consisted of Jews in the absence of the Holocaust.
The point about smart fractions is relevant in regards to wealth and influence, though. Groups with more smart fractions are going to have a disproportionate amount of wealth and influence.
BTW, do you think that it was a good move for Central Asia to secede from Russia as well? I mean, some of them did suffer from the lack of Russian subsidies, but at the same time, they also wouldn’t have to worry about being dominated by Russians.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared whether a surviving Tsarist Russia (or a moderate republic, if the Tsars still get overthrown) keeps Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Central Asia, et cetera. Even without all of these territories, had Russia avoided the demographic devastation of the 20th century, its population right now would have probably been over 250 million–in order words, an increase of over 100 million in comparison to real life. Plus, this figure could have been boosted even higher had a much wealthier Russia actively tried to recruit immigrants from elsewhere. Indeed, I could certainly see a lot of Chinese and Indians permanently moving to Russia in such a scenario due to the better quality of life in Russia.
People are not computer simulations.
The question was literally “mother tongue,” so it would’ve registered recently moved minorities as such, only people whose parents already spoke Hungarian at home would have been counted as Hungarians. So it should match fairly closely with ethnicity, except in the case of Jews. Minorities who thoroughly assimilated and already spoke Hungarian at home were usually Hungarian in loyalty, too, for example my paternal grandparents grew up in families where their parents already spoke Hungarian (despite their German ancestry), and subsequently called themselves Hungarians in censuses. (This happened in the interwar period and in 1941, when there already were already three separate questions of mother tongue, knowledge of languages other than mother tongue, and “nationality,” i.e. ethnicity.) They also never were pro-Germans in feeling (in fact, as Social Democrats, they altogether disliked Germans in the 1930s and 1940s). Another example might be Sándor Petőfi, a Hungarian poet in the 1840s, who was a fervent Hungarian nationalist, and both of his parents were Slovaks. But they already spoke Hungarian at home (and his grandparents already moved to an area with overwhelming Hungarian ethnic majority), so he was Hungarian in outlook and loyalty, too.
Good for Russia, bad for central Asia. Generally speaking Russian influence on non-European areas has been very positive, whereas its impact on European regions has not been so.
Fun with BUFFs
Beef is only king where men are not able to eat wild-harvested venison, especially elk.
Wild elk is the greatest of foods.
However, your criticism of modern, inferior porcine breeds is 100% accurate. My Pennsylvania was a happier place when we had more HOGS, rather than weak little pigs.
“I can’t understand them people down below, eating on beef when they could be eating elk.” – Bear Claw Chris Lapp, ‘Jeremiah Johnson’
Am I correct that the only interesting thing happens in the last 20 seconds or so..?
My local grocery sells D’artagnan venison and bison – would you recommend? Which is better? I like fatty meat.
They have American Wagyu ground beef for 11$/lbs – it makes very tender and succulent burgers, but I was not blown away by the flavor.
Beef and elk are both ruminants.
I enjoy the flavor of wild venison quite a bit, but the texture of modern grain-finished beef is quite nice.
Nutritionally it’s close to a wash, and beef is in my local market.
If you like fatty meat you probably won’t enjoy venison and bison. They’re much leaner.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “very positive.” I mean, didn’t a lot of Kazakhs die in the 1930s famine(s) that occurred as a result of forced collectivization? For that matter, didn’t Russian settlers take Kazakh and Kyrgyz land for themselves?
A friend of mine just visited Uzbekistan (he actually went to Kazakhstan for the Ice Hockey Championship Division I), and messaged me some pictures from Bukhara and Samarkand. He wrote they are even way more magnificent live than in pictures.
So these peoples certainly were capable of producing the highest culture themselves. They were, of course, barbarians, too. Nevertheless… their architecture is really nice.
Interestingly, Afghanistan also has remarkable architecture. (Or rather, remarkable ruins.) It appears that Afghanistan is actually less civilized now than it was half a millennium ago. I wonder what is the reason for that decline. The influx of nomads? Islam’s corrosive powers? Something else?
Thanks.
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/sdp_authenticity_of_mp_hussein_al-taees_social_media_posts_news_to_us/10759456
Bashed homos, jews and (sunni) muslims. Wasn’t anti-white in any capacity. Now he’s being hounded. So much for a nationalist uprising in Finland. In a sane world, he wouldn’t even be in Finland to begin with, but we don’t live in a sane world and I’ll take someone like him than an anti-white SJW any day of the week.
Also lol’d at Simon Wiesenthal Center being called in as experts. These people support a literal apartheid regime but the clueless white liberals are never, ever going to nail them on that. Allows them prance around as the arbiters of morality in the goyim diaspora. Stunning how far whites are willing to cuck/turn a blind eye to ethnic tribalism of non-whites.
That horrible event was an exception, not a rule.
Galicia did better than did the rest of Ukraine, either under the Tsars or under the Soviets. In Poland, the part that had been under Moscow after the Partitions has the reputation of being the most backward part. Eastern and Central Ukraine had been more advanced than Russia when it was part of the PLC but fell well behind Russia afterwards. Etc.
On the other hand, Azerbaijan is probably the most civilized and pleasant of all Muslim countries. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are much better than Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc. Russia is on the right side in Syria. Moscow is the best thing that can happen for Muslims.
It’s a pretty big exception if 30+% of the total Kazakh population died as a result of this, though.
By that logic, though, we could say that non-totalitarian German rule was great for Poles, no? After all, the parts of Poland that were a part of the German Empire until 1918-1919 were the most advanced (in terms of literacy rate, GDP per capita, railroad construction, et cetera) out of all of the territories of Poland.
I thought that Kazakhstan was better, no?
By that logic, though, wouldn’t it have been best for Russia to conquer even more Muslim territory? For instance, Xinjiang, Afghanistan, Iran, eastern Turkey, et cetera.
Sure, for a (likely) low-IQ country, Uzbekistan certainly isn’t that bad. Also, it’s possible that cousin marriage had a negative effect on people wherever it became widespread–in Muslim countries often as a result of the spread of Islam and thus the spread of Arab mating practices as well.
Sure, but still – it’s a one-time event. Germany was generally civilized and played a positive role, the Holocaust was anomalous.
Poles did better within Austria than within either Germany or Russia.
It would have made all of those places better than they are.
Did anyone see that odd story in the paper today about a Buluga whale captured in the ocean by a Norweigan fisherman??? It was wearing a harness that said “Made in St. Petersburg” and had a spy-cam mounted on his head….
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that with all the high tech satellite imagery available today someone felt the need to recruit a whale to spy for them…
I really think we need to exclude animals from this sort of thing…keep it between humans…
What the fuck are you talking about? He’s an anti-white Muslim invader elected in the fanatically anti-white leftist party that wants completely open borders and that made it their biggest election promise to crack down on nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment. This guy literally campaigned on AMNESTY FOR ISIS VOLUNTEERS TO BRING THEM BACK TO FINLAND.
You know nothing at all about Finland. This guy is flooded with support from the left and the mainstream media. He is not “hounded”, he is celebrated, and that is not a good thing, it’s an example of how Finland is following the example of Sweden and becoming fanatically anti-Israel, anti-white and obsessed with importing Israel hating brown Muslims. Finnish leftists universally consider Israel to be white colonist state and this guy is a brown Muslim who advocates destroying white countries.
But I guess yours are typical opinion among American white trash nationalists – it’s more important to you that the Jews lose than actually saving white countries.
Haaretz (the [relatively] leftist Israeli newspaper) appears to be cracking under the strain, or something.
‘White Supremacist Terror Is a Global Epidemic, but Trump Won’t Name It, Let Alone Fight It.’
Muah-ha-ha. For my next bombing, I’ll…
‘…it’s an example of how Finland is following the example of Sweden and becoming fanatically anti-Israel, anti-white and obsessed with importing…brown Muslims…’
Hey. Could be worse. One out of three, anyway.
I will grant you that.
Not according to these two maps:
https://external-preview.redd.it/i_-iiWmSvjfq0TdboQaHcmqAI9AW2JCC5g3kfgzdzOw.png?width=600&auto=webp&s=011477e80a92dc4d8217b93124a276cfe8513209
https://mk0brilliantmaptxoqs.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Europe-GDP-1890.png
In terms of GDP per capita and literacy, Poles appear to have done the best in Germany and, after independence, in the former German parts. Maybe Austrian Poles were less oppressed, but I was talking in terms of GDP per capita, literacy, industrialization, railroad construction, et cetera here.
It’s like with a Chinese person in, say, Indonesia. They might be more free than a Chinese person in China would be, but in terms of economics, they might actually be worse off than a Chinese person in China would be (something that might become even more true with every passing year).
Fair enough. That said, though, one does wonder how much of an effect the forced secularization of Bolshevism played in making Central Asian Muslims relatively tame.
Also, what’s interesting is that Chechens still appear to be pretty wild and radical even nowadays–in spite of seven decades of forced secularization under the Bolsheviks.
In addition, a bit off-topic, but it would be interesting to see this year’s PISA results for both Kazakhstan and Ukraine. I’d like to see just how much duller Kazakhs are relative to Ukrainians. I suspect that the difference between the two of them is not going to be that large (within 20 PISA points, or within 3 IQ points–if 100 PISA points equal 15 IQ points).
Those regions has huge German populations:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/German_language_frequency_in_Poland_based_on_Polish_census_of_1931.PNG/800px-German_language_frequency_in_Poland_based_on_Polish_census_of_1931.PNG
‘Collapse in support for Israel amongst young Republicans and Democrats. Internet trumps MSM amongst the young.’
That brightens my day!
As your map shows, not all of the ex-German parts of Poland had huge German populations. Some ex-German parts of Poland had a German percentage as low as 2% to 10%. In spite of this relatively low German percentage, though, no ex-German part of Poland had a literacy rate below 90% in 1931–and with a lot of ex-German parts of Poland having a literacy rate of 95+% in 1931. Thus, while the presence of Germans might have boosted these figures a little bit, in at least most cases, I presume that this factor was not decisive in causing the ex-German parts of Poland to have a higher literacy rate than the ex-Austrian parts of Poland.
With the exception of the border areas, southern Posen Province had a German percentage of 2% to 10% and yet had all of its subsections have a literacy rate of 95+% in 1931. Likewise, there is a 95+% literacy rate in all of the subsections of eastern Upper Silesia regardless of the German percentage in these subsections.
