Open Thread 165

Another pilgrimage to the Fortress Monastery. AOMI. Robin Hanson: The Insular Fertile Future. Reproductively successful cultures are insular from the global culture. Scott Alexander: Book Review: Modi – A Political Biography * AFGHANISTAN. Apparently internal frictions amongst the Taliban, with Pakistani-backed hardliners winning out and filling the Cabinet exclusively with Taliban (in so doing breaking their commitment […]

American Gas Burners, Russian Nuclear Starships

mal comments on a post from last year: Well, there’s nothing wrong with current Russian commercial space program such – they are launching OneWeb satellites now and there’s a Korean one thats supposed to go on Angara. SpaceX does have more launches but thats because they launch their own Starlink constellation and Russian Sphere is not […]

Homicide Rates in Africa

Charles Murray was widely lambasted a few weeks back for this Tweet: Doesn't it make a difference to @davidafrench's argument that two of the core problems typically ascribed to centuries of American racism–elevated black violent crime and depressed mean cognitive ability–are found wherever sub-Saharan African populations live? https://t.co/ZSkSDF4BXW — Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) July 30, 2021 […]

Open Thread 164

No Sovoks → 500 Million Russians

Matt Yglesias might want a billion Americans. But there would have been 500 million Russians in the absence of the Bolshevik Revolution, as was predicted by Dmitry Mendeleev in a 1907 book. Putin, who it is now very clear reads my blog and Twitter, recently said as much himself in a meeting with schoolchildren in […]

Open Thread 163

I was at the Army-2011 expo this week. Very cool, sort of like a military-themed Geek Picnic. POWERFUL COMMENT. Thorfinnsson on the Japanese economy. Adam Tooze: Chartbook #35: It’s not the fall that kills you …. Afghanistan’s looming triple crisis. “Afghanistan as a country where the costs of central governance exceed local capabilities, and is only […]

Ukraine Shuts Down Independent Media

Since the start of this year, the Ukraine has mounted an accelerating campaign to shut down all “pro-Russia” (apostrophes because more often than not they’re not so much explicitly pro-Russian, as merely less anti-Russian and more oppositionist than the mainstream) media. Examples include: This February saw the shutdown of three TV channels (112 Ukraine, NewsOne […]

Commie Anti-Vaxxers

Politics is tribal. “Conservatism” is situational. And so you can get some “unlikely comic book crossovers” if looking at the world through country-specific ideological prisms. According to one recent poll, the most pro-vax Russians are United Russia (i.e. the most pro-Putin) voters, presumably reflecting the official state position which is and has always been pro-vaxx. […]

Open Thread 162

*** AFGHANISTAN The terrorist attacks today. The Taliban did free all those Islamist militants, not all of them would have been strictly suborned to the Taliban themselves. What’s so surprising? Notable foreign relations developments. Tajikistan has adopted a cold tone to the Taliban, accusing them of gong and has reportedly supplied the NRF holed up […]

Open Thread 161

MUSTREAD. @pseudoerasmus thread on the history of the Taliban. Steve Sailer on Pashtun proverbs. * Erik D’Amato: 20 Hungarian Lessons the West Is Still Missing Noah Carl: Observations on Afghanistan Lyman Key thread on Chinese TFR. We still don’t really know what’s going on there. MUSTREAD. Philip Lemoine: Why COVID-19 Is Here to Stay, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry […]

Where Are the Afghanis?

The past is the best guide to the future, so there’s no surprise that there is already a rebellion breaking out against the Taliban. Finding its core in the natural fastness of the Panjshir Valley, which foiled repeated Soviet attacks during the 1980s, the Northern Alliance is reconstituting itself under Ahmad Massoud (the son of […]

Taliban Rule is the Democratic Will of 13% of Afghans

It is true that Afghans probably have the highest “Islamism Quotient” in the world. Support for sharia, as Steve Sailer reminds us, is basically universal. He refers to a 2013 PEW poll, which Razib Khan and I had covered a few years back. Furthermore, 79% of Afghans who support sharia also support the death penalty […]