Also, for what it’s worth, you talk about how Germans might have inflated the literacy rates in ex-German Poland but don’t mention the possibility that Jews might have inflated the literacy rates in ex-Austrian and ex-Russian Poland–and there were a lot more Jews in ex-Austrian and ex-Russian Poland than in ex-German Poland in 1931:
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5a501e98-2c3b-4b1d-9e54-5f10fb0a9e12/dbygb2b-0f4a7abb-4f2f-4ea0-bbb9-1a13293fbb1e.png/v1/fill/w_854,h_935,strp/map_about_jews_in_poland__1931__by_matritum_dbygb2b-pre.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTc1MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzVhNTAxZTk4LTJjM2ItNGIxZC05ZTU0LTVmMTBmYjBhOWUxMlwvZGJ5Z2IyYi0wZjRhN2FiYi00ZjJmLTRlYTAtYmJiOS0xYTEzMjkzZmJiMWUucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.5q2cl2jVTipTo4vIFVMFtXyD87FTzhvEKakrXUueuXQ
Any pictures of Putin riding on whale-spy? Strange that its gear had country of origin on label.
The crash does indeed happen in the last 20 seconds or so. The rest of the video consists of context.
The video could really use some narration.
Most of the video consists of things that the pilot, Holland, was doing in violation of Air Force protocol. But without the narration, it’s indeed hard to tell what’s important.
What you’re seeing in that video is basically this Wikipedia section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash#Holland's_previous_behavior_and_USAF_leaders'_reactions
According to the Polish census (which may have underestimated the number of Germans) the ex-German provinces of Pomorsk and Poznan were about 9% German and 1% Jewish and had illiteracy rates of around 8%.
Polish-populated ex-Austrian Krakow province, which was 5.6% Jewish, had an illiteracy rate of 14%. If you assume that Jews were as highly literate as Germans (they probably were not), then Polish literacy in Krakow province was only 2% or so lower than was Polish literacy in Poznan and Pomorsk. No real difference.
In contrast, Polish-populated ex-Russian Lublin province had an illiteracy rate of 24% in 1931. It had been 47% in 1921, right after Russian rule.
I blame Islam and then the repeated destructive Turkic invasions myself.
The Jews were mostly living in the Ukrainian parts of ex-Austrian Poland. Krakow was only 5.6% Jewish. Also, Eastern Jews had a reputation for illiteracy. While they were certainly more literate than Slavic peasants, they probably were not as literate as Germans. I could’t find figures for Galician Jews, but about 1/3 of Jews on the other side of the border in the Russian Empire were illiterate in 1897:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/religion-holidays/2019/03/the-shockingly-low-literacy-rate-of-jews-in-eastern-europe/
It would have been lower in Austria, but still not virtually 100% literate as among Germans.
Herat supposedly really flourished in the 15th/16th centuries (it “reached its greatest glory under the Timurid princes”):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herat#Pearl_of_Khorasan
I have no idea how accurate that is, but indeed one wonders what happened…the tribal culture of the Pashtuns (ok, different part of Afghanistan) seems pretty primitive today.
east Asian ruling class gradually breeding out?
Interestingly, one of the grandsons of the savage prince, Timur, Ulugh Beg, was a famous astronomer, and even Timur (though illiterate) appears to have been pretty smart, even in the sense of valuing men of learning and scholarly knowledge to a very large degree, perhaps even above martial prowess.
In that he reminds me of some bookish mass murderers of the 20th century, like Hitler or Stalin.
See my comments about Ulugh Beg, who was to my knowledge fully or mostly of nomad descent. Mongolian nomads are pretty smart. On the other hand, the Central Asian (and Afghani) urban population didn’t seem to be dumb either. One possible explanation is that the cities were population sinks (not unlikely), especially in Afghanistan, and this removed the smart fraction of the nomads, too. Another possibility is inbreeding: perhaps if we removed inbreeding, Afghanistan might jump to European levels..? And it’s possible that Central Asians are smarter than we think they are. How reliable are the data?
That’s pretty interesting.
Thanks for this information.
What about the ex-German province of Upper Silesia?
Also, are you sure about the illiteracy rate of 8%? I mean, it’s certainly possible, but I would have expected it to be a couple of points higher considering that most of the districts in the ex-German part of Poland had a literacy rate of 95+% in 1931.
In addition, off-topic, but it’s possible that some of the Germans who remained in Poland after the end of WWI began to consider themselves Poles and thus begin identifying as Poles.
Interesting point. However, what about the Poles to the east of Krakow? AFAIK there was a lot of Poles in eastern Galicia as well even if they were outnumbered by the Ukrainians there.
In contrast, Polish-populated ex-Russian Lublin province had an illiteracy rate of 24% in 1931. It had been 47% in 1921, right after Russian rule.
Anyway, I checked the figures and you appear to be correct, AP. That said, though, what it looks like is that in the urban areas of ex-Austrian Poland (specifically the urban areas next to ex-German eastern Upper Silesia and the city of Krakow itself), the Poles were about as literate as ex-German Poles were. However, in the more rural areas of ex-Austrian Poland, the Poles were less literate than the rural ex-German Poles were.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of the total population of ex-German Poland and ex-Austrian Poland lived in rural areas (in the case of ex-Austrian Poland, excluding the Ukrainians).
Also, it would be interesting to see what the literacy rate for Polish-majority western Lwow province was in 1931–as well as the literacy for the Poles in Ukrainian-majority eastern Lwow province in the same year.
I appreciate your emotional meltdown, it was highly amusing. It wasn’t very impressive, however. A man who cannot control his emotions is a man of low quality. It’s a very feminine trait.
I guess it depends how we define ‘civilised’. Afghanistan’s life expectency is 62 today. Whatever it was half a millenia ago, it was almost certainly a lot lower. Literacy was much lower. Its per capita income was almost certainly lower, though probably not by huge amounts.
Yet your fundamental point about contemporary Afghanistan’s inability to create a glorious civilisation – or at least a mere shadow of one – rings true. One could bring up the example of Egypt. Ancient Egypt also had a much lower life expectency than today, yet contemporary Egypt is a far less impressive place civilisationally.
Some of that is surely due to rising complexity. If we use the term civilised as a signifier of a certain standard of living which enables a society to prosper, then Afghanistan and Egypt today, while being unimpressive, are still more civilised. If we mean simply being able to build impressive stuff (regardless of the grinding poverty and brutish de-facto reality of its populace), then yes, there has been a regression. Then again, Egyptian pyramids were almost certainly built using slave labor in the hundreds of thousands. Would this be feasible today in Egypt? There would be too much outside pressure not to. And our standards of what accounts for civilised have certainly been raised quite a bit over the millennia – or at least I would hope so.
No, I think they used a few thousand highly trained craftsmen, there are even ancient documents detailing their pay and food they received (they ate lots of garlic, for example).
It’d take several years of planning work if we wanted to build a pyramid, and even so, it wouldn’t be a trivial undertaking even with present technology. I’m not even sure modern Egypt could build it without foreign help. Likely not. (In the sense that they’d need to hire foreign companies and/or engineers and import equipment etc.)
We need a blog post about the Great Venezuelan Revolution/Coup.
Why would I want that?
It made no relevent difference at that time.
All of them were Russians Slavs.
Based RT:
https://www.rt.com/news/457918-easter-worshippers-euphemisms-clinton/
I concluded this the moment I saw Russia in the mid 90’s. The place was full of buildings, structures and machines that when new would have compared to Europe, the US and Japan which I knew. None of it was maintained. I put this down to lack of private ownership but the cultural problem is deeper. It is also to do with the time horizon of a society. If you have no faith in the outlook five years from now, why fix anything. Dubai/Sharjah holds together. Sharjah is a dump compared to Dubai. Everything is poorer but it is still kept in order. Zambia is full of stuff not maintained, recapitalized since the British left, from the Kariba Dam on down.
Isn’t this sarcastic satire of stupid en vogue terms, though?
Ex:
Cisco isn’t really up to it yet but we need 5G now to gain advantage. There needs to be competition to Nokia (even though they use British IP). One assumes that GCHQ and Qinetiq Malvern who are the world’s leading electronic spooks in technology terms have reviewed the dangers/opportunities at length and will continue to do so.
Cisco had it to lose. They lost it. The US Government is trying to rescue them.
In the real world the UK will be installing Nokia but we need the Chinese to be nice to us because … Brexit.
In particular the wiring rots. It can be replaced but that is a huge cost. The plane needs to be all but dismantled. It needs a strong maintenance culture to do it effectively.
I can’t wait for a post about it!
Based on my insider connections, it was essentially an epic, if not catastrophic, failure. I can explain more in detail once Karlin posts about it.
Moving production into the 2030’s is not much different from shelving.
A lot of the loss appears to have been visual processing perhaps night vision. The Cro Magnons had significantly larger eye sockets too.
Looking forward to your possible contributions.
Such of my ancestors as had portraits painted looked quite plump and harmless for their age, even in full uniform despite being at the head of the charge at the 2nd siege of Seringapatam in one case. They drank a lot which feminized them.
I’m not sure that Canadians are ideologically more left-wing than white Americans north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
20-40 years ago, I would have said you were wrong: urban Canadians – i.e. Ontarians, probably Quebecois – were then generally a bit more left-wing than whites in urban/suburban America.
However, times have changed, and the American left is more radical and crazy.
As Karlin himself once blogged, American liberalism/mainstream society has become more European. Yay globalism. /sarc
I live among rural whites. I imagine that American rural whites are about the same, ideologically, as their Canadian counterparts.
Of course there are differences of political tradition and custom, but ideologically, yeah, the two seem to have merged more closely.
how many Canadians have you known? Just curious. The center-left Canadians I knew were hardly different.
I sorta had the sweets for a rural Canuck girl once. Fun times.
You’re correct. I remember watching documentaries about this when I was very young and slavery was brought up as a likely theory, but the scholarly concensus has shifted since then:
On how they were built:
From my experience with Canadian country girls, they are almost no different from American country girls from say, the Great Plains. Same type of cornfed/chubby look, definitely fat by European standards. Their tastes in food, clothes, and music is essentially the same as American country girls from the Great Plains.
In other words, the difference between say a Manitoba or Alberta country girl and a Kansas country girl lies in just a slightly different accent, and they are hockey fans instead of football. They wear the same athletic/casual clothes, have the exact same diet heavy on meats and fried foods, listen to the same pop-country music, and have the same cheerful/sweet personalities.
And on Ontario, Toronto and Ottawa whites are no different from say, Boston or Chicago whites in terms of general lifestyles, looks, political leanings, and culture. Rural Ontario and rural Ohio or Michigan have more or less the same type of people too.
Quebec, however, is very different. They are essentially French transplanted to North America, with minor differences. Newfies are Irish in all but name.
Microsoft blocked Notch from attending the 10 year anniversary of Minecraft, which he created, due to “insensitive comments on sexism and racism”:
Never sell out, folks!
Ontarians are certainly more left-wing than are Michiganders, people from upstate New York, and even New Englanders. Presumably Albertans are more right-wing than are these Americans, but Alberta is Canada’s Texas and it’s far to the left of actual Texas.
Quebec is a different country. Aggressively secular and socialist, pro-gay, don’t have kids, but passed a law banning religious symbols that just targeted Muslim symbols while leaving crucifixes alone. Because crucifixes aren’t religious symbols, they are symbols of the Quebec people so they can still be everywhere.
Canadian are naturally more subdued, violent antifa would not be a Canadian thing. But one sees quite a few Trump stickers in upstate New York rural New England, and he won Michigan and one of Maine’s districts. Canadians think Trump is beyond the pale. Trade issues may have contributed to this, but his approval rating in Canada was at 11%.
Here was the 2016 election by county:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/2016_Presidential_Election_by_County.svg/474px-2016_Presidential_Election_by_County.svg.png
I doubt that rural Ontario would be as red as rural northern USA.
Compare northern American politics to Canadian ones. In the northern US you have moderate Republicans vs. moderate-left-wing Democrats (you have Bernie and de Blasio but most northern Democrats in office are fairly moderate, and even Bernie’s Vermont is very pro-gun). The two sides are fairly evenly matched. In Canada in contrast, the moderate right is outnumbered by the left 40% to 60%. What saves the Conservatives is that Canadian elections are first-past-the-post so the Left splits its votes between different parties so sometimes the right-wing candidate gets more votes than any individual left candidate.
So in Canada it is 40% moderate right-wing and 60% some kind of combination of moderate and far-left:
In 2011 Conservatives won with 40%, far left New Democrats got 31%, moderate left Liberals 19%. Canada had a conservative leader.
But in 2015 Liberals won with 40%, Conservatives got 32%, and New Democrats got 20%. Canada got Liberal Trudeau.
The latest poll for 2019 has the Conservatives leading with 35%, Liberals with 32%, New Democrats with 17%, and yet another leftist party, the Greens, with 9%.
Canadian Conservatives should be grateful that they have one party while the Left now has three. It’s their only chance of getting into power.
See my other post (which was supposed to have been a reply):
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-74/#comment-3187568
I’ve lived in the Great Lakes (not Great Plains) Midwest and in Ontario. Ontario girls are certainly thinner.
With respect to wealthy liberal elites, probably. But working class Chicago or Boston whites don’t seem to have Canadian urban analogues.
Rural Ontario is neater, more British (gardens, etc.) than rural Ohio or Michigan or Illinois. Smaller cities have better public transportation and more of an urban feel, like high-rise apartment buildings and living downtowns with stores and cafes . In the American midwest, only college towns and large cities have liveable urban environments, downtowns are dead and instead there are ugly strip malls.
Compare downtown Chatham Ontario (population 43,000):
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ec/86/d9/ec86d9c29cf6e58fd81f1f28da79d1ea.jpg
With desolate downtown Saginaw Michigan (population 51,000):
http://puresaginaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/new-downtown-saginaw-mural.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/3104/3145679661_109910ca21_b.jpg
https://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/2012aug/a06-sagi-bloc-480.jpg
The only rural Ontario people I’ve met are in Nashville, and they may not represent the typical Ontario natives. I wouldn’t doubt average Ontario people to be culturally much more in line with Western Europe than the US or the Canadian Prairies.
The prairies, like Alberta and Saskatchewan, however, seem to be American through and through culturally. Their cities based on Google Street View, look almost no different from their counterparts directly to the south of the border.
I are probably right about the Prairies people, I haven’t been there (a trip to Banff doesn’t count) but I’ve known a few and they are very similar to Americans from places like North Dakota. One interesting quirk about them is, because of mass settlement of Ukrainians in the prairies, many of the ones out there enjoy Ukrainian food like pierogies and holubtsi. It’s like non-Italians in America who make pasta or pizza.
Indeed, it’s a skewed sample. Small Ontario towns and cities tend to have Victorian architecture, gardens, etc. It’s provincial little Britain to Quebec’s provincial little France. The small city of Stratford, out in the country about 2 hours from Toronto, has a well-known Shakespeare festival:
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/fc/db/0d/stratford-ontario-canada.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DXTXT3/quaint-downtown-street-stratford-ontario-canada-DXTXT3.jpg
In Quebec, btw, there is French-language country music that sounds a bit like the American kind.
I would add that the landscape between towns in Ontario is very similar to that of the US midwest. Cornfields look the same in both places.
What in Heaven’s name happened to Quebec anyway? The land that once produced Maurice Duplessis now refers to his era as a time of “darkness.”
Albertan Corb Lund is probably the best living country singer under the age of 50.
The same thing that happened to Catholic Spain and Ireland, only sooner.
I’ve always been very skeptical of this assertion. There is an undeniable bias among many historians to try to build up non-Europeans, and push down Europeans. I have heard it manifested in many different ways – Chinese officials were “smart” not to send out any more expeditions. Ancient Amerinds “knew” about antibiotics because some consumed mold. Europeans came up with “chattel” slavery.
Ancient Egyptians were ruled by incestuous god-kings. I don’t think they had any moral qualms about slavery, so the question is, would it have been useful for them to employ slaves? I think the answer is almost certainly yes. Their economy had to have been pretty primitive – no money. I’m reminded how people in the old South often paid taxes, etc, in pounds of tobacco. Trade seems to have been conducted as reciprocal gifts among royals.
In truth, they probably used skilled labor and unskilled labor on the pyramids, and many of the unskilled were probably slaves, or else otherwise forced into the work.
Anyone see the new Tulsi spot?
I thought it was an interesting contrast to most campaign ads. Oh, the call for bipartisanship was certainly banal, but it probably had the most direct, anti-establishment message I can recall on the Dem side. She used the words “neo-cons” and “neo-libs”, warned against a new Cold War.
That sounds plausible, but it’s nevertheless important to appreciate the sheer engineering feat that building those pyramids was. You’d probably want the bulk of your workforce to be highly motivated and highly skilled. But we can’t rule out the usage of slaves at the periphery of the construction site (such as for fetching materials etc).
Omega 3 fats are the key.
The Quiet Revolution. I’ve tried to document some of it in interviews but nationalistic efforts led to high desertion rates and ultimately was unable to survive socially or economically except as a shadow of itself.
Conservatives signalling about Noah Carl’s firing is rather sickening. Contra Toby Young, Noah Carl’s only crime is not ‘being conservative’. It’s writing about intelligence and racial differences, which are both true and obviously so. Yet conservatives cannot actually bring themselves to defend him on these points.
Quebec’s Quiet Revolution happened before Franco left power.
That implied that Spain’s collapse occurred earlier. But whatever..
Someone should do a good autopsy so that we can learn how to prevent such catastrophes.
OK. I was thinking of Quebec as the subject. (I just tried to edit my response but for some reason I can only delete).
I can remember telling an Irish friend about the Quebec experience. This was about 1997 when things were already changing in Ireland. He laughed it off. It’s just a correction, he said. Ireland is not Quebec. Even in the middle of the last decade he said it was just a fad. Now he’s one of those completely black pilled people saying “how did this happen?”, “where did my country go?”. But I’m sure Poles and Ukrainians will be different. Globohomo will meet its match with them.
We have unprecedented tools – everything from DNA, to brainscans, to Twitter, to ngrams and other linguistic tools. If these are things are really cyclical, this may be the first time that we even have the possibility of truly understanding what is happening.
I suspect that some perverse incentives are naturally built-into language and political dynamics and that what we are seeing is primarily an evolutionary reproductive strategy that used language as a coalition-building tool and which has lost its natural checks and balances.
Unfortunately, we seem to be to caught in it. IMO, everything will hinge on whether it is possible to change these incentives before a collapse, rather than afterward.
But also entirely predictable. “Conservatives” in the West are just pussywhipped neoliberals. I have more respect for the far-left than I do of “conservatives”. The far-left may be unhinged but at least they have principles they fight for. “Conservatives” are just utter cowards through and through.
This also raises the question about academic freedom. Where can you do this research in peace and quiet? Piffer seems to be able to do okay, and so does Rindermann. It appears that Globohomo is far more advanced in Anglophone countries than in even Germany and especially Italy. I wouldn’t be surprised if universities in East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan etc) start to get a non-trivial amount of clever white male researchers over the next few decades if things deterioate further.
I recall this esp. in regard to evolutionary psychology:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490600400109
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2019/04/25/Photos/NS/MW-HI270_tesla__20190425124001_NS.gif
Anyone who believed that Tesla could increase production while cutting simultaneously its workforce and capex deserves to be shot on the spot.
I would issue PP a God-Imperial Pardon, if I were the God-Emperor, though.
Reiner – I noticed that bus tickets from Budapest to Vienna are 4 times cheaper than train tickets. Are trains that much better? Does the higher train price filter out undesirable passengers or is there no real difference. Bus time is more convenient for me but I will take a more pleasant experience, it isn’t a lot of money.
I’ve never used the bus, but to my knowledge they are nice enough with onboard wi-fi and toilets. I don’t think there’s a big difference in the type of people using it.
I think the train stops at three different stations, so it’s more flexible for some people (that was the case a few years ago), but I’m not sure that’s still the case. (The driver might open the door for you at a traffic light, but I guess you will be with family and baggage. He might also rudely reject the request. Not to mention, he cannot really calculate where exactly he would have to stop at a traffic light.)
Also a bus is inherently less comfortable, you cannot stand up, have a walk, etc.
With these in mind, if the bus stations suit you, I’d take the bus.
Looking at the Hungarian internet (mostly dated, I found quora-type questions and a couple blogposts, from 2013-17), apparently the main disadvantage of the bus is that it’s slightly slower and less comfortable (as I wrote, you cannot really stand up and have a walk in the bus), otherwise not much of a difference. Due to competition prices are getting lower in both. They already mentioned buses being cheaper in 2013, though it appeared to me they should usually be in roughly the same ballpark. At least that was the case until 2017, somewhat (but not 4 times) cheaper bus.
I don’t think the type of people using the bus is much different. Nor do I think there’s any serious risk of violence or crime onboard. If anything, pickpockets might be more prevalent on the train. The baggages are also stored way more safely on the bus than on the train, though I don’t think stealing them or stealing from them is really widespread on the train either.
My personal experience of the train dates from 2010 and 2013, and I didn’t even think of the bus, I just bought a train ticket (though it was also more convenient for me both in Budapest and Vienna, and I didn’t find the train tickets expensive enough to warrant some effort and discomfort to check out the bus), and I found it highly satisfactory – clean seats, no one bothered me except the conductor to ask for the tickets, otherwise I could read a book and listen to music like the good autist I am both times.
Thank you! I had a perhaps silly fear that there would be a bunch of gypsies on the cheaper buses (in the USA Greyhound attracts poorer people than Amtrak and of course planes).
The bus in America has worse people than other forms of transportation. I don’t see why it would be any different in Europe. The old saying, “Our prices discriminate so we don’t have to,” applies.
It’s not intolerable though. I used to ride the Greyhound when I was younger and had less money. Passengers a mix of down and out proles, youth, elderly people, and racial minorities. Not the best but you got where you needed to go.
And the Greyhound company takes pride in its buses so they were clean and well maintained.
My brother has taken the bus in Europe and said everyone just gets drunk. Can’t do that on the Greyhound.
My brother says he’d normally take the train. He doesn’t think the price difference is normally that large, the train is faster, more comfortable and takes you to a better location in Vienna.
But he doesn’t think criminality of passengers should be a big issue on either.
In Hungary in the late 1990s while I was a student and used both forms of transportation to travel between cities a lot, the bus was often more upscale. It cost slightly more, and a much higher percentage of the passengers were university students. Though it might have been the particular time and destinations I was traveling back then. The buses were often newer than the very old and horrible communist era trains (many of which are still in service, because Orbán prefers to build soccer stadiums), and it might still be true depending on where you’d like to travel. (E.g. Budapest-Székesfehérvár now often has very good and modern train cars, but Budapest-Kecskemét might be worse.)
Looks like a Sukhoi Superjet just caught fire in Moscow. The emergency landing looked horrible with the plane already in flames while still landing and moving at high speed on the runway, but apparently only five passengers were injured, and all are safe now.
Video:
https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1125070867120230400?s=20
At least one person died:
https://www.rt.com/news/458436-plane-fire-moscow-svo/
Now they are talking about 13 killed.
Looks like AK’s SSJ caught fire in Moscow’s airspace.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxFrsXunz0R/
https://www.proural.info/upload/medialibrary/c7e/c7e765d4d02f3adac0371ad6f0546412.jpg
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-46/#comment-2373407
RT is very slow with this one. Other sources are already talking about 13 killed, and they still only mention “at least one killed and four injured.”
This was Aeroflot, so crappy maintenance is less likely than with some other operators.
I’m wondering if SSJ production remains viable after this, unless it turns out to be something clearly and easily avoidable by the operator. It’s also very bad publicity for the Russian aviation industry.
The SSJ project survived one of jets crashing on an Indonesian volcano.
This is less worse than that.
One year ago…
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/superjet-1-1024×768.jpg
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/superjet-3-1024×768.jpg
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/superjet-6-1024×768.jpg
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1125100477178417153
Would have done the same.
That was a pre production aircraft and completely the pilot’s fault having turned off autopilot and then proceeding to fly low in poor visibility over mountainous terrain.
This seems more serious and does not look like pilot error but a bad onboard fire possibly involving one of the fuel tanks given the size of the flames..sad
You mean you would also have tried to take your carry on luggage with you?
That’s pretty idiotic. Don’t do that. Airplanes are mostly made of aluminum, which is highly flammable at high temperatures. The plane could burn down in a couple of minutes. You should forget your possessions and save your life, and leave the plane as quickly as possible.
What Vishnagupta wrote, the Indonesian crash was pilot error, and a prototype, this was clearly not a pilot error. The possibilities are:
carrying some illegal flammable cargo
the plane is that bad
I would ground all SSJs until it could be confirmed that they are safe, especially to avoid the error the FAA made with Boeing. That way they could avert a bigger PR catastrophe.
I hate losing my stuff and at worst it means dying during a memorable disaster.
http://avherald.com/h?article=4c78f3e6&opt=0
Failure of the electronics?
I don’t care if you die because of your own stupidity, but you endanger the lives of others.
The news report I saw stated that there was a lightening strike shortly after takeoff which was followed by a complete electrical failure, hard landing, and subsequent fire from a piece of the landing gear piercing the full kerosene tanks upon touchdown. Apparently, it could have been much worse, but the plane skidded away from the pool of burning kerosene so that most of the passengers could evacuate. The main question now is centered around why a lightening strike caused an electrical failure. It looks like the pilots performed admirably and it’s a problem with the plane.
RIP for the people on that plane.
Generally speaking Aeroflot is my favorite airline.
Like Pobeda’s 737Max order, there is no better alternative to the SSJ.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1120412692580306947
After watching a more detailed video of the landing, it appears that the fire was caused by the plane bumping up and then crashing back into the runway. So either the angle or the speed was wrong (or both). So either the nature of the electric failure made it difficult to control the plane, or the pilots emergency landing was less than exemplary.
https://twitter.com/bazabazon/status/1125122587598651393
Entertainer-in-chief strikes again.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1125069836088950784
That does sound like stereotypical Russian behaviour.
41 dead apparently.
https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1125126177386115072
https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1125084637439713283
Smoke is rapidly killing people (or making it impossible for them to leave the cabin), in these situations. Onboard luggage will surely not be the problem.
People will be standing up, waiting for the plane to stop, and fall rapidly unconscious from breathing smoke that circulates through the cabin.
In video above, you can see smoke flowing along the ceiling at 0:18 seconds already. Ideally passengers, will try to stay low, where cooler unsmoked air still circulates in the cabin.
–
I remember the episode of the documentary “May Day”, about a very similar fire in England. Passengers could not escape the plane before the smoke made them unconscious.
Afterwards, there was a complete change of regulations, to improve the speed in which passengers could evacuate the plane. Regulations for interior of planes were completely changed since, including removal of firecatching materials, introduction of lights on the floor of the plane.
Here is the May Day episode:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=137452843525939
More than half of the plane’s passengers are killed.
Smoke must have entered its cabin very rapidly (there is some evidence of smoke circulating in the cabin at 0:18 second in the video above). If it was a similar situation as historical fires, perhaps with tens of seconds, became very difficult for passengers to keep their consciousness inside the plane, while they were standing to go to exits.
There was a “May Day” episode about a similar historical fire.
From 36:00 in documentary below, they explain about how to improve the survival and many changes which have been made (but still not enough to stop many dead today).
https://www.facebook.com/AirCrashDisaster/videos/137452843525939
Pretty clear people walking away from the plane with their hand luggage. Undoubtedly would have slowed the evacuation.
Plane does not stop and doors open immediately. It seems like there is more than 1 minute of burning, and waiting for the plane to slow, before passengers would start to exit. These idiots holding bags, presumably took their bas during that time, before doors open.
The high number of deaths, perhaps, because passengers at the back were so rapidly poisoned with smoke.
Plane is burning, but you have to stand there and wait over a minute for it to stop.
https://twitter.com/Telemaster68/status/1125143584016146435
https://twitter.com/mapkpets/status/1125077793858048000
It’s a small and simple plane, which not be the most difficult to exit (if you were not incapacitated by smoke) .
https://i.imgur.com/43P5ffA.jpg
–
In Toronto in 2005, Air France plane was covered with fire after crash landing, and all 309 passengers were able to evacuate the plane in under 90 seconds, with no deaths. I assume the difference in Toronto, was the speed of smoke intrusion from the fire?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_358
.
Trains are usually much faster.
It should have survived a lightning strike and the crew should have had the skills to land manually. Not great.
I can imagine Americans being stupid enough to grab their hand baggage too. They stand up and switch on their phones while taxiing just like Russians. Most injuries occur while taxiing.
i think this is probably the key.
imo the pyramids were largely a govt makework scheme to keep the peasants busy during the agricultural slow period to stop them getting rebellious.
mass media replaced the church.
the only solution is for the church to have its own TV station.
same – mainstream politicians and their minions are generally speaking mostly narcissistic sociopaths.
the main difference between the mainstream and dissidents is the media protect the mainstream ones as long as they do what they’re told.
Most orders of the Superjet are for Aeroflot. If Aeroflot does not cancel its orders, then production of the plane should continue viably.
A majority government owned company (Aeroflot) purchases from a majority government owned company (ОАК).
Aeroflot probably will not cancel even with these problems. So the plane production will probably continue.
–
There indeed problems with the current system. For example, officials children often as directors of the companies.
For example, the Sukhoi Director of Contracts is the daughter of the head of flight safety of the air force – we already discussed this Sukhoi director’s instagram a few weeks ago.
https://www.instagram.com/p/cTeHUVAiw-
and marrying local
The big issue was the landing. The fire (which killed the people) was caused by the landing at the wrong speed or angle. But maybe it was very difficult to land the plane without the instruments..? I wonder if an American pilot (with the Americans’ often vastly higher flight hours) would have been better at landing this plane. Also, one would think there should be no shortage of former military pilots with excellent flying skills in Russia either.
Had the plane landed without bumping up and then crashing to the ground, there’d be no casualties, and the plane would have survived, too, regardless of the electronics problem.
I once traveled in the jump seat in a Hungarian Malév Bombardier CRJ20o, and overheard what the pilots were saying. Some of the former military pilots (it must be remembered though that Hungarian military pilots at the time accrued no more than maybe 40-60 flight hours annually) often landed too hard with the passenger jets when they were distracted and forgot what kind of plane they were flying, though it never caused more than discomfort to the passengers.
Now I read more on this. So they say there was an engine fire. If so, that probably explains the pilots haste in landing the plane. But elsewhere they say there was no evidence of fire before touching the ground. (Indeed, no smoke can be seen on the video even while it’s bumping up first.)
Or maybe the pilot tried to go around for some reason, but stalled immediately?
Very unusual for a woman to take a picture like that without any friends in frame (as I’m sure an expert on Russian instagram thots like you would know).
This map is fake and gay.
Whoever claims that Austrian Dalmatia (enormous emigration and depopulation, deliberate impoverishment, decline of shipping versus Austrian-owned Istria and Trieste competition, Hungarian Fiume) was more prosperous than Croatia and Slavonia, or that Austrian-occupied Bosnia was more developed than Kingdom of Serbia is a diletante. Even post-WW1, people were resettled from both provinces to more prosperous lands such as Slavonia and Serbia, LOL.
During that same period, Austrian officials discussed treating Dalmatia and Bosnia as “European colonies” due to lack of overseas ones – this should be telling.
It lumps together Dalmatia with Austria.
Makes it worse that it must have been very clear that a quick evacuation needed. There was a BA flight in Las Vegas where the engine caught fire on the runway and some people took their hand luggage, but it was clear the fire was not as serious as this incident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_2276
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-5867221/Feds-Engine-crack-caused-2015-British-Airways-incident.html
The Daily Mail article talks about the circumstance more.
I thought about that. Wouldn’t it slow things down by a second or two (per passenger), if you had to use the slide with a piece of baggage in your hand? It kinda adds up, with fifty passengers it could delay evacuation by half a minute, if only two slides are operational (as in this case).
To be obsessed with being in Monaco and drinking Moet, is not a crime. And it’s not a sign of lack of competence – maybe she is a very good and professional business-lady, in her job.
But what do you think of the total situation, where her lifestyle and position was undoubtedly not in co-incidence, with the official position of the father, as head of flight safety of the air force?
She is the Director of Contracts of Sukhoi, who is the daughter of the head of flight safety of the air force. Daughter is Director selling the plane, while the father will be one of the advisers involved with decisions when the defense ministry decides to buy the planes.
Government workers are supposed to following only considerations of duty. Probably, a very serious and sober position like “a head of flight safety” – is better not to be financially equivalent of winning a lottery for your family.
It reaches breakeven last year. But previous years they were losing billions of dollars in public funding. Yet in the plane factories, the salary of the people building the plane is unacceptably low – can be $230 per month for a turner, $300 per month for a crane operator, and $550 per month for a design engineer (you can adjust to cost of living, but these is unacceptably low salaries for people who build something as important as a plane – on which it is our lives depend on their careful work).
Sure, it’s possible it could have slowed evacuation for some people.
On the other hand, many of these bags may be under their seats (not in overhead compartments), which would not necessarily slow evacuation. Moreover, the passengers had to wait for the plane to stop and doors open (while getting poisoned with smoke), before they could escape, and this time could have been the point when the bags are taken by those passengers.
Still, some of the bag-carrying passengers, are not very sympathetic. This fat man complained that his ticket is not refunded 40 minutes after the accident.
That’s wrong. Just imagine sliding out of the plane (and then jumping out of the way quickly, so that the next guy could use the slide, too) with empty hands, or with a cabin sized trolley in hand. If you only lose 1 second per passenger, it means 30 seconds lost after just 30 people. Especially people who are fat or otherwise not fit would find it quite difficult to do so without losing several seconds.
I would create an international treaty that any person in an emergency evacuation taking luggage in hand would lose all of his property on him (so, the hand luggage in question would be confiscated, as well as his clothes and everything in his pockets), as well as a fine of 20 times the ticket price.
Maybe a short prison sentence (not suspended!) should be mandatory, too, though that provision might be difficult to enforce.
Who has more to lose in a US China trade war? Say the US and China imposes 25 percent tariff on each other’s imports, or China decides to go full nuclear and imposes 100 percent tariff on all US imports or starts arresting and indefinitely detaining high ranking US corporate personel in China? And makes a show of mobilizing its strategic rocket forces just to rattle the US even more. Or starts expropriating the assets of US corporations under national security laws? And what does everyone think if a cashless society? Is it a good or bad thing?
A part solution for this issue, could be to install an automatic locks on the overhead cabins, so they are locked during emergency landing (and hopefully people will understand this, and not try to open them).
In the internet, many people are blaming the deaths on this, but it seems not the main topic.
From doors opening in the plane, to last crew leaving the plane, was 50 seconds. (While regulations specify 90 seconds as the ideal).
So passengers who could leave, had left the plane quickly. On the other hand, most of the passengers are dead.
To me, it indicates most passengers were rapidly intoxicated with smoke and couldn’t walk down the aisle after the doors were open. .
There was a debate about whether there should be smoke hoods in planes. On one side, people argued it would slow down evacuation. On other side, people argued that it would be impossible to leave a plane if you can’t breath.
You can see the debate from 34:00 minute onwards in the documentary below (in a 1985 year flight where evacuation was much slower, and yet a lower proportion of passengers were killed than yesterday):
https://www.facebook.com/AirCrashDisaster/videos/137452843525939/
I think it’s clear that “smoke hoods” should be introduced in the plane. In the aircraft fire discussed in the documentary above, you can only breath the smoke once before losing consciousness.
First, even that is slower, considering that less than 50% of people left the plane, and basically each from the first half of the plane. So if you extrapolate, it means at least 10 seconds lost due to unknown reasons. If people were getting poisoned so quickly (as you suggest), then those 10 seconds probably cost the life for at least a couple people, wouldn’t you think? Therefore, even if your numbers are correct, the assholes collecting their luggage probably killed at least a couple people.
Moreover, watching the videos, it’s pretty hard to believe that they managed to evacuate the plane in 50 seconds. It seems that people were leaving like one person every five seconds or so. That’s considerably slower. Here they mention 4-5 minutes:
http://avia.pro/news/ekipazh-aeroflota-narushil-vse-sushchestvuyushchie-pravila-bezopasnosti
Technology is value-neutral, it is all dependent on how it is used.
Some technologies lend themselves to abuse, others less so.
For example depending on how much economies of scale there is, some technologies might lead to the extreme concentration of power, while others can be kept decentralized more easily.
I read a Hungarian article where they were claiming that now there are widespread calls in Russia (“among members of the public and opposition politicians”) to ground all Sukhoi Superjets. Is it really so?
Apparently the planes have always been considered less safe than comparable Boeing or Airbus models.
According to Aeroflot, evacuation was complete in 55 seconds (I made a mistake of 5 seconds).
https://www.interfax.ru/moscow/660212
In the videos, people are first exiting the plane on both sides. And after a short time (have you tried counting the number of people? – it seems around 30 passengers are seen leaving?), there are no people remaining (the final ones only exit on one side and then its only crew leaving). In total 37 people survive the fire including crew (and I think I count around 30 leaving in the 40 second video before the crew exit).
During the exit, the rate of people leaving rapidly decreases, and the cabin crew are last to leave.
Rate of people is rapidly leaving falls rapidly during the 40 second recorded (and at the end, only the crew are leaving).
Extrapolation is that people are intoxicated by the smoke and cannot leave the plane by the end of the 40 seconds.
In the 1985 fire, in England, the evacuation of the plane was far more slowly (by minutes) than yesterday. However, a lower proportion of people were killed.
For example, below I assume that the remaining passengers are unable to move by 1:22 – (after 1:22 it isthe crew leaving):
After 1:22 in the video clip above – it looks like only 6 people exit (?). The crew was 5 (one was killed). So if they exit last as reported, it is 4 crew, and a couple (or a few at most) passengers who exit the plane after 1:22 in that video.
So almost all of the 33 surviving passengers, are evacuated within about 20-30 second time period of
If they could have been just 1 second faster each, maybe one more person could’ve reached safety before choking on the smoke… of course we’ll never know with any level of certainty.
Another mistake of this airline is possible.
https://twitter.com/DDERSS/status/1125300670427488261
Would not surprise me.
http://www.rusaviainsider.com/soaring-fuel-prices-russian-airlines-losses/
A pair of starling nestlings fell into our house not too long ago due to their parents’ not very wise idea to build a nest in our dryer vent. We don’t have a dryer, so instead of being roasted, once the birds had fledged and hop around, they fell down the shaft into our house. Not particularly sure how to take care of them, we ended up setting them up outside in a substitute nest(now ground-based, to avoid more falls) until their parents found them and took them to some bushes still in our backyard. They might still use our covered temporary nest as shelter from the rain until they can fly fully.
I’ve considered the wisdom of this, given that starlings are seen as an invasive species and technically we’ve contributed to the growth of an invasive bird species. Still, it doesn’t seem right to let small helpless fledglings die if I can help it. There’s certainly an argument that this kind of sympathetic cross-species empathy is a human indulgence born from wealth, but I think its probably something that I won’t be ridding myself of.
Thanks for coming on JFs The Public Space. (Monday, May 6, 2019) If you do anymore youtube interviews, please get a better mic, as the echo made it very difficult to understand what you were saying.
if a country is ruled by a corrupt banking mafia it’s very bad as it will be used to enslave everyone.
purely in trade terms, China.
although the looting and financialization of the US economy by the Wall St. banking mafia may mean the US is more fragile generally – at least until the manufacturing base was rebuilt.
Are there a lot of Blacks on Greyhound buses in the USA? If so, do they cause any trouble while they are on the bus or do they simply mind their own business?
Some Robins built a nest on our back porch, so we banished the dogs from the backyard for a few weeks when they left the nest. Made for unpleasant walks in the rain.
Here is a whale protecting a person from a shark:
They’ve also protected seals from killer whales.
You apparently fail to consider that Mitleser’s personal property may be more valuable than the lives of other passengers.
Consider that Mitleser is a quality commenter here, whereas other passengers on airplane flights are most likely normies.
It’s also possible that he owns interesting, unusual property. Perhaps he has a customized Thinkpad X200 with LibreBoot for instance. If that’s the case, I have no objection to a normie dying so his Thinkpad may live.
Austrian Bosnia was more prosperous than the Kingdom of Serbia.
Hardly surprising given the low governance capacity of Balkanoid swine.
Logically all of Europe south of the Danube should simply be turned over to Austrian administration in perpetuity.
And in light of the stunning ingratitude Balkanoid swine show to superior Hapsburg overlordship, perhaps this time around the indigenous inhabitants should be replaced with better stock from Europe. And I mean actual Europeans–not the porcine pond scum pretending to be European on the cursed Balkan peninsula.
Austrian officials discussing Dalmatia and Bosnia as European colonies is indeed telling…of the extremely low level of Balkanauts.
Can you give us a definition of “financialization”?
Stop cucking for birds.
You should be outraged that these avian squatters trespassed on your private property and illegally constructed a nest in your dryer vent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization#Accelerated_growth_of_the_finance_sector
Used to know a girl whose job it was to kill starlings. On a personal level, I’m ambivalent to them. Not very euphonious, but their iridescence is pretty cool. There’s so many (about 200 million in NA), realistically it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be eliminated. IMO, it would be easy to eliminate swans in NA, at least on a technical level, but they have too many supporters.
BTW, in my ideal state, killing a chicken with your bare hands would be one of the requirements for citizenship, but maybe it would be better to fight a swan to the death. I am still trying to figure out the others.
Chickens are nasty little birds. Would kill them for free.
Epic wokeness against cat ladies.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/x-is-having-a-pet-a-bad-thing
Indeed, reports now indicate the exact opposite of what I initially posted. The investigative committee is saying that they are looking at pilot error as the primary version for the cause of the crash. Specifically, the pilots should have dumped kerosene prior to attempting an emergency landing, the weight of which caused the hard landing, and, of course, lead to the severity of the fire.
I hope you slowly die of smoke inhalation in a plane crash soon you piece of shit.
So basically “financialization” means that the financial sector share of GDP is larger than it was during the postwar era.
I’m not sure why exactly this is a problem. Other than that a lot of people have an odd, atavistic hatred of finance.
Michael Hudson is published on this website. He claims “financialization” is bad because debt service transfers income from the “real” economy to the financial sector. But it’s not like the money sent to the financial sector just sits there. It gets spent.
That’s not to say I endorse the financial sector exactly as it is. Leverage is of course inherently dangerous and must be regulated. There are also inherently exploitative forms of finance like lending at high interests rates to the poor.
I’m inherently skeptical of regulators, but certainly there’s no need for a financial product that allows you to short the volatility index (VIX). Yet it exists.
Smoke inhalation causes unconsciousness and is actually a relatively easy way to expire.
But… would you pay to be allowed to kill them?
i’d say the critical aspect is the relative growth of the financial sector relative to everything else.
the financial sector growing faster than the rest of the economy implies parasitism imo – economic cancer.
yes and no.
financialization = concentration of wealth in the financial sector
1) the wealthy save more and spend less as a percentage so as wealth becomes concentrated less gets spent.
2) stagnant demand caused by (1) leads to lack of real investment opportunities so the surplus savings also caused by (1) leads to floods of cash going into asset bubbles.
Retail has grown faster than the rest of the economy. Is retail parasitic?
There are a number of structural reasons for the growth of the financial sector. Probably the number one cause was the demise of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchanged rates. The necessitated the creation of currency futures markets. The success of currency futures lead to the introduction of options for other securities as well where previously options products didn’t exist.
You couldn’t buy call or put options on stocks in the back of the day. Now you can, and as someone who actively trades I appreciate having financial products available with which I can hedge my risk.
The financial sector has also lowered costs, which naturally increases trading activity. Prior to “May Day” in 1975, trading fees were fixed and scaled with the size of the trade. Buying or selling 1,000 shares cost one thousand times more than buying or selling one. Now the fee is the same for any trade, and intense competition is driving trading costs to zero.
Other forms of credit that were once not formally part of the financial sector now are. Credit cards are a good example. Used to be that small retail stores offered credit accounts to their own customers. Now they don’t because they don’t have to.
As regards to the first factor, as the United States runs a large current account deficit we’d do well to increase the national savings rate. Unfortunately as we’ve seen in the Eurozone that sort of belt tightening is not cost-free.
As for asset bubbles, what asset bubbles? It’s not the dot com era anymore or even the W subprime era.
i’ll stick to the most straight forward arithmetic part as it’s so clear cut and unanswerable and also explains why usury is and always has been parasitic:
the already wealthy spend less and save more of any additional income/wealth they receive than the middle class so if the proportion of wealth in an economy shifts from the middle class to the wealthy:
1) demand goes down
2) savings available for investment goes up
3) worthwhile investment opportunities go down cos (1).
I’m in favor of limiting demand in order to eliminate the current account deficit. US gross national savings rate is just 16.9%, compared to 27.4% in Germany and 24.5% in Japan.
So in other words you telling me that “financialization” has reduced aggregate demand is not going to cause me to view it unfavorably.
If anything we need to reduce aggregate demand more.
And and at least as far as harming the purchasing power of the middle and working classes go, there are more obvious culprits than Wall Street. “Free trade” and union busting for instance. Then there’s mass immigration, although for obvious reasons this doesn’t reduce aggregate demand.
lobbied for (i.e. donor-bribed) by Wall St.
if mass immigration leads to
one full-time 40K job -> two part-time 16K jobs + 8K to already wealthy
then maybe it does.
The USA made the strategic decision to abandon protectionism as a national strategy by the late 1930s, and started putting in place the architecture to do so in 1944. GATT was signed in 1947, and President Kennedy went onto abandon the Point of Peril doctrine in 1962.
I seriously doubt that the Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy administrations were particularly sensitive to lobbying concerns from Wall Street.
Also worth pointing out that the powerful Wall Street of the 1920s was not able to overturn the protectionist consensus in America, even though this made it very difficult for European debtors to pay their WW1 debts to America at the time.
Wall Street was more instrumental in lobbying for China’s accession to the WTO, but they were hardly the only force doing so.
I tend to blame the Empire more than any other force, as it consistently sacrificed US markets for “security” considerations. Of course greed plays in as well, and greed was obviously why American policymakers so easily deluded themselves into thinking they could vassalize China by offering them market access.
Unlikely in light of the fact that immigration expands the size of the overall labor force. The trend line in wages for a long time was for them to be flat. Flat wages + increase in labor force = increase in aggregate demand. Of course the wages of the indigenous population, particularly working class men, suffered.
Good news–Bolton and Pompeo have abandoned their aggressive designs on Venezuela and Iran in favor of asserting America’s legitimate interest against Canadian maritime revisionism: https://globalnews.ca/news/5246154/northwest-passage-canada-pompeo/
they didn’t need Wall St. donors to pay for their political campaigns back then?
Democrats today say all sorts of things about Wall St. in public but going by Clinton’s private speeches to the banks (leaked by wikileaks) in private they’re as much a puppet of the banks as GOPe are.
FDR ran elections against Wall Street and put in place sweeping financial regulations and enforcement. Some dubious (Glass-Steagall, FHA) some good (SEC, FDIC).
Truman and Kennedy wouldn’t have needed Wall Street donations owing to then powerful labor unions backing the Democratic Party.
The modern Democratic Party is indeed dependent on Wall Street funding of course.
It should also be noted that Wall Street has in effect peaked already. The golden age of modern finance was from around 1980 or so up to 2007. A lot fewer people work on Wall Street today than during the W era, and banks are no longer the most profitable entities in American corporate life (“tech” having claimed this mantle).
Though it’s still quite powerful to be sure, and the largest five banks in particular have a lot of heft.
The Democrats are still more willing to regulate the banks than the GOPe, but their style of regulation leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of simple regulations to reduce concentrated catastrophic risks that can be enforced by orangutans, they favor extremely arcane and complex regulations dependent on expert enforcement. And you can guess where that expert enforcement tends to come from.
And actually, come to think of it, former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulsen was much tougher on the banks than Timothy Geithner was. Granted, he wasn’t tough on them until after the crisis. But his willingness to openly threaten Wells Fargo stands in stark contrast to the light touch Obama and Geithner pursued. Perhaps Paulsen being a former banker himself knew when he was being bullshitted.
What are some good books on modern (post-1911) Chinese history?
I’m far from any China expert, but Richard Baum’s “The Fall and Rise of a Great Power: A History of Modern China” is quite good. I especially appreciated it’s matter-of-fact evaluations of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where too many books descend into moralistic outrage or misery porn.
I’d also highly recommend Henry Kissinger’s “On China”, mainly for his excellent descriptions of Mao’s diplomatic maneuvers, which Kissinger can barely hide his admiration for. It also contains an explanation of why Vietnam so soon cosied up to the USA despite the latter having so recently devastated the country.
For contemporaneous descriptions of Communist China before the market transformation under Deng, any of Edgar Snow’s books are interesting reads describing daily life and everyday governance of that time.
Tech is decimating the financial sector, and rightly so.
Do you think that we’re entering a new tech stock bubble as we did in the late 90′ early 00’s? Back then, the tech stocks were supposed to herald in a new era of safe investments funding everybody’s 401(k) plan, and then, all of a sudden ‘pop’?…
I liked Odd Arne Westad’s Restless empire: China and the world since 1750.
Can’t really judge though how accurate it is (I don’t know Chinese and have never been to China).
No.
Back then people made crazy arguments that we were entering a “New Economy” of permanent prosperity and that at tech companies in particular old-fashioned nations like “sales” and “profits” no longer mattered. Jim Cramer wrote an article in 1999 stating that Cisco (admittedly a great company still with us today) didn’t need profits because it had something even more valuable: the ability to issue Cisco stock.
It’s hard to remember 20 years later how nutty the dotcom bubble (and lesser known telecom bubble) really was.
Situation today is totally different. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are now the world’s most profitable companies.
We’re late in the economic cycle of course and there are clearly bad businesses which will fail when the recession hits and the credit cycle turns. The IPO of Lyft, for instance, was obviously an attempt by insiders to cash out by selling a pig to retail suckers while the bull market still exists. The upcoming Uber and WeWork IPOs are similar scams.
As in any downturn, there will no doubt be some surprises.
I thought Kissinger had an interesting insight into Mao’s personality, though he only mentioned it in passing: Mao’s tendency to play-act.
This I think can be expanded much further as being a common characteristic of many people on the Left, as their speech is often laced with ridiculous language. Sometimes it is like they are playing kiddie games – House, or Cops and Robbers. They imagine themselves into odd roles – anti-Nazis, when the Nazis have been out of power for over 70 years. They imagine Trump as Hitler and then, almost in the same breath, themselves as Soviet dissidents, when the Soviet Union collapsed nearly 30 years ago, and most of them would have been pinkos, sympathetic to it.
Since language is a weapon, I tend to think of it like wolf cubs playing. They bare their teeth, wrestle and even bite – the whole point of it is to test the limits of their power, to find their place in the order, and to practice for the real fight. It is very verbal – you can see it on any social media, and conservatives are not as driven to the same pattern of behavior. Probably because to take resources, you often need to organize and attack verbally, whereas keeping them requires displays of strength, and most men were patrilocal, so they they had male kin nearby who would come together in defense almost by default.
I’m curious to know what type of portfolio of mutual funds or EFT’s you’d construct cutting a pie into 5-6 sectors with a 5 – 10 year horizon or a 10 – 15 year one? The portfolio would include an automatic rebalancing, say every quarter or so? This would be for a qualified plan or even an IRA account. Any of your ideas would be appreciated. Any reading material is also always welcome.
A shorter horizon like that would naturally have a higher allocation of bonds.
If you don’t have complex financial planning needs, a good robo-advisor should work well for you.
https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investment_advice/intelligent_portfolios
Charles Schwab has very low costs and excellent customer service. They also have other nice financial products beyond that. Be warned that opening a new Schwab account results in a hard pull on your credit.
Other options here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/investing/robo-advisors
I don’t follow?…
They place an inquiry with the credit bureaus to pull your credit report, which leaves a record on your credit report and temporarily dings your FICO score.
So don’t apply if you don’t have a good credit rating to begin with.
The only time that I’ve been involved with credit rating agencies is when I was forced to do so, buying several homes. Otherwise, I’ve never even made an inquiry to determine my credit score. I have had several credit cards in my life, rarely if ever use them, and never had a problem buying a house or getting a credit card. Next to getting mail from interested buyers for my house, I still get offers for credit cards all of the time – I think that my rating is good, although I never bother to find out. Last time I charged something was a couple of years ago, a stove from Sears. I’m still standing and they’re credit is nowhere to be seen? 🙂
You probably have a prime credit score then.
You can sign up for a free account on Credit Karma to monitor your credit score: https://www.creditkarma.com
You’re also entitled by US law to a free annual credit report from the three major bureaus. The only site authorized to do this is here: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
I use credit cards for everything other than purchases I don’t want there being a record of. Cash also comes in handy for tipping people, gambling, and settling accounts with older people who don’t have the Venmo app.
According to this article, the Aeroflot tragedy on Sunday hit the already bad image of the Superjet hard.
https://today.rtl.lu/news/business-and-tech/a/1345168.html
Alright, quit teasing me…what the hell is a Venmo app? 🙂
It’s a mobile payments application owned by the racketeering scum at PayPal. The application is poorly designed and by default makes all your transactions public because it includes a completely unnecessary “social” component. The application (with your permission) connects to your bank account(s).
None the less it’s a very easy way to send and receive money between people. Very useful for things like settling up after lunch, dinner, etc. Also good for small stakes gambling between friends.
Most millennials and zoomers who live in metropolitan areas use the application. In rural areas people aren’t aware of it yet.
I’ve used PayPal to buy a few items in the past over the internet. Their regular program for doing so, doesn’t include this same scheme to make your info public, does it (It’s been a few years since I used it)?
No, PayPal has no “social” functions to my knowledge.
Might be one of the most incoherent Russiagate articles:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/brennan-and-clapper-are-still-working-as-agents-of-influence-for-russian-military-intelligence/
For sure. Beats Western Union.
Newest video of the fire afterwards by a passenger after evacuation.
The whole situation is chaotic.
Why is the fire automobile that arrives at 1:00, not there from the beginning? (Why didn’t they send all their fire engines at the beginning?) Someone tries to climb back to the plane at 0:40
https://www.facebook.com/forbesrussia/videos/181985209350149/
When a plane emergency lands in England, a whole army of fire automobiles and ambulances meets them:
lolz
that is kinda true but only by accident
The best thing about American buses has been their tendency to inspire darned good country music
On a Greyhound bus, Lord, I’m travelin’ this mornin’
‘Silver Eagle’ – Freddy Powers’s tribute to his friend Merle Haggard
‘Thank God and Greyhound’ – Roy Clark
Top 10 2016 profits
Apple $45.7 billion
J.P. Morgan Chase $24.7 billion
Berkshire Hathaway $24.1 billion
Wells Fargo $21.9 billion
Alphabet $19.5 billion
Bank of America $17.9 billion
Microsoft $16.8 billion
Johnson & Johnson $16.5 billion
Citigroup $14.9 billion
Altria Group (Philip Morris) $14.2 billion
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/investing/banks-record-profits-fdic-deregulation-bill/index.html
Banking industry profits hit another record, $62 billion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/20/banking-industry-profits-hit-another-record-billion/?utm_term=.d10253f7e565
“The U.S. banking industry’s profits reached a record $62 billion during the third quarter”
Berkshire Hathaway is not a bank.
Bank of America and Citigroup are also no longer in the top 10.
2018 profits here here: http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/filtered?sortBy=profits&first500
Two banks in the top 10 last year.
The bus in America has worse people than other forms of transportation. I don’t see why it would be any different in Europe.
Bus travel in central Europe is sometimes better than train. Wifi is usually more reliable, sometimes there are TV screens at each seat with movie selection, and many bus lines – eg Regiojet/Student Agency in CZ or the former Polskibus in PL – have ‘stewardess’ service. Also, you can usually check the advanced sales with seating plan online so you can pick the time & bus least crowded. It’s much better than in western Europe.
1970
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/profits/1970/
mostly industry and oil
(deleted previous post as it was sorted by revenue not profit)
leaving aside what’s happened since 2008 it’s interesting to see a side by side comparison of say 1970 with 2005
2005
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/profits/2005/
Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan all in the top 30
1970
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/profits/1970/
i may have missed something but i can’t see any banks in the top 30 (and i can’t see any in the top 100 either although there may be names there which i don’t recognize).
banks (as in Monopoly) used to be safe, low-profit blue chip utilities which were there as handmaidens to industry – and then they weren’t.
For 2018 “The World’s 50 Most Profitable Companies”
https://asian-links.com/gdp/most-profitable-companies
There are 15 banks/financial institutions including 4 American ones in top 50.
True – but I still probably would try and do it, though I would hope not at the expense of actually blocking people.
Anyway, the desire for the passengers to trample over me in that situation would probably overcome my desire to take my luggage in an extreme situation as that – there doesn’t seem to have been any injury reported from crush/stampede
The hero kid air steward was killed placed at the tail-end of the plane trying to open one of the doors, so I’m assuming that at the point the plane came to a standstill he was still alive ,as normal based on their location- half the passengers have turned to the back exit, the other half to the front -with them all unclear which side is the death-trap and which isn’t for a few seconds – and in that time most people at the back have died.
First people to get off the plane were actually a policewomen and her young son quite a few rows away from the front – probably immediately ran towards the front exit door , whilst the plane was still moving and the fire was visible on the exterior but hadn’t not spread inside – so in other words, broke every single rule and command from the air stewards – but that instinct has saved their lives.
Most Tech Companies are essentially worthless in real-world terms, eg. Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, Twitter etc. Real world industries that actually contribute to people’s lives continue to collapse in the USA despite BLUMPF’s titanic efforts.
The plane landed at 18:30, the emergency services arrived at 18:32. So that could be anything from 90 seconds to 150 seconds before they arrive , and don’t know if that time includes when water actually touches to start extinguishing the fire
Runways are about 4km length, a huge area and they can’t take it as a guarantee where the plane will stop on the runway, or even that it will finish on the runway…….plus they need to give sufficient clearance on the ground so that they aren’t at risk of being hit by the plane. To me, two minutes doesn’t seem an incompetent amount of time to reach it. They weren’t informed at the airport of any “emergency ” situation with regards to the landing on approach ,by the pilot
They were saying that fire trucks from M.Ch.S weren’t allowed to go onto the runways for 40 minutes and of Ambulances not allowed through – but as I understand that’s because the airport emergency services thought they had the situation under control. Plane hadn’t reached any significant altitude for disposing of fuel, over Moscow region, to be a viably safe option
It would be interesting to see what different things a western airport would have done – particularly on if they automatically make assumptions on the dangers of a plane landing with a near fuel tank and have the whole emergency services ready……of if this is simply a mass tragedy that occurred with the combination of a few freakish things coming together, from which it should have reasonably been assumed that the pilot would have been able to land the plane normally.
Obviously it is not as engaging an issue, with far less casualties…… but of far more indicative value of systematic/cultural incompetance/stupidity in Russia – is of the quite frequent occurrences of people falling off mobile stairways upon entering/exiting the plane – either because the docking gear hasn’t been used correctly, or the beam between the stairs and the plane has collapsed – simply an unacceptable event that shouldn’t happen in any country- developed or third world. I have been in a situation where the stariway was sufficiently unsteady that I thought a similar thing might happen to me ( somebody died last year in Pulkovo, I think)
Incidents like that ( and the drunk guy operating the snowplow in one of the airports in Moscow that killed the French CEO of Total) are incidents that are probably indicative of something that needs to be syste fixed and shames the whole country……..I am not sure this incident with the SSJ is though.
Banks weren’t safe, low-profit blue chip utilities at that time either. Banking is inherently risky since it involves borrowing short and lending long.
During that time period for instance the entire thrift industry (Savings & Loans) was steadily becoming insolvent. Congress tried to bail out the S&L’s by allowing them to sell their mortgages to Wall Street and also allow them to write off a dozen years of losses on their income tax and receive tax credits (i.e. cash) in exchange. This among other things ultimately led to the S&L blowup in 1989.
It’s described fairly well in Michael Lewis’ book Liar’s Poker.
There were also other problems like the salad oil scandal in the early 60s that nearly sank American Express and the failure of Continental Illinois Bank in 1982.
Banks have in some ways become more the handmaiden of industry as well. Used to be that junk bonds (high yield debt) were practically non-existent. Michael Milken changed this forever, and now less creditworthy corporations can access the bond market. And remember that these companies generally could not borrow directly from commercial banks either.
I will grant that from the Depression until the 1970s finance was very sleepy compared to before the 1929 crash and today. There were a few interesting areas like corporate raiding and the Eurodollar market, both of which got started in London in the 1950s.
I would hardly rate any of these enterprises as equivalent to General Motors or General Electric in terms of social value, but advertising isn’t worthless. Normies always complain about advertising, but it works and is also how most people get product information.
Social media has some positive features for people but on balance seems to exacerbate social and mental pathology.
Even after the first fire automobile had arrived, the additional ones only arrive significantly later.
See at 0:40 in the video, finally more adequate numbers start to slowly arrive (by this time, probably too late, and the 41 will be already dead).
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=181985209350149
Transponder sen the 7700 emergency minutes before landing, so the airport should be prepared for the emergency landing.
However, airport only issued emergency a minute after plane had landed.
In England today, it looks like all the fire automobiles and ambulances are prepared to meet the plane. (However, there was a fire on a plane in the same airport in 1985).
There should be installed “smoke hoods” in the planes. This would have saved many people (it’s discussed in the documentary I posted above about the English fire after 35:00 minutes). I don’t know why no-one proposes to install fire-hoods into planes.
And yes, you should run to the front. Read here about the 1985 plane fire in England. The girl who runs to the front survived, but the others are killed.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/air-crash-survivors-join-together-1082693
https://www.facebook.com/AirCrashDisaster/videos/137452843525939/
The US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, is being recalled to much butthurt from the foreign policy establishment – like this guy.
The White House says she’s merely concluding her 3-year assignment but Democrats such as Steny Hoyer and Eliot Engel are claiming it’s a “political hit job”.
https://www.exim.gov/news/senate-confirms-three-members-for-exim-board-directors-restoring-full-financing-capacity
For the first time since July, 2015 the Export-Import Bank of the United States finally has a full board of directors. Among other things this now means that the EXIM Bank can insure export receivables exceeding $10 million.
I hope this is a sign that libertarian dweebery is finally losing its grip on the Republican Party.
Other than Trump himself, we perhaps have the People’s Republic of China to thank for this development. America’s response to China in the past two years in many ways validates China’s economic model.
imo restricting retail banking to that old-school business model is what made them safe
(as limiting their business model to the equivalent of paying 2% interest on savings and charging 4% on loans enforces caution).
agreed.
The basic safety issue with “modern” banking is wholesale short-term borrowing on capital markets (as opposed to borrowing from depositors) in order to lend long.
Bankers in ’07-’08 described the crisis experience as if turning on the water tap (the water tap in this case being money markets, commercial paper, repo agreements, etc.) and for the first time no water came out.
Recall also that most of the banks participating in this activity were investment banks (and foreign banks) which did not take any depositor money, so the old Glass-Steagall model could not have prevented this. Banks who relied on deposits to fund their lending did not suffer a crisis.
What’s needed to prevent this from recurring–and we shouldn’t be too traumatized by ’07-’08 to expect it will any time soon–is for the government to backstop the wholesale lending markets in the same way bank depositors are backstopped.
Instead we get confusing, complex legislation about “orderly liquidation” and “systemically important financial institutions”. Yeesh.
A simpler solution would be to allow the FED to purchase commercial paper, short term corporate securities, etc. in exchange for top quality collateral or equity.
A second safety issue with the modern financial system is foreign currency borrowing. This isn’t much of a problem in America, but it is for foreign countries. It either needs to be mostly eliminated or there needs to be a global system of coordinated swap lines between central banks (which the FED to its credit did organize during the crisis).
my personal take would be pretty much infinity in the opposite direction
1) strict split between the retail and investment sector
2) strict regulation of the retail sector in the direction of 99% safety (with govt backstop)
3) let the investment sector do what they like but only with their own money – 100% skin in the game, no govt safety net at all and no bailouts ever.
(someone could probably make a reasonable case my take is infinity risk-minimizing which may not be optimal all the time but i don’t care)
Your first two points would have done nothing to prevent the crisis.
Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were both investment banks. Some traditional banks like Washington Mutual got into trouble, but they didn’t do so because they were gambling with bank deposits. WaMu was operating exactly as the investment banks were but just happened to have normal deposit branch banking as well. Already back in the 1980s Salomon Brothers was boasting of being more important than the nation’s (indeed the world’s) commercial deposit banks.
I would also note that government regulators might not be entirely clear on what 99% safety is. The SEC was convinced that Value-at-Risk (VAR) models were a safe replacement for limits on leverage, and the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie) were convinced their activities were safe.
There were private operators on Wall Street who were well aware that some of the MBSes were unsafe (JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs for instance), but almost no one understood how that could lead to a general financial crisis. Indeed it’s still quite remarkable to go back and read a play by play account of what happened.
The third point is fine and one I agree with, except that if the entire financial system ceases to function then the government may be required to step in.
My condition for any kind of a bail out is that the stock holders should suffer extraordinary losses as a result, up to and including being wiped out completely. This is what Sweden did in its banking crisis in the early ’90s. The executives involved also need to suffer seriously negative personal consequences of some type.
The US Treasury did make a profit on its TARP bailout (and the FED earned massive profits from QE), but the bank stockholders were relatively unscathed. The executives even less so with a few exceptions.
I’ll close in noting that it’s a mistake to try to design a perfectly safe economic or even financial system. Perhaps in another post I’ll outline my ideas for financial reform.
my definitions
retail banking: deposits, low risk, moderate profits, govt backstop
– e.g. mortgages, small business loans
investment banking: own money, high risk, high profits, no backstop
– e.g. using mortgage backed securities to “trade” (aka gamble) on foreign exchanges
if you combine the two (or keep them separate but with investment banking also getting a backstop) then there’s no reason not to put everything into high risk, high profit activities which apart from inviting more systemic risk means SMEs get starved of capital.
if the gamble pays off the bankers keep the profit and if it doesn’t they get their stake returned by the govt so they can gamble some more.
skin in the game.
that wouldn’t count as a bailout in my book so no disagreement there.
Neither mortgages nor especially small business loans are necessarily low risk.
This might seem like nitpicking but it’s important to note that a lot of so-called “boring” and “low-risk” banking people fondly associate with the postwar era are neither.
Tilting the entire financial system toward privileging the mortgage finance of owner-occupied homes may also be a questionable enterprise to begin with. Germany never went down that road and doesn’t seem to have suffered as a result.
Until the 1970s or so you could make a good case that investment banking was quite low risk. Most of what they did was investment banking in the classical sense–underwriting and selling securities on behalf of clients.
Trading is gambling, but bear in mind that trading serves a valid market function. Traders make markets. Their liquidity and trading activity provides buyers and sellers of securities and options at low cost for people who need to access capital markets for non-speculative reasons.
Such reasons include purchasing or selling commodities, saving for retirement, hedging foreign currency risks (e.g. exporters and importers), and borrowing to fund essential business operations.
Strictly interpreted “own money” would mean that investment banks would be prohibited from borrowing money from anyone–not just depositors. They were never under such restrictions at all. Glass-Steagall simply prohibited them from accepting deposits. Lehman Bros and Bear Stears borrowed through selling asset backed commercial paper, floating bonds, and repurchase agreements.
You can make the case that borrowing to lend is inherently dangerous, which it is, but in fact all borrowing is inherently dangerous since at the end of the pay it’s simply a promise to repay. The expected income stream could be something other than a loan portfolio and still blow up, as with saw with the automakers during the crisis.
Of course there’s a reason. The reason is that high yield debt also has a higher risk of default. That’s the reason for the higher yield–it’s called a risk premium.
Have you noticed that the US, German, and Japanese governments have no trouble at all selling their ultra low risk, ultra low rate debt?
I’m in an SME and am definitely not being starved for capital. To the contrary lenders are pounding down my door because they’re hungry for yield. The lenders in question include both non-bank lenders and traditional banks. JP Morgan Chase, America’s largest bank, provides good loans to SMEs (including me) if you can believe it.
There is definitely a need to get the executives to have more skin in the game, and as noted previously and agreed to by you if there is a bailout the stockholders should be wiped out.
Skin-in-the-game and moral hazard remain unresolved issues from the financial crisis which is unfortunate.
US Foreign Policy
Re: https://theduran.com/has-trump-had-enough-of-john-boltons-push-for-war-in-venezuela/
Some cogent points made in this video, along with one very disagreeable comment made in the second half. Contrary to what’s stated, the US doesn’t lack in having competent foreign policy minds for high profile consideration. Here’s one such example:
https://therealnews.com/stories/col-wilkerson-us-would-face-a-unified-venezuelan-military-in-an-armed-intervention
Lawrence Wilkerson is a definite improvement over the likes of Mike Pompeo, Elliot Abrams, Jim McMaster and John Bolton. On the subject of Bolton, Fox Business News host Kennedy stated the following:
https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6034937499001/#sp=show-clips
Regarding other Americans with a counter neolib/neolib leaning foreign policy slant:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/10/rebuking-zakaria-and-goading-trump-the-right-way/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/12/13/spinning-against-russia-and-reality/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/04/11/latest-bump-in-us-russian-relations/
The latest clumsily done regime change attempt in Venezuela is yet another reason for Donald Trump to seek the US foreign policy minds who’re more agreeable to what he stated during his 2016 US presidential campaign.
Providing top quality analysis on a range of key foreign policy, historical, media and sports issues.
The coverage improves by bringing in quality contributors, who by and large haven’t appeared at the more high profile of venues. Political biases and cronyism stand in the way of a fairer/improved situation.
Homerun hitters can’t hit homeruns sitting on the bench. As Dizzy Dean is quoted as saying: “It aint bragging if you can back it up.”
Republican operatives are already revealing one of their strategies to bring down Joe Biden in the 2020 elections. Get prepared for ‘Collusion 2’ Ukrainian style:
The former mayor [Giuliani] had told The New York Times that he planned to encourage a Ukrainian probe into Hunter Biden, the son of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden. That probe centers on business payments made to Hunter by a Ukrainian oligarch, and whether the former vice president was involved in removing a prosecutor whose office was in charge of a resulting investigation. He said he also planned to urge the continuation of another probe into whether Ukrainian officials tried to benefit Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign by targeting Paul Manafort’s business dealings in the country.
“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation”
Sure you are!
I was sent an interesting article about cost disease:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/
Ukraine got its first Michelin-rated restaurant. Its food is based on traditional Ukrainian dishes:
https://guide.michelin.com/en/article/people/chef-yaroslav-artyuk-of-kanapa-in-ukraine-breathes-new-life-into-ukrainian-dishes-2018
Yum!
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-restaurant-finds-success-with-pig-fat-chocolates/29926460.html
I’ll stick to Trader Joe’s dark chocolate with almonds.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/10/trump-pete-buttigieg-nickname-1317460
Incredible. The guy’s name is literally Buttgay and somehow Trump still takes it to the next level. And of course Buttgay pretends to never have heard of the insult.
Mayor Battyman does have an extreme case of gayface, I think that is what Trump is homing in on
Great presentation skills:
https://d3h1lg3ksw6i6b.cloudfront.net/media/image/2018/05/11/c5d20ab3735b4a40a222917a9511eca6_Cherry+Chocolate+Dessert_Ukraine+Chef+Yaroslav+Artyuk+of+Kanapa1.JPG
I like the sunflowers in the background – so very Ukrainian. The dish itself is cheesecake.